[teampractices] Juicero as a case study supporting Agile methods

[Joel Aufrecht]

While that's not the specific point of this article from Bolt about
Juicero's hardware development story
<https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50>,

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.

Juicero has had a very troubled launch
<http://gizmodo.com/the-mad-king-of-juice-inside-the-dysfunctional-origins-1795330639>
:

Juicero has by any measure gotten the public comeuppance it richly deserved

since launching at the end of last March. The company had its juice press
torn down in April as “hopelessly expensive
<https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50>
to manufacture and assemble,” and has since slashed its sale price nearly
in half in January. This, right after a Bloomberg expose revealed the press
itself was made redundant by the simple human hand
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze>,
which can squeeze the produce bags well enough.

If you take Bolt's assessment of their achievements at face value, then I
think that building the device, the facilities, the packaging, the
applications, and the service for $120 million is not a terrible price;
many IT projects have done less with more money. But all of that is
worthless if there's no market, and it would have been better for them to
find out earlier.




*-- Joel Aufrecht*
Team Practices Group
Wikimedia Foundation

[Kevin Smith]

I hesitate to expect a hardware product to be developed using "agile"
methods. Especially one that requires negotiating with suppliers who must
provide compatible hardware (the juice packs, in this case). Agile relies
on a low cost of change to really work well. My gut says that this story is
more about the value of "lean", and especially "lean startup".

I have to wonder why they went for a fancy "squeeze the whole pack at once"
mechanism, rather than pulling the pack through rollers, along the lines of
a Mangle[1]. Sometimes, 500-year-old technology is appropriate.

Just this past weekend, I spoke with a Juicero owner (or more accurately,
the spouse of a Juicero owner). She was laughing (ironically) about how it
refused to make juice unless it was connected to the internet[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine)
[2] I don't know if that's true or not, but it's what she claimed



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation

Post by Joel Aufrecht
While that's not the specific point of this article from Bolt about
Juicero's hardware development story
<https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50>,

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.

Juicero has had a very troubled launch
<http://gizmodo.com/the-mad-king-of-juice-inside-the-dysfunctional-origins-1795330639>
Juicero has by any measure gotten the public comeuppance it richly

deserved since launching at the end of last March. The company had its
juice press torn down in April as “hopelessly expensive
<https://blog.bolt.io/heres-why-juicero-s-press-is-so-expensive-6add74594e50>
to manufacture and assemble,” and has since slashed its sale price nearly
in half in January. This, right after a Bloomberg expose revealed the press
itself was made redundant by the simple human hand
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-valley-s-400-juicer-may-be-feeling-the-squeeze>,
which can squeeze the produce bags well enough.

If you take Bolt's assessment of their achievements at face value, then I
think that building the device, the facilities, the packaging, the
applications, and the service for $120 million is not a terrible price;
many IT projects have done less with more money. But all of that is
worthless if there's no market, and it would have been better for them to
find out earlier.
*-- Joel Aufrecht*
Team Practices Group
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Dan Garry]

Post by Kevin Smith
Just this past weekend, I spoke with a Juicero owner (or more accurately,
the spouse of a Juicero owner). She was laughing (ironically) about how it
refused to make juice unless it was connected to the internet[2].
<snip>
[2] I don't know if that's true or not, but it's what she claimed

There are reports that this is true. The bags have a QR code on them, and
the machine checks things like the expiry dates and checks for product
recalls. That, the company claims, is why it's essential for the machine to
have an internet connection to do anything.

Ref: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/4/21/15376038/juicero-explained

Dan