Juicero smart juicer squeezed $ 120 million out of thin air

What businessmen will do to succeed and earn tens of millions of dollars! Sometimes scam artists quickly expose, but sometimes they manage to fool the public and, most importantly, investors - and get the coveted investment.

One of the most promising startups in 2016 called Juicero turned out to be the most high-profile scam. Watch and learn.

It must first be noted that in Western countries there is a real boom in healthy eating. If you eat vegetables, then only grown in a nearby vegetable garden near the city without the use of pesticides. If the meat - only from the cow, which was killed in an extremely humane way. If the juice - only fresh.
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But squeezing juices manually every day, even on a juicer, is a time consuming procedure. At least, it takes a lot of time, and there is no time for lovers of healthy eating. And here the startup Juicero came on the scene.

Juicero promised a real revolution in the foodtech market. With the help of a special gadget, they promised to produce "the freshest juice that is possible." The idea is that the sliced ​​fruits and vegetables are packed in packages and inserted into a high-tech squeezer, which squeezes the juice out of the bag under high pressure.

No more fussing to wash and cut the fruit, then no need to clean the device. Just pressed the button - and you're done. The company planned to earn money by selling fruit bags, because their device will work only with branded bags - according to this model of “proprietary food”, Keurig coffee makers work with branded portioned K-Cup tablets. Actually, Juicero positioned itself as “Keurig for juices”. But something went wrong.

After three years of development in February 2016, the startup finally presented the first version of the gadget. In accordance with fashion trends, the $ 700 juicer supports WiFi, is controlled from a smartphone via a mobile application, etc. Someone said that the price of the device seems too high, but company founder Doug Evans explained that there is no other way: this is very high technology. and the squeezing takes place under tremendous pressure, “enough to lift two Tesla cars,” as he put it (The Press itself creates the Teslas).

In another interview, he said that this fantastic device contains 400 original parts: two motors, a scanner, a wireless antenna, an “aircraft aluminum alloy 775”, a gearbox and valves, which withstand 16,000 pound-force (71,170 Newtons).

The company had no end of investors. The startup received about $ 120 million from a dozen investment funds, including Campbell Soup, Google Ventures, Artis Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Two Sigma Ventures, First Beverage Group, Acre Ventures, Double Bottom Line Ventures, Thrive Capital, Vast Ventures and others.

Soon sales began, and then the company even lowered the price to $ 400. A subscription was made for packages, and they were delivered to the buyer weekly, by individual order. Each package costs from $ 5 to $ 8 and you can squeeze out about one glass of juice.

But some of the buyers of expensive gadgets and packages with semi-finished products were surprised to find that the juice from the packages was quite successfully squeezed by the hands , even without installing the package in a juicer!


A comparative test of squeezing the juice with the hands and in the juicer showed that in both cases approximately the same amount of juice is squeezed out, and there is no difference in the squeezing speed either, although in some cases the juice is squeezed with the hands faster. During the video test, the car squeezed out 227 g of juice in two minutes, and the girl - 213 g in one and a half minutes.

Imagine how surprised investors were at such a turn of events! It turns out that they were simply deceived, as well as thousands of users who bought a "high-tech" gadget for $ 700 or $ 400, to whom both were lucky. The only difference is that users were bred for a few hundred dollars, and investors for 120 million.

It is very interesting to see how events will develop further. Now the founders of Juicero refuse to comment. A source close to the company said that the company was aware that the juice can be squeezed by hand, but they still decided to bring the product to the market, because “most users still prefer to squeeze the packets in the gadget, rather than manually,” because “this process is more consistent and less dirty. " In addition, the device is equipped with a QR code scanner and verifies the authenticity of each package with an online database before squeezing, so that consumers are protected from fake juice and expired packages. At the same time, the leadership of Juicero concealed this fact from its own employees and from the general public.

Juicero founder Doug Evans had a reputation as a specialist in juice squeezing technology - he has been doing this for more than ten years. Not surprisingly, Google Ventures and many other funds have invested in startups. Juicero became one of the leaders among the “hardware” startups in the USA in terms of the volume of attracted investments in 2016. True, some people became suspicious when, in October 2016, after receiving investments, Doug Evans left his post as executive director and took the post of chairman of the supervisory board. The 50-year-old entrepreneur himself adheres to a healthy lifestyle and a vegan diet and uses mostly raw foods. Well, how could you not believe such a person?