Never Too Old, Never Too Young
No matter your age, you are never too young or too old to achieve success. This is the modified version of this list.
- Shirley Temple became a movie star in “Bright Eyes” at the age of 6.
- Mozart composed his first symphony at 8.
- Anne Frank wrote her diary at 13.
- Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at 13.
- Nadia Comăneci, a Romanian gymnast, scored seven perfect 10.0s and won three gold medals at the Olympics at 14.
- Pelé won the World Cup in 1958 with Brazil at 17.
- Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize at 17, making her the youngest recipient ever.
- Joan of Arc led the French army to victory at 17.
- Elvis Presley was a superstar by 19.
- Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook at 19.
- John Lennon was 20 and Paul McCartney was 18 when the Beatles held their first concert in 1961.
- Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft at 20.
- Steve Jobs co-founded Apple at 21.
- Jesse Owens won four gold medals in Berlin in 1936 at 22.
- Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile record at 25.
- Albert Einstein wrote the theory of relativity at 26.
- Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures, “David” and “Pietà,” by 28.
- By 29, Alexander the Great had built one of the largest empires of the ancient world.
- Sara Blakely founded Spanx at 29.
- J.K. Rowling finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter at 30.
- Jeff Bezos founded Amazon at 30.
- Oprah Winfrey started her talk show at 32, which became the highest-rated program of its kind.
- Edmund Hillary reached Mount Everest at 33.
- Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean at 34.
- Marie Curie was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics at 35.
- The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36), invented and built the world’s first successful airplane, achieving the first controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight.
- Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix at 37.
- Jim Clark started his entrepreneurial career at 37, later creating three companies that went public.
- Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon at 38.
- Masaru Ibuka co-founded Sony at 38.
- Gordon Moore co-founded Intel at 39.
- Mark Twain wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” at 40 and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at 49.
- Soichiro Honda founded Honda at 41.
- Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white passenger at 42.
- Robin Chase co-founded Zipcar at 42.
- John F. Kennedy became President of the United States at 43.
- Henry Ford introduced the Ford Model T at 45.
- Suzanne Collins wrote “The Hunger Games” at 46.
- Momofuku Ando invented instant noodles at 48.
- Leonardo da Vinci started painting the Mona Lisa at 51.
- Abraham Lincoln became president at 52.
- Dr. Seuss wrote “The Cat in the Hat” at 54.
- Morris Chang founded TSMC at 55.
- Colonel Harland Sanders started the KFC franchise at 61.
- J.R.R. Tolkien published the Lord of the Rings books at 62.
- Ronald Reagan became President of the US at 69.
- Nelson Mandela became President at 76.
- Masako Wakamiya started programming at 82 and launched her first app in the same year.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg celebrated twenty-five years on the Supreme Court at 85 in 2018.
- Frank Lloyd Wright completed the design for the Guggenheim Museum at 91.
Rethinking Founder Vesting
The standard vesting schedule for founders in Silicon Valley might be too short. I believe it should be longer.
Vesting schedules ensure that equity is earned over time rather than granted upfront. Typically, Silicon Valley founders use a 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff. This means:
- 1-year cliff: No shares vest during the first year. If you leave before completing one year, you receive nothing.
- After the cliff: 25% of your shares vest at the end of the first year.
- Ongoing vesting: The remaining shares vest gradually over the next three years, usually monthly (1/48 of the total grant).
- Fully vested: After four years, you own 100% of your granted shares.
I’d be curious to know where this standard originated. But regardless of its history, vesting is a necessary practice for companies with multiple founders.
Consider a scenario where one founder leaves after six months, while another stays for four years until the company is sold. It would be unfair for both to receive an equal payout from the sale.
Vesting is a great way to incentivize long-term commitment while protecting the company from early departures. That’s why, when I incorporated my company, I followed this standard too, as Stripe Atlas, an incorporation service widely used for founders here, used this standard as the default term.
The question is whether the vesting term should be “4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff.” Now imagine a company where one founder leaves after four years, while the other works for eight years until it goes public. It would be unfair for both to receive equal payouts from the IPO.
So why don’t we make the vesting period longer? For example, eight years of vesting with a two-year cliff.
There are some concerns with longer vesting.
First, unvested shares at the liquidity event. There is a chance that a company will be sold or go public before the founders’ equity is fully vested. However, this is an easy problem to solve according to our lawyer from Goodwin because you can add an acceleration of vesting clause in your terms; you can make vesting happen faster than otherwise scheduled at liquidity events. On top of that, everything is negotiable in an acquisition. So even your vested shares can be unvested at the point of acquisition.
Second, control. I’ve been discussing the economics of equity, but the other important aspect is control. This may be the biggest risk because you might end up giving your investors more power than you when your vesting takes longer. Investors should have a longer or the same vesting.
Third, investor resistance. Investors may prefer to follow standard terms. If you want to set up different terms from other startups, investors might stay away from your company.
It seems reasonable to have longer vesting as long as founders have enough control over a company and investors are willing to follow the same vesting schedule. That said, I may be missing other concerns, such as potential tax implications.
I’m open to criticism—what do you think?
83(b) Election Basics
Every founder should file an 83(b) election.
When a founder receives restricted stock (i.e., subject to vesting), they can file an 83(b) election within 30 days of the grant date. This means they pay ordinary income tax on the fair market value (FMV) at the grant rather than at each vesting milestone. If you don’t file it, then you pay income tax later when the stock vests, which could be worth much more.
Let’s think of some numbers. Imagine a stock grant with a 4-year vesting period where:
- You receive 10,000 shares.
- The Fair Market Value (FMV) at grant is $0.10 per share, resulting in a total value of $1,000.
- After 4 years, the company does well, and the stock price is $50 per share, resulting in a total value of $500,000.
Below, I compared the case where you file and do not file an 83(b) election. You can see why you can potentially save a lot of tax money by filing it.
| Case 1: Filing 83(b) Election (Pay Taxes Now) | Case 2: Not Filing 83(b) Election (Pay Taxes Later) | |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 Stock FMV | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| Taxable Income at Grant | $1,000 | $0 |
| Income Tax Rate | 30% | 30% |
| Income Tax Owed at Grant | $300 | $0 |
| Stock Value After 4 Years | $500,000 | $500,000 |
| Taxable Income at Vesting | $0 (already taxed) | $500,000 |
| Income Tax Owed at Vesting | $0 | $150,000 |
| Capital Gains Tax Rate | 20% | 20% |
| Capital Gains Tax Owed | $99,800 (20% of $499,000 gain) | Depends on future growth |
| Total Taxes Paid | $300 now + $99,800 later = $100,100 | $150,000 (income tax) + capital gains tax later |
As shown in the comparison, paying a small tax upfront can lead to massive tax savings in the long run. By locking in the fair market value early, you avoid hefty income taxes on future appreciation and instead benefit from lower capital gains taxes when selling your stock.
What Is the Job of an Actor?
Honestly, I couldn’t respect acting as a profession. I thought actors were merely entertainers who distract people from thinking about important problems, and unfortunately, most commercial entertainment is still garbage.
But when I heard Meryl Streep says an actor’s only job is “to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like”, it made me think that commercial entertainment isn’t all that bad.
In fact, I can think of some movies that have done an amazing job of making me feel what it is like to be another person:
異邦人感覚
なんとも表現しようのない感覚を、端的に表現されると、カタルシスを感じる。最近、作詞家なかにし礼さんの、「異邦人感覚」という表現に、まさにそれを感じた。
なかにし礼さんは満洲で生まれたが、1945年の日本の敗戦によって満洲国が崩壊し、8歳だった彼は日本へ追放された。満洲にいても、日本にいても、彼には常に異邦人感覚が付きまとっていた。
自分の場合、日本にいると日本人らしくなく、アメリカにいると日本人すぎる―そんな「よそ者意識」が常について回る。これは、これまで何度も周囲の人から指摘され、自分自身も感じてきたことだ。
おそらく、移民や両親の国籍が異なる人、特異なキャリアを歩んできた人、LGBTQの当事者やビーガンなどのマイノリティも、同じような感覚を抱いているのではないだろうか。境界線上で生き、明確な帰属意識を持たない人たちの気持ちは、自分にもよく理解できるように思う。
今思えば、異邦人感覚を持つことはさほど大きな問題ではない。社会全体に溶け込む必要などなく、自分にとって大切な人がそばにいてくれれば、それで十分なのだ。
ただ、この寂しさが単なる幻想だったと言い切るのは容易い。しかし、そう思えるようになるまでには、時間が必要だった。
Sausage Is the Cigarette of Our Time
It’s no secret that processed meat and red meat are highly likely to be carcinogenic.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an intergovernmental agency affiliated with the World Health Organization, classifies carcinogens into four groups based on the strength of scientific evidence. They published the full list, but here are some examples of each group.
| Group | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Group 1 | Carcinogenic to humans. | tobacco, asbestos, alcoholic beverages, processed meat |
| Group 2A | Probably carcinogenic to humans. | night shift work, dioxins, high-temperature frying emissions, red meat |
| Group 2B | Possibly carcinogenic to humans. | pickled vegetables, PFOS |
| Group 3 | Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans. | caffeine, tea |
Science has been crystal clear about the health risks of processed meat and red meat. The IARC published the report on this back in 2015.
Yet, most people aren’t aware of the risks or don’t take them seriously, just like those who kept smoking cigarettes in the past despite the clear scientific evidence.
The carcinogenic properties of processed meat such as bacon, ham, hot dogs, and sausage are especially shocking as they are in the same group as cigarettes. Though the cancer risk from cigarettes is far higher, processed meat still has a significant association with colorectal cancer at high doses.
Until society changes, we need to take responsibility for our own health and for our loved ones.