

Soylent Closes $1.5M In Seed Funding From Lerer, Andreessen Horowitz - MattRogish
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/21/soylent/

======
pg
Incidentally, Soylent is a perfect example of something that some people
really love and others dismiss as a toy. Not that that is a perfect predictor
of success. If only. But it is at least a positive sign.

(Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't worry so much about middlebrow
dismissals floating to the top of HN threads. They probably do have some
predictive value.)

~~~
jwoah12
A lot of the criticism I've seen is not people dismissing Soylent as a toy,
but instead being worried that it may actually have unknown negative effects
on health, since it lacks any long-term clinical trials.

~~~
pg
That's how you dismiss a food as a toy.

~~~
chasing
No, it's how you take food very seriously.

I'm fine with the idea of meal replacements, but:

1) I think they already exist. They just aren't marketed to trendy
20-somethings. (This is what Soylent does well and why, I assume, they're
getting investment. The actual product can be completely reformulated until it
comes reasonably close to being a good meal replacement: It's the brand that's
become valuable.)

2) The Soylent team sounded like such snake-oil salesmen out of the gate that
they simply don't have much credibility, as far as I'm concerned. With all of
the made-up benefits they touted at the start, now they have to dig themselves
out a deep pit of bullshit to actually demonstrate the value of their product.

It's important that we don't treat this kind of food product like a toy. Which
is why it's important to be critical of unsupported claims. (And critical of
supported claims, as well.) Especially those made by young people with no
particular background in the field they're purporting to be experts in. Food
is not a toy. It's not Tumblr. It's not Zynga. It's something we require to
survive.

~~~
Volpe
Do you ask for the same level of rigorousness when McDonalds release a new
item on their menu? I'd hazard a guess that more people consume that new item
than anyone will ever consume in Soylent.

Remember supersize me, that guy started having liver problems from eating
McDonalds... Yet nothing changes and McDonalds keeps selling crap.

Food is a toy, and Soylent are very far down the scale of "bad food products I
can buy"

~~~
jlgreco
If McDonald actually advocated the diet the Supersize Me guy had, then I
suspect far more people would be concerned. I don't think the food substance
is what has people concerned here; rather the hype and claims surrounding it
are concerning.

On the other hand...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Head](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Head)

~~~
Volpe
People are concerned about the hype? Not the product?

So does it concern you that in McDonalds ads there are always attractive slim
people, when in fact at most stores you see average looking obese people?

Are we arguing truth in advertising? Or Danger in food products?

~~~
jlgreco
> _People are concerned about the hype? Not the product?_

Where 'the hype' includes claims of total meal replacement over long periods
of time.. yes.

I don't think many, if any, people are concerned that this stuff is literally
toxic. The concern is what will happen if you use it as advertised:
constantly, exclusively, for extended periods of time.

People eating McDonalds for every meal every day of the week is troubling, I
don't think anybody actually suggests you do that. McDonalds certainly doesn't
suggest that you do that, though I sometimes feel that many people wish they
_did_ suggest you do that so that McDonalds would be easier to flay alive.
Being appalled by McDonalds _is_ an international sport after all...

There really isn't that much of a problem with eating a greasy deep-fried
cheeseburger once in a while, and there isn't a problem with skipping a meal
or two and having a shake instead. That isn't what concerns me, that isn't
what seems to concern DanBC _( "I think that's the worrying thing about
Soylent. I really wish they'd kept it experimental, or pushed it as suitable
for daily use but not all meals, or some such.")_, and that isn't what I see
concerning other people in this thread. The literal product, the _substance_
Solyent, is almost certainly perfectly fine to consume. So are cheeseburgers.

~~~
mogrim
> McDonalds certainly doesn't suggest that you do that

I thought part of the problem was that McDonalds /did/ suggest you /could/ do
that, without any ill-effects - that their meals were healthy and you could
eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there without a problem.

~~~
nonchalance
McDonalds never claimed that their food could be consumed to the exclusion of
every other possible food. They offer breakfast options, but none of their
marketing made the claim that eating at McDonalds every day was recommended.

On the other hand, soylent _is_ making the claim that it's healthy to use
soylent as a complete replacement for food. Thus, the standards are much
higher in terms of truth in marketing.

~~~
mogrim
I appreciate that there's a difference in marketing, and McDs isn't actively
suggesting you should eat there everyday (unlike Soylent), but take a look at
this page:

[http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/nutrition_c...](http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/nutrition_choices/balancing_busy_lives/a_balancing_act.html)

There's no mention of food from other places, and the final paragraph
("Variety keeps things interesting") certainly implies you could eat there
daily without problem, to the exclusion of other food sources.

------
sharkweek
Call me an anti-foodie

I only eat because I'm hungry; the taste, as long as it's bearable, is always
an afterthought. I find grocery shopping, cooking and especially doing the
dishes to be insanely inconvenient in my daily life, and eating out is far too
expensive. My wife asked me the other day, "It's not that you expect me to
make dinner for you, it's just that if I didn't, you'd likely eat either a
frozen pizza or boil some pasta every night, right?"

I would absolutely love for this Soylent project to become a reality. The
convenience of getting a well balanced diet served in one small dose is
something I only dreamed of coming true; fingers crossed they can pull it off.

~~~
mortenjorck
I _am_ more or less a foodie, and yet am watching Soylent intently for exactly
the opposite reason: I could conceivably only eat when I'm able to have an
excellent meal. Maybe that means setting aside time to cook an exquisite
dinner a few times a month, and only going out to eat when I want to try a new
restaurant or to socialize.

I could actually see Soylent as the hardcore foodie's dream come true: Never
eat a boring meal again, because you don't have to eat until your next feast.

~~~
ssharp
I'm not sure if anyone is so binary with their food that they will only give
themselves a choice between an exquisite meal or powdered, bland goop. Maybe
I'm just not "hardcore" enough.

I can crack a few eggs in the morning, toss in some veggies and have a hot,
delicious breakfast to enjoy with plenty of protein and it all cooks in just a
few minutes.

For the most part with "weekday cooking", the most time consuming part is the
prep work and that stuff can be easily batched as long as you plan ahead.

I just don't see how anyone who would consider themselves as foodies could be
happy drinking this stuff for the majority of their meals.

~~~
erikpukinskis
If you can effortless get healthy, whole foods into your body whenever you
want then you probably have cooking/shopping/organizing skills well outside
the norm.

I love to cook, and am good at it. But I run out of food all the time, or have
weird random stuff lying around that doesn't fit easily into a quick recipe. I
wish I had your skills/organization.

------
robertfw
> The experiment drove enough interest that Rhinehart decided to do a pivot,
> and change his YC-backed startup from working on wireless networking to
> making Soylent full-time.

That's really stretching what pivoting is, no?

~~~
Pxtl
Yeah, that caught my eye too. I think the start-up world needs a better word
for "we're completely abandoning our entire product direction and moving into
a new industry" than "pivot". I'd suggest "reboot" but even that's a stretch.

~~~
accountoftheday
"pivot" as commonly used now is code for "we did not pull an @ev (i.e. undo
existing investment on change of direction such as odeo->twitter) and chose to
continue using the $incubator brand licensing arrangement"

------
guynamedloren
> _They’re also relocating the company to Los Angeles because Rhinehart said
> the costs of operating in San Francisco were too high to have an office and
> manufacturing facilities._

Random snippet, but glad to hear this. It's exciting to watch to LA startup
scene grow and thrive.

------
pilgrim689
If you just want to save time but the Soylent thing creeps you out, try this:
stop eating as often. I've been eating in a 5-hour window every day (5pm-10pm)
and basically save 2 hours a day: I have no need for breakfast and have
replaced lunch hour with a HIIT workout. More and more people seem to be doing
this as well [1], so it might be a bit more trustworthy than some dude's magic
all-in-one concoction.

[1]

[http://fast-5.org/content/summary](http://fast-5.org/content/summary)

[http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-
guide.html](http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting)

~~~
stcredzero
_> If you just want to save time but the Soylent thing creeps you out, try
this: stop eating as often._

Apparently real american cowboys do just this. During the busy season, some
ranch-hands end up eating just one huge meal a day.

------
josephjrobison
What I think with absolutely no deep research into this is that if the
ingredients are all foods or powders that are already on the market in other
foods, it probably won't do short term damage to the body, as a lot of fast-
food eating people probably would get the same amount of nutrition at the very
least.

I would imagine long term damage would come from the mere fact that you're
eating the same combination of foods/powders day in and day out. I'm pretty
sure there are periods throughout history of people eating only one food and
surviving (ie Irish in 1800s with potatoes, 3rd world countries with
rice/beans) but it's not ideal or good long term.

~~~
defen
nb - the Irish "potato" diet also included copious amounts of butter and milk
or cream. There's not enough fat in an all-potato diet.

~~~
jlgreco
To be fair, is there really another way to eat potatoes? ;)

~~~
kamaal
There are plenty. Welcome to Indian cuisine.

Try it.Trust me, you will remain a life long foodie.

------
skeoh
> He gave it the self-deprecating name Soylent — after the dystopian movie
> Soylent Green where Charlton Heston discovers that society has been living
> off rations made of humans.

I wish he had chosen another name, not because I dislike the name Soylent but
because people will always make this association with the movie. Any time I
tell people about this project I get 'hur hur is it made of people?'

Regarding the quote, the name is not self-deprecating (at least by my
understanding it is not intended to be), and Rob's influence is the book, not
the movie.

From [http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rob-rhinehart-no-longer-
requi...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/rob-rhinehart-no-longer-requires-
food):

> Actually, in the original book Make Room! Make Room! Soylent is made of soya
> and lentil. The movie changed many aspects of the book, though it's still
> one of my favourite movies. My Soylent is human-free.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Any time I tell people about this project I get 'hur hur is it made of
people?'_

Just say, "only certain people," then start looking them up and down
thoughtfully then hold and examine their wrist.

------
mrbill
How long until the lawsuits from someone who tries to live on Soylent alone
and ends up doing damage to their body?

Are they going to use some of the money to hire people who know about
nutrition?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and have lived off various meal
replacement methods for short periods of time, but this still seems to me like
40% "custom meal replacement shake mix that I can order at TrueNutrition" and
60% marketing hype.

------
KevinEldon
I drink Ensure Complete to replace about one meal per day (and I do that
because I learned about Soylent and I thougt it was great and I wanted to cut
my expenses and fatty greasy breakfast food intake). It's not cheap and not
readily available (but not too hard to find), but it tastes fine. If Soylent
is the same and can compete on accessibility, cost, convenience, or how it
makes me feel then I'll probably buy it... and I'm a very common demographic.
Investigating in Soylent seems like a smart bet.

------
caycep
What are the overhead/barriers to entry for this? If they are making a
food/nutrition product, I imagine they'd have to hire people for food
safety/regulatory compliance. Plus additional FDA compliance if they want to
market this as a competitor to current inpatient GI tube feeding
solutions/nutrition shakes (i.e. make it billable to insurance companies).

~~~
ChuckMcM
Remarkably few, which I found interesting. Food safety compliance has
primarily been achieved by only using ingredients that are already identified
as 'food safe'. And a lot of what Rhinehart has done is exactly what someone
like 'Sara Lee' might do except they weren't trying to make it seem like a
pie, rather its just goop.

If you're a person who likes eating, this will be a horrible thing, but if
you're a utilitarian it can be quite reasonable. Presuming it is successful
there is also a huge opportunity in prisons. By eliminating food preparation
and eating utensils you mitigate both costs and threats.

~~~
not_that_noob
Though one would assume one would provoke a riot if Soylent was being served
in preference to 'real' food.

~~~
mikeash
The basic concept is already used in prisons, although not in the general
population:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutraloaf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutraloaf)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Awesome link there, I had not heard of 'nutraloaf' (which is a good thing I
guess). That suggests that if you wanted to use it in prisons it would have to
be the 'standard' meal for everyone. Interesting.

------
Pxtl
Best of luck to him. I still wouldn't touch his ichor with a ten-foot pole.

~~~
JonSkeptic
If they need more money, they can try issuing it in different colors next i.e.
Soylent: Blue, red, yellow, green.

~~~
deletes
Hopefully they won't call it green.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green)

~~~
Pxtl
[http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/1/13/Thats_the_j...](http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/1/13/Thats_the_joke.jpg)

------
tdees40
$65/week seems like a remarkable amount of money for this. I have a wife, and
a kid, so that's $10K a year to go full Soylent. (I'm not really planning on
this, of course, but that's the idea, right?)

~~~
zacharycohn
$65/week for 3 meals a day, 21 meals a week?

You're down to $3 a meal. Unless you're eating fast food or nothing but
pasta... good luck finding another way to get to $3/meal.

[edit- Important clarification: I'm talking about a nutritionally complete,
paleo-ish diet of healthy foods (which is what this is targeting to replace).

Of course you can eat for less than $3/meal, but you start to include less
healthy things like chips, breads, pastas, etc. This is not the meal Soylent
is intended to replace.]

~~~
derekp7
$3.00 per person. That's $12.00 for a family of four. So let's compare. Last
night I made for dinner: 1) 4-pack of boneless pork chops, about $5.00 2) 1
cup (2 cups cooked) yellow rice (rice with some seasonings) -- less that 50
cents 3) A couple potatoes sliced up. About 50 cents worth of potatoes (got
the 10 lb bag for 5 bucks)

Browned the meat, put the rice in a skillet, cut up meat and put it on top,
put potato slices on top of that, covered and baked for 45 minutes. Total prep
time, 5 minutes, cost about 6 bucks. Feeds family of four, and had leftovers.

Some other recipes include things like a ham and noodles w/ cheese casserole
(egg noodles, and a ham steak cut up on top), for around $6 to $7 or so; beef
stew -- $4 to $6 for the stew meat, plus $1 - $2 for a bag of frozen mixed
veggies and a couple potatoes; and variations on chicken fried rice, and even
fajitas are all less than $10 a meal. Actually, the fajitas can go up to $15
if you get beef instead of chicken. And these all feed a family.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I wonder why nobody ever counts the cost of the electricity/gas they used when
they talk about how cheap they were able to cook a meal.

~~~
dustcoin
No one talks about it because the cost is negligible. Running a 1.5kW stovetop
full blast for an hour costs 19 cents at the average electricity price in the
US.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
So costs get included when they reach a level somewhere greater than 19 cents
but _less that 50 cents_. Got it. Thanks.

~~~
untog
Given that he wouldn't have been running it for anywhere near an hour, nor at
full blast, it's not 19 cents either.

Do you pay for shipping for Soylent? Because that's already going to cost more
than cooking multiple meals.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
You may have missed the part where he said after browning the meat he baked it
for 40 minutes. That is pretty near an hour. But I can't say what level it was
being run for that near hour. And shipping is included in my Soylent order.

------
deletes
The largest problem to long term success of Soylent must be that people will
grow weary of eating the same tasting food. You can add a couple of flavors
but that is it. Try eating exclusively your favorite food, I doubt you would
enjoy it after 6 months.

I guess you could mix it with 1/3 of normal food, but still two out of three
meals are the same always.

~~~
claudius
I’ve mostly lived of my ‘standard meal’ (eggs, ham, tomatoes and pasta fried
in a pan for breakfast and dinner) now for the past four-or-so years and I
still like it.

Many other people eat bread with assorted cold cuts daily for dinner
throughout their life.

~~~
deletes
Yes you are correct, i forgot to mention that Soylent is a basically a drink
and has uniform taste, compared to a normal meal in which you chew many
ingredients and get the individual taste of them.

------
malandrew
I would love to see Soylent someday include a strong feedback loop into
tweaking/improving the product over time based on a stream of measured data
from regular users. i.e. Pay some users to use the product in varying amounts
and pay them to live a measured life with regular blood tests, fitness tests,
etc.

It would be awesome if they reach the scale where there are always a certain
percentage of Soylent users that are a constantly measured population used to
see how changes in the soylent formula affects overall health. This way they
could provably show a formula improving every year instead of settling for a
product that is "perfected" and then never really messed with once it achieves
market success.

------
pratik661
Food is a major part of our culture. It doubt that it will be completely
replaced by supplements like this. However I can see genuine use cases for
this. I can see this might be useful for certain military operations, such as
reconnaissance missions, which require troops be travel lightly without
support for prolonged periods, and long term space missions where the marginal
cost of extra space and weight is very expensive. Athletes on specialized
diets may also use this to control their nutritional intake more precisely.

Our culture might even shift to a situation where we take supplements for our
routine nutritional needs and enjoy traditional meals for special occasions,
like when we have guests over.

------
diziet
One thing that might hurt Soylent long term is that it doesn't taste very good
when it is not chilled. It might work well for stay at home/office startup
people with a fridge, but when you are traveling the taste suffers greatly.

~~~
staunch
Pour it over some ice?

~~~
diziet
Is ice really readily available?

~~~
staunch
Yes, I'm pretty sure hotels have ice making technology now.

~~~
agos
so much for feeding people who have no access to food, then.

~~~
staunch
We were discussing the traveling problem, not the poor. But, I think it
actually just tastes worse when it's not cold, so it could still potentially
help.

------
zacharycohn
If this doesn't take off with mass public adoption, I bet there's a great
application here for people who are traveling and can't afford to bring a full
kitchen with them (multi-day hikes, soldiers, road trips, etc).

------
pa5tabear
How will they compete with a large food company?

There's clearly some market for this. The food giants haven't yet entered
because it's risky, and the supply chains for the ingredients still being
developed. As soon as Soylent is successfully shipping safe product, however,
the big companies will jump in and crush Soylent Corp with their lower pricing
and higher profit margins due to their scale of production.

~~~
DanBC
> The food giants haven't yet entered

Every single time Soylent is mentioned the other companies selling the same,
or better, gloop are mentioned.

Here's Nutricia
([https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip//](https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip//))

Here's Abbott Nutrition ([http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-
brands](http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/abbott-brands))

Here's the consumer site for Ensure ([http://ensure.com/](http://ensure.com/))

These are, despite what some people say, complete foods that can be used to
replace all food you eat.

~~~
pcrh
You should add Plumpynut to that list.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut)

I have no idea why this Soylent thing is considered new.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, the World Food Programme have many similar products.
([http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/co...](http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp255508.pdf))

([https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-
products](https://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products))

------
ssharp
Once this is out in the wild, I'll be curious to see how people who adopt this
for the majority of their diet handle themselves when eating "real" food. It's
pretty common for dieters to have serious eating binges when they break their
diet, and I could see the same thing happening with people who choose to use
these sorts of meal replacements for the bulk of their diet.

------
nwg
Does soylent contain actual soy or not? If not is it still going to affect
estrogen like soy? What are the actual facts on excess soy (or anything in its
makeup that's included in soylent) and estrogen? What are any hormonal changes
that have been seen in the months of testing so far if this has been tested?

------
codex
Thank goodness for the youth. For, while nothing is new under the sun, they
don't know that yet.

------
aasarava
Why does the author of the article take $1.5 million in funding and somehow
turn that into "$1.5 million in pre-orders"? Or do they actually have $1.5M in
pre-orders in addition to funding for the business?

~~~
caublestone
Yes, Soylent has $1.5MM in funding from VC's and $1.5MM+ in pre-orders.

------
shocks
Anyone in England know of a good place to source ingredients?

