Our company is among the oldest, if not the oldest, funded by YC with 32 and 33 year old founders. We are both hackers. I learned today that Joe Hewitt is getting close to 30 (and he thought he was the oldest of the bunch before today).
Also, Paul has mentioned several times in the past that the mean age of the companies they fund is climbing, and he's thinking 24-ish is the right age to start thinking seriously about a startup (finished school, had a real job for a while, so you know how much it sucks to work for someone else).
Most of the founders who were in WFP2007 are hackers. Some are more hackery than others (it's a quite wide range...some are famously good hackers, while others have only picked up a programming language, probably PHP, in the past year or two). But, even the ones that aren't hackers by nature have become hackers, to some degree, during the program...in this early stage, it's the biggest part of the work that needs to be done. When you have a launched product, the job becomes more diverse and other skills become as important as hacking, but before that, if you aren't able to contribute code or design, you're probably not serving your team very well.
I was more interested in the non-hackers part of the non-young-hackers. Harj said something about how he started something without knowing how to hack; I was surprised, because I don't even know what you DO in a web startup if you don't know how to hack. How does it work?
PG has said here a few times that he's invested in several companies with 30+ year old founders. It seems not really about age as much as it is being able to take the risk and not having a lot of overhead to support (a family, mortgage, etc).
It's fine to have a house and a kid if you've already got capital. Most programmers in their 30's would hopefully have sufficient savings for about a year of no income - It is a pretty well paying job after all.
I'm about to turn 33, but also sufficiently rootless that it's not like I'm taking on a lot of extra risk by trying something like this. No kids, no huge mortgage payments.
It's all about commitment folks, simple as that. People over 30 and under 20 tend to have commitments that might get in the way of their startuping. My cofounder was 31, fwiw.
I'm PG's age and definitely thinking about finding a way to do a startup. No, seriously. Maybe a consulting company that becomes a startup. Who knows?
But I envy the hell out of you guys who are in your 20s now. I had bad luck: when I was in my 20s, it was the late 80s/early 90s, and the economy was a wreck. No one was hiring, and doing startups was not all that easy. There was no internet to speak of, and so not only was it harder to start something (where??), but there was no place to talk about starting something and exchange information.
You guys really have some good opportunities, I think. If I were you, I'd just spend my 20s and early 30s (and maybe beyond) attempting to make a successful startup. Fail? Try again and learn from any mistakes. Adapt to the market as it changes and never stop learning! (Part of the reason guys my age don't do startups or invent new things is because they get complacent -- they stop learning. I have refused to do that, even though I am in an 'executive' position where I work.)
Also, Paul has mentioned several times in the past that the mean age of the companies they fund is climbing, and he's thinking 24-ish is the right age to start thinking seriously about a startup (finished school, had a real job for a while, so you know how much it sucks to work for someone else).
Most of the founders who were in WFP2007 are hackers. Some are more hackery than others (it's a quite wide range...some are famously good hackers, while others have only picked up a programming language, probably PHP, in the past year or two). But, even the ones that aren't hackers by nature have become hackers, to some degree, during the program...in this early stage, it's the biggest part of the work that needs to be done. When you have a launched product, the job becomes more diverse and other skills become as important as hacking, but before that, if you aren't able to contribute code or design, you're probably not serving your team very well.