Ask HN: My startup has failed. What comes next?

Know thyself and accept that you may need a little bit of a mental health break before you're ready to jump back in.

You are probably much more employable than you think. You probably also have more connections than you realise.

As soon as you're ready, reach out to the people you know in the industry both locally and elsewhere. Let them know that you're looking for work and the kind of work you're interested in doing.

What worked well for me when I was in your situation was short term technical work with no managerial component. I found it quite relaxing to just show up, write code for a client, then go home. No team to worry about, no wage bill looming, just some issues in the backlog.

After I'd done that for a little while, I was back in a position to stretch myself again.

An innovation does not have to be a business idea, remember that. Supporting yourself can be incredibly cheap without a 9-5. Joining a team at a real office can develop your skills in ways you'd never imagine - but it's not right for everyone. It's not 'giving up' either - it can open up new opportunities, but make sure you still work towards total independence if you do that - and consider working for someone else's startup that might have more traction.

2 years is a long time - I've been in situations similar. I don't let projects last that long anymore. Motivation is an extremely important thing. You need to find what you love so you can enjoy working on it without the only carrot being a big payoff. NEVER force yourself to work on projects you don't enjoy. In life we have to do things we don't enjoy like paying taxes, apologizing, going to the DMV - but when it comes to your projects you cannot expect yourself to excel in something you don't absolutely love. You can always do 'ok' in those things but it's debilitating after a while.

Take a month, if you can afford it, to hone your skills - watch youtube videos, read a book (Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is what was once recommended to me and I recommend it to pepole all the time in these situations).

Be strong. Let the thing go, don't look back, don't jump into the next thing so fast - make sure you're taking your life in the direction you want it to go. Take a minute to pause, meditate - most people experience 'failures' because they only ever work on a business venture where success is binary - either you're profitable or you're not after x time. If, however, your goal is to better yourself, to build things that you can use and you want, to explore - to not worry about trying to make money with every concept you work on, but to be open to the possibility of it.

You can do amazing things - just admit to yourself what your shortcomings are personally, what your failures were in your last venture - and how to set up your life so that no matter what happens, it will be impossible to 'fail' because you no longer look at things as such a strict dichotomy.

#3 has been the key to my happiness ... and by the way I love to collaborate on awesome experiments - down any time.

Our startup failed early this year. We didn't make any money and while we did have a few interested clients, to keep going we needed funding that didn't come. End of the day, it was the wrong product. Period.

So - lesson learned.

I did try odesk/elance for a while but you can't make any money from it. My work is more embedded, and systems programming and the jobs on places like odesk are suited for very low end webdev. (The good webdev work isn't on odesk). As a result, they are very low paying.

I called that quits pretty quickly and started looking for a job. It took me a couple of interviews (including bombing the first one) before I found work. I'm pretty happy now. It pays the bills, but I am saving up for my next startup sometime in the future.

In short, don't be disheartened. Very few actually make it, but the journey is one that's really worth it. Sometime later you will find the right idea and your motivation will be up again.

Life goes on. Please forgive yourself whatever happened in the past. In my case i started lokking for a job under stress and failed with the first one, so please rank your interviews and go to least interesting ones first. Sometimes going the ones you will never except helps, you will never now what it will bring to you. Good luck!