&quot;&quot;&quot;you&#x27;re only as good as the last thing you did, and no one gives a shit about the last thing you did&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>I&#x27;d say the second part of this isn&#x27;t true in general. You&#x27;ll often be judged by past success weather that&#x27;s a good metric or not as long as it roughly fits the domain. The mentioned NFL is a great example of this. Coaches that have won stuff get better job offers. It may or may not be a good indicator but that&#x27;s how it is. Similarly if you&#x27;ve worked for Google it&#x27;ll probably be easier to land jobs elsewhere (I&#x27;d argue even if the reason for your departure is that you&#x27;d be considered a mishire in retrospect).
In the domain of startups, if you&#x27;ve done one somewhat successfully funding gets a lot easier (which is a good advantage since you won&#x27;t waste much time on it). A16Z are on record saying they&#x27;ll fund people that have done startups before more liberally (in the Stanford video series).