Is a 50+ year old technical Cofounder a “fit” for a social mobile app?

Derek, the most significant single problem I see with many startups and companies run by extremely young founders is inexperience - often (well, usually, in my experience) leading to stupid, rash, and disastrous decisions.

As a younger business owner it's far likelier that you will make bad business decisions due to inexperience, than you will be brilliant and transcend reality due to your youth.

As far as I am concerned, the two of you at opposite ends of the career experience axis are an IDEAL partnership, assuming that you two can work together well.

You have the insight into youth culture. The other guy can balance that with life and business experience. AS far as roles go, you can be the innovator (possibly) and the older gentleman can be more executive and managerial in role, to ensure that stuff that you think you can do can actually be done.

Just so I do not come off as ageist, and to be clear: I believe that a startup that has anything to do with social networking probably needs the involvement of at least one person steeped in the social networking culture. That profile is usually correlated with the younger age brackets. I think two fifty somethings attempting a startup in this niche would be a riskier than average proposition.

I'm wondering about these two statements:

3) Coding. He doesn't plan to do the coding himself, but rather use his team in India to do the initial development with a scalable infrastructure in mind. Since we're still validating the solution, is this even necessary? I just want to get the core features out and test the market ASAP without worrying about servers.

4) Timeframe. Using his team in India, it would take 2-3 months for a first release and cost a few thousand dollars. But he says that if we need more iterations after that, he'll make the cost almost 0. I honestly think 2-3 months is too long, since I know that with frameworks like AppMobi, JQuery mobile or Sencha you can probably bang out an MVP in a week. Am I correct in this?

It sounds on the surface like the guy has exceptional experience in project management. Hello! That's of high value in a technology business that is creating new tech. His involvement will probably lower the risk of outright failure.

However, I do see a clear risk with the guy's outsourcing "solution". Make sure that he is not just shoveling out a project without proper analysis and management of the offshore team.

Also, you are mentioning frameworks as a solution. You say that with a framework, you can "probably bang out an MVP in a week". How do you know that?

He could be of value if you actually need to grow. It sounds like he will know how to scale things - technology as well as teams.

Overall this proposition goes far beyond your narrow statement of the guy's strengths or weaknesses. I think that this combination is a true example of synergy - complementary talents and backgrounds. I honestly believe that your chances of success are far better with a highly experienced individual in a founder role.

As a side benefit for you, you should be able to learn from him, which in the past was how real businesses stayed stable and grew. "Mentoring" is a dirty word today. That is not right ... you should consider this as a big positive.

Lastly, ++ to Chris's statement that ability and not age should be a factor. What if investors stereotyped you as too "immature" to run a business so you had to work for someone else? It's equally ageist.

Don't be ageist. If he is the wrong choice, it is far likelier that it is for reasons other than age.

If you believe you can create a MVP in a week, then just do it. Two weeks later (yes, it probably will take twice as long) you can see if its a good idea for a start-up or not, and then you can use the team in India if you would like.

How were you planing on raising money? If you had specific investors in mind, you might as well ask their opinion... Since you are not asking for money, but rather only for advice, you can expect them to be honest. You can also tell them your future plans, and then, in a few months, once you accede your plans, you will impress them enough to invest in you.

One thing I am wondering about that you didn't address (though it is not relevant to hiring a 50+ co-founder) is how you plan on monetizing your app... Developing an app is easy (it takes money and time) but making money from an app is hard (you have 500K+ competitors out there trying to get the same bucks out of their users pockets).

As someone with a "peer" resume to your 50+ guy, I noticed several things:

1. Bang out an MVP in a week? That rings with the optimism of inexperience. It sounds like you need the foil of someone with the experience to actually know what it will take.
2. Big tech company experience does not equal start up experience. One can get used to all the existing infrastructure and resources of a Microsoft -- and the loooooong timelines (to balance out my statement in #1).
3. Not coding himself is a definite weakness. I do not believe it is overcome even by explicit experience managing an outsourced team. This is a real red flag. I manage an in-house team and an outsourced team but I also code. He can code if he really wants to. If he actually can't, then he needs a hands-on manager under him who can -- and I doubt you want that extra layer.
4. I don't know jack about social media and mobile. It's not that I don't know Facebook and Twitter and Angry Birds, I just haven't had the advantage of growing up with it. This is why I have not one but two 20-somethings on my team. He would have to be one exceptional 50+ to be plugged in to this space. If he has the humility to recognize this gap in his own experience and more importantly has demonstrated that humility to you, great.
5. I don't know what to make of two statements that appear to be in conflict. He has been CTO of several startups but now he can't commit to you because he has a family? How did he commit to the others? Was he actually CTO or was it more that he would have been CTO if they ever went anywhere (and apparently did not)? Being part of the management team of a startup or startups that failed isn't necessarily a red flag but then again it isn't exactly a badge of honor.

Wow, what a question. Any answers you get (including this) will be 1 persons opinion and needs the weighed up against your knowledge of the person in question. Now, my opions.

1. Age should not be a concern. Only ability.
2. The risk is his to take. Your role is to provide him with the information he needs to make an appropriate assessment of whether it's appropriate for him to take the risk.

3/4. Not taking part in the coding would worry me. At the point, you have to ask yourself if you want to outsource your development or retain ultimate control. This is the important part as co-founders really need to be on the same wavelength here. If you are trying to take different routes now, it doesn't look good for the future.

3&4 are where I'd judge his fitness to join the team.