We've funded people older than that. In some types of startups it's the ideal age. E.g. if you want to build a factory or make enterprise software, or do something else that requires lots of capital and/or industry experience.
While I agree that experience can be a benefit in many industries (and I'm 33, have been working around my current industry for about 10 years, and I think that's been a big benefit to my current startup), I also think naivety can be a far more powerful defense than your comment would indicate.
Not knowing about the old boy networks and the "way things are done" can be a benefit to a small and nimble startup. The fact is that economics and the requirement to get things done will occasionally be able to trump "the way we've always done it", and by the time you've signed on two or three clients that way, you can find your way into that network and learn how things are done. And, in the meantime, you've built products that offer better value (because you had to, and your competitors didn't) and a business that is run very lean (because you had to, and your competitors didn't).
Very likely. I've also noticed that whenever you put a hacker into just about any non-technical field, they can very quickly spot dozens of areas of inefficiency that could be resolved with a little technology.
Often, the problems aren't even hard. Barcodes added to all forms being filed by customers, or added to "things" in the warehouse, or organized in a database rather than on the shelf (like Zappos does), etc. And a lot of non-technical industries make a lot of money...saving a few dozen companies a few dozen million each year via automation is a recipe for a beautiful lifestyle business.
I did IT work for a guy in Austin that served court papers...a totally low-tech industry. Individual guys (and a few rugged gals) drive out to peoples houses and personally deliver divorce court summons, etc. The guy I worked for began automating his company in the late 80's or early 90's, several years before anyone else, and by the time I stopped working for him, I believe he had the largest process service company in Texas (and, probably the nation, since Texas is mighty big), though all are privately held, so it's hard to say for sure who was "biggest", but he covered nearly the whole state and almost everyone else only covered one or two cities, and had several million in revenue from ~30 or so employees and ~100 independent field agents. Anyway, there was tons of low-hanging fruit in this industry because it had never been automated before. And because he had lots of process servers on his payroll and many lawyers/legislators that he worked with on a regular basis, he got to shape policy with regards to how it all worked. The state opened up electronic filings with many of its legal papers around 2005, which gave him an even bigger leg up on the competition, because all of his data was already going into a database.
I'm just saying that technical people might be well-served by looking at currently non-technical industries for their golden goose. There are plenty of industries still to be saved from tedium by making computers do more of the work.
