That capable gent Evan Williams, he who built Blogger.com into an organization big enough to interest Google, which now owns it, has made a full confession of the mistakes he made with his newish podcast company, Odeo.

GigaOm reports on his speech to a conference in which he admits that Odeo hasn’t yet settled on a business model — very Web 2.0.

In a much linked-to piece last year, Williams listed 10 points for startup success. Two of them were : Be Narrow, and Be Tiny. He now confesses he lost sight of these injunctions as CEO of Odeo.

Other points of failure include :

“Trying to build too much” – Odeo set out to be a podcasting company with no focus beyond that.

This is fairly typical of the idea that if you build big enough, Yahoo or Rupert Murdoch will come knocking on your door.

“Not building for people like ourselves” – Williams doesn’t podcast himself, and, as a result, the company’s web-based recording tools were too simplistic.

Playing to audiences you don’t understand is asking for trouble.

“Not adjusting fast enough” – The company thought its comprehensive web-based strategy would win out over the competition, primarily Apple, in the long term. “It turns out long term is not soon enough for a startup if you’re trying to get a foothold.”

Never try to take on the big boys, at least at first. Hubris is as much a killer in business as it is in politics.

“Raising too much money too early” – Williams seeded the company with $170,000 of his own money. He then obtained over a million in angel funding, only to be offered $3 million from Charles River Ventures. They took the cash.

Using cash-flow techniques is essential for all startups. Bootstrapping may sound unadventurous but it builds sound finance until you’ve got good sales going.

“Not listening to my gut” When you’ve got a bunch of money and you’ve hired a lot of people and you’re talking to your board and you’re talking to reporters, your gut can get drowned out.

At least he knows where he went wrong. His honesty does him credit and may just redeem the situation.

But what price the Web 2.0 bubble now?