Forty Under Forty and the matter of Tense

Once upon a time I was a "Forty Under Forty." It wasn't a Forbes or Fortune or Inc. list (okay, it was the Baton Rouge Business Report) but still...

It made me feel good, briefly bolstered my self-esteem, made me feel that my future was ... you know ...in the future.

Now, the November 9 edition of Fortune arrives at the CAP offices with their "Forty Under Forty" and I don't feel quite so confident. It's not all overwhelming. I'm not all that intimidated by #34, Ralph Gilles, President and CEO of Dodge. Let's face it--he works for Chrysler. And #33, Erin Burnett is an anchor person for CNBC. What does she have that I don't, besides youth, beauty, smarts and great teeth? Even #18, Ma Huateng, the founder of a $1 billion social network in China--you just can't be intimidated by someone who's nickname is "Pony." So, it's not so bad.

Until you dig deeper into the list. For example, Marc Andreessen is on the list. How's that possible? He founded Netscape and fought what seemed like a Hundred Years War with Microsoft. Since then, he's started two companies, joined the boards of eBay, Facebook and HP. Now he's launched a $300 million venture capital fund. He has to be 80, right? Nope, he's 38.

Tiger Woods is on the list at #5, but everybody knows he was left here on earth by superior beings when they constructed the great pyramids. Above him, things really get scary.

At #5, we have Biz Stone and Evan Williams (Biz...I'm not making this up). These guys are 35 and 37 and they co-founded Twitter. Amazing because Twitter has a $1 billion valuation and no business (bizness?) model whatsoever.

At #2 is Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind founder of Facebook. He's a Harvard dropout and runs a company with a $10 billion valuation--and he holds a majority stake. He won't be 40 for 15 more years.

At #1, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the 36 year-old co-founders of Google, market value $174 billion. They still share an office.

I'm feeling very old. Maybe CenlaFocus will run a sixty over sixty feature and I can get back in the game. I'm more hopeful, however, that somewhere in Cenla right this minute beats the heart of a 15 year-old who will be on this list in another decade. That's the other frustrating thing about this list--they're not from around here. We can't do much about my never appearing on another forty under forty list, but we can do something about the way we value knowledge, about the way we value entrepreneurship. That could make all the difference for Cenla's future.