JaaS: juice-as-a-service

Uber hasn’t had a lot of good news of late.

And we wanted to change that.

So when asked which was the shadier company, Uber was deemed much less shady than Theranos.

Congrats Uber.

Canadian activity declines

Canadian venture-capital backed companies saw $460M in total financing across 64 deals in Q1’17 — the lowest number of deals since the 54 seen in Q3’15. On a quarterly basis, deals were down 25% and dollars down 41% from Q4’16. 

Science is good

Ajay Chawan, who is with our friends at Audi, was at the March for Science in DC rocking his sweet CB Insights “data > opinion” t-shirt.

Nice.

I need space

We identified 57 space tech startups and mapped the space tech landscape based on each company’s primary product, line of business, and/or current focus.

It’s not a juicer. It’s an f’n platform.

Juicero, the $399 internet-enabled juice machine backed by GV, Kleiner Perkins, and others, got pummeled last week cuz it’s JaaS (juice-as-a-service) didn’t do something people thought it did.

It was kinda funny in a schadenfreude’y kind of way for a bit, but it actually got me to look at Juicero and for a second, I thought, “if this gizmo can help me stay regular, maybe it’s worth getting.”

Sidenote: Juicero should be added to our poop tech market map.

And then I read a post by the CEO of the company (see The Blurb), and the whole nauseating “change the world” narrative got put front & center.

What?

Upon reflection, I finally saw what I failed to see.

Juicero wasn’t just a juice maker to help affluent’ish folks poop better and be healthier.

No. No. No.

It was more.

As one investor put it: “Juicero is a ‘platform’ for delivering fresh fruits and vegetables to people’s homes.”

Yes — this isn’t a juice machine. This, my friends, is an f’n platform.

How could I have been so dumb?

Bryce Roberts summed up all the silliness and tortured grandiosity with this tweet.

The highlighted term above is so spot on, it makes me mad we didn’t think of it. It’s what we’ve called the Ponzi Scheme of Ambition, but Bryce’s term is just a lot better.

BTW, there are companies actually trying to do world-changing things that you should pay attention to, like these startups focused on drug discovery & diagnostics or these rethinking how we travel or these building next-gen computing platforms. And then, of course, there are customized babies and robotic companions for the elderly and things like lab grown meat and micro-satellites.

Yup — plenty of real world changing stuff being built. But yeah — we’re talking about an f’n juicer. I mean platform.

Insurers investing in smart homes

Last week, Intact, the largest P&C carrier in Canada, became the latest insurer to invest in a smart home startup – water and flood monitoring company Alert Labs. In light of the news, we took a look at strategic investments by insurers in smart home companies.

Alright, we’re down to the final 4 with results from Round 4 coming in last night.

• Amazon Echo beat Oculus
• Tesla clobbered Xbox Kinect
• MacBook Air outran Wii Fit
• Raspberry Pi edged out Microsoft Surface

So now, we’ve got 2 very interesting match ups left.

• Amazon Echo vs Tesla
• Raspberry Pi vs Macbook Air

It’s do or die time.