Juicero's CEO responds | Hacker News Reader

Juicero's CEO responds

medium.com

56 pointsvirtuabhi41 comments

When I read about Juicero yesterday[1] I thought the product was worthless. People however do sometimes chase after things which they feel to either make them rich or they have passion about.

But this statement by their CEO:

>> So when I saw this week’s headlines about hacking and hand-squeezing Produce Packs, I had a one overriding thought: ”We know hacking consumer products is nothing new. But how can we better demonstrate the incredible value we know our connected system delivers?

is not just ridiculous but even mocking their own customer and investors. Squeezing a pack of fruits is hacking? Someone here yesterday mentioned, in a lighter vein, Juicero adding DRM tech to their juicer. With statements like this from their CEO, they might very well make it true.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14148216

One of the comments in that medium blog puts it right:

>> I’ve been hacking Capri Suns since I was 5. >> I am a hacker

Even worse >>>The journey from Coca-Cola to carrots to Juicero’s rainbow of fruits and vegetables has let me connect my work to my personal mission and passion: solving some of our nation’s nutrition and obesity challenges.

By selling a $400 blender which needs $8 for each glass of juice?

If you cannot afford food, you can't eat it. /s

Let them eat cakes.

This should and will probably become a case study on how flawed the startup funding ethos of creating a monopoly for your billion dollar business creates an environment that encourages fraudulent products and services. In fact Juicero can and has easily ticked off all the boxes of a perfect startup model company to the tune of $120MM. The biggest weakness of a water monopoly is being destroyed by foreign conquerors. In all the cases where the primary resource for a startup is individual users, no one has a monopoly and ergo is not immune to negative value perception, ethics concerns, or bad press. Startups even with a 90% market share, huge users bases, and/or great revenue should never be run or funded like they will never face market competition because users will just abandon them and the market segment all together.

> The first closed loop food safety system that allows us to remotely disable Produce Packs if there is, for example, a spinach recall. In these scenarios, we’re able to protect our consumers in real-time.

SV really is the best parody of itself. This guy sounds as credible as a stock photo of a laughing woman eating salad looks.

As a side note: some German article called the issue "Lügenpresse", which is pretty hilarious (it's also the term for "fake news media" before the English term gained traction here; presse == media and presse = press).

Pretty weak response. I fail to see how their machine's "consistent pressing" improves on a blender or juicer in the "taste and nutrition" department, and that is the point that sells the $400 machine. Point 3 about the "connected supply chain" is just a boast. On point 1, are people dying left and right from eating recalled food? I'm not convinced there's enough of a problem there to warrant such defenses, especially when it looks a lot more like a market capture tool.

> On point 1, are people dying left and right from eating recalled food?

Dying? Not typically. Getting seriously ill? Yeah.. The CDC shows ~375,000 food-borne illnesses since 1998 resulting in 337 deaths -- both of which are bare minimums since many illnesses won't be traced back to a specific outbreak.

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/foodborneoutbreaks/

There are likely other solutions besides proprietary juice packages but it's a fairly serious issue. A friend of mine works in the Central Valley as QA lead for a few different companies -- getting low-margin businesses to spend money on ensuring food safety is an uphill task.

That's like 20,000 per year, if you divide it out, and in a country of 400 million people it's not a significant problem. I'd find it pretty surprising if that was mostly related to juicing, as opposed to other causes.

Recalled food represents a small amount of this. Most foodborne illnesses are the result of improper storage, handling, or cooking at the time or preparation. The chicken isn't thawed properly before being cooked, the soup is stored at 130 degrees, or the chef doesn't wash their hands between touching raw meat and salad or after going to the bathroom.

How much of those are meat/dairy and how much is produce, though? I'd be surprised if it's not something like 95 percent to 5 percent.

If someone wants to corner the juicer market, all they have to do is engineer one that can be completely cleaned in under 30 seconds. The best ones I have seen still take several minutes to fully clean.

I had a Breville something-or-other. Using it was such a project because of the washing ritual. After a month or so I gave it to my mother, who I don't think has ever used it. I agree completely.

Yes!!! Same with a blender (not as bad but still) or a food processor. I like making food but I hate plastic corners where food congregates.

Even better than that, you hook it into the water supply and it cleans itself.

It is the classic problem of having to say something but having nothing to say.

Also, they know precisely which customers were shipped which packs, so they can easily email the affected customers and tell them not to use the packs. There's no need to build a DRM system to lock out packs that have been flagged.

I was completely unaware of what the response was to.

For those who also have no idea, apparently they are refunding all purchases.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15375940/juicero-full-refu...

This guy is squirming.

And he sounds like a gross used car salesman.

And he epitomizes the startup CEO, delusions of grandeur and all...

So basically, it seems like part of their business is metrics and control. Anyone can juice fruit. They don't actually proport any more safety, just the possibility of better response to recalls.

Unless their system can be proven to reduce, as opposed to increase, wastage and spoilage, the entire point is moot.

But I cannot see this ever taking off, so this is moot as well. If you are into raw smoothies, you are probally into knowing where your food comes from and getting it in its natural state.

We also have these magical devices called blenders, invented many decades ago, and available for $20 or so. Toss in your preferred mix of fruit, juice, ice cream etc, and hit BLEND.

This product is solving what problem exactly? I had to ask if this was satire, but sadly it is an example of how some people in the tech industry are so helpless they can't even seem to manage feeding themselves.

Blender blades produce heat which damages nutrition in juice.

Throw in some ice. Juice isn't rocket science, I'm sure you can figure this out if you really apply yourself...

Goodness gracious, get a $50 blender and just toss a bunch of random plants in it. 10 seconds clean up, tastes good, lots of fiber and is filling.

I've realized now why I'll never be a startup billionaire, I'll never be able to come up with a stupid idea nobody needs and doesn't work well and makes the planet and humanity worse off while telling everybody around me I'm making the world a better place.

The video the company produced on how to use the machine is also ridiculous [1]. There's how many steps involved setting up and using the machine? I need an app on a phone and wi-fi to set it up? And after I go through all these steps and get my juice, there's even more steps?

"cut the pack open and empty the pulp into your compost"

"rinse thoroughly"

"keep the packs in a box"

"when you're ready to send them back come to our site for a shipping label"

"burn some dinosaurs on your way to the UPS store to drop off your processed, empty, rinsed juice packs"

This can't possibly be real life.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i0UugILBJg

Proving their machine is literally superfluous is a "hack" now. OK.

How long until they pivot and ditch the pressing machine all together and just go to a model of shipping juice packs with an app that scans the code and tells you if there's a recall or not?

Or a competitor comes along with a self squeezing pack.

Does anybody else think that "Juicero" sounds like a great name for a company that sells steroids?

This guy cannot honestly be as dumb as he presented himself in this article.

I guess if he thinks people will buy his explanation he very well might be.

"You won't get this value if you just hand-squeeze our product bags." Of course, if you manually pour boiling water through a Keurig k-cup, you will not get the "value" of the k-cup. But it's a disingenuous response, because the alternative to using the machine with the packs isn't using the packs without the machine, it's using neither.

> This guy cannot honestly be as dumb as he presented himself in this article.

You could say he's between a rock and a hard place, but you'd be hard pressed getting him to admit it.

... I'll show myself out.

He's targeting the same group of people that keep Gwyneth Paltrow's side projects making her money.

https://theoutline.com/post/1394/the-unbearable-wrongness-of...

...Produce Packs, which to be clear, contain nothing but fresh, raw, organic chopped produce, not juice

...and then posts a video of a disassembled pack of mushy carrot pulp. That was really your best option here?

Right, the difference seems minimal. When you start with a whole carrot, or a whole orange, there's the obvious advantage of greatly reduced surface area plus the plant's natural outer layer. Keeps everything fresh.

Blending it into fine pieces removes all that. The bags apparently aren't even vacuum-sealed (there's a "breathing hole"), so everything will be oxidizing and degrading pretty quickly. That's worse than bottled juice.

* The bags apparently aren't even vacuum-sealed (there's a "breathing hole")*

Wouldn't the content (at least the liquid part of it) leak through the hole?

But they don't pasteurize the bag's content, so it will spoil a lot faster than, say, juice you buy at a supermarket. They use their fancy QR code to make sure a bag hasn't expired, essentially providing an over-engineered solution to a problem they created in the first place.

Yeah thats what I was thinking when looking at the hand squeeze video vs. the product pitch. If its just cut fruit pieces which sounds like big cuts a high power press make sense (if you ignore the price or waste of the pack) but that wouldn't be hand squeezable. If its already a pulp it make sense that you can hand squeeze it but then again why the claim that their press is so powerful if it takes longer than hand?

The blog really boggles ones mind.

Verging on off-topic here, but I found the video itself really odd. Why would you reach your bare hand into the bag to scoop it out rather than simply pouring/shaking the contents out after cutting it open? Perhaps they wanted to avoid any resemblance to squeezing the contents out, but it just seemed strange.

So they sell 3 pre-pulverized carrots for $8?

You might say that they're a... CHOP SHOP.

my favorite part was how he explained that they "source organic produce directly from farms".

which I think means, "We buy food"

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