Ask HN: How have or would you convey failure to an employer?

This one's pretty easy: just be up front about it.

"I had an idea. I went out on my own to try it out. It didn't work out, but I learned a lot along the way."

Then just be prepared to talk a little about the things you learned, and how they helped you grow as a professional.

No employer worth working for is going to ding you for taking a risk like that -- even outside SV! Seriously! -- as long as you can make it clear that you really were working on something during that period, rather than sitting on the couch eating Cheetos.

"The last six months? I did some exploratory projects, but decided against productizing them."

Honestly, if you told me that, I'd want to know more; it would not be a black mark (or even grey). I'd consider that to be a high marker for initiative and hackerishness.

I would, however, be concerned that you'd take off as soon as you found a VC to buy into your idea and give you a few years of runway. So you'd have to alleviate that concern (within reason, of course).

Here, two from personal experience:

"I worked on a mobile startup, right before iOS got big; J2ME games. Yeah, I think we sold maybe 50 games once? Anyways, stayed in college, no harm done."

"I tried a startup. After a year, it imploded in not-quite-glorious fashion. Still dealing with the fallout from that, but I learned a lot about business and product development."

There's no shame in failing, and anybody worth working with will appreciate your experience--that is, if you learned anything.