| It's been over a month now since the emergence of a patent owned by a large, litigation-prone competitor came to light, causing us to shut down. I'm now trying to figure out what to do, but I have no proper software or corporate experience outside my own company, so I'm not actually sure what is a realistic next step. Here's my resume highlights: - CEO of a 4-year bootstrapped wearable sensors company founded straight out of college. - Shipped 3k+ units - Built a machine learning pipeline to solve arbitrary inertial gesture classification problems, deployed working model to hardware prototype - more info, cv, etc: matoles.com - B.S. Materials Science/Engineering - Location: Seattle - Age: 26 In the long run, I would like to start another ML company. Therefore my short term (2-4 year) objectives are: - Work in the data science / ML field - Make a lot of money - No regard for work/life balance Here are my questions for the hivemind: - How feasible are the following routes, given my resume? - If you had my resume and wanted to optimize for the above,
what would you do? - Are there any routes not on the list that I should consider?
Are there important steps I'm missing? - What gaps in my resume can I fill in the next 3 months? 1. Become a data scientist / ML engineer at a large company 1a. Study a lot. For the purpose of this post, let's assume my technical interview skills are in the top 25% of FAANG applicants. 1b. Publish 2-3 portfolio projects and maybe a paper on our startup's IP 1c. Apply to every relevant job I can find 2. Apply for leadership/non-IC positions at smaller companies 2a. Practice interviewing with colleagues in management 2b. Apply I am concerned that my resume does not look like that of a typical management applicant. My experience shipping hardware might make up for this at a hardware/ML startup? 3. Do software or hardware (without ML) because the economy right now is garbage Thanks everyone. |
* If I were interviewing you, I'd be concerned about whether you could take orders from a supervisor, and, more generally, work well with people that you didn't hand select. (Side note: are you good at those things, OP? It's ok if you're not, but it should frame your search). Is there a way you can take on a project where you aren't the boss?
* Have you processed the grief and loss over your previous startup, and are you really ready to jump back in to another thing? I'd wonder this if I were interviewing you, thinking that maybe you were looking for a rebound job but didn't really have your heart in it. Not sure how you would assuage that, except for taking some time off and working on some personal projects, ML-related or not.
* How much work would it be to turn your IP into an arXiv paper and accompanying well-documented repo? My own bias: I would look very favorably on this kind of work, because it shows 'public-midnedness', if you will. Bonus points if you can co-author with someone and not be first author (to point #1 above).
Good luck!