
Rosa Labs - mundizzle
http://www.rosalabs.com
======
freehunter
Well, that title change certainly made this post useless. The original was
"Soylent is now Rosa Labs", which is a very informative title. The new title
of "Rosa Labs" is infinitely more likely to get passed over or misunderstood
(as well as making the comments hard to understand without visiting the site).

~~~
sjtgraham
Don't worry too much about it. FWIW Whenever I see an item on the front page
with a contextless title my first thought is that an administrator has changed
it.

Back on topic, I'm glad they changed the name. Soylent always seemed like a
funny joke they outgrew faster than they anticipated!

~~~
cwilson
According to their website, this is just the name of the parent company that
makes Soylent.

"Rosa Labs strives to create innovative nutritional products. Our first
product is Soylent."

Doesn't seem like they are ditching the Soylent name for that particular
product (I wonder what else they are working on?). For the record, I still
like the name quite a bit. I've never understood why a reference to a sci-fi
book got under anyones skin (pun not intended).

~~~
fallinghawks
> I've never understood why a reference to a sci-fi book got under anyones
> skin

Because some people apparently can't make the distinction between a movie and
reality. O_o

Personally I thought it was a funny, tongue-in-cheek name.

------
jluxenberg
And they still haven't added anyone with nutritional science credentials to
their team:

[http://www.rosalabs.com/team/](http://www.rosalabs.com/team/)

~~~
Dystopian
It's not so much just "adding" that person to their team so much.

In the medical community, there's very much the idea of keeping your
credibility stable. You don't want to be the Chief Medical Officer of a
product that has as much hype as Soylent, and then have it turn out to be
fluff, or be horrendous for the human body.

Remember, Soylent isn't just being tested - they're already making pre-sales
and shipping in early '14\. While there's been a lot of talk and debate about
the product, there's been a relatively small amount of actual medical studies
on how their formula effects our body's chemistry. As a doctor there's also
the risk of breaking your own ethics and being the "Dr. who endorses Soylent".

Soylent as a product is incredibly young. Promising, but young. While I'm sure
there're a number of MDs working on contract with their team, I'm also sure
it'll be a little while before there's a real reputable MD or firm that'll be
slapping their name on the product.

From a technical viewpoint, it's kind of like banking your entire career and
credibility on a young company that has a lot of technical debt.

~~~
web007
The end-product doesn't technically exist yet - it's still in "development"
according to their most recent blog post.

[http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-
the-...](http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-
the-10-15-update-we-planned-to)

------
tghw
Does anyone else find it disingenuous that their homepage has the words
"Welcome to Rosa Labs" backed by a stock photo of what must be a much larger
lab? I doubt their "labs" look anything like that.

~~~
tptacek
If that isn't actually their lab, yes, that's extremely disingenuous, and
potentially even actionable.

~~~
enraged_camel
It may be disingenuous, but actionable? I really, really doubt that.

~~~
tptacek
California unfair competition law is pretty broad.

------
jack-r-abbit
The name is not new... just new to us. :)

 _We have been doing business as Rosa Labs from the beginning, but wanted to
wait a few months before publicizing anything other than the Soylent identity.
Soylent Corporation would admittedly have been a pretty great name, but Rosa
Labs will be a better platform for Soylent and any other projects we cook up._
[1]

[1] [http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-
the-...](http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-
the-10-15-update-we-planned-to)

------
kunai
Is it just me, or is it suddenly the cool thing to slap "labs" on the back of
a company's name to make it sound more professional?

They've turned away from an interesting name that describes and differentiates
themselves into a bland and boring "Rosa Labs."

Hmmm. Soylent, vs Rosa Labs.

I damn well know which one I'd pick.

~~~
freehunter
"Labs" has been around forever to indicate a R&D company. Bell Labs was
founded in 1925, and I'm willing to bet it wasn't the first "labs" company.

Picking a more professional name may make it easier to get funding and be
taken seriously.

------
mcphilip
Solyent brings out the cynic in me for some reason -- Rosa Labs and
accompanying boilerplate just sounds like an attempt at preemptively
legitimizing Soylent as a staggeringly important food replacement; the list of
investors are simply black swan hunters and not indicative of the importance
of the product.

I could be wrong and Soylent may actually be an important product spurring
innovation in the ever so important food industry.

I normally gravitate towards the middle of the road opinion after identifying
polar opposites, but for some reason I just can't shake the cynicism about
this. It'll be interesting to watch what happens...

------
pbreit
Could we temper the negativity around here about companies like Twitter, Yelp
& Groupon and products like Soylent? It's pretty clear the audience here has
some sort of aggregated inability to spot large successes. I guess I can
understand a certain amount of skepticism but it sure would be cool to see
more "glass half full" sentiment here.

------
kcovia
'Soylent' will forever be associated with 'Soylent Green is people' in my
mind.

~~~
nationcrafting
The way I see it, marketing wise, that's an absolutely great thing. After all,
some of the big claims for Soylent are very people-oriented indeed.

Soylent aims to be very cheap indeed.

The net effect, in the affluent countries, will be that we beat junkfood
companies at their own game, by providing a fully nutritious diet for less
than a dollar a day.

The net effect, in the third world, will be to significantly reduce famine, by
turning full nutrition into a staple powder that can be distributed without
waste or decomposition to millions of poor people.

So, "Soylent is people", to me, couldn't be a better strapline. It's right up
there with "Just do it".

------
cylinder
The "parent company" is Rosa Labs but the product/brand remains Soylent.

------
christiangenco
Especially after the admin name change, PLEASE move the soylent picture from
last to first in the carousel. It took me a good 20 seconds to figure out what
this was.

Here was my stream of consciousness: saw "welcome to Rosa Labs", jumped to the
bottom and saw YCombinator, saw tweet about soylent, is this a soylent
competitor? A non-related nutrition startup that keeps getting asked about
soylent? A company independently reviewing soylent? Back to HN comments -> top
post from freehunter about the admin name change -> oh! back to the website,
read "Our first product is Soylent." in tiny text.

------
Nux
I thought Rosa Linux has finally made it on the front page!

[http://www.rosalab.com/](http://www.rosalab.com/)

Clearly not the case. :)

------
corbett3000
I love the fact that this site, the video, the whole thing appears to be
entirely a spoof -- but it's just not.

------
tptacek
Are these people doing actual science?

------
throwawayyyz
Why would I want to have a laboratory feed me when I can enjoy fresh
vegetables and other real foods? What the hell is wrong with this world.

