Joined my dream startup in January. Team went from 20 to 4 in June and I was cut. 200+ cold emails and 9 interviews later, still no job.

I'm 21, graduated from IIT Bombay this year, mechanical. Been writing code since second year.

I got extremely lucky in placements. The first offer that landed was a fully remote early stage startup, good pay, exactly the thing I wanted. I joined in January while still in my last semester and worked till end of June as a frontend engineer.

Then funding got cut. Team went from 20 people to 4. I was not one of the 4.

Here's what the last month and a half actually looked like:

* 200+ cold emails to YC founders
* LinkedIn outreach to about 45 people I filtered out of 500 connections
* 9 interviews
* 10+ intro calls with founders
* 0 offers

The breakdown of what killed them: two companies said they wanted more experience than a recent grad. One went silent after round one. One I lost in the technical round. The rest are still pending in various stages of slow.

The part nobody tells you: **every single interview came from someone I already knew.** Not one came from a cold email or from posting. The 200 emails got me replies and goodwill and zero interviews. The connections got me all nine.

One thing I did learn about myself from those six months: doing only frontend was not the right shape for me. I've spent the last month deliberately back on full stack, building complete projects end to end again, and it's the most useful thing I've done since June.

I also ran my own thing before this, a social app for exam aspirants. Raised 4 lakhs, built the entire stack solo, got to 700 users and 60 DAU, shut it down after 6 months because people used it to chat instead of study. That's the part I actually miss. Talking to users, watching what they really did with it, working out why it didn't go the way I expected.

That's roughly what I'm looking for again. I want complete ownership of what I build rather than one narrow slice of it, and I want to be close enough to the people using it to know when something isn't working.

Where I am now: looking for full stack or founding engineer roles. Fully remote preferred, but open to relocating. Available immediately.

If anyone has been through the same thing this year, I'd like to know what actually worked for you.