The post itself is pretty much about "why did they do it this way". Here's the money quote: Juicero raised nearly $120M from well-known investors before shipping a single unit. The team spent over two years building an incredibly complex product and the ecosystem to support it. Aside from the flagship juice press, Juicero built relationships with farmers, co-packing/food-processing facilities, complex custom packaging, beautifully designed mobile/web applications, and a subscription delivery service. But they did all this work without the basic proof that this business made sense to consumers. Constraints during the earliest stages of a hardware company’s life force founders to carefully allocate resources to find creative solutions. I hope this post serves as a lesson to other hardware startups that spending tens of millions of dollars on product development prior to shipping a single unit is a goal that’s not worth striving for. Compare and contrast: Juicero anticipates its customers will spend $35 a week filling their $700 juicer with bagfruit so they can drink fresh juice. Blue Apron anticipates its customers will spend $30 a week making three meals for two, no $700 gadget necessary. And Blue Apron is just barely hanging on - this is a company with a $2b valuation and nobody is really sure if it can make it long term. The trail of dead is long. And hamstringing your marketshare by putting a $700 roadblock between you and your customers doesn't help - and when you knock that $700 roadblock down to $400 you look like you're gouging.Hidden away in Juicero’s bad week of press is one of the most powerful lessons we preach to hardware startups: unconstrained development is lethal.
We've subscribed to Blue Apron since... March 2013? I appreciate what they do. They're useful; I know three meals a week are handled and the rest I can figure it out. But they've suffered since they've been made more accountable to their backers. We see a lot of repeats and generally, where things were initially a meat and a carb and a veggie, now it's a meat and a carb or a meat and a veggie. Meanwhile they've gotten a lot more... frugal. Last night was "burn some cabbage while cooking it with a russet potato while a couple pieces of cod get stuck to your other pan." Total cost of that meal can't be over five bucks but they charged us $20. And fuckin' A we've had a pink lemon every week for months. I get it - y'all got a deal. But pink lemon juice and shallots and creme fraiche is just a fancy way to say "tartar sauce." At one point I had plans to start a blog called "Or Use A Zester" that catalogued all the stupid shit Blue Apron suggests you do in pursuit of food. They generally assume you have one pan, one knife, one pot and a potato peeler... unless they have two things that need to be cooked at once in which case suddenly you have two pans. Otherwise? "wipe out the pan". They will also create meals by going "boring, easy-to-aquire protein" plus "boring, easy-to-acquire vegetable" plus "bizarre condiment you would never eat otherwise prepared in a stupid way." Tonight or tomorrow I will be cooking chicken and rice with "stupidly fiddly deep-fried shallot rings because fuck you that's why." Their instructions are also hit-or-miss. Sometimes they walk you through the eight steps necessary to cook a pot of rice. Sometimes they're all "fold the napkin into the shape of a swan."
When I remember, I check the comments before I start. I can find most of the pitfalls but sometimes they still get me. I've also learned that 9 times out of 10 their cooking method for meat is "season with salt and pepper then add to olive oil that will spatter all over your kitchen" so even though I bought a blast shield specifically for their shit, I grill whenever I'm suspicious.