[vaksel]

I'm going to guess that it was due to how you behaved during your interview. If you are going for a corporate job, you need to pretty much crap all over your startup experience. You need to talk about how it just wasn't for you, and that you have no plans to ever do it again.

If you talk about how cool it was, and how you plan to do it again, they won't want to hire you, thinking you are just there for a few months until you go back to doing startups

[nostrademons]

When I interviewed, I said my startup was basically a great experience, I absolutely hoped to give it a go again in the future, but right now all ideas I had led through Google. That seemed to work for them, and it was basically the truth. No need to lie or misrepresent.

You definitely don't want to give the impression that you're just applying to pick up some quick cash before trying your next startup. But there's a lot of middle ground between that and "I never want to be an entrepreneur again, and will happily be your corporate bitch forever."

[ScottWhigham]

That was your situation in one job interview. To repost: "Sampling size error"

It is dangerous to assume that "One size fits all" in this situation, for both you and OP. A better answer might be to read the interviewer/company and make the best decision at the time given all the info (on whether to "fudge" or not about whether you'd do it again). It also, I suppose, depends on your financial situation.

[nostrademons]

I've said that elsewhere on-thread. However, by definition each person only has direct experience with a sample size of one, so the only way to get bigger sample sizes is if people post their experiences. :-)

[donw]

This is probably the best advice here. Companies hate hiring -- it's a pain in the ass to find qualified people, not to mention a ton of paperwork, and the time required to get 'the new guy' up to speed. So, if Company X thinks you're just going to jump ship and do another startup after six months, there isn't any way in hell they're hire you.

So, the top-poster should ask himself what he wants: Does he want a few years of nine-to-five, or to be starting a company again in a few months?

If the answer is the former, then he needs to do exactly as vaksel said. Play up the aspects of startup life that will appeal to Company X: hard work, thinking on your feet, people skills, having to come up to speed quickly. Play down anything that makes it sound like you want to leave in less than a few years. Talk about how the uncertainty of income was nerve-wracking, how hard it was to always be on your own, how much you found you missed having co-workers, etc.

If you do want to leave in six months, don't lie to a recruiter -- look for contract jobs. You'll make more money in a shorter period of time, build up a bigger network, and avoid burning bridges.

[donaq]

If you talk about how cool it was, and how you plan to do it again, they won't want to hire you, thinking you are just there for a few months until you go back to doing startups

I don't think so. I did just that and I still got 3 offers out of 3 interviews. 2 of them were small companies (one of which I'm working at now), but the last was a corporate behemoth with the initials FX. It really depends on what the employer wants out of filling the position, I think.

[ScottWhigham]

* It really depends on what the employer wants out of filling the position, I think.*

Exactly. It appears that, out of 3 interviews, those three companies were looking for that type of person. It could be that those were exactly the types of companies you were looking for as well. That doesn't mean that if you interviewed for 500 jobs at a wide spectrum of companies (with sizing from 10-250,000 people) that you would fare as well.