Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpflan | Hacker News Reader

"Two investors in Juicero were surprised to learn the startup’s juice packs could be squeezed by hand without using its high-tech machine."

This sounds almost comical...

View on HN

I really hope a reference to that makes it to season 4 of HBO's Silicon Valley

It's probably too late. I'm sure they've filmed the whole thing already.

I was pouring through my mental rolodex for the episode where they do something with a juicer. I'd never heard of this Juicero but thought it sounded like something Jian Yang would be in charge of.

Juicers have a small episode arc in "The Empty Chair" !

I forget the exact line but it has something to do with "why does he have 2 juicers"

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/silicon-valley-almost-painfully...

They've mentioned in past interviews some things too ridiculous to include. This might be one.

> Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-va...

Richard looks at the floor.

Erlich has some choice vulgar things to say.

Jared chimes in with a cheery way to look at the situation.

Sounds like they're going to get squeezed out of the market...

I don't see why this matters at all -- the disposable juice packs are what extract money from the consumer. It's the razor / replacement blade or printer / ink model. If someone finds out that they really only need the blades, ink, or juice packs, it's no big deal.

The problem for the manufacturer comes when consumers figure out that they can use knock-off blades, generic ink, or 3rd party juice packs.

The problem is that they raised A LOT of VC money and it was supposed to be tech startup that creates a network effect and dominate the market.

Gillette model worked because creating that infrastructure back then had a huge barrier to entry. You had to get a factory to produce the blades, etc.

Compare that to juice mix delivery service in 2017. There are tons of organic juice stores around, and there are tons of delivery services like uber/caviar/doordash. These juiceries can take advantage of the distribution startups to deliver their juice and make money if they wanted.

Basically it matters because you need to take "competition" into consideration. It's an entirely different game than razor blades.

Except the razor is $400 here. It's not a throwaway device like a razor or a printer.

To be fair, plenty of printers are >$400

Ah, but those are generally not throw-away products. There is an inverse relationship between the one-off cost for the printer and the per-page cost for the supplies: cheap printer, expensive supplies <-> Expensive printer, cheap supplies.

This machine is expensive and the supplies are expensive. That... does not make sense. Given that the supplies seem to be delivered by means of some subscription service they'd have done better to throw in the machine for some nominal monthly cost - and make it free for those who manage to consume more than X bags of pulp per year. This also would lower the threshold for potential customers as it would be possible to try the 'service' without needing to invest a large sum up-front. Given that the money is meant to be in the bags it only makes sense to try to maximise the number of customers.

I guess they had a look at Apple and thought their business model - expensive hardware tied to a single supplier in as many ways as possible - would fit them as well. It doesn't, not when you can pick actual apples from a tree in your garden.

There's something to be said about being able to squeeze your own juice that, at least in my mind, makes it feel like the juice is fresh.

How many people do you know that drag the razor across their face without the handle? Sure it's where the profit comes from, but you do need the two parts to have a consumer story. Otherwise they'd just sell the blades and drop the ruse.

They also sell disposable blades with disposable handles attached to them.

https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/19/15357290/juicero-400...

'Juicero’s business plan reads like a pitch-perfect parody of contemporary startup culture. One investor told Bloomberg that Juicero was building a “platform” for a new model of food delivery. ...The technology is mostly superfluous from the customer’s perspective. But the technology dimension was crucial for fundraising. As one investor put it to Bloomberg, “Their venture firm wouldn’t have met with [Juicero founder Doug] Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware.”'

> I don't see why this matters at all

Given the opportunity, how much of your own money would you invest?

Vendor lock-in. You buy the razor because you want to use the blades, you buy the blades because you already have the razor. If you've got $400 in sunk cost sitting on your kitchen counter, you're far more likely to buy the proprietary pouches and far less likely to buy a carton of juice from the grocery store. That psychology is integral to the business model, it's what creates the promise of sustainable high margins. Nobody invests $120m in a startup juice company with no market share.

I think that may be the best symbolic summary of the entire situation; indeed, ripe for satire.

Well, to be strictly fair, the packs are not supposed to be of juice, but fresh-chopped solid produce. (https://www.juicero.com/how-it-works/) It's not clear how much the investors knew before this, but Juicero's clearly been misrepresenting their system to the public.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com