Juicero Is Shutting Down | Hacker News Reader

Juicero Is Shutting Down

fortune.com

415 pointsuptown394 comments

I think they went about getting to market wrong. They should not have targeted end consumers with their equipment.

They should have went after the convenience store market using the soda dispenser/automated latte/vending machine/icee making business model. Basically convince the store owner to have some refrigerated space dedicated to the pouches and then put the machine nearby for the customer to make their own juice in real time.

I see a Juice company in the SF Ferry Building selling fresh squeezed juice for over $8. If they could have positioned themselves somewhere between that and $2 pasteurized/packaged juice from the grocery store, they could have done very well.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/sow-juice-san-francisco

Thing is, nothing about the Juicero is fresh squeezed. It's mostly masticated fruit pulp, that is squeezed out of a bag. That juice company you mentioned, is actually freshly squeezing juice. Juicero was complete nonsense from start to finish.

I believe originally they thought they might make a fresh squeeze. This story is similar to Theranos - the founders/executives just did not want to accept the reality. Juicero founders eventually gave up - and devised some crazy compromise that let them pretend that it is a fresh juice - but it was quite deceiving and it did not work well.

https://medium.com/@zby/the-juicero-story-2f4f762f7e60

  This story is similar to Theranos

Except that Theanos recklessly endangered the health of many, many people who relied on their faulty test.

It's one thing to provide a massively overpriced juice press combined with a ridiculous subscription model than actually endangering peoples health by willful lying.

I cannot see any other reason for Theranos' conduct and if this world would be only halfway fair their executives would look at it from behind bars.

It's like... 70% fresh squeezed. The fruit is chopped up into smaller pieces, so for the most part there isn't much difference, and it is very new fruit. But to the target demographic 70% might as well be 0%.

People might have a misconception about the machine then. I had heard that the juice was easy enough to extract from the pack that you could do it with your hands. This gave me the idea that the pack basically just had juice in it already.

It does, it is shredded vegetation in a bag which is squeezed by an amazingly overengineered solid steel screw press with giant, beautiful one-piece plastic moldings on the back. It is also true that you can extract the vast majority of the fluid without the press just fine. It is not "chopped" into "smaller" pieces, but literally shredded.

I think you're right. The Bloomberg video clearly shows someone just squeezing the back with their hands and juice comes out.

Once you cut open fruit and vegetables, the elements and bacteria are introduced and they start to break down.

Which is why the bags have a super short shelf life and the machine has a barcode scanner that will detect and refuse to squeeze expired bags. They touted this as a feature, of course.

I'm sure it's processed under an inert atmosphere and whatever yadda yadda new age bullshit. It's all woo anyway.

Point being is it's not just a juice bag- they do at least have good intentions/make a show of having good intentions.

And you're removing all the fibers as well.

ggggp's whole point was it was going to compete with fresh squeezed. this whole discussion is how this isn't "fresh" in anyway. Unless FOJC is also fresh.

The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesses.

The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you.

That's all been thought of before, the trouble is how on earth do you build that network? I suspect the reason Juicero got so much money is they were trying to build it first with high end luxury foods, and then expand down-market to eventually own the 'groceries of the future.'

Personally, I think good ol Jeff Bezos is going to win this one too by first owning grocery delivery straight up, and then going 'oh by the way they're all trackable if you want, you should buy Amazon brand appliances to make use of the feature :)" because as others pointed out here, counter space is at a premium and nobody really wants appliances that don't work with all their ingredients.

Anyway, that's what I tell myself to make this whole ludicrous story less sad.

> The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically track what you've got in your kitchen to suggest recipes / restock for you.

What makes you think people want those things? I certainly don't, and I've never heard anyone mention wanting any of those things. I have heard people mention that they hate appliances like the coffee makers that only work with the expensive patented coffee pods from their manufacturer. (And printers, etc.)

I don't want any appliance that the manufacturer can shut down or refuse to run remotely. (See the recent story about the guy who paid off his car, but it was disabled remotely because he didn't pay the "remove the disabler" fee.)

In ~35 years of cooking, I don't recall ever using ingredients that went bad. I'm sure I probably did once or twice, but it didn't leave a bad enough impression on me to even remember, let alone want this sort of device that's tethered to the network and manufacturer, with all the problems that brings.

Let's call it what it is: the Internet of Rent-Seeking. As far as I'm concerned, I want my appliances to NOT be networked.

We should probably split hairs here. I would love for all of my appliances to be networked -- just not on the public internet.

- Preheat the oven as I'm driving home

- Alert me when my laundry/dishes are done

- Alert me if my air filter needs replaced.

- Manage my AC/Heating for maximum energy efficiency.

- Real time energy usage monitoring.

- Turn on/off lights when I arrive/leave.

Perfectly put!

People are way too paranoid over things "going bad" -- typically if something is unhealthy to eat, you'll see it or smell it. The expiration date is meaningless… I eat eggs or dairy past its expiration all the time. Meat and fish that's gone bad gets real smelly, there's very little chance you accidentally won't notice.

Part of the problem is that it isn't an expiration date, it's a use-by date. They imply entirely different things, and it is great for consumers because it provides real penalties for selling bad food.

That said, people need to be a lot more literate in this sense.

The expiration date is a good guide for those of us who are anosmic and wouldn't otherwise notice.

I don't want any appliance like that either, and I find the Kuerig coffee maker appalling.

That said, Kuerig sells many of their machines, and many people like and use them. That fact is very strong evidence that there is a strong market for this type of product if it is done correctly.

In other words, people do want this kind of product.

At the right price point, probably.

On demand juice for < 50c/serving? Sure.

$2-$3/serving? Nope.

We use kcups at the coworking space here, and at 30-35c, they're worth the convenience. 60c? $1? Nope - we'll just brew a big pot.

But... we can get kcups from dozens of vendors with various flavors and price points. If a juicer machine had low price points (original machine and packs) that were available from multiple vendors... yeah, I'd go for it. But it's gotta have all these other factors (flexible vendors and low prices) which I'm not sure anyone wants to target.

I was one of a bunch of people to stand in line at Costco because of listeria contamination of a bunch of different organic vegetables.

None of us got sick, so far as I know. I took 4 bags (peas, corn, green beans, unopened peas) back for full refund.

Not sure what happened to the company (in eastern Washington) because this had to be horrendously expensive for them.

HELP the neighborhood is flooded and the network is down, now I cant feed myself!

interestingly enough much of Houston had running electricity the whole time. We have an office downtown that flooded and never went to backup power and the datacenters stayed on the mains as well.

> keeps you from cooking with rotten food

If only we had some kind of olfactory or optical equipment stuck on the front of our faces that could help determine the rottenness or mouldiness of food.

Failing that, perhaps producers of packaged food could use some kind of common standard system to inform consumers of the date by which the food should be used by, or before which it might be at its best.

I am now going to shut down all future attempts at dry humor because they will never, ever match or surpass this comment. I'm going to take my sense of humor out back and shoot it for never giving me this kind of service.

Fair criticisms, but I maintain we're going to end up tracking our food eventually. It's just going to get cheaper, and there are real upsides IMO.

Wrote this because I got in a similar conversation on twitter: https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/in-defense-of-juicero-an...

Possibly, and i certainly agree that there's benefit in a recipe suggestion tool that is linked to your inventory. It's also a good idea to have something tell you what's coming up to use-by, to reduce waste.

However, that tracking belongs at the kitchen door using a common industry standard format, and the ability to manually enter inventory items.

If you need a different appliance to prepare food from each vendor, then you won't be able to make Alphabet spaghetti with Amazon beef and Apple tomatoes; you can't pop to the local shop to get some milk; you can't go into your garden to pick some carrots; you can't go to a specialist vendor to get a particular spice mix or exotic vegetable; you can't buy your favourite varieties from a local grower.

I can't picture giving up on those advantages just so that Mr. Bezos can tell me what to eat.

The thing is that all you need is a sticker on each piece of food with a unique QR code or an rfid tag containing all the expiration, source, and lot numbers. The consumer can just scan everything and get any necessary info about expiration dates and recalls if they want. Nothing very complex there and certainly doesn't require any fancy kitchen gadgets just a industry agreed on labeling standard.

About half the food I buy is not in a package. I wouldn't want every carrot and every loaf of bread to come with an RFID sticker.

This is, of course, a brilliant comment. Well stated.

The only thing I can add is perhaps a corollary to this, which is "nothing causes a business to fail more than solving a non-existent problem" which is what Juicero did.

Your point is valid, but recently here in Canada there was a recall on contaminated flour. Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli.

Your eyes/nose won't pick up bacteria in the flour.

> Can't remember if it was anthrax or E Coli.

You'd remember if it was anthrax.

Sure, food recalls happen all the time. However, they are selling as a subscription service- they know what packets they shipped you. If there's a recall they should email you, snail mail you, and automatically issue you a refund on your credit card. WiFi is beyond overkill.

That moment when someone unironically recommends full-life-cycle logistics tracking for foodstuffs as a solution to simply checking the expiration date or examining raw ingredients before preparing...

How would tracking the food from origin to consumption allow the machine to reject rotten food?

Things going rotten are not that predictable, even if you know exactly when and where it was packaged.

If it knows when and where for everything about an ingredient, it probably also knows the tagged expiry/best-before. It's easy to play it safe and just reject everything past expiry, even if it need not actually have gone bad. And consumers who prioritize contamination safety (not everyone believes expiry dates, but many do) can respect that.

There are cases where something can go bad before its expiry date, due to improper storage, but storage conditions until food reaches given appliance could be tracked too to account for that.

But fresh fruit in particular doesn't rot at a uniform rate. You can pick two peaches from the same tree at the same time with the same appereant ripeness, store them in identical conditions, and have them go bad on different days.

There are low-tech versions of spoilage alert. oxygen sensitive stickers that change color if too much o2 detected inside the package..

However - there is one food label that I have always wanted on meats: slaughter date, freeze/pack date, sell date, cook date, eat date.

So if I go to the store and there is meat in the freezer - when was that meat caught/slaughtered/packed/frozen.

Am I eating something a year old?

If you had that labeling - I would be willing to bet that healthier eating habits would ensue - not that the meat industry would prefer it though..

Expiration dates are more for best taste rather than food safety. You're able to tell when fruits/veggies go rotten with your eyes, nose, and mouth.

It would apply if the ingredients were contaminated when they were processed but wasn't detected until after they were sold.

This is all textbook 'solution in search of a problem'

I think the future of food is different - it's about restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort. maybe via online ordering, maybe Whole-foods/Walmart. And you may need some fancy oven like combi-oven or solid-state microwave.

And even if we're talking cuts of meat, i think technology like MATS(microwave assisted thermal sterilization) may give you high quality meat that doesn't spoil for very long, so that won't be an issue.

And as for suggesting recipes based on fridge content or restocking (are those such big problems for consumers?) - there are probably other ways to solve that , like AI + camera, no need to reshuffle the whole supply chain.

> restaurant quality meals, for cheap, large selection, with zero effort

If this were ever to happen - and what I know of food chemistry makes me strongly skeptical - you would definitely see it in actual restaurants way before you get it at home. Because for a restaurant, if you can effectively replace a human costing >$40k/yr with a change in supply chain and a fancy machine, you can easily afford to pay $40k for the machine alone. A consumer would never afford that.

(Same goes for fully autonomous cars.)

As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business.

Using frozen food, many french restaurants already do that for some stuff to an extent there was law on that matter, and there's a french/european consumer chain, picard, for gourmet frozen food. But it's expensive. but maybe prices will go down ?

> Because for a restaurant, if you can effectively replace a human costing >$40k/yr with a change in supply chain and a fancy machine,

Ever heard of a TurboChef oven? Because that's almost exactly what you're describing. Think of it as a combination oven that uses microwaves, thermal, and convection to cook stuff extremely fast, and generally of a pretty decent quality.

If you've eaten at just about any restaurant, you have likely had something prepared in one (if not the whole meal).

They are actually pretty nice machines; if I had the counter room at home I'd have one. But they aren't cheap...

Sous-vide?

>As for the "reducing food waste" concept - no store actually wants to achieve this. Think about it - actively trying to get people to buy less of what you sell is pretty bad for business.

Which is why it's ripe for disruption. The consumer could be better off, a company that isn't in the space already could be better off, they're the people who need to make it happen.

This is as good a time as any to plug my company, Mellow: www.cookmellow.com (that's our exact value prop)

If you use a loyalty card at a Kroger owned store, they'll tell you if something is flagged for contamination, it's an automated call system. There is already pretty reasonable tracking on the industry side of the food equation; some things are better than others. It's just not at the point of consumption. I'm kind of okay with this, I'd rather the industry as a whole do more things to prevent contamination period. Making a more friendly notification is nice, it could be a phone call, and email, a notification with some app; it's pretty rare and I want it more rare, not a friendlier notification, that's just me though.

Now I think you could make that stuff better, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to hate on Juicero for that. Their entire play was just VC-Bingo though: they had a device, they had a subscription, they had "lock in" (device is only good with the subscription) they had internet attachment, it's a health and wellness type play, probably some other things I'm not thinking of. Anyone know if they had to subsidize the prices, that'd be the grand slam if they had to do that too. $30 a week for 5 packs of juice, that's $120 a month and you do the work and clean up the mess and you have to get different juice on the weekends. The bags aren't supposed to make that much mess but I think the psychology of it all is huge, a coffee maker doesn't make much mess either and you'll pay a gigantic premium at a coffee shop. How many months before you get a tip-top of the line cold press juicer that'll make juice out of any produce? With no subscription.

The idea itself isn't horrible. But investing $100m in a niche home appliance that hadn't yet been validated in the market was just dumb.

Interesting concept... Tracking what you have to suggest recipes or restock - that's the feature that seems most appealing. But I don't think you need a network like you describe to accomplish that. You could have a "smart" fridge or some other device that can catalog your food for you thru imaging and scans. Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself. Like you say, Amazon could easily do this. They already have a part of it with their dash buttons and smart home devices. They have another part now with Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh.

The other benefits you mention are marginal at best, in my opinion. I would never pay a premium for tagged and tracked food like that.

Edit: Funny, there's a post on overengineering on the front page!

They are already doing it with Amazon wand. It's attached to the fridge, whenever I finish something I scan the barcode. If I tossed away the package or I remember something that I don't have I just tell it to the wand.

> Hell, you could just input a list you type up yourself.

If you put that much effort into it, then you can just as well remember what you need to buy when.

I write down a shopping list because otherwise I forget things.

It would be hard to make something more convenient than a pen and paper though. And in the store crossing things off the nigh indestructible scrap of worthless paper is better than fiddling with a device.

Well the difference would be that the food gets delivered to you based on what you specify in the list..

But obviously that wasn't the main point. Using computer vision you can automate it.

Or the industry could standardize receipts so that they can just be scanned into the fridge.

What's "digitized food"? Does every single one of my strawberries come with a bar code on it? Or does everything come in Juicebro style pouches?

Agafia is a hermit surviving in the Russian wilderness for 70 years. I recommend the RT report on her because they do not try to force a conclusion to the contact. She is afraid of barcodes even though she barely has any contact with other people. During the last world war humans were assigned serial numbers for efficient tracking and resource allocation and extermination. Agafia and her people ran away from several regimes that were set on extermination of her people because of their beliefs. All food she comes in contact with must have barcodes removed because to her, barcodes are a sign of the devil. She will not accept anything with barcodes on it. All aid packages must have barcodes removed from them before she will accept them. According to her the next logical step will be to microchip/barcode all humans and track their activities. Then humans will be treated like cattle and easily controllable assets. Sounds familiar?

Hmm... Whats this entirely detailed sensor that has ALL my access/identity/sentiment/social data on it - where I am required to pay a monthly fee for, and life in modern society will basically stop if I dont have one? The one where I am expected to follow and celebrate every release of one with far more tracking/identifying/documenting features -- and then spend more money on upgrading my tracker?

You know - the one where governments and police departments have equipment to fool the device to connecting to just them so they know exactly where I am?

That next logical step of Agafia sounds ludicrous!

Why am I being down-voted?

A lot of my trust in Amazon eroded after the whole co-mingling fake-eclipse-glasses fiasco. If I can't trust Amazon to tell me accurately where the stuff I buy on their website is coming from… how can I trust them in the retail grocery world where there's so much more middlemen and variables in play?

Because they're different businesses run different ways? And the grocery store ultimately is governed by the FDA and a totally different set of regulations and expectations?

Most packaged food has a serial number on it for tracking purposes.

Going from that to sticking it in a scanner to get permission to eat it probably doesn't add a lot of utility.

What value does this add over stocking various drinks, in containers, in a refrigerated case with no machine?

I've noticed that the digital multi-flavor soda dispensers create more customer bottlenecks compared the regular 4-6 nozzle dispensers. Having every customer figure out how to load a "juice pack" then operate the machine seems like it would have a similar inconveniencing effect.

> What value does this add over stocking various drinks, in containers, in a refrigerated case with no machine?

You can market it as "fresh".

if it comes out of a bag, it's not fresh.

Of course not, but you can still market it that way.

Basically those units are a great idea, but to keep costs down they only serve one at a time. If that could change to each unit even serving 2-3 the bottlenecks would ease, and you could also consider blended approach in which you have the standard 4-6 nozzle dispenser and one or two freestyles. After all some people really have no interest in anything other than straightforward Cokeor whatever else.

I don't see a lot of differences between the self serve milkshake machines in gas stations and this proposed self serve juicer.

In Europe, some grocery chains have orange press machines so you can make yourself some really fresh orange juice.

These make more sense to me. I've seen them in various places in the US too. The big difference is that they take in straight oranges from a bin...

If you have slightly more space and $$ than an end user there are, IMO, much better options available. I see more and more in the grocery stores orange juice squeezers that make juice out of oranges in front of you. With a clear plastic front you see the machine slicing oranges and squeezing the juice for you into any container you want.

Cost-wise it is more expensive than buying not-from-concentrate juice in a half gallon quantities, but not that much more so. Definitely <= 100% premium and you get it freshly squeezed right before you.

Those orange juice squeezers are pretty common in Brussels. Every Carrefour and Delhaize mini markets have them.

The problem is the founders did come from that world and tried to consumerize it. If they'd focused on per-juice-cost (thus, high volume) and gone from attended to semi-attended (office) or unattended (vending machine) it might have won.

They also could have just built a "scrappier" v1.0 hardware product at a lower cost (maybe with rollers or something) at 50% BOM cost and subsidized it a bit more. At $200 + $6-8 per pack they might have been successful; at $200 + $200/mo for 30 packs they probably would have been.

Rollers were my immediate thought as to how to get the juice out. Would love one of their engineers to chime in and talk about the reasons they built it that way.

The AvE teardown mentioned this. It does give you uniform force across the entire work surface, which is theoretically superior, but I think it's a case where a 5% improvement in results does not warrant 75% increase in BOM cost and design, at least in v1 of a relatively virgin market (if the market were flooded with roller systems, you could possibly differentiate with a press based 1.0, but no need to do that out the gate in a virgin market.)

There is nothing complicated about squeezing something out of a bag with with uniform pressure. The book press / screw press has existed since the first century AD.

Here is a 'juicero' that you can fill with whatever chopped fruit you want and get the same/better results:

https://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Press-Italian-Stainless-Brewcra...

If they did the "sell to stores" biz, the competition they would have seen would be far stronger, and stores would squeeze them, unlike their current dream of a printer for juice.

And it's far from certain that first business would attract VC's.

>I think they went about getting to market wrong.

I find this line really funny for some reason. (Juicero has been the laughingstock of the tech community over their go to market, pricing, and marketing/business models, and we are now looking at the pieces as they exploded over this fact.)

So I had to try really, really hard not to reply to your innocent comment with mock surprise - like no! You think?

>I think they went about getting to market wrong

Zumex is quite common in UK and does not hit the higher end of your price range.

I admit to a slightly childish glee in ordering an orange juce and watching the machine peel and juice the fresh oranges. (Mostly I eat actual fruit).

http://www.zumex.com/en

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/commercial-automatic-o...

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2000A-4-commercial-ef...

But I already can buy cheaper juices at the grocery / convenience store. Why would this be any different?

They should have started with something that actually used the press. Who wouldn't want fresh olive oil?

> Who wouldn't want fresh olive oil?

Good idea but I don't think it's that easy: the extraction of olive oil is not a simple matter of pressing olives until the oil comes out, but a long process with multiple steps [1] that I doubt they could been done by a press that is relatively simple as/as big as Juicero (as it can be seen by the cons in the two methods for the extraction that are listed on wiki).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil_extraction

Juicero did nothing inherently wrong. It is a fancy juice machine for fancy offices and busy people. It's really just another random victim of the internet lynch mob.

Along those same lines, I think spas, fitness centers, salons would have been good segments for them.

I don't think there _is_ a market for this over-engineered, overpriced monstrosity.

Caffe Macs near Vallco 1 at Apple has Juiceros doing exactly what you describe.

They should not have targeted fruits and vegetables with their equipment.

They should have gone, not went.

Seems like the perfect thing for an airport. :)

For Virgin Galactic and SpaceX

Airports are full of $6 lattes and smoothies, $4 bottled water, etc. I would imagine their might be enough folks who want something "healthy" who'd be willing to pay.

I was joking about the aesthetics only

The commercial options are cheaper, faster and more durable. This 'appliance' will break in a couple of days.

AvE tore one of their machines down awhile back[0]. It's so over engineered, I was wondering how they'd ever make money back with their business model.

[0] https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ

He sums this up well [1] (paraphrasing):

> This is what you get with no constraints. Building something that lasts and doesn't break the bank is what's hard. This thing will last forever, but it's a machine to squeeze pre-masticated fruit in a plastic bag that costs $400.

I've watched this before and just skipped through to find that bit, but I'm fairly certain he also mentions at one point how they're almost certainly selling the juicer itself at a loss, which makes the whole thing that much more absurd.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ&t=37m09s

> I'm fairly certain he also mentions at one point how they're almost certainly selling the juicer itself at a loss

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ&t=15m07s

and here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ&t=33m42s

After watching the teardown video - I really want one of these things - very impressive.

They will probably be available on eBay cheaply now that they are paperweights for those who bought them.

Skookum as frig, possibly.

He had a better idea though: pass the bag between one or two rollers.

this is another teardown with a similar conclusion

https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensi...

I love how Bolt.io tore down a pair of Beats headphones and came to the opposite conclusion -- that they were a ripoff and that the components inside in no way justified the pricetag.

But, take a look at the quality of the internals of Juicero vs. Beats headphones and realize that one of the companies is worth $1.5B while the other is shutting down.

That "Beats" teardown was with a counterfeit pair of headphones.

Even so, I don't think a large difference between the BOM and the price the consumer pays is necessarily a ripoff. There's more to a product than simply how much it costs to manufacture.

> Even so, I don't think a large difference between the BOM and the price the consumer pays is necessarily a ripoff.

Actually, in some jurisdictions, if that difference goes over 12.5% of the paid price, and the customer is not specifically informed about this (and about potential cheaper competitors), the contract is not valid.

The counterfeit pair probably had a more reasonable frequency response than the genuine product it was trying to imitate, so much for Beat's famous distorted bass.

I think you mean "so", not "but" :)

Holy crap. That's the kind of thing I expect from undergrads who don't know what COTS stands for.

Like how do you convince yourself that this is a sane design for something more than a prototype? Using more off the shelf stuff might result a little more weight and a higher overall part count but the cost savings would be huge.

As I kept watching the video I thought the word "overengineered" was the completely wrong word, and AvE himself addresses it perfectly in the end: It's "underengineered", "underdesigned" but "overbuilt".

I always assumed that the revenue was going to come from selling the bags of fruit. The machine is easily and cheaply cloned, but a network for distributing prepackaged produce would be much harder to copy and provide the recurring revenue that really matters.

I've wondered if some of the problem here is how many people involved are so well off, the VCs especially, that they've forgotten what $40/week is to the vast bulk of people in the world, or even in the industrialized countries. That's on the order of 5% of the median total income and a great deal more than 5% of the median disposable income in the US. I wonder how many people just forgot how expensive that is and how small the market is for that level of extravagance.

wow great video! Just wasted half a days work just watching that channel's stuff :/

Likewise. That channel might be the most Canadian thing ever to exist - got a little homesick just watching it.

After watching their promo video at the top of the page, I'm left wondering two things:

- If the machine takes away all my liberty (I cannot use it on my fruit and vegetables) and even their packs need to be refrigerated and stay good only for 8 days, can't I just buy the resulting juice and put it in my fridge? (If I left the bottle closed, that would last equally long). So what do I gain?

- They're using QR codes to check that I'm not using their packs beyond the "best by" date or try to trick the machine into squeezing a competitor's cheaper packs. And for that, they need a camera on the inside. And WiFi. Didn't somebody at some point notice that the way they're treating their customers is really disrespectful? This is the whole printer-cartridge-thing all over again.

EDIT: layout/typos

You gain the prestige of saying "you want a fresh-squeezed juice?" to your guests. Keurig grew HUGE in large part thanks to the appearance of higher class it brought to ordinary homes and offices. Instead of fooling with tools, you click a button on a sleek looking SV futuremachine, and presto.

Humans are weird, and this is a very good marketing strategy.

I'm not familiar with Keurig, but I assume it is similar to Nespresso?

Nespresso became extremely popular because:

1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers)

2) They take a fraction of the time to prepare coffee (compared to other methods)

3) They are extremely easy to clean

4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities, so it doesn't matter if you drink 3 cups of coffee per day or 3 cups of coffee per month.

5) They have really fancy stores in top locations where they sell their capsules

Everything about Nespresso is convenient and feels great. There is no DRM, because that would not be convenient.

The only thing that's convenient about the Juicero machine is that it is easy to clean. Everything else about it, from the short shelf live to the subscription pricing, to the long time it takes to make juice, is just inconvenient. The DRM and Wifi requirement is just stupid.

The fact that anyone can make a sort of decent cup of coffee with a nespresso is also important.

Additionally, the taste benefit of nespresso over instant coffee or something similar is probably much higher than juicero over the best bottled juice.

Those coffee 'cup' machines automate a majority of the series steps and outputs a decent coffee... perfect for office environments or mornings before work where people don't have time to grind or babysit a drip machine.

The value is quite clear in the context of alternatives. Which is where I believe Juicero stumbles when one considers the various alternatives. Especially with the high cost and fast expiration dates.

I thought nespresso had DRM to stop other coffee pods.

No DRM, but patents on the machine and the capsules. Enforceability of the patents varies a lot between countries, so in some there are non-Nespreso capsules, in others there aren't.

No DRM as far as I can tell. You can make your own pods with simple kits which are basically just an empty capsule and some foil you stick on the top.

I think you're thinking of Keurig's K-cups (a different and of course wholly incompatible means of coffee capsule thingy)

> 1) The machines are very cheap (compared to other espresso makers)

Simply not true, I have an 160eur Delonghi espresso machine which takes grounded coffee (doesn't grind it itself), and it's pretty awesome for what it cost me. Every 2 weeks, I go to a local coffee shop where I buy on high-quality freshly roasted coffee which I let the shop grind for me. It gives me way better coffee than what I get from a Nespresso.

Sure it's a bit more cleanup, but the results are a lot better, and it allows me to pretty easily make a killer cappuccino.

> 4) Capsules have a long shelf life, you can get them in small quantities...

Coffee, once roasted and grounded does not have a long shelf-life, taste and quality goes down remarkably. That's probably also what makes the most difference in quality comparing a Nespresso with my 'fresher' coffee. The capsules being packed in vacuum does improve this, but I wouldn't keep them for longer than a year.

I get my coffee in 250g bags, which is about 15 espresso's, that's not exactly 'large quantities'.

> 5) They have really fancy stores in top locations where they sell their capsules

I prefer local specialized shops that know what the hell they are talking about.

But yes I get the convenience and cleaning. Time to prep is a thing, with my machine, it takes about 1.5 to 2 minutes from start to finish, including 30 sec brew-time and quickly rinsing and wiping everything - which isn't that bad in my book - but yes, a Nespresso scores points here. I don't think I would go through the hassle at work every time I wanted a cup.

I have a Nespresso machine and highly disagree with you. The worst part of preparing Coffee is cleaning and the time required when I just want the coffee and not to mess with tools.

With the Nespresso, I just put the capsule and I get my coffee. The cleaning is easy and I don't need to clean stuff for every coffee.

Sure, you might do a whole bottle of coffee and consume it during the day. But the machine gives you convenience and it is affordable.

I have no problem putting 200-300USD on a coffee machine.

For juice? Well, I like it fresh. I didn't try Juicero but I highly doubt that it compares to freshly squeezed oranges.

Except that Keurig/Nesspresso/Tassimo machines actually make coffee using ground beans. It's a convenience thing, sure, but they are roughly the same as an espresso machine that you don't have to fill up yourself. Juicero was squeezing juice out of a pack. It could come in a bottle and you could pour it yourself, the product would be exactly identical.

But the printer-cartridge-thing made lots of money, so people probably want more of that!

Even if the machine was $50, I don't think many people would want to spend that much for the privilege of being locked in to Juicero proprietary juice packs, letalone spend kitchen counter space to a dedicated juice squeezer machine. And everyone who did now has an exquisitely engineered $700 paperweight.

Ultra expensive juicers aren't new[1]. Even "normal" juicers are quite expensive[2]. Juicero was just trying to jump on a fairly well-established gravy train catering to the juice woo crowd.

[1]: https://www.acemart.com/equipment/beverage/juicers/zumex-ess...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EXF4PLC/

Has there ever been a juicer before this that has forced you to buy all your fruits from one company? I think that's the key. People are ready to pay big bucks for premium appliances, but lock-in is another matter.

People love being locked in. Applying the keurig model to the juicing trend was a very solid business idea- it rocketed keurig to the top of all coffee makers, and juice fanatics make coffee fanatics look positively sane. I'm pretty cynical about it, but it is still a real and good thing. A half second of convenience makes you feel good and selecting, storing, washing and prepping produce is not trivial. A few extra clicks in one area of UI makes it a terrible design. The same thing translates into the real world, although at extreme cost (to the environment, primarily).

Negative press, overengineering, the smaller market group, and underdelivering convenience (the bags are just way too big compared to coffee) killed juicero. It was such a high-profile and brutal lambasting that it will be a scarlet letter for quite a while, but the core idea is solid enough that I wouldn't be surprised to see the idea re-emerge in 2-3 years.

I still can't get over how much people viscerally hate the idea. You'd think apple, google and microsoft had partnered to make a juice press because of how much juicero represented silicon valley-ness.

> People love being locked in.

Are you serious? I think Keurig succeeded because it was able to offset the lock-in with genuine convenience and better coffee than most people were drinking.

If the idea will re-emerge, I'm sure it will be more focused on customer convenience rather than lock-in. Literally every single "feature" of juicero was there to enforce the lock-in. The camera, qr codes, always-on wifi, proprietary bags. It's a miracle the company lasted this long.

'normal' juicers aren't anywhere near as expensive because you can buy your produce at the grocery store.

Apparently as per the article they're at least offering refunds to some subset of their customers.

Also, I think at $50 a lot more people would consider it. Keurig coffee makers seem to have done pretty well and I'm sure the $100 cost was a big part of that (as opposed to charging say > $200).

Founder seems to be having a good time at Burning Man the day his company shuts down.[1]

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/BYaIlV4jFb5/?taken-by=dougevans

Even founders of failed startups deserve a chance to relax.

Never claimed otherwise, just unfortunate or perhaps obtuse timing. People around here sure wouldn't dare miss the Burn, even as their company burned out.

I suppose I'm not the target demo. But I'm not too interested in buying anything from the man in this video.

You most likely have put money in the pockets of many people who have behaved just like the man in this video.

They have probably been preparing for this for many months now and now that it's over, I think the founder deserves some time to relax and reflect. I only hope the employees get good severance packages.

The Bloomberg article described Juicero as "one of the most lavishly funded gadget startups in Silicon Valley" and founder Doug Evans once said he planned to do for juicing what Steve Jobs did for computers.

With vision like that, it's hard to believe there were any issues.

Meanwhile, the Chinese clone with what is likely a very similar mechanism, but no DRM or other IoT crap, seems to be still alive:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1793272089/juisir-juici...

...and Juicero even tried to sue them a few months ago:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/juice-wars-juice...

At least some people have common sense. This is so much better!

Come on. Juicero was pure Silicon Valley craziness.

It’s strange they didn’t fail from the very beginning.

Tried it in a bar in San Francisco: slow as fuck, avg juice.

Can we agree that if any founder makes a statement comparing themselves or their vision for their product with Steve Jobs and Apple, that they are automatically disqualified from being funded? Steve Jobs was one of a kind. If you are like Steve you don't have to say it, people will figure it out.

The thing i'm curious about: why did this raise $120M? And how much has already been spent, on what ???

Founding team were serial successes in an adjacent/directly-related industry. "Because they could" is probably the best explanation of why they did.

I could be extremely wrong about this, but I doubt they've spent the majority of that money. I think they're likely to be giving it back to avoid shareholder unpleasantness and seeking a buyer to try to neutralize the overall outcome. They raised $98m of the money in the last 18 months, I would bet 2/3rds of that is still there if not more.

not sure how they managed to convince the investors. as far as the money spent - setting up physical manufacturing of anything, especially at scale is orders of magnitude more expensive than setting up an "IT" shop. here we're talking the actual (apparently worthless) juicers and the packs.

This video is one of my favorites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ

Edit: Most like contains strong language...

Amazing video, the money they threw to design and build this device is mind blowing.

Ugh. I can't decide which party is dumber.

This will serve as a good example for future startups where taking one concept from one market does not always work in another market. Keurig managed to make a great product at an affordable price range, both the machines ($80-$250) and the K-Cups (~$0.85 per pod). However, a $400 machine, that just squeezes the pack for juice, and each juice pack running several dollars is enough to kill anyone's wallet. I liked how they made an attempt to promote a sustainable healthy lifestyle, but ultimately there are cheaper alternatives.

But how is it sustainable to grow fruit, pick it, wash and peel it, then cut it up and put it into some sort of disposable bag, then ship it to each individual who wants it, then require them to own an appliance that likely runs on fossil fuels to get the product out? They could have just shipped bottle of juice to the local supermarket and cut out the machine entirely. The waste would have been less because the bottles would have been recyclable, and they'd own the machines and use them in place in bulk. The shipping would be more sustainable because of the scale of doing all shipping to fewer grocery stores than all their customers (or at least all they hoped to reach eventually). The whole thing is wildly wasteful.

To clarify, I meant sustainable in the context of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, not in their overall manufacturing process and waste output.

> I liked how they made an attempt to promote a sustainable healthy lifestyle, but ultimately there are cheaper alternatives.

That was always a bullshit reverse-engineered marketing spin on their device.

It was a product solving a problem few people had, at a price point few people could justify for a one-purpose device.

That the founders and the dialogue around it were all aspirational BS just exasperated the problem. It felt like it was constantly pitching a lifestyle very few people have, want or care about.

The fundamental problem with Juicero (at least as an ambitious startup) is that juice isn't a product with broad appeal, especially after the recent trend against sugary drinks. You could overcome price barriers and other issues if there were some real demand, but I just don't see it.

I thought the fundamental (and well documented) problem with Juicero is that they over-engineered themselves into a product that was far beyond what a consumer would ever pay for a kitchen appliance. Kinda like exactly what the article says.

Consumers will (and do, all the time) spebd $700 or more for kitchen appliances, provided the use of the appliance is expected to provide adequate value to warrant that. The fact that it's a juicer, and that you are locked-in to Juicero packs, is what limits the market, not the fact that it is a “kitchen appliance”.

> The fact that it's a juicer

The biggest problem is Juicero isn't a juicer. Juicero's market was limited because the average customer doesn't want to pay a premium for juice press theater. Shoving juice into packs that are hard for the consumer to access is simply a worse experience than the status quo containers of juice.

> juice press theater

Yes, this should be their epitaph.

It's actually hopeful in a way. Substance still has sway over style.

Yep. You can buy a Vitamix for about the same amount of money which is great for making smoothies but also certain soups, adult beverages, etc.

AvE tore one down. It really was well-built. Too much so, really.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ (possibly NSFW for language - use headphones)

No, the fundamental problem with Juicero is that the product was bullshit.

Did you just call pressed veggies and fruits sugary drinks? As in more or less the same as Pepsi? The problem with Juicero is that it was a scam, pure and simple. Overpriced bullshit and awesome profits, at least that was the plan. Thank god it's over. Now we're just waiting for Uber to fold and then maybe we can start actually making a difference, as opposed to spewing bullshit until no one can tell the difference.

> Did you just call pressed veggies and fruits sugary drinks?

Pressed fruits at least, are sugary drinks. Anyone who's calorie conscious is probably wary (as a calorie counter I know I am).

yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value. You're left with basically sugar water. Yes it's "natural sugar", but it's still not the healthy food people make it out to be.

> yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value.

Pressing (but not blending) leaves some of the good bits (including bits that mitigate some of the adverse effects of sugars) behind, but it does not destroy the nutritional value, as many of the important micronutrients of the fruit are retained in the juice.

Hyperbole isn't helpful here.

yup pressing/blending fruits destroys any nutritional value

That is utter nonsense.

Yes, whole fruit is healthier than blended fruit or juice. No, that does not mean there is no nutritional value.

Wouldn't chewing fruit destroy all nutritional value as well, if that were true?

Eating them whole is even better. But calling pressed fruit the same thing as the poisonous crap they would rather have us drink isn't helping anyone. It's clearly not the same thing.

Are you saying that sugar is good for you depending on the source? Sugar is terrible for you no matter what. If you have a juice with the juice of say 5 apples is not healthy. That is 5 servings of the sugar with almost 0 of the fiber. It is just as poisonous as a sugary soda or other sugary drink.

Who on earth is the "they" that you are referring to here?

> Did you just call pressed veggies and fruits sugary drinks? As in more or less the same as Pepsi?

Well, they didn't make any comparison to Pepsi in their comment, but I 'll go ahead and make that comparison.

12 fl oz of:

* Orange juice: 31.2g of sugar

* Apple juice: 36g of sugar

* Coca-Cola: 39g of sugar

* Pepsi: 41g of sugar

Not the same, but in the ballpark. But iirc, regular Coke and Pepsi aren't growing. Diet Pepsi/Coke are. The brands are also coming up with semi-diet versions, such as "Coca-Cola Life" (17g of sugar).

The diet sodas are getting crushed along with the regular: http://fortune.com/2017/04/19/coca-cola-pepsi-dr-pepper-soda...

Oh wow, water it is then. Thanks for the correction.

They are though, Juicero being a scam or not (it's not, they shipped at straight forward pricepoints).

Even "traditional" pressed juice companies are starting to see a crunch, as their evangelical customers ("health nuts") are realizing that eating an apple is healthier than pressing 4 of them.

> The problem with Juicero is that it was a scam, pure and simple.

I'm not sure how you can even make an argument that it was a scam. A stupid business model isn't the same thing as a scam - it was a real product, however ill conceived.

I am fully aware that this is business as usual these days, but that doesn't make it any less destructive to society or any less a scam. What you're saying is basically that as long as people fall for it and you don't go to jail it's ok, I don't agree.

There wasn't much fraudulent or dishonest about Juciero. It was overpriced, stupid, and a totally unnecessary luxury item, but that's not the same thing as scamming people.

Their failure was in trying to "squeeze" a hardware-as-a-service/recurring revenue model into a device that was better suited as a single purchase appliance.

If you could have just shoved fresh fruit into it, they would have been ok.

But whoever talked investors out of $118M probably also sold everyone on the H-A-A-S model, which didn't quite fit for this product.

One of the VC-funded businesses we all knew would fail has finally failed, is this an early indicator of a market correction?

I don't think so, because an idea this obviously silly should fail under almost any market conditions.

It's an indicator that the market needs to be more discerning about consumer needs. There is a lot of dry powder waiting to be deployed in the VC industry, so expect to see more specious stuff get funded until LPs decide that they can generate returns elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ breakdown of juicer. So fantastically overengineered. Beautiful.

I am a big fan of kitchen gadgets - and there are a few really useful ones around, this product is just odd. Besides the price for the machine and the pods, I fail to see how it adds any value to the process.

If you want really fresh and nutritious drinks, get a high-power blender. Not only do they operate on any fresh fruit and vegetable, they keep all the fiber in the produced drink. So less sugar percentage (especially if you have lots of vegetables in the mix) and vs. eating the fruit directly, the high power mixing helps digesting all nutritients much better than just chewing can.

As a bonus, you can use it for many other cooking tasks (soups, sauces) but also you can do things like blending a good amount of ice with the fruit to get a cold and icy drink and my favorite is just to mis a scoop of natural yoghurt with frozen berries (add sugar, cream, a shot of bourbon to your taste) to instantly get a nice ice-cream like dessert.

(Disclaimer: there are a very few vegetables which should be eaten cooked only, so don't use those for a smoothie, others only in reasonable dosis, so some very basic reading is recommended)

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed.

Can someone watch the video in the article and explain what sort of mindset you have to be in and think that this is a good idea? Perhaps the initial vision was different somehow and the final product does not align with what you thought you were putting your money behind? Is it possible that you see the issues, but have so little faith in consumers not to buy crap that it seems like you'll make a reasonable profit? Maybe there's something you see or know that I don't -- perhaps some sort of shake up in the fruit industry was set to make this a hit only to not meet expectations?

I am now more deeply concerned than ever about the effect that an exploding tech bubble is going to have on our economy.

The answer to this is fairly straightforward: VCs don't actually expect (or need) every investment to be successful, they just need it to have the potential to be huge if everything works out.

Laypeople always seem shocked when a VC-funded company implodes. We should actually be surprised if we didn't see routine flame-outs, as that would mean VCs aren't taking on appropriate quantities of risk for the asset class.

As a final aside: I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled an about-face on businesses I initially thought were stupid -- once I had a chance to talk to the founders and better understand the vision. Many of these seemingly 'dumb' ideas have surprising depth.

Some, granted, are in fact dumber than a box of rocks.

The reason people are shocked isn't that VCs are willing to take a risk on an idea that appears ridiculous at first blanche, it's that Juicero had 4 rounds of investment before they launched, which amounted to $118.5M. That includes a $70M Series B in 2016-03 which was quickly followed by a $28M Series C one month later. [1]

Few would be surprised by a few million being spent looking for a market fit on a wacky idea, it's the scale and obvious demand to get involved at such a late stage.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/juicero#/entity

It's not that a VC company failed, it's that the entire idea looks completely ridiculous from the start.

You could say that same about Soylent as it's simply a Pediasure/Ensure marketed towards hipster 20-somethings. People love drawing the conclusion that superior marketing/design equates to better products.

Often times, if you can make a consumer happy with the experience, they don't care if they're overpaying for a terrible product.

The problem with Juicero is that their user experience laid bare how futile and ridiculous their product was by having consumers manufacture the product themselves.

If the Juicero simply made those juices in a bottle (EVEN IF the nutritional value was lost during bottling) I can see them succeeding based purely on their marketing and people suspending disbelief to support their idea they were being healthy while looking cool.

The problem is a lot of disruptive businesses initially looked "completely ridiculous from the start".

VCs are not idiots, they are probably much more humble than what ordinary people think they are, because any active VC--especially if they're successful--would have run into at least several cases where they passed on a company because they "looked stupid", just to find out that they went on to become wildly successful.

Once you go through this routine several times, you generally learn to appreciate and not immediately discount seemingly stupid ideas. This happens not just to VCs but overall if you live in Silicon Valley.

Since ideas alone aren't enough, the only good measure in my experience is looking at the person who's working on it. And here lies a lot of mistakes VCs make, they just look at some guy who was successful in the past and just think it's safe to bet on them.

To be clear, I also think Juicero was a stupid idea, and I think it was stupid of them to waste so much money upfront instead of starting scrappy, but my point is that there is no such thing as an "absolutely stupid idea". Ideas are contextual.

You see a juice shop sprout at every corner of your yuppie neighborhood, and you read about the success of Keurig, who married the coffee machine with the consumer-level printer, which allows you to control which consumables go into your machine, and you think that this can somehow be translated to said fresh juice craze.

So I don't think it's completely crazy. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation should have shown that it's probably not a great idea.

The parallel to Keurig is a key piece of insight. Investors see "Coffee -> Starbucks -> Kerrig", and think "Juice -> Jamba -> $$$".

Juice is not addictive as caffeine, perhaps that’s why.

Maybe not enough for Juicero, but sugar is addictive. Their 'juices' had a lot of sugar (via fruit) in them.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081210090819.h...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/05/is-sugar-wor...

It is probably because I can go to the store right now and buy pretty great Odwalla stuff that tastes good and is healthy. However, pre-brewed coffee from a bottle isn’t at the same level as fresh coffee. The point is that there are reasonable substitutes for a Juicero, but coffee at home is something people already make but most people don’t care about making their own juice — and if they were aficionados, they would have a real juicer. Juicero just didn’t make much sense. It wasn’t solving a problem most people had.

Many people make coffee each day and they might even drink juice, but most people drink juice from bottles, so Juicero was solving a problem that didn’t really need solving for the average consumer.

> It is probably because I can go to the store right now and buy pretty great Odwalla stuff that tastes good and is healthy.

Contrary to popular belief none of that stuff is healthy. It doesn't matter whether it comes from a juicero or from a bottle, it just all contains far too much sugar.

- A capsule coffee machine is way cheaper than an expresso machine.

- Expressos are minimally hard to make correctly, and those capsules are above even the quality of some coffee shops.

- There is a big movement of gourmet coffee that favors high priced drinks with the correct marketing (not perfectly correlated with quality).

None of those seem to apply to Juicero. They may have aimed at the last point, but I don't think it's something you can create on a startup's budget.

It's espresso, not expresso.

Capsule is far more expensive over the it's lifetime than something like a Gaggia Classic. Capsules aren't anywhere near the quality of coffee shops, unless you're counting Dunkin.

The thing that troubles me is not that people tried a dumb idea. It's that they spend $120m trying a dumb idea.

That is 100 seed rounds that never happened. Could we have learned the lessons here for less?

I'm gueessing yes; the ridiculously over-engineered [1] juice press is a good sign that efficient use of capital was just not a priority.

[1] https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensi...

I think what makes it frustrating is all the times people with honest good ideas walk out of investor meetings with nothing but empty promises. There doesn't appear to be any specific meritocracy or guidelines in the venture market, not even a chance to make money!

Huh, it's almost like it's not a meritocracy at all!

If "knowing your users" applies to startup success, it should also apply to VC startup success. I think most VCs are simply out of touch and thus don't understand what average consumers want, leading to poor investment decisions like this.

While I agree, I don't think it's the case every VC desires to appeal to the average consumer. Companies ranging from Gucci to Rolls Royce to Tesla have made a good business for themselves knowing what the above average consumers they want to cater to like. Thus VCs, like any company, should be judged as to how well they know their target audience. At their price point, Juicero clearly wasn't wanting to appeal to the average consumer. But they instead missed the mark in appealing to their target market--the wealthier than average.

What I don’t understand is how they flopped after getting so much publicity?

Was the price too high? Didn’t manage to turn PR against them? Was it designed to fail?

I think the product is awesome in every possible way.

The model worked for Nespresso (Kruger or smth in US), printers, dishwashers, Soylent, etc.

Soylent? No normal person I have ever met in my life has ever heard of the stuff. Slim Fast — everyone has heard of that, but Soylent? That’s an ultra niche product with little mass market appeal. Is it successful? Sure, but about as successful as a company that produces kits for growing orchids. The whole concept of Soylent is essentually Ensure for Hipsters. Even the name sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cliché.

> Even the name sounds like some kind of cyberpunk cliché.

I'm pretty sure this is a deliberate reference to the specific thing. I'm not sure if I won't end up looking stupid for saying the obvious, but this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

I know a couple of people that worked at Juicero. The news article that humiliated Juicero came just as they were about to get another round of funding. All of the investors pulled out, so they basically ran out of cash. This is completely due to the negative publicity generated by that one article that went viral. It couldn't have come at a more inopportune time for them, it's almost as if the reporters wanted to do as much damage as possible to the company.

You talk as if the negative press wasn't justified. And as if journalists were supposed to consider a company's convenience when writing about them. And as if investors were such empty vessels that they are blown hither and thither by each thing they read.

If one negative article about your product can kill your company, your problem is not a couple of journalists. It's your product.

Most companies get hard press. This report went viral and shut down the company because it exposed the product as being ridiculous.

Can someone watch the video in the article and explain what sort of mindset you have to be in and think that this is a good idea?

Hate to be glib, but I'm pretty sure it's all about e.g. Redfin and Vanguard, and that there's a sucker born every minute.

This investment seemed to me to be in search of the next Dollar Shave Club.

The idea of getting people to subscribe to your product looks really good to your investors these days -- once you get people to start the subscription, they are likely to keep giving you money, even when they don't really want the product anymore because there is some effort in canceling it.

I am NOT saying anything bad about the DSC, I love the commercials, but you have to wonder about a company who's business model is intertwined with subscribing to a product.

Subscription model businesses are actually pretty good businesses if you can service a genuine recurring need with a genuinely good product at a reasonable price point.

I order diapers for my kid on a subscription. As a consumer it works great for me since I didn't have any upfront one time cost like $700.

The problem I see with Juicero and its investors is that the machine is not unique, it is redundant, the investors were clearly blinded by the founder's pedigree to overlook the simple clear fact that the machine was not needed and the founder was delusional to think the machine was needed.

It is a shame that Juicero could not develop a product with a lower price point that could reach a much broader marketplace. With the initial price point they should have clearly seen that their customer pool was going to be smaller than that of a lower cost product.

It seems that they did not have enough time and money to right their ship. It is sad to see a dream die even if you don't agree with the product or business plan.

I think it's more a shame that they didn't actually make a product anyone needed. Just remember that this was a thing actually said about real life humans who can walk and talk and dress themselves:

> One of the investors said they were frustrated with how the company didn’t deliver on the original pitch and that their venture firm wouldn’t have met with Evans if he were hawking bags of juice that didn’t require high-priced hardware. Juicero didn’t broadly disclose to investors or employees that packs can be hand squeezed, said four people with knowledge of the matter.

This was a dumb thing from the jump. Maybe all that money spent on an evenly-pressing juice-o-tron would have been better used almost anywhere else.

I agree they should have done what they said they would do and should have talked to potential customers before making something that was not wanted or needed. And I do not dispute what you say about the product not being needed. I also agree that the money would have been better used on other companies but personally I think that the employees are the losers here (as are the investors). If the employees truly believed in their product then the employees have worked on something that has gone nowhere. All their work and effort is gone. That cannot be regained. These people are out of work. And for that reason, it is sad.

> It is sad to see a dream die even if you don't agree with the product or business plan.

Why is that sad? They were trying to solve some made-up problem in a way that would have wasted resources and created a lot of waste. They didn't do this to make the world a better place, their goal was to get rich (which isn't immoral by itself), so why should we – as a society or as individuals – be sad that they failed?

Whatever their motivation, there are employees who had no say in the decisions the founders made who are now out of work. It is sad that the founder and those who make product decisions etc did not think of their employees when they went off in a direction with little hope of success and mainly because they failed to carry out basic business research.

I don't think the price point per se is an issue, people happily pay over 400 for a quality juicer. But the kind of person who does that probably wants the full experience, chopping the vegetables etc. This experience just seems too similar to just buying high quality juice in the shop.

I know this model works for coffee, but there the prefab alternative is not an option.

I think the "full experience" you speak of is getting fresh juice rather than some pre-oxidized slurry in a bag.

And shame on the VCs for not using their heads. You can't get a half pint of juice out of a pint bag of fruits and veggies.

Which reminds me of my brilliant idea of making fresh squeezed lemonade for our wedding guests. I had to cut a whole 25lb box of lemons in half and then press them into the Kitchen Aid to get about two quarts of juice. It took me hours and a lot of elbow grease to do that.

Most people I know with juicers also like the fact that they can save money by throwing in fruit or veg before it goes bad. It makes it easier to capture the shopping surplus that otherwise ends up in the trash. The QR-code scanning Juicero basically does the opposite.

I don't think it's about price really. People pay $700 for all sorts of high quality kitchen appliances. But all that was good about the machine was offset by the lock-in, stupid pre-pulped juice packs, DRM, always-on internet, and other user-hostile stuff.

You're right that people may have been able to stomach all that 1984 stuff if the price was low.

> It is a shame that Juicero could not develop a product

That's where the period goes.

Juicero has been quoted as saying that they sold "over a million Produce Packs." [1] Does anyone know who bought so many of them? Or how many they would've had to sell to stay in business?

[1] https://www.juicero.com/company-news/

I think this will be a wake-up call for companies like uBeam. For uBeam's case, you can send mechanical energy via ultrasound: true, with very little efficiency. But very few will be interested to buy the device.

Rumor has it that their engineers couldn't concentrate...

Magnificent engineering to solve a stupid non-problem. Sigh.

Given how overenginered it was, was it really magnificent? I don't think it's hard to make a quality Mechanism if you're willing to spend 400% of what's necessary for 108% of the benefit.

I don't think we have the same definition of magnificent.

I hope the writers of "Silicon Valley" were paying attention to this saga. There's some juice left to be squeezed from it.

If anything, I'm surprised they're only laying off 25% of their staff. I have a feeling more lay offs are around the corner.

I'll pick one up in the liquidation sale.

What are you gonna do with it with the the packs? Or you can use it without them too?

Like for what?

I think it was a joke, maybe.

Yeah, it's a pun on the word 'liquidation'.

Yes, it was what passes for a joke attempt on a Friday afternoon.

There are amateurs successfully manufacturing ancient Kodak photographic processes; given that, "insert apples into bag" sounds pretty easy in comparison. The problem is my real juicer juices better than I can likely make this machine juice with homemade bags, and to keep my carb load low, I generally eat pieces of fruit not juices so I'd not use it personally, although its an interesting challenge.

I guess the components. I think the sold the machine at a loss and maybe you could make some profit reselling some components, yet I am not quite sure.

I just secured the purchase of two of these... for $200 to tinker with...

Anyone have any ideas on the DIY project to make from them?

Juice is bad for you anyhow, no matter the price. TOO MUCH SUGAR!

This will be one for the (forgotten) history books!

Oh noooo!! Think of the Juice(ro). What will happen to existing machines once the servers are shut down!? Are we destined return to the days of squeezing juice by hand?

So they got squeezed.

Color me not shocked? The whole premise of this was ridiculous from the start

I guess the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze.

These remind me of the CUE::CAT

Are they shutting down using a super-complicated completely over engineered method of shutting down, or the regular way?

I heard someone was able to shutdown about 98% of a similar company using their bare hands.

But they'd have squishy stuff on all over their hands, wouldn't they?

Only if you accidentally pierce the corporate veil [1], but that's pretty hard for one person to do with their bare hands.

[1]: Much as I hate to explain a pun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil

The ancient Babylonians would shut down companies by burying their executives and employees with clay tablets, which were much more accurate and humane than modern methods.

There was Shutdownify, but now there isn't a trace of it left, aside from news articles about how fake it was.

http://web.archive.org/web/20170610003354/http://www.shutdow...

My gut says that they'd have a lot of repeat customers.

They're starting a web site called GoFireMe.com, to crowd source their layoff packages.

I'm pretty sure there are startups that exist solely to aid the liquidation of other startups.

Like hiring an expensive PR firm to write your shutdown notice?

If I were to create a PR firm to do such a ting, I would call it "The Amazing Journey"

Drink, drink of the dark nectar of schadenfreude.

I imagine Richard, the owner of Desk Depot, rubbing his hands together and chortling to himself.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/desk-depot-mountain-view

Nevertheless, I'm sure it'll be done in a pulp-conscious manner despite their feeling the squeeze of such pressing times.

As funny as this thread of jokes was (and it was; I had a good laugh), I don't come to HN for jokes. I come for interesting, deep, and intelligent discussions. I don't find much value in amusing jokes… isn't that what we have Facebook or Reddit for?

It's true that the joke chain actually does violate the terms of hacker news. It's very likely that a mod will remove the comments within a short amount of time.

Are you a goddamn robot, sir?

Seems like they felt the squeeze after that expose

And now it's time for a liquidation

The early investors are left holding the bag!

They should have scanned the QR code on it first, it would have told them something's rotten in there.

WTF? HN is allowing humor now?

I don't think the expose changed much. They would've died anyway. The product was a joke.

Its been a pressing time for them

Their grapes have soured, but I'm glad I didn't buy one of their lemons ;-)

Please don't.

Noooo!!! :)

Juicero is shutdownero.

Those who funded this will only squeeze their portfolio companies still remaining for a juicier return.

120 million USD in funding and such a spectacular failure because of one article. This whole episode goes on to show the power journalists have. I know the sales number were bad but with so much money the founder could have bought the market or pivoted but with no coming back from the PR disaster the investors most likely just wanted their money back.

Unless their was a serious problem with their product or their team, with 120 million USD, they should have been able to avoid a PR disaster set off by a single article. Obviously, there are numerous issues with the product itself: no one wants to subscribe to packets of fruit, especially if those packets are perishable, especially if they have to buy a six-hundred dollar machine to properly use the packets and to know if they are fresh, even if you later find out you can just squeeze them with your hands. I suspect if you dig, and probably not too deep, you'd find issues with the team that tried to make money with this product as well.

There are problems that even $120 million can't fix.

Shoot the messenger?

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