Travis Kalanick’s spectacular rise and fall at Uber contains many lessons for the technology industry. But one lesson should rise above the others: This was not just Mr. Kalanick’s failure — it was far bigger.

What happened at Uber is an indictment of everyone who enabled Mr. Kalanick’s worst tendencies and practices, which is just about everyone in a position of power at the ride-hailing company and its funders. In other words, this was systemic. Top to bottom, Uber was a failure of Silicon Valley’s start-up machine.

And if we want Silicon Valley to create better start-ups — which we should, for everyone’s sake — the Valley would be wise to now examine Uber’s entrails and find another way.

Over the last half-decade, Uber became the tech industry’s model start-up. It was not just the most valuable private company in the world, but an inspiration and template for dozens of other start-ups that would follow in its wake. It was among a small group of start-ups that pioneered a novel way of funding and running a tech company, favoring private capital over the public markets.