Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
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Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#2I think this idea will appeal to people who can't eat -- such as those with cancer -- as an alternative to products like Boost and Ensure.
I can't see myself or any of the people I know replacing food with a drink, but I definitely see room in the meal replacement market.
Best of luck to Soylent.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#3The key thing that Soylent is going after is Ensure/Fortsip/Sustagen's margins. Full meal replacements are cost competitive with normal food at $5 a day. Medical suppliers currently charge a steep markup of $14 a day for their full meal replacements. At this price it is uneconomical for most people to adopt full meal replacements as a large part of their diets.
These margins must be destroyed. Soylent, and its competitors, are out to destroy them.
Full meal replacements will only hit critical mass if they cost less than the $7 a day an average American already spends on normal food, and if they are easier to prepare, eat and store. They need to taste nicer too.
The first part is the hardest bit. $6 a day is the current mean cost of full meal replacement production in small batch sizes. Large batch sizes and huge volumes can probably half this cost through economies of scale. Once we have at volume, non-regulated full meal replacements that cost $3 a day, with say a 20-50% gross margin, I expect the entire market to explode.
First one to market wins.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#4I think this idea will appeal to people who can't eat -- such as those with cancer -- as an alternative to products like Boost and Ensure. I can't see myself or any of the people I know replacing food with a drink, but I definitely see room in the meal replacement market. Best of luck to Soylent.
> as an alternative to products like Boost and Ensure.
You specifically mention people with medical needs: What does Soylent do that isn't done by existing meal replacements? What extras does Soylent bring? Or is it just nice to see more products in that segment?
I guess with the investment Soylent could employ qualified dietitians or nutritionists to write information for medical professionals, and to answer questions from medical professionals.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#5One of the ideas I want to find out by trying Soylent is: What happens when hunger is no longer an issue? Will I still crave juicy burgers and fries everday at 12pm? Will I really be satisfied by only eating small bites if I'm already full off Soylent? I definitely see myself using this on days where I'm just too busy to run out for lunch, early morning breakfasts, or as good healthy travel food. Not sure I'll replace my whole diet.
What a cool experiment though...
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#6Given the abundance of links about Soylent that get posted to HN, I can't believe this point hasn't been brought up yet:
Calcium.
Studies have shown it blocks the absorption of Iron and Zinc. At least one even indicates that the combination of all three taken together can be quite detrimental[1]
I'm not a nutritionist, and I'm not even arguing against the possibility that a Soylent diet may be much healthier than the average American diet. I don't have a wealth of other examples where nutrients being taken together at the same time could be less than ideal.
But I do believe that these are questions that the people involved in Soylent should have concerned themselves with before even entertaining the idea of an all-purpose one-size-fits-all meal replacement. I haven't seen this addressed, and it boggles my mind that so many seemingly intelligent people are eager to pay for the opportunity to be guinea pigs of a meal replacement powder that could very well be harmful in the long run.
[1] (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20486142?uid=3739960&u...)
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#7I think this idea will appeal to people who can't eat -- such as those with cancer -- as an alternative to products like Boost and Ensure. I can't see myself or any of the people I know replacing food with a drink, but I definitely see room in the meal replacement market. Best of luck to Soylent.
> as an alternative to products like Boost and Ensure. You specifically mention people with medical needs: What does Soylent do that isn't done by existing meal replacements? What extras does Soylent bring? Or is it just nice to see more products in that segment? I guess with the investment Soylent could employ qualified dietitians or nutritionists to write information for medical professionals, and to answer questio…
Soylent is the Kim Kardashian of meal replacements: it is famous for being famous. There is literally nothing else to distinguish it from the dozens of other meal replacements that make extravagant health claims.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#8The key thing that Soylent is going after is Ensure/Fortsip/Sustagen's margins. Full meal replacements are cost competitive with normal food at $5 a day. Medical suppliers currently charge a steep markup of $14 a day for their full meal replacements. At this price it is uneconomical for most people to adopt full meal replacements as a large part of their diets. These margins must be destroyed. Soylent, and its compet…
> These margins must be destroyed
Are those real margins, or are those the costs of sensible operation in a safety critical regulated marketplace?
> It is currently not economical for most people to adopt at the steep mark up of $14 a day that medical suppliers currently charge.
You Americans and your weird healthcare. Just checking - how do you work out that price of $14 per day? I don't doubt it, these things are expensive and something to make it cheaper is a good thing.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#9I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing about soylent, but it seems to me like the most remarkable thing in the soylent story is that the company is a product of the tech startup culture.
The product itself fits (in my mind) in the nutritional supplements / meal replacements category and wouldn't have ordinarily gotten the attention of HN and startup investors.*
I wonder if this is an anomaly or first blood. Maybe startup culture is spreading to other areas. Startups haven't themselves been necessarily creators of technology (tricky to define). Many are just something that is enabled by mass adoption of some new technology or the cultural shifts that came with it (eg cloud based enterprise software). The whole world seems to be changing fairly rapidly now. That means there might be room for startup-culture to infiltrate even more areas. Tech savy, risk tolerant, big vision, funded, etc.
*I've got nothing to say about the product itself really. I like eating, personally.
Re: Soylent: An Offbeat Food Idea Investors Are Taking Seriously
#10The key thing that Soylent is going after is Ensure/Fortsip/Sustagen's margins. Full meal replacements are cost competitive with normal food at $5 a day. Medical suppliers currently charge a steep markup of $14 a day for their full meal replacements. At this price it is uneconomical for most people to adopt full meal replacements as a large part of their diets. These margins must be destroyed. Soylent, and its compet…
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers - but a four pack of Ensure Complete can be had for ~$9 or less. It's not the cheapest thing in the world, but I can comfortably drink three for breakfast, lunch, and midday snack and have a regular, home cooked dinner and still keep daily food intake cost below $15.