According to a report from Accenture, 50 per cent of health and wellness start-ups never make it past the 20-month mark. The success stories of therapy services such as Better Health or DNA testing company 23andMe are anomalies in their respective fields.
Rounds of funding, sometimes upwards of tens of millions, don’t necessarily guarantee success either. Theranos, helmed by soon-to-be-jailed former CEO Elizabeth Holmes, is a prime example of the struggles often seen in the health tech industry; visionaries don’t necessarily have a medical background to understand what can and cannot be realistically achieved.
Theranos is a unique example of overzealousness, a sheer denial of medical science and fraud; the start-up raised US$700 million from top business and thought leaders worldwide and made Holmes a billionaire at the height of the operation.
While Holme’s ambitious and fraudulent attempt to revolutionise blood testing has landed her an 11-year jail sentence, many health and wellness start-ups fail less dramatically. From a juicer that doesn’t quite live up to its fresh-squeeze claims to an online physician service that was perhaps too much ahead of its time, here are some of the most notable health and wellness start-up fails.
Juicero
Juice company Juicero had the idea to revolutionise how the average consumer enjoys their freshly squeezed juices. The idea was simple- to create a machine that could extract juice from prepackaged bags filled with organic fruit and vegetable pulp.
The machine’s app allows users to preset when their juice is ready in the morning. It all sounds pretty good; you can get a subscription to these pulp packets delivered to your doorstep and have it freshly squeezed and waiting when your alarm buzzes in the morning.
The machines initially cost $699, with packets priced between $5 and $7.
It seems, however, that investors didn’t ask simple questions such as the contradictory contempt behind ‘prepackaged fresh juice’ nor food safety concerns over the organic contents of the packets. The start-up raised US$118.5 million before the product's practicality was questioned. Early adopters of the Juicero machine soon realised they could extract more juice from the packets by simply squeezing them with their hands.
Things went downhill for the company after this news got out. By 2017, just four years after its launch, the company went bankrupt, putting its estimated 250 employees out of work.
Call9
One of the first telemedical consultation services to launch, Call9 provided a platform for nursing home residents to jump on consultation calls with doctors and get a prescription filled 24/7. The California-based company was met with positive feedback when it was founded in 2015 and was estimated to have raised US$50 million during its four years in operation.
The company failed to take off, citing difficulties negotiating with health insurance companies and couldn’t get enough nursing homes to adopt its services quickly.
The company shut down in 2019, just months before the global Covid outbreak- perhaps if they had held on just a little longer, it could’ve taken advantage of the skyrocketing demand for remote physician consultations in 2020.
Jawbone
The wearable health tech industry is a cut-throat and highly competitive one. With power players like Apple and Samsung, who have substantial market shares already in the tech industry, dominating the scene, it’s an anomaly when brands like Aura or FitBit make it into the big league.
San Francisco-based Jawbone, however, was a completely different story. Valued at US$ 3.2 billion in 2014 after years of successfully producing speakers and headphones, the brand pivoted to fitness trackers and launched a sleek display-free bangle called UP that tried to ride that fine line between tech gadget and fashion accessory.
Despite raising US$900 million, the company stopped producing new products in 2016 when it was revealed they had only 3 per cent of the market share in the previous year. A number of factors, including poor management and use of funds, are cited as reasons for its demise. However, users attest it’s for one simple reason: it’s a wrong product. Users reported that the fitness tracker was awkward to wear and not waterproof, which baffled users as a product designed for use during different activities, including water sports.
Also see: How wearable tech like Apple Watch cater to women's health