Software is a maturing market and the bigger companies know the playbook. The incumbents today are not getting disrupted easily because they were once themselves disrupters. It's harder for a novel / toy idea to take the world by storm, it's much more about scaling & distribution

“Hold my cucumber”

modern society continuing to clip the wings of the young, who thusly have a substantially greater flight distance when it comes to problems. covid was no small thing. they'll unfurl

we got older

One could argue vc standardization of comparative data sets (eg Saas comps, daus, etc) when looking at companies skews towards teams who know how to operationally drive to those results which probably skews older. Less lottery ticket driven investing.

In 2003 Firefox showed us that simple change (tabs) can make a huge impact. In 2003 a 28 year old was 9.

I think the comments about the complexity and required sophistication of SaaS these days, plus AI/ML, are the most accurate but surprised no one's brought up 1) more VC $ = more competition (and how the vets can be more competitive), and 2) that these guys are ...

I think, we stopped aiming for moonshots. Everybody now want to start a predictable (uber of x) startup. I mean, we are definitely starting more startups, but not just impressive enough. In the early days of YC, nearly every startup was defining a new category.

no one knew how to run a startup and it was low status to start one. now it’s high status and it’s much more operationalized also, mobile/social/local vs b2b

You had to grow up with the internet to „get“ it on a visceral level. This cohort had a natural ceiling as the internet was only a teen back then. We will see incredible companies from 60+ yo founders in no time (given they take care of their health and knowledge)