Ask HN: How to value your skills as a (former) sole proprietor?

Hi HN, some quick context: I am 22, no college education, entirely self taught. Started coding when I was 15, spent an average of 30~ hours a week coding since then. I have been writing in TypeScript for about a year now, and it’s my most frequently used language as of late. Other than that, I have been writing JS code for about 3-4 years, Python for the same, as well as Java.

Anyways, back in 2019, I was enrolled in College for some courses. I had a few “side hustles” that played off my tech skills back then. One of those side hustles revolves around video games. When lockdown and quarantines hit early that year, my video game side hustle turned into a video game business due to all the extra demand from people staying at home.

I ended up dropping out of college to pursue this, and I don’t regret doing this— I was in school for something non-STEM/tech as I wasn’t confident that this was what I wanted to do with my career back then. I made a great deal of money from that little business, and I managed to not let it get to my head too much and put most of it into savings.

So, long story short, my business looks like it’s going to have to come to an end soon. I have enough saved to live for a few years without issue but ideally I’d like to have a job lined up to not have to eat into my savings when it comes time to pull the plug.

The issue is: all of my commercial / for-pay coding I have done has been for myself. I don’t have much in the way of a portfolio, as most of what I worked on was for my business, and not fit for public display (eg server side code, or Uber specific solutions/projects, or even possible publicity issues if I end up selling my company and cashing out).

I know that I am talented, I wouldn’t have been able to survive and run my business solo for so long if not. It’s just that due to the nature of my work (I had no employees, my business didn’t have much of a public presence), I have little proof of what I am capable of, and hardly any references.

Should I intentionally take whatever low hanging fruit I can get, or should I aim for the stars and settle for nothing less? I have maybe another 1-3 months of predictably OK revenue left with my business. After that I’ll have to start using my savings.

Thanks HN