I did some seriously unscientific and extremely dirty stats on the "age of success" for people in Founder's At Work. In a couple cases I guessed DOBs based on university graduation. I freely admit this is a very lazy attempt and it's flawed, but I didn't see anything like it. Anyone know of a good list?

#################### (Blake Ross/20)

########################## (David Heinemeier Hansson/26)

########################### (Mena Trott/27)

########################### (Max Levchin/27)

############################ (Sabeer Bhatia/28)

############################ (Joe Kraus/28)

############################# (Steve Wozniak/29)

############################## (Dan Bricklin/30)

############################### (Evan Williams/31)

############################### (Joshua Schachter/31)

################################## (Paul Graham/34)

################################### (Mitch Kapor/35)

#################################### (Philip Greenspun/36)

#################################### (Caterina Fake/36)

##################################### (Joel Spolsky/37)

###################################### (Mike Lazaridis/38)

####################################### (Ray Ozzie/39)

########################################### (Charles Geschke/43)

################################################## (Craig Newmark/50)

Average: 32 Min: 20 Max: 50

Here's the data I used. Mostly based on making up a "date of success" around when they got rich/famous (not when they created what got them there). The DOBs are mostly from Wikipedia or other bio.

David Heinemeier Hansson|Partner, 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails|1979|2005

Charles Geschke|Founder of Adobe|1939|1982

Ron Gruner|Founder of Alliant Computer and Shareholder.com|?|?

Steve Wozniak|Founder of Apple|1950|1979

Philip Greenspun|Founder of ArsDigita|1963|1999

Evan Williams|Founder of Blogger.com and Odeo|1972|2003

Craig Newmark|Founder of Craigslist|1952|2002

Joshua Schachter|Founder of Del.icio.us|1974|2005

Joe Kraus|Founder of Excite and JotSpot|1971|1999

Blake Ross|Creator of Firefox|1985|2005

Caterina Fake|Founder of Flickr|1969|2005

Joel Spolsky|Founder of Fog Creek Software|1965|2002

Paul Buchheit|Creator of Gmail|?|?

Ray Ozzie|Founder of Groove Networks and Iris Associates|1955|1994

Sabeer Bhatia|Founder of Hotmail|1969|1997

James Hong|Founder of HotorNot|?|2000

Mitch Kapor|Founder of Lotus|1950|1985

Bob Davis|Founder of Lycos|?|1999

Arthur van Hoff|Founder of Marimba|?|?

Mark Fletcher|Founder of ONElist and Bloglines|?|2000

Ann Winblad|Founder of Open Systems and Hummer Winblad|?|?

Max Levchin|Founder of PayPal|1975|2002

Mike Lazaridis|Founder of Research in Motion|1961|1999

Mena Trott|Founder of Six Apart|1977|2004

Dan Bricklin|Founder of Software Arts and creator of VisiCalc|1951|1981

James Currier|Founder of Tickle|?|?

Mike Ramsay|Founder of TiVo|?|?

Steve Kaufer|Founder of TripAdvisor|?|?

Paul Graham|Founder of Viaweb and Y Combinator|1964|1998

Brewster Kahle|Founder of WAIS, Internet Archive and Alexa Internet|?|?

Steve Perlman|Founder of WebTV|?|?

Tim Brady|First employee at Yahoo!|?|?

Nice work. I tried to get some stats on a previous thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=2260) that considered YC applicants. I think the average there was around 28.

So what does this prove? The ages are so evenly spread-out, I think the only conclusion is that age has no relevance at all.

I'm calling my grandpa to see if he wants to partner up for a startup :)

To sound more positive, it shows that there is no age limit. Craig Newmark for inspiration!

Exactly.