Zhidongxi (public account: zhidxcom)
compiled | Wang Jianen
edited | Gaoge
Zhidongxi reported on July 16th, how failed can the most failed entrepreneurial failure case you can think of? American art group MSCHF has released five famous entrepreneurial failure cases in the form of miniature toys, each of which costs US$40 (about RMB 260) and a set costs US$160 (about RMB 1,040).
The five failure cases are Juicero juicer - a juicer with less juice performance than bare hands, Jibo social robot - a robot with "no function" and OLPC - a mini laptop that tries to completely change education but ends up doing nothing, Coolest Cooler outdoor refrigerator - a crowdfunding product that is considered fraud, Theranos minilab - a blood tester that claims to be able to detect various diseases but does not actually exist.
This is not the first time that MSCHF has "played with fire". It once launched a "Satan shoes" modified based on a certain Nike shoes, claiming that each sole contains a drop of human blood. Of course, this move was strongly opposed by Nike.
This time, MSCHF chose to use toys to mock these dead entrepreneurial projects. It said: "This is not a commemoration, this is another way of death. We celebrate the pale shadows left by them after they fall."
1. Juicero juicer: It is said to be able to squeeze out "perfect juice", but it is not as good as squeezed with bare hands
Juicero juicer must be the most famous of these five cases.
In 2016, Silicon Valley star startup Juicero released its first product: Juicero juicer, priced at $700. This juicer is said to be free of cleaning for life, but it needs to be used with a special fruit and vegetable bag. The principle of juice squeezing is also extremely simple. The machine squeezes finished fruit and vegetable bags to produce juice. Doug Evans, founder of
, compared himself to Jobs , saying that he pursues "perfect juice". He claimed that the juicer produced by his company is enough to produce 4 tons of force to squeeze out the freshest and healthy juice.
Juicero's creativity attracted many investment companies, including Google Venture Capital, and raised a total of $120 million. However, when everything was in full swing, an unexpected discovery slapped everyone in the face.
Someone tried to squeeze the fruit and vegetable bag with his hands, but found that he could squeeze out the "perfect juice" with his bare hands, and the amount of juice produced by squeezing the bag with his bare hands was almost the same as using a juicer, and even faster. The discovery of
made Juicero lose its glory. For a moment, various doubts came one after another, and Juicero finally ended in bankruptcy.
2. Jibo, the founder of family social robots: before Apple Google , but after
MSCHF said Jibo is an "expensive technologically optimistic social robot companion", it has a expressive face, anthropomorphic body powered by a 3-axis electric system, but "almost no practical functions."
Jiob can be traced back to a lab at MIT . Cynthia Breazeal, an associate professor at the school, founded a robotics team with the initial goal of studying robots, artificial intelligence and how humans interact with them.
In 2014, Cynthia Blazell initiated crowdfunding on the crowdfunding platform, raising more than US$3 million in a short period of time. In addition to the investment of venture capital institutions, the total financing amount exceeded US$70 million.
However, things didn't go so smoothly. The expectant buyers waited year after year until 2017 until the first Jibo shipped, with a price of $899.
However, the market has changed a lot by this time. Amazon and Google launched smart speakers, Apple increased its investment in Siri, , Samsung launched Bixby, and the home smart audio market showed explosive growth... Jibo originally wanted to change the world, but was taken a step forward by large technology companies. The continuous delay in
consumes consumers' patience, and its overly monotonous function is difficult to support its high selling price. At the end of 2018, Jibo's IP was sold to New York investment firm SQN Venture Partners.A few months later, Jibo made a final farewell to the user.
3. OLPC laptop: AMD, Google and others unanimously supported it, but in the end nothing happened
OLPC is the abbreviation of the slogan "one laptop per child", which means "every child has a laptop". At the same time, OLPC is also a non-profit organization initiated and organized by the MIT Multimedia Laboratory. The purpose of OLPC is to produce laptops at a price of US$100 for children in developing countries, so OLPC laptops are also called "100 yuan computers".
This computer has a manual rocker, which can generate electricity by turning the rocker. In addition, it has functions such as computer mode, e-book mode, game mode, TV mode, etc. Once it was proposed,
OLPC has attracted widespread attention from all walks of life. Giants in various fields such as AMD, Google, eBay, and European Satellite Global Company have sponsored it. In 2007, the OLPC fan laptop was officially launched, but it was a lot of bad reviews, and users said it was slow, bulky, frustrating, easy to damage and difficult to repair. The reason why
OLPC laptops are cheap is because they use a rather cheap configuration, but even so, it is difficult to achieve the $100 target. In the end, the organization stopped operating in 2014 due to poor sales of OLPC laptops and overly idealized pricing.
American technology media The Verge commented in an article: As a flashy, smart, and idealistic project, it was shattered when it first came into contact with reality.
4. Coolest Cooler: Setting a history in the crowdfunding industry, but being defeated by its own tricks
MSCHF called Coolest Cooler "a typical representative of the crowdfunding trap." Coolest Cooler is a multi-functional outdoor activity station that integrates coolers, speakers, mixers and power bank power. It integrates these features together for a pre-order price of $185 to create a fantastic combination.
The first crowdfunding of Coolest Cooler on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in 2013 ended in failure. The following year, its producer Coolest readjusted its crowdfunding plan and seemed to have invited marketing companies to participate. This time it attracted the attention of many consumers and eventually raised more than $13 million in funds, becoming the product that the crowdfunding platform raised the most funds at that time.
However, Coolest is completely unprepared to face the challenges he is about to face. It was stranded after only a small portion of the orders, neither enough funds to continue production nor enough profits to generate.
At this time, Coolest took an unexpected measure and completely aroused public anger. At this time, the pre-sale period is not over yet and the pre-orderer has not received the product, but it is on Amazon and sold for $499, while also trying to charge the pre-orderer for an additional fee to speed up shipments. This series of operations has completely lost people's trust in it.
In 2016, the Oregon judicial department launched an investigation into Coolest Cooler's behavior. A year later, Coolest promised to refund $20 each to its abandoned supporters. But now the company is bankrupt and no one knows whether these people have received the money. The failure of
Coolest Cooler has also become a milestone in the out-of-favor of the crowdfunding model.
5. Theranos: Kissinger , Murdoch stands for it, but is found to be full of lies behind it
If the previous stories are more amazing, then Theranos' story is even more bizarre.
In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes (Elizabeth Holmes) dropped out of school from a prestigious school Stanford and founded the blood test company Theranos. She hopes to make blood testing cheaper, more convenient and easier for consumers to use, thus changing the entire blood testing industry.
By 2010, Theranos, which had multiple rounds of financing, reached a valuation of US$1 billion.
Theranos, which had been working hard for ten years in 2013, officially launched its own blood testing device: miniLab. Compared to traditional blood tests, Theranos costs only $2.99.The company also claims to use a "nano container" to pass its proprietary "Edison" testing technology, which can complete a large number of tests that have been completed in minutes that have been completed by professional institutions in just a few drops of blood. In the same year, Theranos also cooperated with the US pharmacy chain Walgreens to open testing to the public in its stores.
was the most glorious period of Theranos. The company's valuation once exceeded US$10 billion. Elizabeth is also known as the "female version of Jobs" and has also appeared on the cover of " Fortune " magazine. Theranos' board of directors even includes former US Secretary of State Kissinger, media tycoon Murdoch, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and others.
However, things took a sharp turn in 2015. Investigative journalist John Carreyrou conducted an in-depth investigation and then exposed Theranos in the " Wall Street Journal ", saying that it did not use its own equipment for blood tests, and that the "Edison" technology boasted by Theranos will provide a large number of false results, and its technology has been seriously exaggerated.
then U.S. Food and Drug Administration released two reports saying Theranos' blood collection containers were "not verified under actual or simulated use conditions" and "not reviewed and approved by designated personnel before release."
Theranos has since been constantly prosecuted and investigated, and the company has also been continuously laying off employees. Finally, Theranos announced its official closure in 2018.
In the same year, the reporter who pulled Theranos from the altar organized his investigation into a book, named Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
Conclusion: Even if entrepreneurial projects are surrounded by halo, they still need strength to support
From Jibo, the pioneer of the times to Coolest Coolest Cooler, the representative of the crowdfunding trap, these celebrity entrepreneurial projects have been surrounded by halo and have been in trouble. They are either too idealized to fulfill their promises, or the ideas are too advanced to reality cannot support them, or the entire project is full of lies, resulting in the end of death.
Entrepreneurship is not smooth sailing. Even if it is a celebrity entrepreneurial project, if it does not have enough technical strength, complete development plans, etc. as support, relying solely on fooling investors and consumers, it will only end up in failure.
These five entrepreneurial stories bring us not only laughs after dinner, but also more about the alertness and inspiration of entrepreneurship.
Source: MSCHF, The Verge, Bloomberg
