But more importantly, does that matter? There are tons of great projects here on HN that are never able to get any customers. Does that make their work any less impressive? Let's judge the work for the work itself, not whether or not it achieved something. Obviously, it's a dog-eat-dog world, but you wouldn't look at a founder with a string of failures and automatically come to the conclusion that the person doesn't know how to do a startup. Luck, economic environment, and a host of other issues come into play. Judge the work for its own merit.