Enterprise Ageism
You might think enterprise startups are only founded by older engineers. Think again.
At first glance, the enterprise software world is dominated by older engineers. On one enterprise mailing list, a recruiter for an enterprise company admitted:
“The enterprise applications game is for the 30-and-over crowd and is completely irrelevant to people under this age.”
The CEO of Rimini Street, a company that provides enterprise software support for Oracle and SAP, explained that he overwhelmingly hires expensive but experienced engineers instead of new grads with lower salaries, explaining that older engineers resolve problems in less time.
Clearly if I were an investor, I would never invest in an enterprise company founded by someone under 30:
So what makes these companies different than companies with older founders, and how did these examples of young founders compensate for their relative inexperience?
Hiring for your weaknesses
Young founders don’t know everything. Their product’s success depends on old-school sales and business development rather than the viral feedback loop of the App Store. Dropbox’s first hires show that Drew Houston—a technical founder—realized he had holes in his engineering knowledge and was looking to hire the right people to round out his team. Stripe’s team page shows that it hires older employees in support, communications, and management roles to complement the younger founding team.
Stronger than average founding team
Consider the Collison brothers. Here’s how TechCrunch described the duo two years ago:
Patrick has the most valuable of Valley technology skillsets. He’s a technical prodigy having won numerous prestigious awards including Ireland’s 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005, a national science competition which boasts hundreds of submissions each year from the country’s brightest young scientists. But he also has the personality and presence to be a leader and CEO. His two brothers are equally impressive. John is one of Stripe’s co-founders not to mention a Harvard dropout and one of the first engineers at Auctomatic. His youngest brother, Tommy, is a teenage blogger and writer that probably has more Twitter followers than most of us.
Dharmesh Shah might have been young when he founded Hubspot, but he had previously sold a company in the enterprise space. His co-founder, Brian Halligan, had 13 years of experience as VP of sales.
These teams have stronger than average track records. You leave a meeting with them feeling inspired and confident that they can execute on something. Maybe not revolutionizing the global payment industry or redefining how companies market to their customers, but something. That something just often ends up being a substantial company
They embrace the consumerization of the enterprise
I’ve spoken to this point before, but there’s something unique about the way young founders tackle these large problems. Stripe’s value prop is it’s documentation and support. Hubspot’s is its ease of use, modern feel, and 3rd party integrations. Young founders take consumer approaches and apply them to developer and enterprise tools, often to great success.
Enterprise companies are founded by people of all ages. The companies they found just have a very different focus, feel, and early story.
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