A couple of weeks ago I shared an amazingly honest post from founder Anand Sanwal detailing the “screwups” he’s made as he built CB Insights.

I found it unusual because of his blunt honesty; so many founders offer reasons and try to spread the responsibility for errors — or so it seems to me.

image source: here

Then last week I read Slava Akhmechet’s post-mortem after shutting down RethinkDB. In which he took full responsibility.

In hindsight, two things went wrong – we picked a terrible market and optimized the product for the wrong metrics of goodness. Each mistake likely cut RethinkDB’s valuation by one to two orders of magnitude. So if we got either of these right, RethinkDB would have been the size of MongoDB, and if we got both of them right, we eventually could have been the size of Red Hat[1].

Obviously, you can learn a lot from his analysis.

But that isn’t my point today.

I’ve always wondered how founders can claim stellar success is the direct result of their efforts, but anything less is not.

Now I’m wondering if a shift is happening; a shift from founders having reasons and blaming external elements to honest analysis and taking responsibility.

I understand that it takes a giant ego to start a company and believe in one’s vision in spite of the naysayers.

However, I think it takes an even bigger ego, and, more importantly, a secure ego, to admit one’s errors, to say “I screwed up,” to take responsibility, to be authentic.

I salute those founders with the courage to be truly authentic.

And I hope the rest will follow in the footsteps of these outliers.