Silicon Valley's $400 Internet connected juicer is superfluous.

One of the most lavishly funded gadget startups in Silicon Valley last year was Juicero Inc. It makes a juice machine.

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. Tech blogs have dubbed it a “Keurig for juice.”

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. Bloomberg performed its own press test, pitting a Juicero machine against a reporter’s grip. The experiment found that squeezing the bag yields nearly the same amount of juice just as quickly—and in some cases, faster—than using the device.

Juicero declined to comment. A person close to the company said Juicero is aware the packs can be squeezed by hand but that most people would prefer to use the machine because the process is more consistent and less messy. The device also reads a QR code printed on the back of each produce pack and checks the source against an online database to ensure the contents haven’t expired or been recalled, the person said.

Source

The Mac of juciers.

Whoever thought of that idea is either the biggest idiot in the world or an accomplished business genius. Doug Evans found a way to scam his way into millions of dollars.

Wow. He really did it

The evidence is piling up — Silicon Valley is being destroyed

"Is that what Silicon Valley scientists and business leaders really want? ... Was their goal really to create "anti-competitive juice packet lock-in"?"

Or you know, just stick with smoothies and eat the actual ENTIRE FRUIT and get ALL the nutrients.

Juice is pretty terrible for you, and wasteful.

"Oh wow, look at this marvelous piece of fruit. Hmmmm let me squeeze all the water and sugar out of it, ignore all the fiber and a majority of the nutrients, and while I am at it let me just make it so I need ten times the amount of fruit to yield the same volume if I just used the whole fruit versus the juice"

Just eat a freaking apple or orange. What are you, toothless?

*and yeah I know it's about demand and "Oh well if people want it, they should be able to have it" but I want to complain about it, so I should have that too

HARRUMPH!

saw this the other day.. makes me think we're in another tech bubble where any idiot that says "internet!" to an investor get thrown a shitload of money...

I... what... this isn't a juicer... This is an I'm Too Lazy to Squeeze Juice Out of a Bagger.

To be fair, Keurig made millions off of an, "I'm too lazy to put a scoop of coffee into a coffeemaker" machine.

This thing has some really nice DRM too. In order to use it you need a smart phone ap, wifi, a subscription, and their proprietary juice bags. This device is everything that is wrong with silicon valley and its beautiful

I don't like it when people say it's too complicated and that's all I hear from techys.

Bah! Just stuff the damn fruit in a whoopee cushion and sit on it.

Chewing gets old but throwing things in the blender never tastes right like the strawberries died in the blender.

A friggin $400 juicer with a DRM. The wonders of this world never ceases.

I loved your comment the "mac of juicers" so true lol.

Wait, can you re-full the bags yourself with fruit you have grown or from a supermarket, or do you NEED to keep buying the pre-packaged fruit from the juicer company?

I also find the QR code to get expiry date to be needlessly complicated when simply printing the date is much simpler.

The juicing fad needs to die in my opinion, or at least the perception that it's just as healthy as eating fruit in their natural form, because it's not.

Hmm. Apparently this is an ongoing thing. I haven't kept up with Silicon Valley news so I don't know what's what. Oh well. What if we all stopped caring so much about patents.