Memo to older entrepreneurs: Don't wear a suit when pitching to VCs

Another post about age and entrepreneurs, this time written by VC Seth Levine (a colleague of Foundry Group's Brad Feld):

I recently waked into a pitch meeting for a social networking related business and was surprised by what I saw. I had interacted with the entrepreneur over email – taking a look at the initial business plan and setting up the meeting – but we hadn’t met in person before. In front of me were three guys in suits, each in their late 40′s or early 50′s, with an older Dell laptop and a paper print-out of some product ideas. And as I sat there listening to their pitch I couldn’t help but think about how differently I might have reacted if this team was in their 20′s or 30′s, dressed in full tech/nerd hipster outfits (or at least jeans and sneakers), and whether there is a negative age bias in venture capital.

Levine tries to sound sympathetic, but it's pretty clear that there is a strong negative stereotype on his part, exacerbated by the choice of clothing used by the team pitching him.

In the comments below the post, there's the expected back-and-forth between older startup founders who bring up the advantages of age/experience and others who trot out more negative stereotypes (e.g., old founders can't handle long hours) and outright misinformation (older founders seek venture capital as income replacement?! C'mon!).

But one of the most interesting comments was by someone named "Kendal":

No one is addressing the elephant in the room. VCs prefer younger entrepreneurs because VC money is largely a game of pimping the inexperienced. Newbies won't argue deal points and won't resist when VCs strong arm them to place their own people in management positions and pick board members.

Experienced entrepreneurs, or those with long domain expertise (generally people in their 30s,40s,50s) won't simply rollover and obey orders. Why? Because they actually kind of know what they are doing.

Levine disagrees with Kendal, but there's a parallel in the corporate world and even the military: The younger the hire, the more easily they can be molded.

I am going to keep an open mind about all of these opinions until I've had more experience in the startup world myself.