Serial entrepreneur and investor Kevin Rose tweeted this about Path’s sale to a Korean company:

Silicon Valley dances around failure. It’s how we learn/improve. Digg was a failure, Path was a failure. Embrace it and try again, ya know?

— Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) May 29, 2015

On reflection, he decided to go deeper into the matter on Medium, exploring what he meant by the failures of Digg and Path. But it’s his last thought that’s most useful:

[…]  my deeper point here is that I believe that it’s best to be upfront when things don’t work out. Emotionally it’s quite freeing for the entrepreneur, and in talking about and explaining our failures we all benefit and learn.

And that’s a lesson that applies as well to any business as to startups. I periods of change capturing and exploring the reasons for failures can be far more valuable than just blaming and punishing.