Listen, I know that once we turn forty we're all put out to pasture in the Great Programmer Iceberg and left to fend for ourselves but:
I think the takeaway is, you're not building something sustainable if you can't attract people with kids. Kids are a very natural and common lifecycle event for people over the age of 25.
In terms of dollars and cents, the notion that you're building a team of "world class talent" that doesn't include anyone over the age of 30 is silly.
Not that the vast majority of startups need world class talent, but that's neither her nor there.
This is so well stated. It's something I (age 34, married, no kid(s) (yet)) think about a lot. I live and work in a city (San Francisco) and in an industry (web developer) where being 10 years older than the median age of my neighbors and colleagues feels like a liability. I feel like I've just figured a few important things out and I'm already past my prime.
Not to mention the huge and underserved market for people with kids, grandkids etc. Now I like startup culture or I wouldn't have been on HN so long, but in all the excitement and hipness of disrupting things, it's easy to forget that there's a large number of people who are not interested in that attitude, but want products that help to stabilize or enhance their life.
Marketing to these people is basically selling to the tortoise rather than the hare [1], and success in doing so probably means building that attitude from the inside out.Tortoises aren't very exciting to look at, but there are a lot of them and they are pretty successful in evolutionary terms. So don't grudge them their lettuce.
I think the takeaway is, you're not building something sustainable if you can't attract people with kids. Kids are a very natural and common lifecycle event for people over the age of 25.
In terms of dollars and cents, the notion that you're building a team of "world class talent" that doesn't include anyone over the age of 30 is silly.
Not that the vast majority of startups need world class talent, but that's neither her nor there.