The Average Founder Ages 6 Months Each Year
19 comments
·December 12, 2025popalchemist
neogodless
No "average founder" exists, but the mathematical average of founder ages does!
Darfk
Please just let me believe I can double my lifespan as percieved by the rest of the world by becoming the average founder.
reactordev
However, an additive 6 months is definitely what some have done (1yr + 6mo). Stress is a killer.
null
don_neufeld
I would say that in the years I was a founder I definitely aged faster than that ;)
gpjt
100%, I think there were weeks when I aged a year...
acessoproibido
Title is very misleading - founders are older every year they dont age faster...
WJW
If the title was true they actually age slower. Begin a startup to extend your life!
camdenreslink
I thought the title was pretty clear.
Analemma_
I think it's possible to have a little fun with your titles without them being "misleading". And in this case there's a reading that's straightforwardly correct: there's an abstract "Average Founder", and each year that hypothetical person is six months older than the prior year's Average Founder.
iou
Aww was hoping this would be a Peter Thiel immortality quest story :/
swyx
title definitely made me click and was true enough that i wasnt mad
ccozan
My current experience is quite the opposite, I have the feeling I aged more than 1 year in the last 6 months after funding....
jmkni
Does this go up exponentially based on how many companies you found?
lenerdenator
It'd be interesting to see how this correlates across markets in different eras of history.
At the core, being a "founder" (as cringe as the cult around that word has become) is about accumulating capital. As technology advances it becomes more capital-intensive to create. You outcompete other businesses based on how advanced your technology is. Older people generally have more money even if for no other reason than they've had more time to accumulate it.
Thus, so long as you are still able to grasp the concepts related to the technology and can act upon it to accumulate more capital, you're at an advantage in the quest to start a successful business over younger people. Not an insurmountable advantage for the younger people to overcome, mind, but it's still an advantage.
jaredklewis
I don't think technology is a linear progression towards more and more capital intense businesses.
Software businesses in the 2000-2020 era were famously capital light. Much more so than the technology businesses that came before them. I think these extremely capital light businesses were an aberration that briefly lowered average founder age and now we're just reverting to the mean.
Yes, AI is capital intense, but many of the world's previous technological endeavors were also capital heavy.
Grammar abortion. The age of the average founder rises. The average founder doesn't age at a rate less than 1 year per year.