Title: So the last time I relied on you for advice was 1394 days ago, according to this: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=134685<p>Since then, I worked at a few startups, dropped out of school, started a successful Mac app business, and ended up spinning off a music publishing platform for the iPad that was doing very well until I ran into a legal issue.<p>So I exited earlier than I would have liked:<p>http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-debuts-etude-20-ipad-app-for-learning-and-playing-piano/<p>The heart of the matter was that I signed a bad contract with someone who was supposed to get music deals for me. With the contract in place, it limited my options for continuing to bootstrap, taking funding, or getting acquired by a few of the companies I was talking with. Except for Steinway, which found a way to work with me.<p>So I moved from SF to New York, I brought in a team, we transitioned the app over, built one of the first sheet music stores for the iPad, and released a new version of the app I'm really happy with.<p>If you're curious, you can try it for free at: http://etudeapp.com<p>With the app transitioned and my legal matter finally settled, we've set a date for me to leave the company. I'm excited, but a little terrified.<p>Since the time I sold, I have many times the resources/runway I had before, and I'm a good deal more mature and in much better shape. The odds are waaay better, so I ought to just hang out and see what I come up with, right?<p>But for whatever reason, after spending about 2-3 years pursuing a single idea so passionately, I'm pretty burned out, and I'm not quite ready to start something new yet. I'm not excited about any of my other ideas to the degree I was with Etude, and I'm having trouble seeing what to do now. I feel like I've reached a local maximum, and I need to go work with other people and see what kind of ideas they're into.<p>I'd really like to do an incubator like YC, since having decent advisors would have prevented me from running into the trouble I did before. But it's not the right time, and I'm (so far) a single founder.<p>So I went and interviewed at a bunch of places in New York (since I'm stuck for at least a little while). People seemed to like what I'd done and I got a few offers from some good companies, traditional and startup.<p>I don't really <i>need</i> a gig, but I figured I'd see what I could get. But the thing that bugs me about this is that nobody seems to think that I'm anything more than a code monkey. They don't realize that, in addition to engineering, I actually started something new, managed the product, a whole team, did a fair bit of design, promotion/press, successfully exited, all sorts of stuff that doesn't really fall under "Objective-C developer." Not exactly covered in the Stanford course. I'm not usually so arrogant, but it's frustrating.<p>For some reason, the logic on the east coast, and even in a lot of SV is, "If you <i>can</i> code, then you can <i>only</i> code. Forever."<p>I'm returning to San Francisco for a week just to meet up with some old friends and escape the cold later this month. Hoping that will help me.<p>But what should a person who wants to take a break and get some broader experience but is tainted with an engineering background do? Is the only option for me to just suck it up, gather the courage, and commit to striking it on my own with  another idea? Have any of you ever been at a similar crossroads after exiting something?
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