3 IoT Takeaways from the Juicero Fiasco

April 27, 2017
 
Ashley Rondeau

By now, you’ve probably read about the new laughing stock of Silicon Valley: Juicero. If you haven’t, you really should check out the hilarious video from Bloomberg.

Now, everyone likes a little schadenfreude once in a while, but Juicero’s embarrassing media storm gives us a little pause as well. After all, this was a high-profile Internet of Things (IoT) product and as fans of the coming IoT revolution, we would be loathe to see the young industry face a setback due to one overpriced device. Is there some lesson here to glean?
We think so. Here are the 3 IoT thoughts that businesses should takeaway from Juicero.

1. Not everything needs to be an IoT device.

Yes, you can’t have innovation without a few missteps. Yes, hindsight is 20/20. And yes, people seem to like WiFi-enabled coffee machines so why not a juicer? But the Juicero fiasco should be a wake-up call to businesses looking to dive into the IoT waters.
Let’s look at a pretty successful IoT device that everyone knows about: the Nest thermostat.

The Nest is the poster child of IoT devices. Once it’s installed, the smart and connected thermostat is easy to use, can be controlled and programmed with an app, and is designed to eventually pay for itself. The Nest makes sense and everyone can see how a thermostat connected to the internet can save them time, effort, and money.
But why is the Juicero a connected device? Let’s look at the reasons the company states on its own website:

We can quickly see that these reasons don’t hold water. Transparency of ingredients? Every food product has a USDA label with that information. Updated firmware? That’s necessary to being connected in the first place, and you wouldn’t need it otherwise. Tracks consumption? You can tell which packs you’ve consumed by either looking at the stack of used packs, or looking at the packs you have left. Ensures high quality juice in case of a recall? That shouldn’t happen in the first place, since they also make the packs.
And that’s it. Those are all the stated reasons for being a connected device. If your company is looking to create an IoT device, make sure that the connectivity actually solves a pain-point for the end user. After all, adding WiFi to established products adds complexity, so you better be sure that the benefits outweigh the engineering.
Speaking of which…

2. Don’t over-engineer the IoT device.

By all accounts, the Juicero is an exquisitely engineered device. As it should be, for $399 (initially $699) not including the juice packs. Bolt did a fantastic and detailed teardown of the juicer, and while the whole post is worth a read to get a sense of how crazy the device really is, it’s summed up well in this sentence:

It’s clear that cost savings was not anywhere near a top priority for Juicero when designing this product (or if it was, something went horribly wrong).

Is your machine supposed to live on the International Space Station? Then sure, engineer the hell out of it. It’s one or two of a kind. But if it’s for mass consumption here on Earth, you have to keep it simple. First of all, more moving parts mean more points of failure. The last thing your company needs is a fleet of service people constantly out troubleshooting. Second, unlike Juicero, odds are that you won’t have $120 million from investors to burn in R&D. Third, and most important of all, you’ll be forced to pass the costs on to your customers.
Yes, consumers are used to shelling out hundreds for a smartphone, but that devices solves dozens of problems. And even then, people know that $700 iPhones are generally luxury items. That’s why there’s a huge market for much cheaper Android phones. Does a juicer, that does one thing well (ostensibly), merit people digging deep into their pocketbooks? Probably not, and that leads to…

3. Understand your target audience.

Bolt’s teardown sums up with this quote:

Our usual advice to hardware founders is to focus on getting a product to market to test the core assumptions on actual target customers, and then iterate. Instead, Juicero spent $120M over two years to build a complex supply chain and perfectly engineered product that is too expensive for their target demographic.

“Target demographic” is the key term here. Bolt posits that Juicero doesn’t understand its user base, and they’re probably right. Most likely, the people who would buy this device would be the well-off health-conscious; people who can drop four bills on a glorified fruit squeezer. But that’s a very niche market, and the jury’s out on whether that segment of the population is large enough to make Juicero a sustainable business. After all, rich people who like juice have plenty of other options up to and including walking into a juice/smoothie store.

Sure, plenty of products are made explicitly as luxury items for a small segment of people, but as the Washington Post pointed out, that’s not what the CEO of Juicero (Jeff Dunn) was going for:

Rather than admitting what the Juicero actually is — an entirely unnecessary device targeted at the tiny segment of the population who, for some reason, need expensive juice gadgets that they can control with their cell phones — Dunn claimed that his life’s work was in “solving our nation’s nutrition and obesity challenges.” His statement went on to embrace Juicero as the best solution so far, describing a mythological “frazzled dad” who needs the juicer in order to do something good for himself while getting kids ready for school, and a “busy professional” whose Juicero reminders keep her from wasting her hard-earned money.

If the goal was to provide fresh, healthy juice to the everyman, then it shouldn’t have been (over-) designed to be priced as a luxury item. It isn’t a product for the stated target demographic, and that’s a big problem.
At the end of the day, Juicero is just one IoT device. As slashgear put it, “IoT will survive this Juicero scorn.” But it should serve as a sobering lesson of the pitfalls to avoid when your company starts work on your IoT product. Or else you might feel the big squeeze next.
What do you think of the Juicero fiasco?

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

3 Reasons Your Mobile Website Should Mimic Your Mobile App

April 20, 2017
 
Ashley Rondeau

We all know by now that mobile apps should be your go-to mobile solution over web apps. But is there a reason to have a good mobile web presence anyway? Yes, especially now that Google is inching closer to launching their “mobile-first index,” which may drastically impact your site’s SEO and Google rankings.
You can read more about mobile-first indexing on googleblog, but the gist is that Google will soon be launching an “experiment” and using the mobile versions of websites as the primary pages to index. So instead of a company’s desktop site being the main consideration when Google ranks for search queries, it’ll be the company’s mobile site instead. Word on the street is that this experiment may be coming in a few months.
So how should you prepare? Well, if your company already has an app, then it’s a good idea to just mimic the app to your mobile site. Here are 3 reasons why.

1. Your app is the tip of the mobile spear.

We’re a broken record here, but it’s much more important to have a mobile app than a mobile website. Here’s the simple reason why:
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As the eMarketer chart (via dazeinfo) shows, consumers spend nearly all of their time in apps as opposed to mobile websites. Thus it just makes sense to put your design and development calories into your app first, and then port the work over to the mobile site. No matter how much Google’s spiders and robots want to crawl your website, your actual customers prefer an app when they’re on the go. Be sure to make the app experience great before anything else, and not the other way around.

2. Less of a learning curve.

From the data above, it’s safe to assume your mobile customers will be more familiar with your app than your mobile website. So making sure the latter looks and acts like the former gives them a better user experience. Having two different mobile experiences, be it layout or navigation or functionality, will only confuse and frustrate the user.
Take a look at the Dropbox app and mobile website:
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Pretty identical. If you’ve used the app, you know how to use the mobile site too. Of course, for many companies it may not be this identical, but by mimicking as much of the design of your app as possible, your users will have a seamless transition if they ever do utilize the website. As a bonus, your mobile website can act as a “backup” to your app, in case the latter experiences some technical glitch.

3. It’s already optimized for speed.

If you’ve already got an app out, it’s likely that you’ve stripped it down to just the essentials in order to keep it small, light, and zippy. So if your app already is optimized for mobile use, why would you have a bloated mobile website that tries to cram in everything from the desktop site?
A mistake that many companies make is to just port the desktop site to mobile, but that can lead to a clunky and over-dense user experience. Even “mobile optimized” sites can have too much text that an on-the-go user won’t want to sift through. Consider this quote from appticles.

A global study by GfK and BlackBerry Limited has shown that 69% of business smartphone users are “constantly looking for new ways to get things done as efficiently as possible”. On the other hand, desktop users are more open to design elements, such as boxed testimonials of quotes, which may not support their main informational needs directly.

These days, no company should port over their desktop site. Port over your app instead.
Is your mobile app ready to become your mobile website?

So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

3 Ways IoT Will Positively Change Your Manufacturing Business

April 12, 2017
 
Ashley Rondeau

communication-1927697_1280In our previous post about the Internet of Things (IoT), we took a broad look at why tech-savvy businesses shouldn’t fear the coming connected-tech revolution. We argued that similar to the advent of the smartphone, this will be a disruptive technology that companies small and large need to educate themselves on in order to benefit from it. Now let’s get more specific as to how IoT is poised to change traditional manufacturing businesses and make them more profitable.

1. IoT will reduce manufacturing costs.

A couple years ago, I switched to a cheap Chromebook as my everyday laptop. For less than $200, it provided me with two important things: 1) a portable laptop that could surf the web and do light tasks, and 2) a remote device I could connect to my home desktop computer to run tasks that this machine couldn’t handle. All of a sudden, I didn’t need two expensive workhorses anymore for the home and for the road; just one at home and a good portal.
In a nutshell, that’s the promise of how IoT can save your manufacturing business money. Instead of selling stand-alone boxes, let’s say HVAC systems, with a full human interface built into every unit, you’ll be able to “off-load” the controls to a smartphone app and thus slash costs. Now the boxes themselves are cheaper to make, and the customer has even more control over temperature, humidity, and cycling in more convenient, and inexpensive, software form. The boxes themselves, now with less moving parts, will also require less maintenance.
And that’s just the start. According to a survey from the American Society for Quality, 82% of the manufacturing companies increased efficiency and 49% experience fewer product defects. By implementing IoT into their boxes, unplanned downtimes were reduced, problems were found and resolved faster, and the data mined from connected units led to finding new efficiencies.

2. The data gathered from IoT will be invaluable.

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The beauty of IoT is that these boxes no longer live in isolation. Instead, each will be connected to the cloud, and the data a manufacturing business will collect will be transformative. For example, in agriculture which is widely considered to be one of the best areas to implemented IoT solutions, the data gathered from various sensors and monitors can produce models to maximize growth and reduce costs. ZDNet had a great interview with Sam Boyes, senior manager for ICT at Tassal (a salmon producer):

“[Salmon] pens have been fitted with smart cameras above and below the water to get more accurate information about the water’s oxygen levels, temperature, and current. The software to which the cameras are connected can then identify the optimum time to feed the salmon and release food accordingly. This ensures the company maximises the salmon’s growth patterns, while also minimising food wastage, said Boyes.”

IoT is ultimately all about better data, and this data can be harnessed in two ways: 1) the manufacturer can empower their customers by providing access to aggregate data; and 2) the manufacturer can use the data for predictive analysis. What component fails the most often and why? What features are your customers using the most? How often are these boxes being replaced? When should you send out a maintenance team to prevent any downtime? Having the data to answer these questions will lead to cut costs and higher margins.

3. Expand your manufacturing business into a services company.

You’ve heard the trope: Gillette doesn’t make money on the handles, they make money on the replacement razors. A monthly subscription is ultimately more profitable for your company than one-off sales. That’s why even Apple is turning into a services company. With a solid implementation of IoT, your manufacturing company can too.
Predictive analytics through IoT data means manufacturing businesses will take on more of an ongoing partnership with their customers. Monitoring and maintaining the boxes you sell is now an added service you provide, because you know before your customers do if/when there is an issue. We here at Rocket Farm worked with Yankee Candle on an IoT system to broadcast specialty scents through office buildings. Now, instead of just selling a product, Yankee Candle has an ongoing relationship with their clients because they can tell when customers are low on scented oil, or if there is a problem with the base station. The customers are happy to have peace of mind and one less thing to worry about, and Yankee Candle is happy to have ongoing business. It’s win-win through IoT technology.

credit: http://www.ycscentsystems.com/
credit: http://www.ycscentsystems.com/

With IoT, it’s never been easier for manufacturers to create more business with an increasingly tech-savvy customer base. And, lest you forget, it’s already here. The estimated market size of IoT last year was over $900 billion, more than the market value of Google or Apple. It’s time to take the plunge into a more connected world.
How will your business embrace the coming IoT revolution?
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.

Building a Tech Business in Boston, Massachusetts

April 7, 2017
 
Ashley Rondeau

It seems like every other day, there is a new tech story coming out of Boston. There’s “The Engine,” which is a new accelerator out of MIT. Or tech firm Carbonite announcing a new charitable fund strictly for tech education. Or even how Boston’s ties to Ireland make the country a “European launchpad” for our tech companies.
Rocket Farm Studios has been based out of Boston since 2008, and we’ve witnessed a lot of change and growth in the near decade. And since mobile is a growing area in tech here, we wanted to give some insight into what benefits similar businesses can expect here. Dan Katcher, CEO, and Scott D’Entremont, COO, sat down and reminisced about building a tech business in Boston.

Why do you like owning a company in Boston?

DK: It’s such a hub for tech. There is so much going on on the tech front these days, it’s really exciting. All these young, super-smart innovators collaborating with seasoned business people. There’s just so much energy and intelligence in this city.
SD: There’s a business culture here that supports entrepreneurship. Selfishly, there a huge market we can access for great employees. Not only are the colleges churning out top-notch people, a lot of people from other states and countries come here to work in tech. We’re spoiled that way.
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DK: That’s very true. All the colleges here have stepped it up not just producing smart people, but smart ideas. It used to mostly come from Harvard or MIT but these days so many colleges have great incubators and pitch competitions. And that just puts out students that want to do great, big things.
SD: And more on the business side, Boston’s a big enough city that we have a solid entrepreneurial community here. So startups can get the financing, get the advisers, get employees and backers with solid track records. The city has a certain reputation for being a major tech hub and it’s just good for business in general.
DK: Yeah the startup culture here is strong. Boston has the people and the capital.

Even in the winter?

DK: Hey I love it. Walking my dog in the snow is awesome.
SD: I’m a skier. I love winter.

What stands out as some major benefits of being located in Boston?

DK: Well besides what we said previously, one thing is the physical location. We’re in the Seaport, which is awesome. It’s beautiful, fun, and we’ve got a lot of like-minded companies all around us. You can’t deny how good it is to be near the water.
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SD: I’d say there’s a certain credibility boost that comes with being in a tech hot spot [like the Seaport]. We enjoy that benefit for sure. I think this area might be one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the country. Good thing we got here early!
DK: Also Boston, and I think the state as a whole, is very pro-tech. The government likes technology, I feel, and they’re progressive about opening up data. Like IoT (Internet of Things) initiatives, for example. The city really wants to be a leader in that area and that’s good for companies like us.
SD: We’re ten minutes from the airport too.

What changes have you seen over the last decade in Boston for businesses?

SD: I guess growth overall, in almost all aspects. We see it all around, but for us, since we’re in the mobile space, that growth has been amplified. I mean the iPhone came out a decade ago. The mobile sector in Boston has been a rocket ship.
DK: The sheer connectedness of the business world. It’s so easy to connect with people now, and that’s really important especially for businesses first starting out. And with that, the community has grown a ton.
SD: Also the increase in mobility, the increase in people working remotely, the cloud. I think tech has enabled people to work in very different ways and that’s mostly been a benefit.

What advice do you have for people starting businesses in Boston?

DK: Take advantage of the tech competitions here like the Mass Challenge and various pitch competitions. You can get a lot of exposure very quickly.
SD: And get used to the culture here. What I’ve come to find is that Boston is all about the steak and not the sizzle. Not many companies are overly flashy. It’s more about what their revenue picture looks like than flash. Boston companies are practical. It’s about when you’ll get your first customer. People just put their heads down and work hard. They don’t showboat.
Take advantage of what’s here. Be in the hotspots. Network enough and you’ll find the right people. And Boston has a ton of great advisers who genuinely want to help. They’re not hard to find and they know what they’re talking about because they’ve been there before.
DK: When I started the company, I wrangled a ticket to a forum by Scott Kirsner and got to sit at a consumer entrepreneurs round table. I got there with about twenty people and I said I don’t even have a name for this company yet but we develop apps. Out of that thing we closed two deals within a few days. So that’s amazing right there. Then, one of them was with LocaModa in Central Square. We went in there to kick off the project and the CEO, Stephen Randall, asked where our office was. Of course, we didn’t have one yet. So he said, “why don’t you move in here? I won’t charge you and we have plenty of space.” We were there for two-plus years, rent free.
Then we were looking for a fresh space and I bumped into the CEO of CityVoter, Josh Walkman, who was another very early client of ours. We got into a conversation about space and sure enough he also said, “why don’t you move in with us? We have plenty of space and we won’t charge you.” And so we got to stay there for a year, rent free. Both these things were so helpful and I’ve always tried to pay it forward to several startups since then. So network, network, network!
What’s been your Boston business story so far?
 
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So, if you don’t know where to get started with a blueprint for your app, Rocket Farm Studios can take the pressure off.