Michal Cieplinski, Carmen Li, and Amir Elaguizy are all founders in their 40s.
Michal Cieplinski; Carmen Li; Amir Elaguizy
Amir Elaguizy has books about neural networks from the '60s.The 42-year-old serial entrepreneur doesn't believe that being younger means you're more AI-native. Elaguizy emailed with Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI," before Hinton started working at Google. He's been learning about AI's roots for decades."For me, AI is a continuum," he said. "I watched it the whole time. It's not like it came online for me in 2022."For Elaguizy, his age is a perk. It's a sign to investors that he's serious and knows how to build a business. (Elaguizy sold his first company to Zynga in 2011.) It also shows that he's dogged, he said, and not taking his earlier cash-out and retiring.These days, his age cohort wants in. Elaguizy said that many of his friends were coming out of retirement to launch new AI startups. "You have all these old guys who are not just back at it, but back at the keyboard, typing code," he said.Elaguizy called it a "vibe shift," something Garry Tan would likely agree with. The Y Combinator CEO posted that we were entering an "age of the unc." ("Unc," for those unfamiliar with Gen Z parlance, is a shortening of "uncle" to call someone old.) Tan expected a new class of unicorn founders in their 40s.The founder in their 40s with taste and discernment is the new gentleman unicorn founderBecause there can be 100x to 1000x of them working at their beck and call via agents and software factories all the time https://t.co/VV5GOgI12h— Garry Tan (@garrytan) July 5, 2026
