Slashdot Mirror
Silicon Valley's $400 Juicer May Be Feeling the Squeeze (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: One of the most lavishly funded gadget startups in Silicon Valley last year was Juicero Inc. It makes a juice machine. The product was an unlikely pick for top technology investors, but they were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage. Doug Evans, the company's founder, would compare himself with Steve Jobs in his pursuit of juicing perfection. He declared that his juice press wields four tons of force -- "enough to lift two Teslas," he said. Google's venture capital arm and other backers poured about $120 million into the startup. Juicero sells the machine for $400, plus the cost of individual juice packs delivered weekly. But after the product hit the market, some investors were surprised to discover a much cheaper alternative: You can squeeze the Juicero bags with your bare hands. Two backers said the final device was bulkier than what was originally pitched and that they were puzzled to find that customers could achieve similar results without it.
It makes a juice machine or it makes juice?
Here I thought you would stick fruit containers in it, and it would pulp them up. But using bags of... juice? Did no one along the line wonder what the device was actually for?
This device showed up in my FB feed nonstop. There wasn't one good comment or praise. Mostly people pointed out how wasteful the packaging was. I felt like the lack of fiber was bad too.
Modern app appers know that ONLY apps can app apps, and this LUDDITE machine doesn't have an appy app app! It only has LUDDITE juice!
Apps!
The Pico Brewer is almost a 1000 dollars for a machine that homebrews beer. I just don't see spending that kind of money on something that could be home built for substantially less.
... of finest silly valley laughing stock.
... some investors were surprised to discover a much cheaper alternative: You can squeeze the Juicero bags with your bare hands. Two backers said the final device was bulkier than what was originally pitched and that they were puzzled to find that customers could achieve similar results without it.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms...
...Plants into juice. You absolutely can't compete in the 'juicer space" without internet connectivity; I wonder WTF their competitors were even thinking...
Too much sugar and it rots your teeth. There is a reason your grandma had those little juice cups that were a bit bigger than a shot glass.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Back in the old days. a pair of HP engineers put in purchase order for a Saturn V rocket launcher and it got all the way to VP before it got cancel. These days you can combine a toaster with an iPhone, call it iToast, and no one will think twice about throwing money at it.
It's not a juicer if it doesn't even make juice. All it's doing is squeezing already made juice out of a fancy bag. So if anything, it is a $400 (after the price drop, looks like it was originally $700) juice dispenser, not juicer. Looking at the photos in the article, it looks like what we would have if CapriSun was made by Apple.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Too many people fall for the 'jucing' meme every year, which is why shitty companies keep producing them. You want to eat healthier and be healthier? Eat whole fruits and vegetables instead. Goal attained, and you saved hundreds of dollars in the process. You're welcome.
It's called economy of scale. You can make a lot of beer more cheaply on a per liter basis than a liter at a time.
Silicon Valley is one of the weirdest places you can visit on Earth.
Strange things happen when you take naive, out-of-touch leftists and then give them huge amounts of money that they didn't really earn in any meaningful way.
For example, you end up with a city like San Francisco that's supposedly "liberal" and has immense financial wealth, yet it also has the highest concentration of homeless in America. What's worse, they aren't just homeless, but they act in the most uncivilized ways possible. They urinate and defecate on sidewalks, for example, and then turn around and sleep in their own filth! There are entire districts of the city where this is a typical scene.
You end up with absurd property zoning bylaws that prevent anything resembling modern high-density development. So not only are there many homeless, but housing becomes increasingly scarce and nearly impossible to afford even for those who should be able to support themselves. It even gets to the point that highly-paid professionals, who in other cities live in very nice housing, end up living out of their vehicles.
You end up with a large number of adults who have a mentality that's comparable to that of a child. What's worse, these people somehow become CEOs and other executives at companies. They expect all sorts of unreasonable accommodation, and you shouldn't be surprised to see them crying (yes, with actual tears and pouting) if they don't get their way, or especially if somebody says something "mean" to them.
You end up with technology that's utterly asinine in its concept and execution. For example, just look at the UIs of software like Firefox and Chrome. They're total rubbish. Or you end up with devices that cost a huge amount of money for delivering very little practical value.
When visitors come to Silicon Valley, one of the first things they notice is that they're saying "What the fuck?!" to themselves constantly. The more you learn about the region and its people, the more idiotic it all seems. Things happen there that would be laughed at and ridiculed everywhere else, yet these things are considered perfectly normal by the local inhabitants, despite how much stupidity and idiocy is often involved.
Silicon Valley is all about "What the fuck?!"
Joy Lane. This is all her fault.
So you buy packets of fruit instead of going to a farmer's market for locally grown organic fruit? Seems like they don't understand the target demographic of juice-a-holics.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The idea is so silly it sounds like something The Onion came up with. Anyone remember Egraters.com?
Isn't a BlendTec home version about $400? I'm pretty sure it can not only juice, but crush ice and is likely to last the rest of your life. So. If I were going to blow that much money on something in my kitchen... I'm going with something that has a reputation. Otherwise I'm going to do what I usually do--spend a lot less money and count it as a victory if the thing lasts 5 years.
and who is stupid enough to think all my kitchen appliances need internet connections, sheesh only an idiot would pay 400 dollars for a juicer, these fools deserve to go bankrupt,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
So.. your overpriced machine will only juice fruits that were purchased through your company. i.e. the only people who would buy your product, are people who hate themselves.
OMG, I was just kidding. But apparently I was right: it really is just like an iPhone.
That products like these are considered viable, is one of the saddest things ever. But on the bright side, why would a user squeeze the packets themselves? That doesn't waste enough money, and the customer's desire for self-harm is your market. Don't worry about the packet-squeezers; they never would have bought your machine, nor your overpriced packets in the first place. Concentrate on the self-loathing idiots, just like Apple did.
are soon squeezed dry?
TFA says that Alphabet is one of the investors in this miraculous juice technology.
So the real purpose of the article? Create a trumped up controversy in order to generate hype before the IPO. Everyone is supposed to think the stock is cheap because of the controversy while thinking they are the clever one who sees the business model will work because the consumables are what matter. When everyone is the clever "one" they all buy the stock and the original investors get the profits.
*yawn*
"Gotta get a juicer, gotta drink juice, lose weight, won't get chest pains from answering the phone anymore!"
Im thinking the internet connection is so it would automatically reorder new bags when you are close to running out or let you manually order extra or different flavors. Nothing that you couldnt set up on your own. Im sure this is just a novelty added to the machine for the 'wow factor'.
Nope. According to the product web site, it scans a code (bar code or QR code I guess) on each bag and validates against an online database whether the contents have expired or if the product is subject to a recall.
And just how the hell will I now forget to put a receptacle in place and dispense $5 of pre-made juice onto my kitchen counter by phone? BY PHONE, do you understand?? This is Internet-connected! IoT! AI! Deep Learning!
I'll bet it could order its own $1000 worth of juice refills from Amazon automatically, too, dammit.
They should collaborate, co-mingle or do some sort of strategic conaplication. They are made for each other.
Tat Tvam Asi
Anyone paying $400 for a juicer should be fired out of a cannon and into a brick wall. In Russia we made and still make juice with a cotton pad and a baking roller. No motors. No machines. Works fine. No mess because everything is on the pad and you toss the pad when you are done. Hell, my grandparents generation would wash the pad and reuse it too. Its degenerate to spend $400 like this. Criminal.
I don't know which is worse: that a company exists that thinks there are people stupid enough to pay ten times what this thing is worth, or that that there are enough stupid people in the country that will pay that outrageous price to support such a company.
With my $40 blender, I can make a frosty, 40-ounce Organic slushy by adding ice and about $3.00 worth of Organic fruits and vegetables. That's about sixty cents for an 8-ounce glass of a tasty, healthy snack in drink form.
Having lots of fibre and vitamins in your diet is good. But a juicer is basically a machine for separating the fibre from the juice, and it also separates the skin of the fruit which often contains a lot of vitamins.
Juice by itself is sweet and tasty, but it basically gets all of its calories from carbohydrates, and without any fibre the carbs will hit your system quickly. The glycemic index of carrot juice is very high, while eating carrots will not usually have much effect on your blood sugar. (See the difference between glycemic index and glycemic load: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_load)
If you want to enjoy a tasty beverage that is better for you than juice, I recommend you get a VitaMix. The VitaMix company has been around for decades, and their product is an extremely expensive blender that is IMHO worth the expense. A VitaMix is so much more powerful than a cheap blender that it can do things the cheap blender cannot do.
So a typical fruit smoothie will start with some juice or even water and then throw fruit in, where the 2 horsepower motor at full speed breaks the fibre, skin, and even seeds down to the point where you don't really even know they are there. If you want to add a pleasing orange color to a smoothie, throw in some carrots; the texture will be a bit thicker and the color will be orange but you won't find any carrot chunks.
VitaMix has competitors, and some of the competitors may be as good. BlendTec and Ninja seem to have similar horsepower. I'm only recommending VitaMix since I have had one in my house for like two decades now. We use it so much that, despite the high purchase cost, it has a very low cost per operating minute... our food processor cost less but we hardly use the thing.
My favorite recipe: put a cup of plain yogurt into the blender, and add a spoonful of sugar and a squeeze of lime juice. Then dump a 10-ounce bag of frozen organic strawberries in (still frozen!), and run the blender on "high" while using the "tamper" to push the berries down into the blades. When the texture is smooth, serve. Don't overblend because you don't want to heat up the mixture. It's a tasty sweet dessert, and much healthier than any strawberry frozen yogurt you can buy.
Here's an example of throwing various hunks of vegetables into the thing to make a vegetable smoothie. After that demo the next demo is a sweet fruit smoothie. https://youtu.be/1qemLSu63d0?t=1m36s
P.S. LOL, YouTube appears to have a channel called "Blender Babes" where young females demonstrate blenders. I wonder what would happen if they tried to get a booth at a conference that bans "booth babes"... would they not be allowed at their own booth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXG65NgmrIM
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
If I'm paying $400 for a juicer, it out to be able to peel at least oranges and lemons that I put in it. Maybe even clean/wash them before they get juiced.
That would actually be useful: a labor-saving juicer that you just toss stuff into a hopper and it takes care of it without any additional effort.
Dang, $5 for a bag of fruit that I press into juice, with or without a device, is obscene.
Not only does $5 of fruit amount to WAY more than a single glass of juice around here, but $5 of fruit has WAY more than just juice in it. I can eat the fruit, which quite frankly is WAY better than juice alone.
And if I want just juice, well then I don't need lovely fruit. I can get unripenned (often better for raw juice) or over-ripe (often better for sweetened juice) even cheaper.
And if I really just want juice, $5 buys me a beautiful tropicana carton of WAY more than just one glass of juice.
Don't skimp on the blender part. Also, when I make it I use rum instead of yogurt. It's heaven in a glass, and all-natural so I know it's good for me.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There are 400 custom parts in here
cringe
So I have to by bags of juice to use a juicer? And people backed this scam?
Kinda kills the idea that Silicon Valley investors are any smarter then... well anybody.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Make the machine cheap and sell the consumables above cost.
I'm looking for investment money in my product,it's a rock,but with an internet connection (wi-fi/4gsim),it does nothing but warm up in daylight and cool down again at night,it can be yours for $300,but I need 100 m upfront to open a production facility..
Any donation gratefully spent..
A "juicer" that is totally usless,what happens if you give it something real ?
A fool and his money are soon parted.
There's one born every minute.
Why would anyone subscribe to a porn site? When you exhaust their free samples, move on to another site. There are so many - why would anyone pay?
Just be happy that there are people out there that do pay, otherwise there won't be (new) free samples. My guess is that there is a quality differential, between the free samples and the premium content, sufficiently high to cause enough men to subscribe and make this a viable business model.
Are they just buying Naked Juice and Odwalla bottles, putting them in bags, then reselling them with a markup? Brilliant. Plenty of people will buy it.
Or Nespresso ?
... the giddy days of dot.com version 1.0. They didn't do market analyses or thorough business cases back then either.
Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here on the value of experience. Maybe, just maybe, it's worth having some old farts around?