[mywittyname]

This is really good advice. To pile on, big companies tend to pigeon-hole their developers based on company needs, instead of considering developer skill. So a person coming from running a startup is probably going to feel highly constrained from the lack of autonomy and "big picture" involvement.

I'd totally hire a developer with a failed startup. Especially one that managed to stay around for seven years. That indicates to me that they know what they are doing, but the market feel out of their idea for some reason. Lots of great businesses go bankrupt because their product is no longer useful and it's difficult to pivot.