Self replying with another thought: I always find it remarkable when really young founders (like college-age) are successful, because they lack so much understanding about the world, business, people, etc. BUT they likely have a great deal more curiosity and drive than older folks.
Maybe there's some sweet spot, where founders have enough real-world experience to understand how the world works, and how to build things, but are still curious and driven enough to jump off and try.
Past that point, I fear that curiosity starts declining even as competence increases - say, when you're 50, will you get the feeling you 'know' the world in-and-out, you 'know' there's no easy opportunities... and besides, you have a teenager-filled family, a mortgage, etc all of which perhaps stifle really broad-ranging curiosity not least because your time has more demands on it.
I think that there is also a certain (to a large degree realistic) pessimism that comes with age. It's not just that younger people are less risk averse (though they are), it's that they are less likely to think that they will fail.
Lots of successful startups could have a post-hoc analysis of "Holy shit we were stupid, but we worked hard and got lucky"
Or, as a friend of mine put it, inexperienced people don't succeed because they know something that experienced people do, they succeed because they don't know something that experienced people do.
Reminds me of Pixel (the cat from Heinlein novels and others), who teleports and travels through walls because the cat simply does not know such feats are impossible.
It's a not-unusual theory, but it's bumping into something I'd really like to avoid (especially on HN), which is negative generalizations of different age/gender/racial/familystatus/etc. demographics in business contexts.
(In the US, a super HR person's Spidey Sense would tingle, and they'd fly across the building and yank the keyboard out of someone's hands, before certain sentences could be finished. Then sit down for a constructive discussion about why generalizations are not only counterproductive and unfair, but also a big policy no-no at most established US companies. But on HN, we just have to frequently ask to please stop saying that.)
It's also not really helpful to generalize like that in the sense that I've known plenty of 50+ senior engineers who were very curious and very capable. And they often had a lot of advice about pitfalls to avoid when applying new technologies because they had used the same technology 20 years ago when it was called something else or sold by a different vendor. People often deride experience on here, but I've gotten a lot of mileage professionally out of learning from other peoples' experiences. Occasionally I have to explain that "yes, things are really different now" but that's good because if I'm wrong about that I get to find out before I invest a bunch of time in a bad approach.
You hear about the young founders because they are the exception. Research shows most successful ones are in their late 40s. I also take issue with curiosity changing over time. If anything, it's naiveté. Young founders charge ahead and a few get lucky.
Maybe there's some sweet spot, where founders have enough real-world experience to understand how the world works, and how to build things, but are still curious and driven enough to jump off and try.
Past that point, I fear that curiosity starts declining even as competence increases - say, when you're 50, will you get the feeling you 'know' the world in-and-out, you 'know' there's no easy opportunities... and besides, you have a teenager-filled family, a mortgage, etc all of which perhaps stifle really broad-ranging curiosity not least because your time has more demands on it.