Launched by computer engineer Julie Pankhurst and her husband Steve in July 2000, the Friends Reunited website helped people trace their old school friends. A forerunner to social media and a market-leader in nostalgia, the site’s initial growth was extremely modest.

Sean Farrington tries out a Sinclair C5 on Bournemouth’s seafront.

But after the site was mentioned on Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon show in January 2001, Friends Reunited gained traction, and, by the end of 2002, had attracted 8 million users. The inevitable transition from free to paid subscription didn’t dampen enthusiasm, nor did a backlash of bad press, fuelled by stories of old school friends having affairs and teachers being slandered.

Friends Reunited went unscathed until its sale to ITV in 2005 for £175 million. The acquisition was a flop, and, in 2009, ITV got rid of the site for a mere £25 million. The channel had overpaid for a centrepiece of their digital strategy despite, as Sam puts it, being “a business that culturally just was not in the right place.”

Despite its drastic change of fortunes, Sam believes that Friends Reunited “could have taken on the Facebooks of this world.”

Find out more about why Friends Reunited fell out of favour by listening here.

Sinclair C5

Marketed as an electric car but resembling a go-kart, the Sinclair C5 was rolled out to the public in January 1985. The brainchild of Sir Clive Sinclair, the celebrated inventor, the C5 seemed like it could have joined the first pocket calculator and home microcomputer as another Sinclair success story – it didn’t require road tax or a licence and was suitable for anyone aged 14 and up to drive.

However, things went downhill – literally – from the off, with journalists at the launch taking them for unauthorised test drives and finding that its batteries lost power quickly in the face of low temperatures and hilly terrains. There were road safety concerns voiced in some quarters too.

“Clive didn’t believe in market research,” explains Barrie Wills, the former MD of Sinclair Vehicles, offering a clue to why the C5 went off-road. Ultimately, however, Sam feels that it all came down to “misaligned expectations at every step of the way.”

Hear more about the obstacles that the C5 just couldn’t get over by listening here.