This just freaks me out. I can't wait for this one to slide down the frontpage...

Hi, I'm 50. I tried to apply PG advices to become rich. I left my job and went back to grad to find a cofounder. I also divorced to get rid of wife and kids. I applied for rejuvenation camps, plastic surgery and many othere expensive treatments because PG said we better start young. Since Cobol and Fortran are useless, I had intensive courses to learn lisp, visual basic, php, .net and ruby.

There are still a few details left to smooth, but I think I am very close to be able to apply to YC. I still have no idea of what my startup would do, but PG said this was not important...

Could there be something I misunderstood in PG talks ?

PS: This is all fake, of course, and ment to be humorous. There is only one thing that matters and PG was very clear on this. It is to come up with something that people will want and will be ready to pay for in some way (accept to view ads for instance). Wether you'r old, married & dad, have no technical skills in CS, etc. won't stop you from succeeding if you found a gold vein. It will just be a little bit more difficult to start, that's all... and maybe YC is not the VC to go for. ;-)

"Once you have kids, you can't afford to take that kind of chance with your life because you're also responsible for their lives."

I agree to a point, but having kids does not relegate you to life in a cubicle, slowing building your 401 K, and complaining about not having enough Paid Time Off.

I think if you have a burning passion to start something and there is a significant potential pay-off down the road you are doing your family a dis-service by not pursuing an opportunity to make your lives better.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Typically, employers just don't care about ideas that are outside their line of business. After all, if I come up with a great social networking site but my employer is a financial software company, stealing my social networking IP will just be a distraction from their business activities. They're worse off for taking ownership of the IP.

Do tell your employer what you're doing and clear it with them. Aside from being the honest thing to do, it also sets you up to get formal legal permission. If they're not willing to do so, you know that immediately and can weigh your options from there, including quitting or giving up the startup.

In some cases, your employer may even give you money, advice, and customers. I once worked for a company whose CEO was the former CTO of Cybersmith (the gaming cafe company that went bust around 1999). She came up with an idea that was useful for Cybersmith's business but was not something Cybersmith was willing to put resources into. Cybersmith became her first (and only, it turned out) customer and gave them significant resources to fund development.

"3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??"

This happens more often than you think. The most prominent example is Apple Computer - Steve Wozniak was on HP's payroll when it was founded, and needed HP to sign away their rights to the Apple I. One of my cofounders is in the process of getting a similar release from Sony Entertainment, and I'll probably need something similar from my employer (I have verbal permission already).

Give up your dreams and spend the rest of your life locked away in a cubicle? Maybe you should just get a new wife instead, one that isn't so high-maintenance :)

He had a point. He just phrased it in a way that alienated a lot of people. But there is a certain energy and willingness to see things in unconventional ways that most people lose as they get older.

I also think the world is changing to value it more. Math, for example, is famously a young man's game. And I think the world is changing so that more things are like math.

agree with above, and just went through this a week or two ago. i got a letter from my company saying they have no ownership stake in what i'm doing (an extra complication was that i'm working part time in the office and part time on my idea as part of an agreement we struck.) it cost me like $1,000 out of pocket to get an attorney and a letter drafted saying my employer has no "right, title, or interest" in my new venture and related patents/applications/copyrights/etc., but in the grand scheme of things it's a no-brainer to make sure the IP around the idea/new business is clean.

if you have questions about this shoot me an email at houston at alum.mit.edu ... it was a pretty straightforward process.

-drew

remember pb's (to distinguish him from pg) definition of a good product: the suffix "that actually works".

Paul writes: "The big mystery to me is: why don't more people start startups? If nearly everyone who does it prefers it to a regular job, and a significant percentage get rich, why doesn't everyone want to do this?"

You have a logical disconnect here, involving the self-selecting nature of the group. One could just as easily say: most people who try bungee-jumping enjoy it - why doesn't everyone bungee jump?

Math is hard. I have about as much formal education in math as I do in CS (about to finish undergrad as a double major). Yet I can pick up nearly any CS research paper and breeze through it, but my eyes will glaze over at 90% of math research.

My wife likes money and my wife loves taking big risks. So she's the biggest cheerleader in my "crazy" fantasy. At the same time, my wife's been poor too, so she's not worried about tightening the finances either. I guess not everyone is as lucky as me.

We do, in a sense: some people who apply we already know, because people we've funded recommended them. If you can impress the founders of a YC startup, that counts for a lot.

This site was designed partly as an additional filter. It works too. When I met danielha I knew his name because he was #1 on News.YC.