You're in the UK? Well, that's the problem I'm afraid. People in the UK are not generally very accepting of startup failure, and will often count it against you.

I moved from the UK to San Francisco a few years ago, and everything is very different. An attempted startup, whether successful or not, is almost always seen as a good thing here.

I've recruited in the UK grad developer market, and I can tell you there aren't anywhere enough barely competent programmers on the market to make a failed startup background a problem. Most people applying for graduate developer jobs struggle to even write basic code and lack any real fundamental understanding of the languages they use.

Yea, you're nothing but a row on a spreadsheet to these guys...

That varies so much by company though. I've had everything from silence to a very detailed feedback letter.

People hiring for jobs have better things to do than to make up stories for why they didn't hire people.

In the US, people usually ignore you when you call to ask this question, or give an incredibly generic answer.