6 Lessons for Startups from a Museum Dedicated to Failure

A collection of more than 1,000 failed products and businesses reveals the common forces that spell doom for new ventures.

Recent data shows that U.S. startup failures have increased by 60% in the past year. And every failed product or company carries a price: wasted resources, lost jobs, tarnished reputations. To understand more about risk-taking and failure, Sean Jacobsohn has catalogued more than 1,000 failed products and businesses in a collection he calls the Failure Museum. He has identified six warning signs of failure, and offers lessons to ensure entrepreneurs learn from these mistakes.

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  Sean Jacobsohn is a partner at venture and growth equity investment firm Norwest Venture Partners, where he focuses on early to late-stage investment opportunities in enterprise cloud. As the founder, chief historian, and collector of the Failure Museum, he collects artifacts from failed companies and products and catalogues his learnings from them. Sean also founded the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, the largest university-affiliated angel investment group in the world.
  

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