Just because it's an unpleasant time in the founder's life doesn't mean that it's above criticism and tough discussion. Look, the dude raised tens of millions

Just because it's an unpleasant time in the founder's life doesn't mean that it's above criticism and tough discussion. Look, the dude raised tens of millions of dollars and failed. Those are facts. Simply lauding someone for being brave about the failure or even raising money in the first place is dumb. They had a large opportunity, pitched big promises in order to get their funding, and failed because they could no longer exploit a labor market. And we're supposed to ignore that because it might hurt his feelings to discuss it openly, after he himself opened himself up for that discussion by publishing a post-mortem? The positive culture of failure in startups is childish and enables the continuation of poor decision making. Business isn't a summer camp where everyone gets to hold hands and win participation trophies; people win and people lose. By not being honest about why they lost and learning the lessons from it - even at the cost of potentially hurting someone's feelings - the community does not advance.