Corporate board failure. Is it possible? What do boards do, after all? If their mission is to rubber stamp the CEO, that leaves a big margin for error. You’d practically have to have sat on the board of directors to Theranos to run into trouble. Oh wait, we forgot. They didn’t get into trouble either. But, some boards do. Believe it or not, there are standards, even for corporate boards.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore the duties and failings of corporate boards with Joseph Ayoub, of Varuna Strategies. Like Ben Solo née Kylo Ren’s return from the dark side in the latest of the Star Wars saga, Joseph is a litigator turned corporate consultant, specializing in forming and fixing corporate boards.

Notwithstanding what you may have thought about college psych, communications and business majors, the instructors who teach those disciplines can be as nerdy as any academician. Take the guest of our latest episode of Failure - the Podcast. Elaine Chen is an instructor on technology innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic management at the Sloan School. That’s MIT’s prestigious B-school. (OK, technically, she’s a senior lecturer at Sloan. We suspect the students don’t know the difference. Remember, this is B-school.) Elaine is as nerdy as they get and proudly admits it. Why shouldn’t she? We certainly are not going to be able to MAGA (make America great again) without MANA (make America nerdy again).

Taking the plunge into entrepreneurship can be a scary thing. Seasonally speaking, you could think of it as the Halloween of job changes: it’s best for young or the steel-nerved. (Yeah, we left out ignorant and desperate, but go with us here ....). For those who have what it takes, the plunge can be well worth it. Not only for the excitement of building a business from scratch but, for the lucky few, the handsome financial returns.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a disjointed discussion of startups, the young, the steel-nerved and, well, the life of entrepreneur Marc Held. Now, the head of IoT Solutions at Turvo, you could say that Marc was a serial entrepreneur before even finishing college. Who amongst us can beat that?

Back in the day, the sale of land was consummated by a ceremonial act: the buyer gave to the seller a fistful of dirt from the property being sold. It was beauty in its simplicity. And, what could possibly go wrong? Either the buyer delivered the dirt or she didn’t. Well … the parties might have different understandings of the tract being sold. The supposed sale of the “back nine” of one man’s yard might spark a country-wide invasion. (OK, it’s a stretch. But it’s based on something we read in Wikipedia).

Today, we are more sophisticated. Buyers and sellers located continents apart may negotiate and close deals for land that they’ve never seen, much less, held the dirt of (yep, you caught us, a dangling preposition). All of this, through middlemen, like brokers, lawyers, and escrow agents. With such an august crew facilitating the transaction, what could possibly go wrong?

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore the wild world of title insurance with Ethan Powsner, Vice President of Market & Technology Development, for the Fidelity National Title Group. You’ll be thankful that there’s someone there to make right things that go wrong.

Listeners more erudite than us — yes, grammarians, it could be “we” — are undoubtedly familiar with Carole Cadwalladr.  Her work was the subject of the recent Netflix documentary “The Great Hack,” exploring the weaponization of social media.  

The Cadwalladr and Netflix work adds further fuel to an on-going debate:  would society be better off regulating Facebook, Twitter and the like as proposed by certain now-vacationing Washingtonians, or is Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” the answer?  

Economists might argue the latter:  that aggregate consumer self-interest, unhindered by governmental or capitalist influence, will always produce the best outcome.  But, if that’s so, how do you explain the 300,000,000,000 burgers sold by McDonald’s?  

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Nadeem Mazen, co-founder of fabrk.io, a social network that is powered by cryptocurrency and consumer choice, and decide for yourself.

Our guest walked in saying he had so many failures, he kept a notepad to remember them.  Even showed us the pad.  Our mistake was we didn’t look closely.  Surely, though, we should have known something was up when he said he had already listened to some of our episodes.  In retrospect, we had to wonder whether that was casual listening — or something more akin to Belichick and Brady watching Rams videos in the run-up to the Super Bowl.  This was clearly going to be Christopher Mirabile’s podcast.  Managing director of Launchpad Venture Group, chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association.  You got it.   Join the team from Failure - the Podcast and Christopher Mirabile in a wandering story of consultancy, the auto business, entrepreneurship, investment, and you name it.  It’s a nail biter.

You’d think the team from Failure - the Podcast would learn. Screen, screen, screen.  We have to screen our guests before making the invite.  Certainly, we have to have a word or two with them before pressing the record button (assuming we remember to do that, at all).   We think Mic’s confusing his cold calls for Failure - the Podcast with those for our favorite angel investment group.  Instead of bringing in guests ready to pitch their stumbles, he’s getting ones that stumble through their pitches.  Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in an uproarious discussion with Bob Allard, co-founder and managing partner of Extension Engine, a consulting firm that’s trying to Make Education Great Again!  What will you learn from today’s episode?  Who knows?  What do you ever learn from this podcast?  

Ever wondered what an MIT party is like? You won’t get that from today’s podcast. But, you will get an audio tour of one of Boston’s hottest springtime events: the annual MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge “Startup Spotlight.” Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they work their way through a crowd of 300+ entrepreneurial party-goers and 30+ startups competing for a chance to win big prizes. (Well…not really big. Not even small, as a matter of fact. Frankly, we weren’t even sure why they called them prizes….)

We first met our guest, Randall Levere, in 2012.  He had just launched Erba Cycles and was geared up (get it?  geared up) to sell a new breed of bicycle — one that was not only environmentally friendly to ride, but also to produce.  And, it was downright fine looking.  Randall was a guest on our first podcast, The Tech Entrepreneur, and graced us with a discussion of turning a passion into a business.  Flash forward seven years and Randall’s the guest on Failure - the Podcast.  Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a retrospective look at Erba Cycles, one of the last great bamboo bike makers, and learn why.

Before every good sale, there’s a story. For investors, it’s no different. You might think that all they want from the first meeting is the entrepreneur’s story. But, often, they have to tell stories of their own. After all, in some markets, willing investors are easy to come by. So whom to choose? The teller’s story may decide. Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast as venture capitalist Arjun Bhatnagar regales them in stories of goats, airplanes and startups gone bad.

You’d think that after 40+ episodes, the Team from Failure - the Podcast would know a thing or two about failure. We certainly thought we did, until we met today’s guest: futurist, speaker, author and leader Tom Koulopoulos. Turns out that Tom’s all about success through failure. Who knew? Perhaps we should have done some research on him, first. Anyway, we quickly learned that Tom travels the globe talking to the best and brightest about failure as a critical component of business innovation. Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast as Tom Koulopoulos schools us in failure. Perhaps, you’ll learn a thing or two. We did.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore a writer’s world with Ken Briodagh, a story teller and adventurist in the Connecticotian mold of Mark Twain — but with a tech twist. Fear not, however, faithful listeners — all three of you!  This is not a tech podcast.  Using interviewing skills that would make NPR’s Terry Gross jealous, the team brings out Ken’s softer side and has him philosophizing on the art and craft of writing in a manner likely to make even Stephen King proud.

Navigating life is challenge enough.  Failure, it seems, is waiting at every turn.  Most would imagine that living with a disability would only add to the worries.  AccessSportAmerica has long recognized that resilience is the foil to the fear of failure.  The Boston-based charity’s mission is to inspire people with disabilities.  One of its key teaching aids: windsurfing! Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast and Ross Lilley, executive director of AccessSportAmerica, in a meandering discussion of failure, resilience and the challenges of running a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of the challenged and disabled.

Seven is a big number when it comes to co-founders. You have to expect that most startups will go a few pivots before finding their niche. Try it with seven co-founders, and the number goes up exponentially.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as the wind their way through the story of media and entertainment start-up ROTU with co-founder Jason Parks. He and the company are onto something, now. Is it just a siren song of another pivot, or have they hit on something truly big?

As listeners of a certain age will appreciate, when a man’s yearly physical goes beyond the “now, cough!” stage, things can become downright awkward.  What more need we say, here, about the prostate exam?  Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Christopher LaFarge and learn that circles of torment are neither the exclusive realm of hell nor the health care system.  From an entrepreneur’s perspective, it can seem that the investment community has become pretty good with them, too. 

“Conversations” are a favorite topic of this podcast. This includes not only those attendant to new product introductions, but also those between entrepreneurs and investors. Today’s episode delves into both. Our guest, Brandale Randolph, is doing well by doing good. Join us in a digression-filled discussion with Brandale and learn how an entrepreneur’s vision, when shaped and fueled by conversations with customer and investor marketplaces, can drive potentially exponential business growth.

Sebastien Mannai plans to bring oil wells into the 21st century. His company has not suffered any failures yet — or, at least, not any he would admit to — but Sebastien is hoping to prevent oil pump failures. His is a “happy news” story. It’s not one we like to hear too often at Failure - the Podcast, but on a day when it seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, maybe this is just what the doctor ordered.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they fumble through a discussion of women’s bra’s with Athena Kasvikis, founder of Dreamweaver Intimates, as she readies to disrupt a highly profitable segment of the $1 billion women’s bra market.  (Ok, actually,  just Mic, Mark and Dave fumbled — Susan carried on per usual, though, with a smirk).  

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Frank Gillett, of Forrester Research, as he takes us down the tortured road of an emerging technology.  Whether the supposedly unsinkable Titanic, a foolproof Iranian nuclear reactor, the Internet of Things or, yes, even the blockchain, we should simply assume that new technologies will fail — and, probably, in ways we would never predict.