[jfb]

"There is no moral of the story other than: failure does not mean that you didn't do well."

While this lesson is pretty well internalized, I think there's some difficulty with the converse: just because you succeeded, doesn't mean what you were doing was right. Life is contingent.

[sz4kerto]

Oh yes, that might be even more important. See the Superinvestors of America: http://www.tilsonfunds.com/superinvestors.html

[baddox]

This is really just semantic. You can play around with definitions and construct all sorts of truisms:

Just because your company ran out of money and ceased to exists doesn't mean you failed.

Just because your company grew very quickly, IPO'd at a high price, and had consistently large profits for many years, doesn't mean you succeeded.