White Sox 2024 - Failure Museum

Chicago White Sox 2024

The 2024 Chicago White Sox had the most losses, 121, of any Major League Baseball team in modern-day history finishing the season 80 games below .500 and 51.5 games out of first place.

They scored the fewest runs of any team in the past 50 years and their run differential was the third worst in MLB history. Plus they were lowest in the league in home runs, RBIs, and OPS, had the second worst batting average, and third worst ERA despite having a $133M payroll, 18th in the league. Their payroll exceeded 11 teams including several playoff teams: Royals, Brewers, Orioles, and Guardians. They had a 0-88 record when trailing after 8 innings, 13-29 record in one-run games, and an 8-42-2 series record. Plus they had a MLB-high of 51 blown lead losses and 37 blown saves (a 35% save percentage compared to the MLB average of 63%).

They set a record for the quickest assurance of a losing season by losing 82 of their first 109 games, surpassing the 2003 Detroit Tigers, who lost 82 of their first 111 games. Meanwhile, starting pitcher Chris Flexen set the MLB record of 20 consecutive starts where his team went on to lose.

They lost at least four straight games 14 separate times this season, headlined by an American League-tying 21 game losing streak and a 14 game losing streak. They started the season with four consecutive losing streaks, each longer than the last. They lost the first four games of the season, then lost five straight, then six straight, then seven in a row. Each streak was separated by one victory.

Aunt Jemima - Failure Museum

Aunt Jemima

Aunt Jemima, founded in 1888, was an American breakfast brand for pancake mix and table syrup. In 2020, Quaker Oats discontinued the Aunt Jemima brand “to make progress toward racial equality”.

Selectica - Failure Museum

Selectica

Selectica IPO’d in March 2000 at the peak of the dot com boom and reached a market cap valuation of  $5 billion and was sold 8 years later for $50M.

Selectica provided configuration software, a subcategory of quote-to-cash, which is a sub-category within the broader CRM.

In the early 2000s, as the Internet became mainstream, businesses discovered online b2b as a new procurement channel and rushed to deliver their products and services for purchase online, via their website.

Businesses such as Cisco and DELL, had products that required configuration by the buyer to customize for their needs. Some of these products (e.g. configuring a large server) had many options across the bill of materials that customers could pick and choose, and therefore a class of software that could manage the logic of providing only valid options at each stage of the configuration, came in particularly helpful. Selectica aimed to provide this software.

However, there wasn’t really a market large enough for a standalone company to thrive and grow in this category. The majority of the b2b businesses, did not need a configuration software solution. Their products and services were relatively straightforward and did require complex configuration, and simple rules that could be easily programmed were sufficient. For the niche segment of the market that had a complex set of products and services to sell (the likes of Cisco), were too complex, and only custom logic built from the ground up specific to their use case could solve their problem.

Quarterly revenue capped at about $12MM range, 70%-80% of which was attributed to professional services. 

Microma - Failure Museum

Microma

In 1972, Intel entered the business of wearable tech with its acquisition of digital watchmaker Microma. They exited the business in 1977 after realizing marketing a consumer product is completely different from the chip business and requires different skills and staffing.

Microma watches were finicky, especially the display, and return rates were over 25%. Plus the batteries did not last long and competition heated up with Seiko, Citizen, and General Time Corporation.

Philadelphia A's - Failure museum

Philadelphia A’s

The 1916 Philadelphia A’s achieved a record of 36 wins against 117 losses making them the poorest performing team in MLB history with a .235 winning percentage.

Red Herring - Failure Museum

Red Herring

Red Herring began as a technology business magazine in 1993 and flourished during the dot com boom, with global distribution and bureaus in Bangalore, Beijing, and Paris. It also sponsored conferences designed to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technologists together. The magazine went into decline with the dot com crash, and ceased print publication in 2003.

The Industry Standard - Failure Museum

The Industry Standard

The Industry Standard was a magazine that published technology business news from 1998-2001. In 2000, it sold more ad pages than any magazine in America, and launched that year a European edition. However, as the dot-com boom failed, sales of the magazine began to shrink, and it went into bankruptcy in August 2001.

LA Gear - Failure Museum

LA Gear

LA Gear, which was third in athletic shoe sales behind Nike and Reebok in 1990 with $818M in sales. By 1993 LA Gear’s popularity was beginning to wane. The company began restricting access to the shoes, focusing on higher-end department stores to gain a more upscale clientele. However, in doing so the company was so desperate to sell the remaining inventory that LA Gear shoes began showing up at flea markets, swap meets, and supermarkets.

Silicon Graphics - Failure Museum

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, which produced computer hardware and software, peaked at a $7B market cap in 1995 and filed for bankruptcy in 2006. The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- and BSD- based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGI’s core markets. The porting of Maya to Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft Windows further eroded the low end of SGI’s product line.

Google TV - Failure Museum

Google TV

In 2010, Google TV was big on potential, but short on features, while the software lacked application support and access to some online programming. The software development kit wasn’t available to developers that would allow them to bring entertainment content to the Google TV platform. Plus the TV features Netflix, but networks were blocking Google TV’s access to their shows.