Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com