We all know and accept that failure is a natural part of the business cycle. Bad ideas will be rejected by the market, and good ideas will flourish and lead to a more prosperous and efficient economy. Hell, even perfectly good ideas that outlive their usefulness will slowly die ignominious deaths no matter how marketable they were a few years ago. But some business ideas are so catastrophically awful, so based on warped views of what the market wants, that they fail quickly and often in spectacular fashion. And we’re not just talking about your local artisanal cheese shop that failed to flourish in a down market. Most of these ideas had tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars and big name companies backing them, and still couldn’t manage to survive more than a year.
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