It all started with a bobblehead. When Sean Jacobsohn (BBA ’94) attended a Golden State Warriors game in 2022, he received a well-intentioned promotional item with an untimely sponsorship. The item: a nine-inch-tall replica of starting guard Jordan Poole. The sponsor: FTX, described on the bobblehead’s box as the team’s “official crypto platform and NFT marketplace.”
“This was right around the time FTX was imploding,” Jacobsohn says. “I realized right away I had something here.”
As a lifelong collector, the unique nature of the item appealed to him, but as a successful executive and venture capitalist, it spoke to him in a different way—and the idea for a new project, aimed at helping entrepreneurs, was born.
Enter Jacobsohn’s Failure Museum: a personal collection of artifacts showcasing a wide range of failed companies, products, and ideas. As the museum’s founder and chief historian, his collection began with the bobblehead and now includes everything from cans of New Coke to Blockbuster membership cards.
It’s a cheeky hobby with a deeper purpose.
In addition to showcasing each item online, Jacobsohn shares his thoughts about failure on his blog and personal LinkedIn page, and what business leaders can learn from each unique misfire. Because as good as success is, Jacobsohn says it’s the failures that are frequently more revealing—and common.
“Not a lot of people like to talk about failure and lessons from failure, but really, most companies fail at some point,” he says. “Even the most successful companies have had to pivot, and many of the most successful entrepreneurs have had a failed startup before. I’ve found that you really need to learn from failure—and learn quickly.”
Mequon to Silicon
These days, Jacobsohn sits on 13 separate boards, using his expertise and position to help entrepreneurs and their companies build successful teams, find new opportunities, and raise funds.
He’s come a long way since his first taste of entrepreneurship, which came as a teenager and combined his lifelong interests in sports, collecting, and business.
“I bought entire memorabilia collections from other students and sold the pieces for a lot more in aggregate,” Jacobsohn says. “That helped me pay my way through college.”
Growing up in Mequon, Wisconsin, Jacobsohn knew he wanted to attend one university and one university only: UW–Madison. Seeking a well-rounded business education, he declared majors in finance and marketing at WSB while minoring in international business. Along the way, he founded a student-based sports club, got involved with school entrepreneurship programs, and over the course of four years, watched the Badgers go from a one-win football team to Rose Bowl champions.
Then, nearing graduation, Jacobsohn’s interest was piqued by a job ad in The Badger Herald for a position at Prudential Financial, which became the launchpad for his business career. He’d then earn an MBA at Harvard Business School, join three early-stage companies that would eventually go public, and become involved in angel investing.
About 10 years ago, he was recruited to Norwest Venture Partners, a global venture capital and growth equity investment firm. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California—deep within the heart of Silicon Valley—the firm manages more than $12.5 billion in capital and has investments in more than 700 companies.
“I continue to network with entrepreneurs and product leaders to see what opportunities they’re looking to start,” says Jacobsohn, a partner at Norwest. “I’m always looking for companies in spaces that I think are ripe for disruption.”
In other words, he helps businesses successfully launch, operate, scale … and not become fodder for the Failure Museum.
Turning lemons into lemonade
Businesses and products fail for any number of reasons. Maybe a product was ahead of its time or entered a saturated market. Maybe a business ignored customer feedback or had the wrong team in place.
While Jacobsohn has identified primary reasons for failure—he frames them as the “Six Forces”—what’s universal is that no business leader sets out to fail.
As such, Jacobsohn’s blogging doesn’t mock or point fingers—and his open-minded approach has earned him fans, including some executives who’ve directly experienced failure themselves.
When he first blogged about Juicero—a tech-infused juicer that hit the market in 2016 and now lives in the museum—the company’s original CEO reached out to Jacobsohn, and the two sat down for an interview. Other business leaders soon followed suit, giving Jacobsohn and his readers a unique and unfiltered perspective.
“I’m one of the few people deeply interested in their stories,” he says. “Allowing them to tell their side of things can benefit a lot of entrepreneurs across the world.”
“You shouldn’t fear failure and shouldn’t be afraid to take risks.”
—Sean Jacobsohn (BBA ’94)
Since launching the Failure Museum, Jacobsohn’s personal collection of items—all of which can be viewed online—has grown significantly. Through donations and his own forays into eBay, he’s up to over 500 artifacts and counting. Products, companies, toys, sports memorabilia: It’s all there, and even Wisconsin has representation in the museum. Among other items, Jacobsohn owns a program from a 1926 NFL game between the Chicago Bears and the Milwaukee Badgers—and no, that wasn’t a typo.
“Pro football was much less popular than college football at the time, and the thinking was that by naming a team the Badgers, Wisconsin fans would pay more attention to them,” Jacobsohn says. “Milwaukee and Green Bay actually played each other 10 times. Green Bay won nine of those games, they tied once, and people stopped going to the Milwaukee games.”
Meanwhile, Jacobsohn keeps a list of items he’s hoping to add to the collection—everything from Colgate frozen meals to an ESPN-branded flip phone. Each new item provides another opportunity to generate more insights into failure, and Jacobsohn says the public response to his work on the topic has been overwhelmingly positive.
At the end of the day, Jacobsohn wants his readers to come away from the Failure Museum feeling optimistic. After all, if a company like Apple can have a few flops in their closet, and still see wild success, there’s no reason you can’t either.
“You shouldn’t fear failure and shouldn’t be afraid to take risks,” he says. “Failure can be your springboard to success.”