Opinion: What we can learn from the $400 juicer that’s ‘destroying Silicon Valley’

Photo credit: Jan Vasek.

The Business Insider article titled “The evidence is piling up—Silicon Valley is being destroyed” seems to have riled up a lot of people. People are at a loss to understand how the fabled VCs of Silicon Valley could invest US$120 million in a company. People are wondering incredulously, “There’s an app for that?” “Since when did we need an app to drink juice?”

But this is business as usual as far as I see it. Allow me to explain.

If you have one of these burning questions in your mind, you could just skip to that section below.

• Isn’t it just making juice? (hint to the answer: jobs to be done)
• How is this different? (hint: value proposition design)
• But US$400? (hint: business model innovation)
• What is its worth to you? (hint: subjective and objective value)
• Still, US$120 million in funding? (hint: market opportunity)
• Is Silicon Valley really being destroyed?

Isn’t it just making juice?

People who buy juicers want to, well, drink juice. But that’s just the functional task they engage in.

The motivations to drink juice are all about having a healthy lifestyle, consuming fruits and vegetables, likely of the organic variety, and juice is the best option for this quick nutrition fix instead of peeling fruits, cutting them up, and so on. A few gulps and you are on to your next thing. A juicer enables people to get the job done of living a healthy life by consuming more fruits and vegetables. (If you are not familiar with the concept of jobs to be done, look here.)

In the context of doing this job, people face a number of pain points. First, we have to drive ourselves to get the specific type of organic fruits and vegetables that we want to juice. We have to wash, peel, and chop them to feed them into the juicer. Then, we need to make sure we don’t overload the juicer or the blades. Operating the juicer also requires the right speed and the right amount of water. We also need to make sure the fruit chunks are nicely blended. Too many decisions! And then, we clean up all the mess. All of this for one glass of juice!

The traditional customer experience with drinking juice is a little involved now that we think about it. And nobody is addressing these pains. We have taken these pains for granted and are choosing to live with them because we do not know who can address them for us. This is what Juicero is attempting to do.

How is this different?

So, does Juicero have a value proposition that is sufficiently differentiated from the other juicers in the market? Is their juicer better than other juicers at addressing the jobs to be done?

• No need to go shopping – check.
• No need to worry about juicer setting – check.
• Nothing to clean – check.
• No mess to clear – check.

Here’s a video that explains this better:

There is a clear before and after picture of the customer experience.

But $400?

What is its worth to you?