F.A.Q.s

Sean Jacobsohn, a venture capitalist and sports memorabilia collector with an interest in historical lessons of failed ventures. (LinkedIn)

Our purpose is to discover the main ‘lessons learned’ from failed ideas in business, products, sports and toys.

 Are you open to donations of additional items for companies and products already featured in the museum?  Yes!

Companies that failed like:  Color, Cuil, Solyndra, Wachovia, Kozmo, iVillage, Geocities, TheMan, Enron’s Code of Ethics, Shyp, Theranos’s Centrifuge, FTX’s Arena, Hopin, Silicon Graphics, Buddy Media, Nikola Motors, Fyre Festival, San Francisco Cubs, Magic Leap, Quibi, Zume, One Kings Lane, Dot & Bo, Fab, Better Place, Iridium, Fast, Bolt, Convoy, Rockmelt, flying cars, CommerceOne, Blippar, Lime, Sidecar, Groupon, Hippo, i2, Zenefits, InVision, AltaVista, Celsius Network, R-Zero, Silvergate, uBiome, Plastiq, Veev, Rothenberg Ventures, Bowstreet Software, Openview Venture Partners

Products that failed like: Apple HyperCard, Ayds candy, Boeing furniture, Bird scooter accessory, Bald guyz head wipes, Coleco Adam, Colgate frozen entrees, Cosmopolitan Yogurt, Crayola Cereal, Gerber singles, Google Orkut, Google Stadia, HP Jornado, iRobot Lawn Mower, Jolly rancher soda, Kellogg breakfast mates, Life savers soda, Kellogg’s Yogurt shampoo by Clairol, Miss Bic pen, HoloLens, Motorola lazer, Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Do.com, Salesforce Work.com, Sugar’s Daddy Barbie Doll, Twitter Peek, Uroclub, Mirror, ESPN mobile phone, Sour Cream and Onion Doritos, Levi’s suits, Tangem ring, Google Wave, Google+, Google Clips, Google TV, Meebo, Google search appliance, Mazing bar

Samuel West, who runs the Museum of Failure. https://museumoffailure.com

Tom Eisenmann, HBS professor & author of the book “Why Startups Fail”.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623123/why-startups-fail-by-tom-eisenmann/

Mathieu Guerville, 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mguerville/
Cyncap | Collection (mattmg83.github.io)

Jonathan Becher, President of Sharks Sports and Entertainment.
https://jonathanbecher.com/2014/05/12/famous-failures/

Rohit Bhadange, CEO of Zamp

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohitbhadange

Dan Olszewski, Head of the entrepreneurship program at University of Wisconsin, is studying failure.

Chris Fralic, partner at First Round Capital, is studying failure. (@chrisfralic)

Lindsay Hyde, HBS professor, is studying failure. She teaches the course “Avoiding Startup Failure”.

Chris Fralic: collector of failed tech gadgets (@chrisfralic)

Lindsay N. Hyde teaches a class at Harvard Business School (HBS) called “Avoiding Startup Failure

Juul - Failure Museum

Juul

After having raised $17B at a peak valuation of $38B, Juul's mission was to improve the lives of the world's 1B adult smokers. Meanwhile, lawsuits claimed Juul planted the seeds for a youth addictio ...

Sony PSP - Failure Museum

Sony PSP Go

Launched in 2009 and discontinued in 2011, PSP Go was a mobile gaming device.  Sony tried to launch a product that needed retail support to sell units, then cut them out of the value chain by selling ...

Furby - Failure Museum

Furby

Launched in 1998, Furby was a furry, talking, animal-like toy—equal parts gerbil, owl, and gremlin. The Furby represented one of the first attempts at domestic AI mass production. With built-in sens ...