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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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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
poverty, n.:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:31PM (8 children)
This tends to confirm my suspicions about successful venture capitalists: they don't have a clue about business.
They are not successful because they are better at identifying or guiding businesses to success, they just have the money. They got lucky once or twice and have parlayed that success into ever more money.
VCs hire MBAs straight out of school and then have those same MBAs running or advising businesses, when there is evidence that MBAs are a negative for the businesses they advise.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:41PM (3 children)
Are there many VC then that has engineers to run and advice businesses?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:08PM (2 children)
As far as I can tell, most VC firms don't have those kinds of roles. Which seems incredibly dumb: If I'm a vulture capitalist, then I'd make a lot more money if I had people on staff who could hear the presentations and give them a rating of how realistic or crackpot their idea is.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:17PM
It seems you fail to understand how VC's make money, profitable companies is not the method, ripping off investors is, so if you take the company public you win, it does not matter what the company does or even if it does anything, so long as it sounds like it does something, or alternatively if you can't get a bank on your side to spin your IPO you rip off pensioners and people with a substantial nest egg in boiler room type scams, if the company actually makes money that's great but it's a side effect not an objective, silicon valley is mostly grifting
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:55PM
It's depressing, but: it's marketing all the way down. VCs probably don't care about your product. They care whether or not you can make a charismatic sales pitch. If you are someone who can sell ice to eskimos [wiktionary.org] (I'm sure that's not PC anymore, tough), then you get funded.
Really, it seem to be the standard Silicon Valley strategy: Get something, anything up as a product. Spend on marketing, build hype, sell at the peak, and get out before reality hits. The sociopath's way of doing business, which contributes nothing useful to society.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:00PM (2 children)
From what I can gather from the people I've known who had MBAs, what those programs teach, in a nutshell is how to:
- use Excel at a really expert level
- hoodwink people you will be dealing with: customers, investors, your bosses, and especially employees
- ruin perfectly good personal relationships by turning them into business relationships
- cultivate personal relationships primarily for how you can turn them into money-making business relationships
Or, in short, how to behave like a sociopath, whether or not you naturally are one. Obviously, people who actually are sociopathic have an easier time with these kinds of programs than others.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @05:10PM (1 child)
People that are naturally sociopaths are also known as psychopaths, being a sociopath is always a choice
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:04PM
I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath.
S.H.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @07:09PM
It's more a matter of the amount of money that venture capitalists have combined with a relatively small number of projects to fund and the lack of expertise on each idea.
Raising the capital gains taxes to something more reasonable at the same time that interests rates are allowed to return to something more normal would likely go a long way towards addressing problems like that.