The sevral hundred dollar juice machine? 'Juicero'. Here are the mega buck guts:

Yup, that stuff is still here. Last numbers I saw showed that 50% of all the medical device startups in the world were in the San Francisco Bay Area. The only change I've seen in the last 10 years is that some machine shops have moved out of the Bay Area so they can have a lower cost of living for their employees. They do almost all of their business via website/email and FedEx anyway.

I didn't mean there aren't good hardware people here, there are a lot! There are just a great boat load of silly hardware startups so sometimes you end up with stuff designed by very inexperienced people that has some basic flaws. My understanding is that same problem exists for software: best concentration of programming talent in the world, but still not enough competent programmers...

I know a couple of guys who start up insurance companies. Initial investors buy in at about .10/share in the first round - second round goes to a wider circle for about 2.00/share and a third round at about $5.00/share. Once launched the price usually settles around $3.00/share. Inner circle folks make a lot. The general public folks will mostly lose money. The founders make a bunch, sell it and start another. At some point it just makes you wonder if most of the business world is mainly a bunch of scams, pyramid schemes and other shenanigans.