So, revealing one of these mistakes would come off as a brave revelation of a personal mistake; a lesson learned and moved on from All of them together seem to

So, revealing one of these mistakes would come off as a brave revelation of a personal mistake; a lesson learned and moved on from All of them together seem to come across as being simply dishonest. Being years behind on taxes because you never bothered to have a proper accountant look at your finances, calling people co-founders one day and then treating them like employees, selling non-existent features to your customers and collecting credit card information with no product to back it up, saying you "dropped out of Harvard" when you "took a few courses at Harvard Extension", not telling your investors about what's going on, all adds up to pretty much being entirely dishonest with everyone you interacted with. One of these mistakes could be forgivable; I've known some very good people who were terrible at accounting and so wound up with lots of back taxes to pay. A good salesman may sell a feature that's not quite ready yet; it's sometimes frustrating for the developers, but as long as it's more the exception than the rule it's OK. Focusing on your product more than your investors may be OK if you just have so much to do and you really are bringing them a lot of value. But all of them at once? That doesn't leave you with very many excuses; you weren't so busy building features that you didn't have time for investors, you were using your customers, and the IRS, and your "cofounders" as extra investors and even with all of that you weren't able to make it work out.