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Juicero Is Shutting Down

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211–220 of 413 posts

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#211
post #184

Founder seems to be having a good time at Burning Man the day his company shuts down.[1] [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/BYaIlV4jFb5/?taken-by=dougevans

Even founders of failed startups deserve a chance to relax.

Never claimed otherwise, just unfortunate or perhaps obtuse timing. People around here sure wouldn't dare miss the Burn, even as their company burned out.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#212

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

This investment seemed to me to be in search of the next Dollar Shave Club.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like... 70% fresh squeezed. The fruit is chopped up into smaller pieces, so for the most part there isn't much difference, and it is very new fruit. But to the target demographic 70% might as well be 0%.

Once you cut open fruit and vegetables, the elements and bacteria are introduced and they start to break down.

Which is why the bags have a super short shelf life and the machine has a barcode scanner that will detect and refuse to squeeze expired bags. They touted this as a feature, of course.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#214
post #124

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.

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.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, I've always thought Juicero was a bank shot for digitized food in general. If that's the case, they needed to be serving consumers not businesses. The concept of food that's uniquely tagged and tracked from origin to consumption is pretty attractive - makes contamination a breeze to trace back, keeps you from cooking with rotten food since the machine knows to reject it, and it could automatically tra…

If you use a loyalty card at a Kroger owned store, they'll tell you if something is flagged for contamination, it's an automated call system. There is already pretty reasonable tracking on the industry side of the food equation; some things are better than others. It's just not at the point of consumption. I'm kind of okay with this, I'd rather the industry as a whole do more things to prevent contamination period. M…

The idea itself isn't horrible. But investing $100m in a niche home appliance that hadn't yet been validated in the market was just dumb.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#216

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

The answer to this is fairly straightforward: VCs don't actually expect (or need) every investment to be successful, they just need it to have the potential to be huge if everything works out.

Laypeople always seem shocked when a VC-funded company implodes. We should actually be surprised if we didn't see routine flame-outs, as that would mean VCs aren't taking on appropriate quantities of risk for the asset class.

As a final aside: I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled an about-face on businesses I initially thought were stupid -- once I had a chance to talk to the founders and better understand the vision. Many of these seemingly 'dumb' ideas have surprising depth.

Some, granted, are in fact dumber than a box of rocks.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#217

This will serve as a good example for future startups where taking one concept from one market does not always work in another market. Keurig managed to make a great product at an affordable price range, both the machines ($80-$250) and the K-Cups (~$0.85 per pod). However, a $400 machine, that just squeezes the pack for juice, and each juice pack running several dollars is enough to kill anyone's wallet. I liked how…

But how is it sustainable to grow fruit, pick it, wash and peel it, then cut it up and put it into some sort of disposable bag, then ship it to each individual who wants it, then require them to own an appliance that likely runs on fossil fuels to get the product out? They could have just shipped bottle of juice to the local supermarket and cut out the machine entirely. The waste would have been less because the bott…

To clarify, I meant sustainable in the context of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, not in their overall manufacturing process and waste output.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#218

Founder seems to be having a good time at Burning Man the day his company shuts down.[1] [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/BYaIlV4jFb5/?taken-by=dougevans

I suppose I'm not the target demo. But I'm not too interested in buying anything from the man in this video.

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#219

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

[deleted]

Re: Juicero Is Shutting Down

#220

I simply do not understand the mindset of silicon valley investors. I used to think that perhaps they had some edge that helped them to get behind successful companies, but looking at this -- how much money they raised and from whom -- I think that there are just a bunch of people who have so much money that they can afford to risk throwing it away on something that will not likely succeed. Can someone watch the vide…

This investment seemed to me to be in search of the next Dollar Shave Club.

The idea of getting people to subscribe to your product looks really good to your investors these days -- once you get people to start the subscription, they are likely to keep giving you money, even when they don't really want the product anymore because there is some effort in canceling it.

I am NOT saying anything bad about the DSC, I love the commercials, but you have to wonder about a company who's business model is intertwined with subscribing to a product.

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