A Lost Generation of Entrepreneurs?
I've been worrying lately that we are suffering from a lost generation of entrepreneurs. That was my first reaction when I read what Sequoia's Doug Leone said a few weeks ago about innovation and age at a recent talk with MIT Sloan students visiting Silicon Valley, where Leone claimed that only people under the age of 30 are truly innovative. Over 30 folks can manage innovation, Leone observed, but you need to be under 30 to create it. Examples cited included Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder who was 30 at the time that he started the service. Now you can argue whether this is right or whether it's a hyperbolic statement for effect, but let's put that aside for now. Here's my worry: when I was under 30, I had the opportunity to be a part of a rocket ship start-up (Open Market), that promoted me into an executive team position of a public company in my 20s. The lessons and skills from that experience inspired me to delude myself into thinking I could be the founding president of another start-up, Upromise, when I was 30. At the time,
