The cards are stacked against you. This fact is true.

The job of the founder/co-founder is to re-stack the deck in their favor: Get people on your side, excite them, enlighten them and change their minds.  All of this is to be done, despite that the deck is unfavorably heaped against you.

While doing this, you also need to build your team, articulate your vision and turn it into a product, demonstrate traction (i.e. wow users or customers), sell, sell, sell and then sell some more.

Getting old(er), it's no walk in the park.  Aside from the existential and physical aspects of being and getting older, there's a bias towards younger founders, at least in the news.  Whether or not this bias is based on real data, a fad of some sort (i.e. sheep following sheep) is hard to tell. 

SV Angel produced some data on this topic last summer which reveals that 25 years old is the optimal founder age (discussion of age starts at 12:00 in the video).   Younger founders have bigger exits, according to SV's data. 

As Ron Conway says at the end when Michael Arrington suggests he is too old at 41 to start a company, "...the odds are against you, but there are still outliers."  Yet, this may be the classic "correlation not causation" mistake.  Or, perhaps, Conway suggests, older founders (ahem, over 30) desire to take the quick flip, and when I say "quick flip" I mean exiting for under $50M, more than their younger founders.  

Having children, a mortgage and perhaps a proclivity to stick with what you know are some challenges for founders over forty (note: I have neither children or a mortgage).  Founding and Co-founding a company can put stress on a family and finances.  It's not for the faint of heart.  Those who go forward in this business should be rewarded for their bravery.  Un-shackling one-self from old-ways of doing and thinking can be liberating.  It's also hard work and not a job our society has traditionally requested men and women in their forties to take on.

Being a founder means going where other people won't go; walking into the dark.  Which reminds me of a TV episode I saw some 30 years ago...

Kung-Fu was a successful TV series in the '70s featuring David Carridine as Caine, a Taoist Shaolin monk living in the Old West.  He is mentored by a teacher, the blind Master Po (played by Keye Luke in the pic to the left).  Po instructs Caine in the ways of his sect, including how to let go of your fears, to not let fears lead to inaction. 

In one lesson, young Caine's fears are tested.  In a cave, on a precipice, Po urges Caine to step into the darkness and walk from one side of the cave to the other, seemingly forced to walk off the ledge into certain death.  Caine doesn't know this but there are stones to step on which are not visible.

Caine trusts his teacher, only after his paralyzing fear leads to anger and frustration, and eventually steps out into the darkness.  He makes his way to the other side despite that his fears tell him to run away from crazy Po.

So many things can go wrong.  And, so many things can go right.

You can be a young person or an older person.  You can be great at this and horrible at that.  You must perservere and set aside your fears, not obsess about your odds or a label ascribed to you or which you hold onto so dearly.  [I write "You" but we all know this is aplied to me too :)].  Day to day life in a start-up can be up then down; take the long view, keep your goals in mind.  Expect the unexpected.

Your fears may be telling you something, but probably not.  Most worries are not worth worrying about; they are part of the mindless chatter of the mind if you will.  Worrying about draining ten, twenty or fifty thousand dollars from your savings account is really not worth your brain cycles, unless you want it to be.

Focus on the problem you are solving for your users, focus on building your business, from its idea to a real product and focus on your team.  If your fears are telling you anything, it's that you have to find a way through every challenge, to push aside your fears and find a different and better way.

Most partners, investors, employees and friends won't look you in the eye and tell you that you are simply too old. 

And, maybe they aren't thinking about that.  Maybe, it is all in your mind.