This is one of those posts that stew around for a few days.....Marc Andreessen
recently set a challenge.
So here's my first challenge: to anyone who has an opinion on the role of age and entrepreneurship -- see if you can fit your opinion into this model !
His model is, in a nutshell:
Generally, productivity -- output -- rises rapidly from the start of a career to a peak and then declines gradually until retirement.
This peak in productivity varies by field, from the late 20s to the early 50s, for reasons that are field-specific.
Precocity, longevity, and output rate are linked. "Those who are precocious also tend to display longevity, and both precocity and longevity are positively associated with high output rates per age unit." High producers produce highly, systematically, over time.
The odds of a hit versus a miss do not increase over time. The periods of one's career with the most hits will also have the most misses. So maximizing quantity -- taking more swings at the bat -- is much higher payoff than trying to improve one's batting average.
Intelligence, at least as measured by metrics such as IQ, is largely irrelevant.
So in effect creativity, innovation etc are not really about special techniques, self help books, 6 point plans or whatever - its about hours spent and number of shots at goal - a numbers game in other words.
He also notes that research shows different types of endeavour peak at different ages:
And here's my second challenge: is entrepreneurship more like poetry, pure mathematics, and theoretical physics -- which exhibit a peak age in one's late 20s or early 30s -- or novel writing, history, philosophy, medicine, and general scholarship -- which exhibit a peak age in one's late 40s or early 50s? And how, and why?
(There is a fascinating aside that talents in the early peaking fields also tend to die young btw ).
One of the problems with waiting for one's thoughts to percolate is that
others get there first. Naval Ravikant pretty much hit some of my first thoughts, which were roughly on his lines:
Now I prefer a slightly different hypothesis. More of the creative instinct is driven by the sublimated sex drive and the desire to attract a mate than we give it credit for. And more of it is squelched by the demands of family than anything else. An extreme take on it is presented by Kanazawa:
"Scientists tend to 'desist' from scientific research upon marriage, just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage."
Sociobiologists have long speculated that creativity (and intelligence overall really) have just been an aid to getting our jeans down and our genes up into the next generation. (Of course, if this were totally true then geeks would all get laid constantly, which - on empirical observation - is not a very provable hypothesis. It is clear that if you are going to peak young
and leave progeny, poetry is a better approach than physics )
The other - and more salient here imho - point Naval made relates to time. As anyone who has tried to start anything from scratch knows it takes a huge amount of time - as does family life. And when the two collide, it makes for very hard choices (and getting it on is normally on the opposite side to setting it up as well). The other thing is that families need cash, and cash - by and large - does not flow from the early work required in an entrepreneurial endeavour.
Therefore, I would hypothesize that there are 2 main points at which there is significant free time for real creative, innovative endeavour (ie time to generate lots of shots on goal) in most people's lives:
- Pre having Young Kids - for most people that's the 20's
- Older, post Young Kids (and probably when you have earned enough to send the bleeders to college) - ie from say mid 40's on for most people - hence the 50's peaking. (In a few cases like Marc's the first swing of the bat means that all this is solved at a stroke, but that is probably a small minority)
Underlying this is an assumption (i) of an S curve, i.e the fruits of one's overnight success have been laid in damn hard work for 3-5 years previously, and (ii) that one takes one's family responsibilities vaguely seriously. Hence the 20's and 50's peaks.
Now a thought on why the difference in fields where things peak. The ones that peak young do not require a holistic view of multiple things, you can win by being very good in One Thing (Youth in general not usually noted for holistic views). The endeavours of the Old Lags seem to require (in general) a much more rounded set of experiences - familiarity with more things - and a more holistic world view.
So the question is - what sort of skillsets does starting a business require - The One Big Thing or Many Small Things? This is the
Fox vs Hedgehog Hypothesis (The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing). So, by this logic:
Hedgehogs are the 20-somethings - if the market is hot to trot for curling up in a ball with spikes outwards, you're a hit. If not, you're a one trick pony (as it were) and will get eaten as there are simply not the skills to duck and weave (talking generally here).
Foxes are the 50-somethings - can probably turn their hands to many things, know the ropes - but that is both a blessing and a problem, in that the Hedgehog has to keep that ball thingy going through thick and thin, and by sheer perseverance may still survive and prosper. The Fox on the other hand can easily drop something that looks too hard and go off in another direction.
So, applying this to entrepreneurship, I hypothesise that :
The Hedgehog strategy probably works really well where the One Big Thing is in a new area (ie no one knows how to unravel spiky balls) and is fairly simple to co-ordinate (does not require knowledge of lots of other tricks). Imho a lot of the "Web 2.0" hypestuff is like this - its Presentation layer, pretty, fairly simple to do really, just requires some cutting edge know how and requires sheer perseverance and usually a lot of chutzpah.
The Fox Strategy probably works better where things are a bit more complex, need bit of ducking and weaving and a lot of disparate skills. Infrastructure layer start-ups are probably more of this ilk. In general this is more capital intensive as well. Foxes probably can strt Hedgehog businesses but are less likely to be in the New new areas (it may also be that many of those Hedgehogs that succeed go for younger consumers which the Foxes are less likely to grok
)
This is a simplification of course, but seems like as good a hypothesis as any to go with.
So, an answer of sorts then - its a function of the time available to swing the bat , shoot at goal or whatever (which is bimodal on average) plus positioning the type of startup to the skillset you have. And as its a numbers game - there are very many SocNets or VideoShare sites, only a few make it - this brings one on to a discussion of Luck....I have 2 views on this from empirical observation.
The first is that many (most?) entrepreneurs who have "made it" were "right place, right time" (some even put in the hard yards of long times, many places), though all of course believe its their own skills etc. The proof is in what they do next.
The second is about "creating your own luck". It's really a play on the numbers game - or options theory if you prefer - in that the more bread you cast on the waters and time you do it, the more likely you are to get a bite. For those interested, Richard Wiseman has done quite a bit of
research on Luck., and his conclusions in a nutshell are:
Principle One: Maximise Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, including networking, adopting a relaxed attitude to life and by being open to new experiences.
Principle Two: Listening to Lucky Hunches
Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. In addition, they take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities by, for example, meditating and clearing their mind of other thoughts.
Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune. These expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by helping lucky people persist in the face of failure, and shape their interactions with others in a positive way.
Principle Four: Turn Bad Luck to Good
Lucky people employ various psychological techniques to cope with, and often even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, do not dwell on the ill fortune, and take control of the situation.
Now there is a danger this all sounds a bit Self-Help like, but all he is really describing is the equations in any numbers game - Chances Created x Balls to go for it x Execution x Know when to cut your losses.
