I have a friend who worked at Juicero, so unlike 99% of the people here on HN, I have a lot of info on it, and didn't just read the headlines. In fact, I had mo

I have a friend who worked at Juicero, so unlike 99% of the people here on HN, I have a lot of info on it, and didn't just read the headlines. In fact, I had more than a few glasses of Juicero drinks whenever I visited her place (generally hated it, but I'm not their target demo). Overall, I never liked the idea, and I told her that. I said it was way too expensive and they would have to decrease the price by 80% for it to be viable. But for the people who got it, mainly celebrities and millionaires, they loved it. I think I remember that Beyonce or Katy Perry or Britney got it for all of her dancers, etc. The entire "green juice" industry is large, and the founder made his first millions by selling chains of these types of juices. The target was to make a glass of green juice less expensive than what you would find at a high-end gym or juice shop. The plan was to build it out with the people who were willing to pay for them, like celebrities and influencers, and then make them mass-market. The biggest expense was getting the food chain up and running, trying to get enough local farmers, etc, and getting the freshest ingredients possible. The internet connection, while ridiculous on the surface, was necessary to ensure that the ingredients were still fresh, because they literally had no preservatives. They wanted to avoid having people drinking a glass of mold or worse especially if they weren't mindful of expiration dates. This could also help if they sold these presses to juice shops (a later business strategy) and the person selling the juice might have old expired stock. But once it was set up, the plan was to scale out and lower prices through higher volume. Unfortunately, the bad press hit just as they were doing a round of funding and went bankrupt soon after because funding dried up. Do I think it would have been a hit? Probably not. But the idea wasn't absolutely stupid. It's about the same as any other Silicon Valley idea I've heard. Cater to a very select market of influencers first, and then scale out and create a new market based on green juices. The company absolutely believed that green juices would help the world, because it's a lot healthier, etc, so if you buy into that mindset that they could create a new industry, then it made sense. Did they make pure business strategy mistake? Yes, just like other companies. Did the founder have too much of a Steve-Jobs-Deity complex by trying to over-design the press? Yes. But it's not nearly as bad as people believe from the headlines. The goal was to create a new market, like how Uber created a market by lowering prices for ridesharing. If you could lower the price of green juice to the price of a Starbucks latte from $15, then they really felt like this company would be a tremendous success.