[poulsbohemian]

I looked back through your comments and noted you posted a similar Ask HN a couple months back... look if you are a CTO and have a reasonable network (or can quickly build a network) there are plenty of companies that would take you in a sales / pre-sales engineering type capacity on the basis that you:

a) presumably understand tech / can learn quickly b) will have street cred from your past experiences c) will presumably bring some kind of network / rolodex with you

So, don't stress - if you can put a confident foot forward, you probably have more going than you realize. It's just a matter of how you sell it to a future employer.