I spend a lot of time on here and I'm hoping to get some advice. I'm in my mid-30s. I've started several start-ups since I graduated college, none of which achieved any traction. I've been working a full-time job for the last few years developing and managing the internal business process systems for a manufacturer. I'm now trying to transition back to the start-up world and am looking to rebuild an income flow to support myself. After many years of being out of the freelance game, I'm looking to restart a freelance practice which would buy me the flexibility to work on another start-up if I could even secure the rates I billed 10 years ago. My concern is picking up work, as many years of working in almost masochistic isolation on various start-ups has left me without much of a professional network and my skill set is lacking in sex appeal. While I am well-versed in Javascript and I'm currently studying Ruby, my background is in the pretty staid world of SMB line-of-business applications (and Microsoft technologies). While I'm sure that there is still plenty of demand for these kinds of intranet applications, I'm not quite sure how to break back in. I've been looking at postings on craigslist and some of the other boards mentioned here, but most listings seem to revolve around consumer-facing web apps. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to look online or what sort of events I should be looking for to network myself to find these sorts of gigs? I suspect start-up community events will not lend themselves to finding this kind of work. I'm in New York City. In the event anyone on here has work, I also have experience with SMB ERP systems (my first start-up was an ERP as a service flameout) and am very strong on business and financial analysis (I'm trained in finance) as well as project management stuff like gathering requirements and writing specs. Thanks very much for any guidance.
