Like bottled water. The idea of people paying 1600x markup for something they got essentially free while creating massive amounts of waste when sports bottles already existed. When bottled water came out, I remember thinking, "that's a friggin' joke."
It sure worked out though.
Before someone replies that tap water is perfectly suitable for drinking: Sure it's safe, but I have never had municipal water that didn't taste bad. Never. Maybe I'm just spoiled because I have a well that provides tasteless water.
We can substitute bottled water with premium bottled water and the argument holds though.
Put another way, do you imagine that nobody at Nestle or wherever stood up and said "this is a dumb idea" when bottled water was being devised? And how would you imagine the creators of the idea answered that challenge?
The first makes money, the second doesn't. :)
There are dumb ideas, and dumb ideas that are poorly executed.
Juciero is clearly the latter.
But just because an idea is dumb, doesn't mean it won't be successful in the market.
Two of my favorite satires on this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t28ZB1t6gg8
and
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/9nzwjt/the-colbert-report-vess...
Now try to remember a tech/company you thought was stupid that became a massive success. For me, I remember thinking wifi was stupid -- I was a power user, laptops were grossly underpowered circa 1998. Why would anyone need wireless internet on a desktop?
I keep that story in mind because it keeps me humble about hindsight bias.
With regards to Theranos, my point also stands. It's baldly evil on its face and shouldn't exist. Capitalism and "it's none of your business" are not excuses.
The problem with Juciero and Theranos isn't that they failed. The problem with them is that Juciero was an immensely dumb idea that was never checked or questioned and thereby wasted tons of money, and Theranos was so unabashedly, obviously mustache-twirlingly evil that if it were used to script an evil corporation for TV, I'd have called it unrealistic (and thereby, it wasted tons of money). They're the worst parts of SV (dumb companies offering things nobody wants at outrageous prices, and obvious evil pretending things are OK because they're 'changing the world' or some other nonsense) exaggerated to near-comical extremes.
Silicon Valley's problem is deeper than failing businesses or not enough diversity. It's that the entire enterprise is a bold-faced moneygrab for VCs; ethics, diversity, etc. were never really part of the point, and it's only now that the rest of the world is starting to figure that out. SV's problems are at the core of the reasons for its current existence.