Three years and $12 million (U.S.) were simply not enough time and money to teach the world about the benefits of owning a $1,000 teapot. That’s the word from Teforia, a Mountain View, Calif., startup that is moving to the graveyard of technological gadgetry. “The reality of our business is that it would take a lot more financing and time to educate the market and we simply couldn’t raise the funds required in what is a very difficult time for hardware companies in the smart kitchen space,” Teforia CEO Allen Han wrote in a note posted on the company’s website. The company, founded in 2014, sold a “smart” tea maker featuring “advanced algorithms” and a hand-blown glass “infusion globe” for brewing the proprietary tea satchels it called “Sips.”Teforia is following San Francisco’s Juicero, which raised more than $100 million and sold a $700 juice maker that used proprietary packs. Juicero was undone — even with a price cut to $400 — after Bloomberg journalists found that the juice packs could be squeezed by hand.

Source: thestar November 03, 2017 13:52 UTC