Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

This post is from 2014. Study after study has proven that more successful founders are in their 40s and 50 than in their 20s. More on the most recent studies this week.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

On one hand you have Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital, lamenting the lack of enterprise startups and on the other you have Sequoia’s Michael Moritz, “an incredibly enthusiastic fan of very talented twentysomethings starting companies. They have great passion. They don’t have distractions like families and children and other things that get in the way.”

Other things such as experience.

The shallowness of so many of today’s startups makes a great deal of sense if you remember the advice given to every aspiring writer, i.e., write about the things you know; write from your own life and experiences.

Investors give entrepreneurs similar advice, which is probably why you have an abundance of hook-up apps, gossip apps, games and social time-wasters.

And then there is the question of what purpose our economic growth actually serves. The most common advice V.C.s give entrepreneurs is to solve a problem they encounter in their daily lives. Unfortunately, the problems the average 22-year-old male programmer has experienced are all about being an affluent single guy in Northern California.

Monday we looked at the economic dangers from Silicon Valley’s generational gap highlighting the incredible waste of talent engendered.

But the real stupidity in the rush to fund the young is that their success is a myth and not backed up by any kind of hard data.

A 2005 paper by Benjamin Jones of the National Bureau of Economic Research studied Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics over the past 100 years, as well as the inventors of revolutionary technologies. Jones found that people in their thirties contributed about 40 percent of the innovations, and those in their forties about 30 percent. People over 50 were responsible for 14 percent, the same share as the twentysomethings. Those under the age of 19 were responsible for exactly nothing. One study found that even over the last ten years—the golden age of the prepubescent coder, the youth-obsessed V.C., and the consumer Internet app—the average age of a founder who could claim paternity for a billion-dollar company was a rickety 34.

Everybody in tech focuses on the importance of “data driven” decisions—until the data doesn’t support the decision they want to make.

That’s when they start talking about the importance of “gut instinct” and “unconscious pattern recognition.”

Data only matters when it supports prevailing prejudice.

Flickr image credit: Deryck Hodge

When you encounter a vacuum it seeks out something to fill it. The vacuum doesn’t care what that is as long as the void is filled.

I think that fact is true for us as well. If we have a void we will seek to fill it and if we’re not careful we can damage the work that we have done.

I state all of this because I think it’s important to recognize that we need to constantly fill ourselves with what will benefit us and surround ourselves with people that share the same beliefs.

How do we do that? For me personally, I work in sales, but tend to be by myself most of the day. I have an office and it can be a little bit isolating at times.

To combat that I make it a point to read some good sales blogs like Jeb Blount, Anthony Iannarino  and Jen Gluckow. These folks all have slightly different approaches to things and it’s like you’re talking with a friend and bouncing ideas.

I also make it a point to go to outside events. Startup mixers, AA-ISP and other networking events. Some of these can be a mixed bag, since there are those that are just there to seek out a job.

However you can find gold as well. I have found that AA-ISP makes it a point to have value in their meetings while also having a good time.

I also make it a point to reach out to my boss to make sure I am on the right path. It clears my head to ensure we are on the same page and helps guide my priorities.

Finally I speak to my wife about everything. She is my rock and my support in all things. Whenever I have doubts or successes I share them so we can work it together and celebrate.

What do you do?

Image credit: James St. John

It’s so sad. At least it is if you believe Vinod Khosla, who claims that no one over 45 has new ideas, let alone disruptive ones.

That doesn’t bode well for a new his new healthcare venture.

Amazon is forming a joint venture in healthcare aimed at employees with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, according to a company press release.

Obviously, Khosla and his groupies forgot to tell 54 year-old Jeff Bezos that he is dead in terms of new ideas and that his co-founders, Jamie Dimon, 62 and Warren Buffett, 87, are even deader.

Not only are his co-founders old-to-ancient, one of his first hires was a geriatrician (in case you don’t know, that’s a doctor that specializes in the Medicare crowd)

Must be those dead brain cells at work, since the tech crowd, who are disrupting healthcare with bio hacks and drop-in clinics, know that speed and convenience are what’s needed.

What is it that old guys can see — and the under-40 just don’t get?

If Amazon is looking to disrupt the healthcare industry, why start with geriatrics -— a specialty that hardly seems cutting-edge? But what tech experts don’t know, and what Amazon has figured out, is that to provide high-quality health care for seniors, physicians must be innovative — and disruptive.

Cutting edge IDEO figured that out in 2016.

Just as writers must use their life experience to write with any kind of authenticity, you can’t expect innovations from people who have never experienced or noticed the problem.

When your body, and those in your social circle, work as they should 99% of the time you are unlikely to have a handle on the difficulty of managing multiple, chronic diseases, especially with severely limited resources — financial and human.

So let’s hear it for the old crowd, may they focus their efforts on the problems and challenges of which their younger brethren are barely aware.

Hat tip to Emily White for sending the article.

Image credit: Stuart Richards

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Since the start of this blog 12 years ago, I’ve written numerous times about the sheer idiocy of using age to screen talent. This post mentions several examples that easily refute Vinod Khosla’s ignorant comment on age and creativity, but here is an even better example, since software is supposed to be a young person’s game.

Yukihiro Matsumoto was born in 1965; in 1995 he released the Ruby programming language to open source. Of course, at 30 he was still within Khosla’s window. In 2012 he open-sourced MRuby, in 2014, at the ripe old age of 49 he open-sourced his work on streem, a new scripting language and he is still going strong.

Age as a criteria when hiring is just plain stupid, no matter the size of your company.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

It’s always interesting to see young people following in the footsteps of their predecessors.

Even more so when they hotly deny doing it.

But the frosting on the denial cake is that they are following in some of the stupidest footsteps.

Which they are doing in droves.

Last week I wrote how stupid it is to stereotype 80 million millennials.

Before that is was management’s stupidity regarding Gen X.

Age, however, is the biggest stupid and has been for decades.

For Boomers, the breakpoint for when a person became hopeless and valueless was 30; Millennials raised it to 40.

As bad as age discrimination has been in general, it is far worse in tech.

VC Vinod Khosla crystallized and popularized this mindset back in 2011.

 “People under 35 are the people who make change happen. People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

That means you can expect no more creativity from Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Marc Benioff, Parker Harris and Satya Nadella. (For insight to other fields read the article.)

Not to mention that 32 year-old Mark Zukkerberg only has a few good years left.

There are thousands more at all levels, I just picked recognizable people to better illustrate the stupidity.

The difference between when the Boomers did it and now is the notice and action being taken.

This past week, the EEOC joined a probe behind a federal class action lawsuit against Google filed last month, charging that the search giant “engaged in a systematic pattern” of discrimination against applicants over the age of 40. The suit, expanding upon a related case filed earlier this year, cited data from Payscale that placed the median age of Google’s workforce at 29, with a margin of error of 4%. By contrast, the median age for U.S. computer programmers is 43.

Actually, I will probably find it somewhat amusing to watch founders as they try to meet candidate demand for the compensation and perks of the past few years in today’s do-more-with-less/revenue-based-business-model world.

That also goes for many, not all, by a long shot, tech workers who are looking for those same jobs and perks.

So heed the advice I recently gave a founder who took advantage of my standing offer of free help (both my phone number and email are posted on this blog).

He asked how to land a “star” candidate looking for “yesterday’s” compensation and refused to consider anything less.

My advice was to take a pass, refer him to Facebook or Google hire a reality-based programmer who can do the needed job and was sincerely interested in his product and vision.

The only thing he might lose were a few late night bragging rights.

In short, grow up, get smart and hire talent — no matter its age or color or gender.

Image credit: Ben Sutherland

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

I often field questions about compensation, stock allocation and bonuses that revolve around the idea of fairness.

There have been more calls since a rise in media attention to gender pay inequities, especially focused on tech. They look at what other countries are doing, such as a recent UK law, and wonder if similar things could happen here or if someday down the line they will have to do as Marc Benioff did.

Whether the subject starts with diversity or compensation, my callers fall in two distinct camps.

• Those looking for ways to bake fairness into their company’s DNA; and
• The ones who want to cloak current unfair actions in a veneer of acceptability.

(I have to admit that listening to the second group stumble around trying camouflage what they want to do is amusing, but definitely not funny.)

Of course, it’s easiest for founders just starting, since they have no historical staff or (hopefully) bad habits, but any size organization can do it if management is determined and has the grit to follow-through.

Here are some basics actions:

• Develop core values around fairness, diversity, transparency, etc., make both values and culture public on their site, and follow-through when recruiting.
• Salary and stock offers should be based on the value and effect of the position on the company’s success, as opposed to the person you are hiring.
• Before approving compensation compare it with similar people inside and out for fairness, especially if the candidate is a woman or minority.
• Talk to others, such as Gusto cofounder and CTO Edward Kim or the folks behind the Founders for Change coalition.

The most critical factor is a willingness to pass on hiring people when it’s obvious they are assuming it’s just talk or that you should make an exception for them because they are special.

As I’ve said in the past, “If you pay your people equally when you hire and promote there won’t be a pay gap for you to erase.”

Image credit: HikingArtist

If you’re anywhere close to sales you know last week was a busy one. For some it was end of quarter, others the month, and for a few it was end of year.

As much as we would all like to have our sales done well before the end, it rarely happens. I have found the end of a quarter to be this odd nebulous time. You typically can’t push a sale more than it already is and you’re in a waiting game to get it in.

There are a lot of calls with legal, management and then a lot of waiting. I love the crush of it all, but for non-sales folks I think it’s hard to convey the roller coaster of emotions.

However, the first week of a new quarter is like stepping in a new car right off the lot.

Everything is shiny and new; all is right in the world and you have a brief moment to relax.

I am a firm believer that rest is required to excel. I have taken this week to do that and get in some needed time for myself.

I have been to the beach, spent time with old friends and made time with family. It has had the much needed result of putting things in perspective and allowing me to appreciate why I work.

I don’t think we are meant to be machines, always pushing our metrics. That’s not to say we are not meant to excel, but I don’t think it should be our only focus.

There are a few single minded individuals in the world who seem to not relax, but I know this cannot be true as we have all seen what burnout looks like.

As I write this, I just returned from spending time together with family and catching up. I’m relaxed, in the moment and ready for the week to begin when I return to work.

How do you approach rejuvenation?

Image credit: kansasphoto

Have you ever been to a post-holiday potluck? As the name implies, it’s held within two days of any holiday that involves food, with a capital F, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and, of course, Easter. Our group has only three rules, the food must be leftovers, conversation must be interesting and phones must be turned off. They are always great parties, with amazing food, and Monday’s was no exception.

The unexpected happened when a few of them came down on me for a recent post terming Mark Zukerberg a hypocrite. They said that it wasn’t Facebook’s or Google’s fault a few bad actors were abusing the sites and causing problems. They went on to say that the companies were doing their best and that I should cut them some slack.

Rather than arguing my personal opinions I said I would provide some third party info that I couldn’t quote off the top of my head and then whoever was interested could get together and argue the subject over a bottle or two of wine.

I did ask them to think about one item that stuck in my mind.

How quickly would they provide the location and routine of their kids to the world at large and the perverts who inhabit it? That’s exactly what GPS-tagged photos do.

I thought the info would be of interest to other readers, so I’m sharing it here.

Facebook actively facilitates scammers.

The Berlin conference was hosted by an online forum called Stack That Money, but a newcomer could be forgiven for wondering if it was somehow sponsored by Facebook Inc. Saleswomen from the company held court onstage, introducing speakers and moderating panel discussions. After the show, Facebook representatives flew to Ibiza on a plane rented by Stack That Money to party with some of the top affiliates.

Granted anonymity, affiliates were happy to detail their tricks. They told me that Facebook had revolutionized scamming. The company built tools with its trove of user data (…) Affiliates hijacked them. Facebook’s targeting algorithm is so powerful, they said, they don’t need to identify suckers themselves—Facebook does it automatically. And they boasted that Russia’s dezinformatsiya agents were using tactics their community had pioneered.

Scraping Android.

Android owners were displeased to discover that Facebook had been scraping their text-message and phone-call metadata, in some cases for years, an operation hidden in the fine print of a user agreement clause until Ars Technica reported. Facebook was quick to defend the practice as entirely aboveboard—small comfort to those who are beginning to realize that, because Facebook is a free service, they and their data are by necessity the products.

I’m not just picking on Facebook, Amazon and Google are right there with it.

Digital eavesdropping

Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person’s desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations. (…) Facebook, in fact, had planned to unveil its new internet-connected home products at a developer conference in May, according to Bloomberg News, which reported that the company had scuttled that idea partly in response to the recent fallout.

Zukerberg’s ego knows no bounds.

Zuckerberg, positioning himself as the benevolent ruler of a state-like entity, counters that everything is going to be fine—because ultimately he controls Facebook.

There are dozens more, but you can use search as well as I.

What can you do?

Thank Firefox for a simple containerized solution to Facebook’s tracking (stalking) you while surfing.

Facebook is (supposedly) making it easier to manage your privacy settings.

There are additional things you can do.

How to delete Facebook, but save your content.

The bad news is that even if you are willing to spend the effort, you can’t really delete yourself from social media.

All this has caused a rupture in techdom.

I could go on almost forever, but if you’re interested you’ll have no trouble finding more.

Image credit: weisunc

From religious leaders to politicians; corporate titans to everyday folks; glitterati to moguls; intelligentsia to idiots; there seems to be no action that elicits societal condemnation, let alone punishment, for anyone except getting caught.

That’s right, getting caught.

If a societal no-no, first vehemently deny it and/or claim you didn’t realize anybody actually minded. If that doesn’t work, apologize profusely using language that changes the focus from what you did and who you hurt to you, i.e., how sad you are for them and how your big sister broke your GI Joe when you were a kid, so it’s not really your fault.

Another approach is to buy their silence, but if that doesn’t work, you can claim that the devil led you astray, you were weak, but you’ve preyed a lot, God forgave you and so should those you mislead/hurt.

Enterprise and Internet companies emote about how important user privacy is and how hard they try to protect it every time they’re hacked or their hands are caught in the cookie jar.

Worse, repercussions of serious criminal actions, especially murder, are relativity easy to avoid as long as you’re white and well-healed — or in law enforcement.

It used to be that people talked of someone having a “strong moral compass.” I suppose many still do, but that’s not worth much when “true north” is portable, shifting with the trends on social media and shoved around by rigid ideologies.

Image credit: Tim Cigelske

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

A year after I wrote this Alphabet was created as the holding company for Google and its siblings and “Don’t be evil” was scrapped in favor for “Do the right thing.” Supposedly nothing changed, but it did open the door to a wider definition. In the years since, doing the right thing for stockholders seemed focused on maximizing their returns in every way possible. This included mining personal data, with or without permission, and selling it to advertisers.

Until now, money seems to have acted much like Holy water, eliminating the taint of evil from the acts of Google and its ilk. Europe has been fighting, passing laws and working to hold these companies responsible. Now, Americans are waking up to just how much damage Google, Facebook, etc., have done/are doing and saying ‘enough is enough’.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Did you know that the sixth point of Google’s 10-point corporate philosophy is “You can make money without doing evil?”

But ‘evil’ is a fluid term when it comes to making money.

And if Google is into anything it is into making money.

Take Google Plus. Google isn’t trying to displace Facebook and doesn’t even care if you use it.

That’s not really the point.

Google Plus may not be much of a competitor to Facebook as a social network, but it is central to Google’s future — a lens that allows the company to peer more broadly into people’s digital life, and to gather an ever-richer trove of the personal information that advertisers covet.

Plus is now so important to Google that the company requires people to sign up to use some Google services, like commenting on YouTube.

Some people have no problem being tracked and their personal information being shared to the enrichment of the sharing parties.

To millions of others, stalking in the name of better ad targeting smacks of evil.

Of course, when world domination is your long-term goal you need to keep those definitions fluid.