Following a parade of headlines and news that Fast shut down back in April, Natasha and Alex asked: What are we missing when we talk about startup failure?

The question comes after one of Natasha’s Startups Weekly columns, where she looked into the complexity of startup failure, fallacy of takedown stories, and importance of diversity in newsrooms. Here's an excerpt:

"There’s the argument that startup tensions are inevitable and common, so should we spotlight every time something bubbles to the surface, especially at the cost of an underrepresented founder who may just be doing their best? There’s also an argument that the business is messy, so we should report on the issues as we hear about them; and there’s the narrative of the female takedown story, in which people believe that women are targeted by the press more than men due to unreasonably high standards."

We discussed our own definitions of failure past Theranos and WeWork, examples of rising tensions, and what this means for early-stage startups and historically overlooked founders. We took a closer look at another wave of layoffs, some notable valuation cuts, and the implosion of Fast to weigh against 2021's strident startup optimism.

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