I don’t teach startup failure as a case study. I lived it.

Each talk digs into one of the six contributors in The Patterns of Startup Failure. What I cover is the psychological side of the founder’s journey, the part audiences recognize immediately but rarely hear said out loud.

Audiences have been MBA and graduate students, faculty, and professional associations.

Identity

Founders blur the line between who they are and what they build, and become both the engine and the hostage of their own creation.

Distraction

New product, new market, new plan. Anything that looks like forward motion and spares a founder the stillness to confront what isn’t working.

Vanity

Appearances become the product, and the story can only outrun the truth for so long. (1 talk)

Fear

Decisions stop being about progress and start being about protection. (1 talk)

Hubris

Founders stop listening, stop questioning, and start believing their own myth. (2 talks)

Isolation

It cuts founders off from other people, and more importantly, from the truth. (1 talk)

Where this comes from

I spent years building a company I was sure the market needed. It ended in corporate bankruptcy, and I was convicted for misrepresentations I made while fundraising.

I could describe what happened right away. Understanding why took years. That is what I bring into a room: not a framework I studied from the outside, but the thousands of small choices that each felt reasonable at the time and added up to a catastrophe.

Sessions work as a guest lecture, a fireside conversation, or a discussion built around the case you are already teaching. In person or remote, typically 45 to 90 minutes with time for questions.