Ron Garret is one of those names that should perk up the ears of anyone who's been around the Lisp world or NASA's deep-space program. He was the lead programmer for the Remote Agent that flew on Deep Space 1 — the first AI to autonomously command a spacecraft — and a longtime Googler back when Google was small. He's also written one of the more honest reflections on startup life you'll find on the open web.

The premise of this post is unusual: rather than the typical "five lessons from my successful exit" genre, Garret walks through six and a half failed attempts at building a company. The "half" alone is intriguing — it suggests the kind of granular honesty that survivor-bias-heavy startup writing rarely musters.

Why this deserves more attention than a single upvote:

• Selection bias correction. The startup canon is dominated by founders who won. Reading someone who tried repeatedly and didn't break through — but who is also clearly technically formidable — is genuinely rare and useful signal.
• Credibility. Garret isn't writing as a perpetual aspirant. He's a serious engineer with a real track record at NASA JPL and early Google. When he says "this is what I got wrong," there's no pretense to defend.
• Title framing. The "(not)" in "I am (not) a Failure" hints that the post is wrestling with how we define success in a culture that conflates outcome with merit — a topic the HN crowd argues about constantly without much nuance.

For technical readers, the value here is twofold. First, it's a reality check on the founder mythology: even with strong engineering chops and the right networks, the modal outcome is failure, and failure has texture worth studying. Second, Garret has historically been a thoughtful writer on why technically excellent things don't always win — a lesson that translates beyond startups into open source, internal tools, and career strategy.

The post also dates back to early 2025 but is being resurfaced now, which usually means someone found it durable enough to share a year later. That's a stronger signal than most front-page churn.