Juicero: The $120 Million Wi-Fi-Connected Juice Squeezer That Squeezed Itself Out of Business

Once upon a time in the magical land of Silicon Valley, where unicorns roamed and venture capital flowed like artisanal water, there lived a company called Juicero. With dreams as big as their $120 million in startup venture capital, they set out to revolutionize the way we consume juice. Armed with Wi-Fi connectivity and proprietary packets of pre-chopped fruits and veggies, Juicero was ready to take the world by storm.

But as the saying goes, “When life gives you pre-chopped fruit, make juice. Or just use your hands.”

Juicero burst onto the scene in 2016, offering a juicer that was more connected than your average teenager. With a price tag of $699, it promised to do the impossible: turn those pesky fruit and veggie packets into the nectar of the gods at the push of a button. Or, you know, with a firm squeeze.

In the world of juicing, convenience is king. And Juicero delivered, as long as you define “convenience” as “having a machine do what your hands can do in a fraction of the time.” But wait, there’s more! Each packet came with its very own QR code, ensuring that your juice-making experience was as high-tech as possible. You couldn’t just go rogue and squeeze those packets; you needed the machine to approve it. We wouldn’t want any rogue juicing incidents, would we?

CEO Jeff Dunn assured us that this QR code was for our own safety, like a digital babysitter for our juice. After all, we can’t have our juice packets going bad, and we certainly can’t trust ourselves to remember when they expire. Imagine the horror of drinking juice from a packet that’s a day past its prime! The nerve.

But not everyone was convinced. Some skeptics believed that this was less about safety and more about making sure you only used Juicero-approved packets. It was like a fruit and veggie club with a secret handshake, and you needed their expensive machine to join.

Then came the day that shook the juicing world to its core. Bloomberg News, those investigative daredevils, decided to put Juicero to the test. Armed with nothing but their human hands and a healthy dose of skepticism, they squeezed those packets. And lo and behold, the juice flowed freely, just like it did from the expensive Juicero machine. It was a revelation. It was a revelation that cost $120 million to discover.

Juicero, now facing more hand-squeezing competition than they ever could have imagined, did what any responsible company would do. They defended their product, claiming that squeezing by hand was a messy affair and an insult to the art of juicing. But then they realized that their juice-squeezing emperor had no clothes (or rather, no Wi-Fi connectivity), and they offered full refunds to anyone who felt betrayed by their fancy machine.

Venture capitalist Ben Einstein, after dissecting the Juicero device, summed it up perfectly: “an incredibly complicated piece of engineering” that didn’t need to be so complicated. It was as if they designed a rocket ship to cross the street.

And so, with a whimper, Juicero pressed the button on its own demise, suspending sales and searching for a buyer. They became a symbol of Silicon Valley’s excess, a cautionary tale of a company that raised millions for a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. But hey, at least they reminded us that sometimes, the simplest way to make juice is just to use your hands.