People downvote for completely stupid reasons here. If you think that was bad, see what happens when you question the collective wisdom of a bunch of boys in Sa

People downvote for completely stupid reasons here. If you think that was bad, see what happens when you question the collective wisdom of a bunch of boys in San Francisco barely out of college who think they rule the world. Not that I'm bitter or anything... :) But back to your situation. There's a question I like to ask everyone, stolen directly from Babylon 5... "What do you want?" You need to be able to answer that for yourself, honestly, and then work toward that. Is what you do now working for you? Why or why not? I put in two decades in the software industry before I realized that what I want is total independence, by owning my own company, setting the direction, making sure it's as good as I want it to be. The enterprise is secure, and often challenging, but I'll never get rich and I'll never feel in control, not that way. On the other hand, after two decades of career gone, I don't have a bunch of spare rounds in the clip the way the average kid getting processed through a startup accelerator does. I wound up here backwards. I didn't start with "I want a startup" and then cast around looking for an idea (the problem with so many startups is mediocre, timid ideas). Instead, the idea came to me, and I realized that it would best be done through a startup. And a startup fits my sense of how to live a lot better than the enterprise work I've been doing. Luckily, the idea itself comes from those decades of experience in large-scale software development and its problems. Without all that real-world experience, I wouldn't even know of the existence of the problem I am trying to solve. So back to you. What do you want? What kind of life do you want to lead? What sort of impact do you want to have on the world? Answer that, and build toward that.