Sound-off: does age matter when deciding value one brings to the table?

Sound-off: does grey hair matter when it comes to doing business?

Recently I have been trying to approach a potential client to offer my services to his organization. We had a good discussion I felt, and I am planning to do a show and tell to the rest of his group come the new year.

But I understood he had some queries on the number of years I have under my belt, ie I'm too young and indirectly perhaps fears on whether I can properly represent what I said to him or not.

While I don't hold it against anyone, but fundamentally the answer should be: does age matter?

arguably I can understand and justify his concern, afterall, he will be the one trying to rally his colleagues to attend the show and tell on his behalf come the new year, so if I am too wet behind the ears, the surely it will impact is reputation and that of his boss as well.

So for this case, I intend to show him what I am made of. If the work I had done had sufficiently impressed the ex-CEO of a listed company, then I think it should do for him, his colleagues and his boss as well.

enough said for my experience, but I would like to expand that to the larger picture of singapore and perhaps the asian countries.

Entrepreneurial activity in the US is mainly done by fresh grads or your people, with a few grey haired serial entrepreneurs thrown into the soup. And yet they are able to survive. I haven't done extensive research into whether they are able to thrive without a grey haired Ceo or not, but google is a good case study. I believe (and I could be very wrong here) that sergei brin and larry page got their start and first customers before eric schimdt came on board (he was the grey haired boss). VC and angels all judged them by the technology they had and as well as the customers. It was only later when they were in the growth mode did the Board bring in Eric.

Here if everyone expects an older boss to always helm the venture, then where does that leave our younger generation of entrepreneurs? Are they then doomed to failure from the onset or do they justify bringing in an older person as CEO and possibly high salary and higher burn rate at the same time?

For my case, I am thankful that my potential client had not raise his private thoughts to his boss, and that he was willing to give me a chance to prove my mettle to his colleagues, I guess some of whom may not be as forgiving.

As I said when the show and tell comes, then the proof will be in the pudding.

But what do you think? is this experience prevalent in this part of the world or not?