Greg's Corner

Does the Juicero show that we’re headed for another tech bubble burst?

Juicing is one of those types of diets that’s practiced by celebrities, high-profile businessmen, and various other trend setters. While its health benefits can be debated, as opposed to eating fruits and vegetables, one can’t deny its popularity. Leave it to Silicon Valley to come up with a gadget marketed directly to juicing fans. Enter the Juicero which is a machine that’s designed to press proprietary bags of fruit and vegetables into juice. It presses the bag with the force of four tons and will run you around $400.

This is actually not a bad idea as it’s been called the Keurig of the juicer set. The man who founded Juicero even went as far as to refer to himself as the Steve Jobs of juicing. That comparison is in fact correct, that is if you’re comparing yourself to the Steve Jobs who released the Apple Lisa. It turns out that for the $400 price tag the Juicero can’t compete with another device that can squeeze the bags of juice just as well and doesn’t cost as much. As a matter of fact they don’t cost anything. The Juicero bags can be squeezed just as well by using your own two hands.

Between this debacle and other newsworthy startups that have failed to meet expectations one can’t help but be reminded of the dotcom bubble bursting in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Do these failures indicate the beginning of the end for startup culture? Will we soon be talking about the startup bubble bursting? If current trends are any indicator, we just might be.