In his essays, Paul Graham often mentions that even entrepreneurs who fail at their startups are usually much better off (in terms of experience, and perhaps monetarily too) than they would have been had they chosen not to start (see for example: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html). As an aspiring entrepreneur, I find this rather encouraging. However, I am looking for data or detailed stories on failed entrepreneurs with more than just a few data-points. Successful founders get a lot more media attention than failed ones, so information on the latter seems to be generally lacking on the Internet. What do founders do after failure? How do they know they have failed? Where do they go next? If they do another startup, is it harder to get funded by VCs? If they look for a regular job, is their experience running a startup valued? Are there other hidden challenges a failed founder must face? Not to be a pessimist, but I feel information about failed founders is a bit of a blind spot for me (and maybe others too), and it would be very useful to get more factual data about this subject, from members of the HN community.