Ask HN: 18 y/o YC founder post-startup – what now?
Some context: - I dropped out when I was 15 to spend more time working (at the time consulting for F500s, later climbed to a senior-level job in advertising) and soon after found myself building companies. The first one didn't quite work out, but by 16 I had a good amount of experience in marketing and cofounded an ad agency with a friend (also 16y/o) that we grew to relative success (~500k rev.) - We got into YC, learned VCs don't invest in agencies, pivoted and raised 1.5m from VCs including Paul Graham. Several months in the pivot hadn't landed with users so we gradually whittled down our multicontinental team of 25 (managed by two 16 year olds lol) as we searched for a new idea. - Parallel to this a 3rd company/side hobby (a luxury brand) became extremely profitable, but I mothballed it to stay committed to the startup. - We worked on a new idea all through 2023 with 2 remaining employees, but by late December we were starting to realise the economics would never work. - By then I was so burnt out from the failures and 3 years of literally nothing except work, sleep, work, sleep that I eventually left in the aim of going to college, but couldn't get a school transcript in time for the 2024 cycle.
All the overachiever business stuff I did between 15-18 (much of it cut out for brevity) put me so far from the beaten path that I'm unsure what exactly I'm supposed to do in the ~1.5 years until the next college cycle. I cut everything in life from hobbies to friends to work relentlessly (14-16 hours a day) and I now have some kind of stockholm syndrome for obsessively working on complex and stressful problems. This has made it pretty hard (if not impossible) to enjoy doing "normal person things" like going on holiday or picking up hobbies, which has been the average advice I've gotten so far. (The hobbies that do interest me satisfy the blend of complexity and stress but require a lot of money (that I don't have) to get into -- Skydiving, biking, helicopter flying, mountaineering)
Several people have also suggested getting a job, but I'm in a weird position of having a lot of experience (across several industries/roles) and having no specialized experience (at an employable level) in one specific thing. Most people in this position would probably work somewhere in operations or bizdev, but again, I'm young, and I highly doubt anyone would hire an 18y/o over an MBA into a role like that, even if the 18y/o is much more experienced.
So, HN. What do I do now? -- And if I work somewhere, where?