[awinder]

Depending on your priorities, midsize is usually a great place to get autonomy wins of small startups mixed with the scale to actually be solving real problems. I’d be curious if you don’t like aspects of your workspace or are otherwise convinced that startup really is the place to be.

I’m also gonna take a stab at reading this so take with a grain of salt. I think the companies are not getting back to you because it’s super low odds of mutual fit. 15 years in and looking at early stage startups, you probably are not going to be a fit unless you are replacing a key team member or part of founding team. You have experience level, trading off for the very unglamorous aspects of early stage means the value prop to you would only make sense with significant stock package and likely a high salary. To get into that, you’re really talking about opportunities coming in from your professional network, or a number of other low odds vectors for getting in the door.

If you want to go down that path I would suggest really building some solid relationships at either bigger companies nearing IPO or midsize, basically you need to expand the pool of people you’re close with who might create new startups