5 Things Young People Don't Know

Jason Goldberg:

One of the greatest joys of my job is coaching and mentoring super smart and super ambitious young people.

I find myself doing this a lot lately.

Here's a common pattern we find at Fab (and, I'm sure, at many startups): Young person leverages his or her brain, passion, ambitions and talents to rise up to a senior role very quickly. They take on a ton of responsibility and they kick ass at it. But, then, invariably, the young superstar hits some sort of a wall. Often it's a burnout wall. Other times it's a managing-down wall. Other times it's a managing-up wall. Other times it's just a bruised ego. Most of the time though it's just youth. There's value and maturity that comes from experience and pattern recognition. And, for young people who rise to the top quickly, there's a natural impatience that flies in the face of waiting for that experience and pattern recognition to guide the way.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 8, 2012 2:11 AM
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