I don't see a definition of failure being mentioned. In my world, success isn't getting acquired. That's just short-term success for the founders and early inve

I don't see a definition of failure being mentioned. In my world, success isn't getting acquired. That's just short-term success for the founders and early investors. But putting such value on short-term success is... well, short-sighted. Long-term success is about developing a concept into something valuable (ie. a product). Its about attracting customers, and retaining them. Its about profit, and retaining profit. You don't need to get acquired for such. I agree that cherry picking examples without in-depth analysis isn't worthwhile. If you want to learn from other's mistakes, you need to go in-depth instead of shallow. Also, there's nothing wrong with failing itself. It can be important to note such, the why. For example, its important to note the founder of Discord previously had a startup where data gathering was part of the profit model. Because that tells us something about where his moral values lie. And that is where mentioning Theranos or uBiome is worthwhile. I don't know about uBiome, but with regards to Theranos it took too long for the fraud to be exposed. Many people got hurt. Mostly financially, but also via fraudulent results, and at least one employer committed suicide. I don't know anything about uBiome but that they got raided by FBI is noteworthy. I know another startup who've acted fraudulently, deleting evidence via FDE in their remote office in Brussels: Uber. Yes, these events are important to note if your subject is failed startups. Although as mentioned fail should be clearly defined.