$400 WiFi-enabled 4-ton-force juicer's $120 million fail

[Zetor]

B) That doesn't explain why venture capitalists funded this startup with 120 fucking million dollars!  

The answer is simple: they were Ventrue capitalists.

As a VC privilege, they also get access to the "Special Strawberry" juice bags. I hear they're very... filling, and made of by the best people.

[Cyrrex]

The only reason any of this works is because people are, for some reason, obsessed with juice.  What the fuck people?  Protip:  in most forms, juice isn't really good for you.  I would go out on a limb and say there are only rare or no exceptions where the juice from an object is better than just consuming the original object.   

Juice is like, I don't know...eating the skin on your chicken and throwing away the meat and pretending you are being healthy.  Somebody should make chicken skin juice.  Same general idea.

[calapine]

Which is another reason this machine is dumb, the drinks don't contain any fruitmeat (don't know the English term... ), so you lose all the fiber and lot's of vitamins.

[Cyrrex]

I like fruitmeat, so let's go with that. 

It also essentially concentrates the sugar content because you remove all the filler (and fiber), and thus consume far more of it.

[Rendakor]

B) That doesn't explain why venture capitalists funded this startup with 120 fucking million dollars!  

The answer is simple: they were Ventrue capitalists.

As a VC privilege, they also get access to the "Special Strawberry" juice bags. I hear they're very... filling, and made of by the best people.

I see what you did there.

[calapine]

I love all the Silcion Valley Markting Gobbledock these guys spew out.

The CEO:

Juicero’s mission is to make it dramatically easier and more enjoyable to consume more fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, and that’s a really tough nut to crack.

What I love about Juicero is that our team is attacking this issue in a way unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

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. [Hand squeezing is hacking, alright!]

The value of Juicero is more than a glass of cold-pressed juice. Much more.

The founder, quotes form an interview:

Q: I like it. I have to say I'm surprised. I thought it was juice in a bag and you just squeeze it into your glass. For some reason I just thought that.

A: Yeah, you wouldn't need a $699 device to do that.

Q: Oh right, it's the pressure that you're paying for.

A: Yeah exactly. [höhö  ]

I was on a treadmill. And I thought, "What can I do that can have the greatest impact on humanity, on human health?"
--
There are 400 custom parts in here. There's two motors, there's 10 printed circuit boards, there's a scanner, there's a microprocessor, there's a wireless chip, wireless antenna. There's 775 aircraft-grade aluminum. There's a gear box. There's latches that support 16,000 pounds of force. So this is basically a monster of a machine inside this veil of this nice aesthetic.
--
I think we're a company wanting to have an impact on human health and the planet and the environment. I don't think in terms of tech or food.
--
And I said, "I'm going to do what Steve did. I'm going to take the mainframe computer and create a personal computer, I'm going to take a mainframe juice press and I'm going to create a personal juice press,"
--

And here is a Youtube presentation by Doug Evans, the founder, music included.


I really hate these kind of people with every fiber (see what I did there? ) of my being.  

[Morat20]

Which is another reason this machine is dumb, the drinks don't contain any fruitmeat (don't know the English term... ), so you lose all the fiber and lot's of vitamins.

In orange juice, it's the "pulp". Maybe that's for all fruits, I don't know. Fruitmeat is a pretty awesome term though.

[rattran]

"Flesh" is the normal English term. Fruitmeat is more specific portmanteau though, I like it.

[NowhereMan]

I think technically it's only pulp after it's had all the juice squeezed out and been generally crushed. Flesh would be prior to that but generally we just call it fruit when we're eating it i.e. the edible parts don't really get referred to separately, the assumption is when you're eating an orange it's just the flesh so we have terms for the non-edible parts that do get used but no-one typically talks about the 'fruitmeat'.

[Trippy]

Juicero and its CEO deserve the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them. However there are some misconceptions what market this machine is targeting.

Some people when they hear the word "juicer" are thinking along the lines of an orange juicer like these things:



This machine, however, is actually competing against things that can extract juice from vegetables like spinach, kale and carrots like these things:



To put it another way this thing is making the equivalent of this:



not this:



Those of you living in Trump-land may not realize that "juice" and "juicer" have different meanings now among those this machine is targeted towards. A relatively small but growing population of people are spending not-insignificant amounts money on these new-style of vegetable-focused juices helped along by various celebrity endorsements. LA, which is ground zero for this movement, has a crazy amount of juice bars especially around areas like West Hollywood which has like 20 of them within a 1 square mile area, and it's spread to other big cities and their surrounding areas.

My biggest issue with the Juicero is actually the price of the packs. Blueprint juices are ~$10 - $12 for 16 oz bottles in stores. Juicero packs are $5 - $8 dollars for <=8 oz of juice (Pomegranate is especially egregious at $8 for 3 oz) making them on average more expensive per ounce than Blueprint or other comparable juices.

[schild]

Was someone here actually confused? I'm not reading every post.

Literally every city has a fuckload of juice bars in it.

They all serve the same thing.

Foul tasting horseshit.

[IainC]

Do the Blueprint juices require a $400 machine that only works when it has a wifi connection to open the bottles for you?

[Chimpy]

So this is a internet connected, less environmentally friendly take on the $200 things that Jack Lalane was hawking on infomercials 25 years ago.

Got it.

[Soln]

I need my Kale and Cocaine drink in the morning or I'm not really committed.

[calapine]

Well, we have those too in bigger supermarkets. The juices are pressed by the staff and filled in bottles in the morning and put on an ice bench for the customer to take.

Although admittedly the ingredients are more pedestrian. For example 100% carrot juice (my favorite) or Bananas+Orange juice mixed.

Prices are € 1.99 for 0.5 liter or €4.49 for 1 liter. Around an hour before shop closing all the unsold juices of the day are discounted by 50%, which is the only time I buy them.

[NowhereMan]

This machine exists for idiots who want one at home because they don't like cleaning their current juicer and idiots who want one in their office to impress other idiots who might be willing to invest in their tech company because they seem like they're successful.

[Torinak]

It'll be super-awesome when the $400 juicers become part of a botnet, and are then destroyed when a rival botnet operator points brickerbot at them.

Just about every IoT device is some shit trying to find a problem to solve. They're easy to fund because there's just so much VC money floating around (due to concentration of wealth) that's desperate to find anything in which to speculate.

[Trippy]

Do the Blueprint juices require a $400 machine that only works when it has a wifi connection to open the bottles for you?

I know people like making fun of the Internet-requirement of the device but given that the contents of the bag are unpasteurized and extremely perishable it makes sense to have some safety mechanisms in place. Without the Internet connection the expiration check is too easy to bypass manually (just set the device's clock back) and you lose the recalled product lock out ability. Larger-scale produced speciality juices like Blueprint are safer cause those are either High Pressure Pasteurized or Flash Pasteurized and don't need Internet-connected bottle openers to monitor their safety.

[IainC]

The expiry date is also printed on the packs. Are you really trying to make the argument that bypassing the effort of reading a label is worth the overhead of a required wi-fi connection?

[Trippy]

I don't think the target market for this machine really cares the device needs to be on the Internet all the time.

[schild]

for $120M i'll cater to any miniscule market of yuppy assholes

who needs an exact, automatic, 3 square peel of toilet paper every time?

we can build that

[IainC]

I don't think the target market for this machine really cares the device needs to be on the Internet all the time.

Actually, a lot of them are. I can't find the article now but the Venn diagram overlap of people dumb enough to buy a bag squeezer and people who don't understand the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation is significant. There have been several calls for the wi-fi to be optional.

for $120M i'll cater to any miniscule market of yuppy assholes

who needs an exact, automatic, 3 square peel of toilet paper every time?

we can build that

Shittr

[MahrinSkel]

Don't forget the social media integration. It needs to anounce your bowl movements on Instagram.

--Dave

[Morat20]

The expiry date is also printed on the packs. Are you really trying to make the argument that bypassing the effort of reading a label is worth the overhead of a required wi-fi connection?

Place barcode on bag that lists expiration date. Scan barcode. There's 100 dollar savings.

If user sets his fucking clock back a month, user is liable for his own stupid food poisoning for being a stupid fuck.

[Trippy]

for $120M i'll cater to any miniscule market of yuppy assholes

Which begs the question how they managed to get so much money in the first place when the entire cold-pressed juice market here in the US is likely less than $200 million in size*. The wider juice space is a multi-billion dollar market but given that this machine can't make competitively priced basic juices like orange or apple juice I can't see how the VC's thought they were going to get a 10x return on their investment.

* $100 million in 2015 is the best estimate I've seen so far: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-juice-20150131-story.html

[Chimpy]

VC money is easily manipulated by hucksters. Just like voters.

See Theranos for an even more colossal fuckup.

[Morat20]

VC money is easily manipulated by hucksters. Just like voters.

See Theranos for an even more colossal fuckup.

There's that damn stupid solar roadway thing, for instance. WTF? We're gonna drive on solar panels? Good fucking luck, magic materials science that creates roadway surface as tough, rugged, waterproof as the usual multi-layer shit AND clear as fucking glass.

All that money, pissed away. Whereas you could just take regular solar panels, the shit that's getting cheaper than dirt, and stick them on a roof on top of parking structures and lots in every city, mall, business park and strip center south of, say, Denver and make a steady profit for the next 25 years selling power to the businesses nearby or back to the grid. While commuter feel both virtuous for helping contribute to green energy, their cars get to park in the shade, and they don't get wet when it fucking rains.

[Trippy]

VC money is easily manipulated by hucksters. Just like voters.

See Theranos for an even more colossal fuckup.

The market Theranos was claiming to address, before it turned out they are frauds, though, is humongous -- as in tens of billions of dollars in size.

E.g. let's say the blood testing market is $50 billion and Theranos's funding is $700 million. At a P/E ratio of 50 and a profit of margin of 30%, Theranos would only need revenue numbers of $467 million in a year or ~1% of the blood testing market to hit a $7 billion valuation on the public market or a 10x return to investors.

For Juicero let's grant them a future P/E ratio of 30 and a profit margin of 15%. That would require revenue of $267 million in a year, which is larger than the entire market currently, to hit $1.2 billion in valuation and a 10x return.

[Chimpy]

I wasn't saying that the markets were similar, just that VC people are easily swayed by charismatic presentations full of buzzwords like "cloud", "disruptive", "groundbreaking", and "innovative".

[Khaldun]

I am 100% not confused about what the Juicero assholes are selling to. First off, they're just Theranos in a glass, as has been pointed out: grifters who know that venture capitalist are fucking DESPERATE to score big with another unicorn and so are primed to fall for anything. Second, yeah, I understand that a "juicer" is not a thing you manually make orange juice with. My brother had a higher end Breville juicer; I make stuff sometimes along these lines with my blender. It is not a huge hassle or difficulty. This is the result of dumb venture capitalists meeting grifters who said, "It's like a Keurig for juice" and the dumb venture capitalists said, "OH YES PLEASE HERE IS MONEY".

[Cyrrex]

Haha, a blender.  It's like you're some kind of cave person!

[jgsugden]

The real value in this is the customer list. A list of people dumb and rich enough to get this cap is digital gold.

[schild]

for $120M i'll cater to any miniscule market of yuppy assholes

Which begs the question how they managed to get so much money in the first place when the entire cold-pressed juice market here in the US is likely less than $200 million in size*. The wider juice space is a multi-billion dollar market but given that this machine can't make competitively priced basic juices like orange or apple juice I can't see how the VC's thought they were going to get a 10x return on their investment.

* $100 million in 2015 is the best estimate I've seen so far: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-juice-20150131-story.html

Eh. I would almost bet the Austin market alone for this foul-tasting horseshit is over $100M.

LA is surely way over that.

Fucking whole foods has 10 brands of fresh-pressed juice here.

[NowhereMan]

But really with that market you're not looking so much at people who buy juice from Whole Foods, you're looking at people that are buying home juicers already or convincing VCs that the people who are buying juice from the shops but haven't bought one for home yet is due to not wanting to deal with clean up or concern over food safety. I could see people believing the former but the latter is clearly bullshit.

You are then selling a $400 device as the entry point so you can probably count out anyone that has gone for a noticeably cheaper juicer (admittedly I don't know the current price point) so you are looking at a potential market upselling people that have a juicer and possibly getting a percentage of the store bough juice market with the offer of convenience.

I'm guessing that they're selling on a business plan of getting the main unit price down to $250 or so with a projection in capturing a significantly larger market share than current juicers enjoy and simultaneously cannibalising much of the existing juicer market. I can imagine they base a lot of their projections on the success of Nespresso, working with their numbers and ignoring the starting point difference in the number of coffee drinkers versus juice drinkers.

That said I can imagine them making a relatively successful business out of this but nothing to justify the amount invested into it.

[MahrinSkel]

But they're *disrupting* the juice market. Don't you understand how disruption works?

Yeah, neither does Silicon Valley.

--Dave