Most new businesses fail within a few short years. It's just a fact. Yet optimism abounds, and entrepreneurs are always ready to start over with a new venture. Circumstances are usually just a fraction of the game (20% if you really need a made-up statistic), the rest of the outcome is based on how people react to various changes in the economy. Here are some interesting links for anyone with a startup idea.

• Presenting a startup to investors seems to have a fairly well-set routine. It only takes about 6 slides. [url]
• Marc Hedlund wrote up a nice autopsy on how Wesabe lost out to Mint.com. An interesting viewpoint on the head-to-head competition between two similar startups -- one that exited with an acquisition by Intuit, and one that ended by closing up shop. [url]
• ChubbyBrain has gathered up a list of several other startup post-mortems. These are not sob stories; they're mostly lesson-learned conclusions from a variety of entrepreneurs. [url]
• To discover more interesting business-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.