I think very few people, even in Paris, would actually continue to think along the four “conservative” lessons you attribute to pundits. I mean, this is commonly admitted now that you should burn cash. I think most of the discussions around this summer series of failures were actually much more elaborate than that, and much more legitimate. I have in mind:

• managing exponential growth is hard (Save)
• being totally dependent on VC financing is risky, especially when you’re not #1 in your industry (Take Eat Easy)
• if you have too many flat data points and you’re not profitable, you’re dead

All of that is not conservative at all, but very fair questions that should be addressed by any VC or founder. It’s OK to fail, but failure is useless if you don’t learn.