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Juicero, a startup that sells a pricey juice press, found that out firsthand. The company's Wi-Fi-enabled machine produces cold-pressed juice out of packets sold exclusively to owners via subscription.
Received as both Silicon Valley cautionary tale and commentary on conspicuous consumption, Juicero's story was chronicled this week in a Bloomberg News piece.
[...] In all, the company raised some $120 million.
But Bloomberg says investors' confidence waned once it emerged that people didn't actually need the press to get juice from the packets but could simply squeeze it out by hand.
A Silicon Valley startup slain before it could blossom into a unicorn.
[Ed. Note: Also at ExtremeTech with a bonus link to Juicero's very silly marketing video.]
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Juicero Squeezed by Press and Internet
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"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
-- Bernard Berenson
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:30PM (14 children)
Seems like a great marketing opportunity. Jump on the IoT bandwagon of "cool connected gadgets" and market to an audience that is known to buy fancy kitchen gadgets and likely believe marketing for unproven health claims.
(By the way -- I'm NOT saying anyone who drinks juice or uses a juicer is gullible. Whole fruit and vegetables generally are better for you, but juice is a better choice than a lot of other stuff you could be consuming. Nevertheless, I think it's pretty clear that juicers are one of those "gadget" things that probably the majority of people buy thinking they're going to use every day, when in actuality they get it out once or twice per year and then it just gathers dust.)
Some fun quotes from TFA:
Dunn touted the device's connectivity. He said, for example, that the juice bag's QR codes allowed the company to remotely intervene in case of a product recall.
... or to remotely decide to brick your device or refuse to use juice packs that aren't the "more recent version" or allow hackers to -- I don't even know. What the hell does internet connectivity on a juicer even do??
He also advised against hand-squeezing the company's juice: "What you will get with hand-squeezed hacks is a mediocre (and maybe very messy) experience that you won't want to repeat once, let alone every day."
So, what you're telling me is that this $400 device is effectively a substitute for a decent pour spout on a pitcher?
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:40PM (1 child)
"So, what you're telling me is that this $400 device is effectively a substitute for a decent pour spout on a pitcher?"
Sounds like someone is rich and can afford to buy the $20 dollar pitcher. Some of us are stuck with the ones with the rounded lip that water tensions done the side of the pitcher instead of into the cup.
Next thing you are going to tell us is that there is some "technique" to pouring juice that makes it not do that, thats just ability shaming at its finest.
This juicer will finally solve all of the worlds problems.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 24 2017, @09:52AM
+1. We seem to be back at the 2000-or-so level of dotcom lunacy when a device to extract juice from a plastic bag gets $120M in funding.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:43PM (9 children)
Oh and if you think I'm being overly nasty about the marketing potential, I just read the Bloomberg piece [bloomberg.com], which has this choice quote:
The creator of Juicero is something of a luminary in the world of juicing. In 2002, Evans helped start Organic Avenue, a chain of juice bars selling cold-press concoctions in glass jars. The New York franchise drew rave reviews from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Hmm... "luminary"... "juicing"... "Organic"... "juice bar"... "cold-press"... "glass jars"... "New York"... "rave reviews from... Gwyneth Paltrow"...
I think we just won some sort of "natural foods" BS Bingo in three sentences! And he's humble to boot:
In an interview with technology website Recode, he likened his work to the invention of a mainstream personal computer by Apple’s Jobs. “There are 400 custom parts in here,” Evans told Recode. “There’s a scanner; there’s a microprocessor; there’s a wireless chip, wireless antenna.”
LOL.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:58PM (4 children)
WTF is cold-press juicing? is there a hot-press? the amount of stupid in this whole story makes me think idiocracy might be optimistic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:02PM (1 child)
It's not stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold-pressed_juice [wikipedia.org]
Perhaps a little bit of research on the matter before spouting off would be nice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 23 2017, @02:19AM
I wouldn't call it "stupid," but definitely overrated -- or "benefits exaggerated."
Cold-pressed juices can have different flavors and subtle textural differences, but the nutrient content is just *different*, not necessarily better. It's like cooking. Cooking was a huge evolutionary thing because it makes different nutrients more readily available. Cooking vegetables will destroy some things but release others. Cold-pressed juice has even more subtle differences, because "normal" juicers don't raise juice to cooking temps, but will tweak availability of various nutrients (and change the time profile of nutrients -- some people also irrationally believe that fresh juice must be superior, but enzyme activity will break down some things but make other nutrients available over time).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:35PM
There are juicers that use steam. They've been around forever so no way of patenting them:
Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Norpro-619-Stainless-Steamer-Juicer/dp/B002N5TQUK [amazon.com]
Making juice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5z9ExL5Pxg [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @10:05PM
"What *are* these electrolytes? Do you even know?"
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:49PM (3 children)
Typical of con artists, the ego.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @04:53PM
Indeed there was nothing wireless about Jobs's Apple.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 22 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
This is an idea so retarded it had to have come from San Francisco. * checks *
Yep, San Francisco, with an office in Los Angeles. There's no shortage of fools in California who enjoy being parted from their monies.
Can North Korea fucking nuke San Fran and L.A. already? It would solve both our faggot and Mexican problems overnight.
(Score: 1, Troll) by LoRdTAW on Sunday April 23 2017, @12:58AM
Wait, is Doug Evans a mexican faggot?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @09:55PM
wow. just wow. I can buy bottles of Lakewood Farms cold-pressed juices instead.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 24 2017, @10:00AM
It's not even a juicer as most people would understand it, it gets the juice out of a frickin plastic bag, not fresh fruit. This [youtube.com] is a juicer. Incidentally, they're hypnotic to watch if you can get to see one in action live.