As a guy who's worked in several startups i'd have to say that yes, I think they do need guys like you but there is a catch. I've worked with lots of developers

As a guy who's worked in several startups i'd have to say that yes, I think they do need guys like you but there is a catch. I've worked with lots of developers from tons of different backgrounds on three continents, but the one thing they all had in common was experience. Do you have experience in other disciplines? I don't mean do you know C++ but can you program your own AI for a Game Engine? Have you already done this? Can you apply your machine learning knowledge on an Open Source Web Analytics tool? Your definately backend (as am I) so I'd say just program something, open source it, and let that be your gateway in. Just as a curiousity what's your Doctoral work on?