Consumer hardware startups face an uncertain future–even if they’re able to raise hundreds of millions in VC funding–as high costs and ever-changing consumer demands make developing products with mass appeal increasingly challenging.
One of the most infamous startup product fails in recent memory was Juicero, a $400 WiFi-connected juicer startup that crashed and burned when a Bloomberg story revealed users could simply squeeze the company’s juice bags by hand into a glass. Juicero shut down in 2017 after raising $100 million in venture capital.
But Juicero isn’t the only heavily VC-backed hardware device to fail. Sleep tracker Hello raised $53 million and has since shut down. Wearable tracker Pebble raised almost $60 million, and even an acquisition by Fitbit couldn’t save the once-popular smartwatch. But these startup failures pale in comparison to Jawbone, a wearable tech company that raised $930 million before shutting down in 2017. It was the second-costliest VC-backed startup failure of all time. Read the full story here.
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