I think in terms of the kind of job position they could get going into a Microsoft after their startup, they ended up about the same as if they had been at Microsoft the whole time.

So it wasn't wasted time in that respect, and they'll be bringing in unique and different skills that they probably wouldn't have developed had they been at MS the whole time.

But...there's things like the lower pay they probably had while doing their business, and the intensity of running a failing business is very very hard mentally and physically.

Near the end, one of the guys shut down...hard...now that he's moved on he's recovering. But I think that kind of experience trails along with you for a long while.

I think that's very dependent on the person and how they internalized the experience. One of them I know thinks that it was wasted years off of his life. Another feels like they learned more in those years than they did in the rest of their career combined, and it's armed them to be more effective in future endeavors.