Got to love my garbled tweet above. Too hard to talk about this in 140 char. It totally depends on what you are doing. Trilogy was founded by a team right out of college (actually Joe dropped out) building configuration software. It was *not* a six week learning curve but they pulled it off after a lot of hard work and eventually built one of the biggest private sw companies in the world. If you are doing something very specific to one industry, there is no doubt that domain expertise will get you started on a better foot, but it can be overcome with hard work. In either case, customer development is needed.

I think 20s is too broad. That is a decade. No reason why you could not work for a couple of years, see an industry opportunity, and go make it happen. Look at Second Market.

Nor do I see why systems management innovation could not come from someone young. It would help to have real insight into corporate networks and infrastructure management of course, but that doesn't take a decade.

Then there are B2B plays that are so horizontal that they are not unlike consumer products, and right now there are folks trying to take consumer successes and port them to the enterprise. You would not need years of experience to do Yammer, just good sales skills and ideally some great mentors.

So like with most things “startup”, the answer is “it depends”

I actually had in mind the implementation challenges you outline above more than idea generation – understanding precise pain points, positioning your product in the market, networking and partnership opportunities. With human capital markets increasingly fluid (Gerson Lehrman arguably created this space and it's been improved on considerably by others) and the ease with which a good entrepreneur can get in front of the leaders in an industry (both technological and cultural reasons for this, IMHO), in a relatively short period of time an entrepreneur can flush out existing pain points, current offerings and their perceived shortcomings, existing marketing channels and messaging, where thought leaders are focused in that space, etc. And even on idea generation, often times entrepreneurs are best suited simply jumping into a big market that's being disrupted without knowing their precise thesis – Kopelman wrote a great blog post recently on this: http://redeye.firstround.com/2010/08/heat-seeki….

You make some great points re the disadvantages of not having industry expertise, specifically the networking and motivation ones, but I think people overestimate the difficulty of understanding a market and meeting the right people within it.

On an aside, the strategy consulting industry is staffed on the premise of my tweet. Industry agnostic 20-somethings are sent into Fortune 100 companies and expected within 4 weeks to interact on a level playing field with senior executives that have been in the industry for 20 years. Their business is a human capital arbitrage play that wouldn't work if industry expertise was as difficult to acquire as many believe.

B2B is rather broad. You have B2B that caters to a particular industry and B2B that is focused on core technologies. Think of OS, database, PAAS, middleware, security, etc., to name a few examples. B2B tech infrastructure does not require experience in a particular sector, only a deep grounding in computer science and understanding of pressing technology challenges. These questions are being explored by graduate students in their 20's and eventually getting rolled into real businesses successfully selling to other businesses. Here are a few tech entrepreneurs in their 20's making it happen:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/10/young_e…

The other aspect that I alluded to in my tweet is the imaginary gap in experience needed to start a B2B versus a B2C tech company. Both are hard, it is getting a company and product off the ground and trying to get customers! However, all you need to start is the idea, the spark when you have that eureka moment and decide to do something about it. Both Bryan and Michael go into that in good detail. The only thing I would add is that anyone can gather knowledge quickly, but it is our ABILITY to use that knowledge that puts our skills into action for the development of a new company or product or service. That is the bigger factor in whether an entrepreneur is successful.

Lastly, I believe we are a bit blinded in what is happening across technology because in NYC we just see a TON of consumer plays. That is what NYC is about though, it is about art and fashion and digital media and outrageous consumption. Of course that is what NYC tech companies are going to gravitate towards. It is less a factor of age and more a factor of environment that we see all of these start-ups targeting B2C whether it is people in their 20's, 30's, 40's or beyond. If you went to Boston or Silicon Valley, you would see a much greater percentage of B2B and technology infrastructure start-ups.

Thanks for the comments. Interesting to hear your view that B2B is easier. It's definitely less fickle and I've met some VCs that only do B2B investments because B2C is too unpredictable.

You're right that B2C is much more sexy. A related thought: A B2B company that never touches end-users will never get the entrepreneur on the cover of Wired Mag. Building up a “personal brand” is an important long term investment and a compelling reason for young people to satick with B2C.

Awesome!

Depends on your access and how vertical industry-specific the idea is. If you are interested in medical, and have access to doctors, nurses, or administrators for honest, in-depth conversations to really dig into their processes and problems, then yes you should be able to spot an interesting opportunity in 6 to 12 weeks. But I also think that there is a very good chance that the problem you end up solving, and the solution you bring to the table, ends up being something different from your original discoveries — you'll just “pivot” along the way. You'll eventually become an expert but it isn't overnight.

Microsoft had to close a deal with IBM for distribution.

I had the Grasshopper dudes on my podcast http://www.venturevoice.com/2009/05/siamak_tagh… — they serve a wide variety of small business, I don't think most are internet entrepreneurs.

VideoEgg serves brand advertisers, though they launched thinking they'd be a consumer company (I was the first to cover them http://www.venturevoice.com/2005/09/vv_show_14_…).

Blackboard sells to college IT departments.

Another friend sent me these via email. Though I'd share them.
* Everyone works on B2C's . Too much competition from other hard working, entrepreneurial 20-somethings.
* B2Bs desperately need the most help from 20 somethings
* Bs (or organizations) do great things to help society. Therefore, helping organization has a potentially larger impact.
* All B2B is actually people to people relationships
* If something is harder, it creates more barriers to entry and less competition (and more differentiation)
* The old-timers in B2B LOVE energetic entrepreneurial 20-somethings

Why does this have to be relative to 20-somethings?