PhD, Startup, or Career? 
seshagiric: You can narrow down the choices to two:1. Take the startup job. In the worst case it will fail. If so you would have gained so much valuable experience in programming + project management + finance + HR. With that experience you will easily get a Senior level job in any company. And that is the worst case. If it succeeds the returns will simply be atleast 10 times more than that of a career life.2. Given the market situation do your PHD, perhaps working on algorithms for detect money launder. The idea is by the time you complete your PHD (3 yrs?) the markets would have turned around surely.And if the PHD is not in one of the top 10 universities, ditch the idea and go for the startup.