Silicon Valley worships youth while demanding experience. Wants fresh thinking from seasoned minds. Seeks disruption from those who built what's being disrupted. The paradox is real, and it's exactly right.
The Value of Not Knowing
Fresh eyes see possibilities that experience has learned to ignore. They ask "why not?" when veterans know exactly why not—and sometimes that's precisely what's needed. The impossible often just needs someone who doesn't know it's impossible.
But fresh eyes also reinvent wheels, repeat mistakes, and build bridges that experienced engineers know will collapse. Innovation without wisdom is just expensive failure with good PR.
The magic happens when experience maintains fresh eyes. When you know all the reasons something won't work but try anyway. When wisdom informs but doesn't constrain.
At Wakai, we cultivate this paradox. We bring decades of building at scale but approach each problem like we've never seen it before. We know the rules intimately—which is why we know which ones to break.
The future belongs to those who can be simultaneously naive and wise, fresh and seasoned, young at heart and old in experience.