Juicero

Juicero raised $120M to build a $400 WiFi-connected juicing machine that squeezed proprietary fruit/vegetable packs. Bloomberg journalists discovered you could squeeze the packs by hand and get the same result—making the expensive machine unnecessary. The revelation went viral, becoming Silicon Valley's most mocked product. Beyond the PR disaster, the company faced fundamental unit economics issues: expensive hardware, high customer acquisition costs, and a narrow subscription market. Juicero represents the Silicon Valley tendency to over-engineer simple solutions and apply venture-scale thinking to problems that don't require it.