When you’re king of the hill and you get knocked off the fall from grace is great. You feel like the world is watching you and judging you, but odds are they’re not. When you have to start over you have VERY little to lose. So why not try something different?
Consider this little story from Steve Jobs.
"So we (Steve and I) went to Atari and said, "Hey, we've got this amazing thing, we even built it with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you." And they said, "No."
So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, “Hey, we don't need you. You haven't even finished college yet."
That’s Steve trying to get Atari and HP interested in their first P.C.