It would be interesting to know if the average hours worked per week would also be correlated with # of employees and age. My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed. They will tend to go for those startups where for whatever reason (early revenue streams ) they can staff up sooner.
My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed.
I predict that marital / family status would have more to do with it than just raw age (allowing that age may somewhat correlate with being married / having children). That is, a single founder who is 39 is, as far as I can tell, not much different than a 25 year old founder. Being in that position myself, I can at least tell you that the "now or never" effect mentioned below is very motivational for us old farts. I know I work harder on Fogbeam Labs now than I would have when I was 25, and I'd be comfortable saying I work approximately as hard as most 19, 23, 27, 32 or whatever year old founders.
Now, if I were married with children at home, I probably would not be willing to put in those hours... in that regard, I kinda agree with your hypotheses.
Regarding older founders. I'm currently working with one of the founders that is a statistical anomaly on the upper rage of the graph. Reality as I perceive it is far opposite from the case, perhaps this is why they are a statistical anomaly within YC.
