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Entrepreneurial failure and exit are critical components of the venturing process of social entrepreneurs. Failing and abandoning the pursuit of opportunities that seek to create social good affect also multiple stakeholders, whose well-being depends on the (public/social) value that the social enterprise provides. Given the nature of social entrepreneurship, this type of entrepreneur may present essential dissimilarities with their traditional counterpart in the way they cope with potential failure and exit. Because of the fact that researching failure in the context of SE is rather new, this paper uses a qualitative approach and bases on semi-structured interviews as a research method. With a lack of academic and case-based research on social enterprises that have failed, the goal of this research paper is to investigate and report on the underlying reasons why social entrepreneurs fail and to provide some insights into why talking about failure is beneficial to both current and future social entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]