Social Currency with Sammi Cohen Doug Evans (Juicero) on the Viral Takedown, Blessings in Disguise and Reinvention With The Sprouting Company
Mar 3, 2026
Doug Evans, founder of Organic Avenue, Juicero and The Sprouting Company, is a wellness entrepreneur turned reinventionist. He recounts the viral takedown that toppled his juicer startup and the leadership and media lessons that followed. Then he describes retreating to the Mojave, writing a bestselling book on sprouting, and building a countertop sprouting business.
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Why Juicero Was Built As A Logistics Solution
- Doug built Juicero to recreate commercial cold-press logistics at home using pre-prepped packs and a countertop press that sold thousands of packs and thousands of machines.
- He engineered a smaller press from Norwalk-level performance to a $699 V1 and sold over a million packs while customers loved the product.
Big Funding Made Juicero A Clickbait Target
- Publicizing that Juicero raised over $100M shifted the story from product to finance and made it a target for blow-up coverage.
- Bloomberg seized on the funding figure and anonymous investor quotes, which triggered a media pile-on that ignored actual customers and product usage.
How A Two Minute Video Cannibalized Perception
- Doug says the Bloomberg video edited out the slow manual wringing process and instead showed a short clip implying you could easily squeeze the pouch by hand.
- That editing choice created a misleading narrative of redundancy that spread across major outlets copying Bloomberg's piece.
