Juicero began in secret. The startup, a sort of Keurig for cold-pressed plant-water—which made headlines for the $120 million in venture capital it secured from the likes of Google and Kleiner-Perkins between 2013 and 2015, and again when it announced its wi-fi-connected countertop appliance would cost a jaw-dropping $700 on launch—intended to keep its business free from prying eyes, either because it feared corporate espionage, mockery, or both. Was it the future of convenient health food, or an overfunded subscription service for bags of chopped up plants?

Founded in 2013 by Doug Evans, erstwhile CEO of New York juice company Organic Avenue, Juicero coupled a bizarre set of interests: a curdled, monopolized tech industry which has run dry on useful new ideas; the medically-vague but burgeoning wellness industry’s promise to fill a physical and spiritual void, stripped away at least in part by tech itself. Two types of snake oil, expertly blended to suit their flavor profiles—and true to the spirit of both industries, accessible only to the wealthy...

...Evans’ micromanaging style and refusal to defer to his own employees’ expertise caused the company to hemorrhage talent. One former employee watched Juicero churn through three top executives—a CFO, a COO, and a VP of Operations—in under a year. In spite of tremendous funding and an impressive talent pool in its early days, disagreements, especially with Evans led to a “legendary” volume of exits or firings. Evans bragged before launch of having 12 PhDs on staff. Several have since departed according to their Linkedin profiles, and a source claimed around a quarter of those PhDs remain today.

And what Evans wants, allegedly, can range from impractical to humiliating. Several employees related an anecdote in which flies had begun cropping up in the company’s San Francisco office. Evans—a vegan who at one point only allowed his employees to expense vegan meals on business trips—refused to implement a solution that would kill them. “I had to interview companies and ask if they had a catch-and-release program,” an employee recounted. “I went through links to help him understand that even that is not humane. It’s actually more stressful on the pests for you to catch them and relocate them.” Gizmodo could not confirm how or if the issue was resolved, and Juicero declined to make Evans available for an interview...