I had no problem finding my pick of companies to work for however.
The transition wasn't tough necessarily, but neither is the desk job very fulfilling. There's a sort of manifest destiny when you're building YOUR thing, and building anyone else's thing is just nowhere near the same -- regardless of the token scraps of RDUs or options or company outings they throw at ya. You're riding on the bus, not driving it. It just ain't the same.
Like the other poster, I would do it all over again as well.
I interviewed with FAANG’s and startups in nyc and the Bay Area. I felt like my experience was valued by most companies I interviewed with, to my surprise, and many others had similar stories to mine.
It felt like the right the step, like going to a version of my company that’d turned out (a lot) better. It’s been a great experience- went from senior dev to manager, and love doing both. Management allows me to wear a bunch of hats in a similar way I did as a founder, but with a safety net and much more support.
My experience as a founder was extremely valuable. It made me a much better engineer and a much better leader than I could’ve been if I hadn’t done my startup. Overall, my career trajectory is better than it would’ve been otherwise, barring some stroke of luck in the corporate world. I have no regrets.
It wasn’t all roses, though. For the first 18 months or so after we shut our startup down (and through my subsequent return to full time employment), I was hurting pretty bad, constantly thinking of what I could’ve done differently and still had many, many sleepless nights. It took those 18 months to really get it out of my system and move on.
I still itch for the next one.
Since then full-time software dev contractor, can't complain income wise. Apparently: Even running a page into the ground yields enough technological experience to make you interesting enough for other companies ;-)
Sometimes I felt the itch to try out a new venture with a friend. Some ideas including non-profit things. But quickly give up, because VCs are loaded with with requests, and those VCs that can shuffle free their calendar are not the ones you want to do business with.
YC never was an option because they demanded to move to California and (at least officially) little money.
Contracting delivers a very comfy cash-flow, but not really the fulfillment one might seek with a startup
However, my tech being ready in '08 was in the middle of the global financial crisis. Plus, nobody ever heard of "automated actor replacement" back then, angel and VC investors simply did not believe it was possible. If they did, they wanted to pursue pornography, which I refused.
I went bankrupt. I ended up selling the global patents, which was an incredible achievement acquiring them in the first place. One of my technology providers was a facial recognition company that incorporated 3D reconstruction in their FR suite. So I went to work for them for about 7 years. I quit last spring, I guess a part of the great resignation. Far too many long hours, with no equity participation.
Currently, I enrolled in some graduate Machine Learning classes, and I am formally learning what I've been doing without the training for the last 7 years. I expect to be back in the market around the beginning of the new year, with a freshly minted formal understanding of the ML/DL aspects of the computer vision work I've been doing professionally for nearly a decade now.
Since then I got a job, moved countries and am working on the next thing with my wife :)
It was an invaluable experience and I would do it all over again.
The lesson made me a better founder, now am solving another problem- anomaly detection for companies.
On the plus side, the interviews were a breeze due to the depth I had built up on the tech side in my startup, and I had instant street-cred every time I talked to new coworkers.
Experience as a founder was very valuable due to the much bigger picture that I could see most of the time and easily switch my thinking hats from tech to product to business, and add value to most discussions, even with executives.