Ask HN: Ex-entrepreneurs, what career path did you pursue after your start up?
3 comments
Web development. I did online marketing (mainly seo) before founding a cleaning as a service startup. I had basic wordpress, html and css knowledge before so I had to take time out to intensely learn computer science fundamentals and then web development specifically. It was definitely the right choice to do development. Much more interesting and challenging and it is a skill with a much greater leverage for doing future projects.
Wish I could tell you. Struggling, really struggling with this now. My business is dead and I need to find something else. But I have no worthy ideas and nobody wants to hire someone with "general" experience - everything is about highly specialized skills and experience.
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Like many entrepreneurs, I've worn many, many hats over the past few years - product development, QA, finance, accounting, sales, marketing, etc. I love being able to contribute ideas and suggestions in each of these areas getting started, until we have found someone who is truly an expert in that business area to take the reins and ownership of that aspect of the team.
As I start exploring opportunities in the marketplace, I see many, many postings asking for functional expertise, but next to nothing asking for broad experience putting pieces together for a venture with many unknowns (figuring out and reducing the risk associated with those unknowns in the process).
So I am curious, those of you here who have previously ran or started a company, but returned to the labor market, what opportunities did you pursue? Where were you happiest after leaving your entrepreneurial venture? What was your background before taking the entrepreneurial leap, and did you return to that field after you left your company?