MIND GRENADES
MIT, Northwestern University, the National
Bureau of Economic Research, and the US
Census Bureau who examined the success
rates of startups. When they homed in on
elite “high-growth” tech firms, they dis-
covered the average age of the founders
was 45. What’s more, their chance of suc-
cess didn’t decrease with age. It increased.
But I think the biggest value of older
entrepreneurs isn’t merely that they suc-
ceed more often than younger ones. It’s that
they’re better positioned to take on what’s
sometimes called “tough tech”—the hard
challenges of our age, like clean energy,
curing disease, and climate adaptation.
Sure, young people are great at crank-The study defined these accomplished
companies as those with the fastest job
growth and that had a successful acquisi-
tion or went public. Founders in their fifties
were more than two and half times more
likely to hit those marks than ones in their
mid-twenties. Even those who had hits at
a young age had bigger ones later in life.
As one of the researchers, MIT Sloan
economist Pierre Azoulay, pointed out to
me, Steve Jobs may have cofounded Apple
in his twenties, but the company only
became a world-spanning behemoth
when Jobs presided over the invention of
the iPhone. By that time, he was 51.
Why might older folks have better suc-
cess with startups? Part of it is that they
acquire better people skills. “They develop
better empathy,” which is crucial in build-
ing devoted teams, notes Rich Karlgaard,
Forbes publisher and author of the book
Late Bloomers.
Tony Fadell, a wunderkind at Apple in his
early thirties, founded Nest at age 41. The
startups he created in his twenties failed
to take off, but with Nest he had rocketing
success. He attributes this to the acquisi-
tion of self-knowledge: understanding the
importance not just of making a cool prod-
uct but also what customers want, how to
make a sale, the whole ball game.
Fadell loves young founders, but “they
have so many blind spots,” he says, and
they don’t understand the broad picture.
“Or at least I didn’t.”
ing out software. All they need is a laptop
and an idea, and arguably they’re better at
seeing opportunities in the world of culture
(like Facebook or Snap). But if you want to
pioneer new battery technology or bioen-
gineering for growing crops in zones ren-
dered arid by climate change, you’ll need
to navigate regulated industries and pull
off research that requires a PhD or more.
Today’s science is getting more and more
complicated and specialized. “We’ve never
met a biotech founder who’s 25 years old,”
Azoulay notes. Fadell is an investor now
and is putting money into “the hard stuff,”
including biotech. He was an early investor
in Impossible Foods, a company that wants
to curb our consumption of C0 2 -heavy meat
by making plant-based substitutes and which
was founded by a 57-year-old professor of
biochemistry (see Pat Brown, page 73).
So maybe it’s time to actively unlock the
power of older innovators. Tech firms could
build more multigenerational teams, much
the way hospitals pair younger surgeons
(fast, eager to learn) with older ones (expe-
rienced, seen it all). Meanwhile, Silicon Val-
ley investors should reconsider their ageist
biases. “People over 45 basically die in
terms of new ideas”—as venture capitalist
Vinod Khosla has said—is a sentiment that
clearly needs to be retired.Sure, innocence is great. But what
if experience is even greater?
Maybe we’d get better innovation
if we left it to the elders.
DEMOCRATIZE THIS!
The operations overlords of wired
make me use Airtable. It’s a hip work-
flow tracker, with pretty color coding
and copious tabs and a “robust” API
that syncs with Slack. It’s also, appar-
ently, a superhero. The Captain Amer-
ica of spreadsheets. Airtable isn’t just a
shinier version of Excel—it’s on a self-
professed mission to “democratize soft-
ware creation by enabling anyone to
build tools that meet their needs.” As
if the oppressed white-collar workers of
the world were crying, “Help! Bring salu-
brious democracy to my dismal day-to-
day!” Democratizers run rampant through
tech these days. An app called Robinhood
(was that guy pro-democracy?) wants to
“democratize finance for all.” Veo aims
to democratize soccer videos “one cam-
era, one field, one team at a time.” Cus-
tom Movement wants to democratize
bespoke sneaker ownership, and Creator
imagines the same for hamburger prep.
Then there’s dearest Dadi, here to reform
that most undemocratic of institutions,
sperm storage. It’s all so gross and con-
fusing. I mean, I theoretically support
unfulfilled sneakerheads finding shoes
that match their special personalities,
but the last time I read my Plato a stable
republic didn’t depend on the freedom to
personalize products. See the contradic-
tion? Democracy is a kumbaya-humming
potluck where the whole class is invited.
Democratization, meanwhile, caters to
infinite constituencies of one, a nonsen-
sical personalization of the political. By
now I should be used to marketers pil-
laging the English language for profit,
but this is tone-deaf even for tech. The
town squares of social media? Now roil-
ing hellsites of extremism! “Democratize”
all you want, but I’m no fool. Democracy
is burning, and you would have me buy a
reclaimed-wood, custom-made violin.CLIVE THOMPSON (@pomeranian99) is a
wired contributing editor. Write to him at
[email protected].ANGRY NERD
BY SARA HARRISON
(^022) ILLUSTRATION / STORYTK