How did Soylent manage to secure VC funding for a product with absolutely no intellectual property protection?
Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#22I tried Soylent. It made me fart. A lot. Really a lot. It was pretty unprecedented in my life, and I'm generally pretty gassy and have even had the bout of the vegetarianism thing where I pressure cooked and ate lots of beans. Right now, I'm "changing my relationship with food" but by cooking everything myself. I almost exclusively roast and steam things. So long as you can plan things ahead a little bit, on about a…
> 2) Go buy fresh produce once every 3 or 4 days
I would add:
4) Buy stuff that's in season
This can save a lot of pre-planning on meals, since by just buying one or two measures of several things (focusing on getting a variety of colors) you'll naturally have what you need to make a bunch of traditional recipes, which are almost always based around seasonal fruits/berries and veggies (i.e. you won't find a lot of recipes calling for both something that's ripe in Spring and something that's ripe in late Fall).
You can buy first, plan later. I find it to be nearly as easy as sticking to small set of dishes week after week, except that it gives you much more variety. Since what you bought determines the set of things you can make, it removes most of the time and stress associated creating new meal plans for every week and shopping to match them. A good middle ground between the two, IMO.
As a bonus, your food will taste better. AND it opens up the possibility of shopping almost exclusively at farmers' markets, which will make it taste better still. There's no, "oh, they didn't have any fresh X at the farmers' market, and the dish I'm making tomorrow requires it, so now I have to go to the grocery store too, even though I don't need anything else from there right now". Staples at the grocery store, fresh stuff at the farmer's market, make what you can with what you got.
This may be less practical in the Winter, depending on where you are, when canned and frozen stuff becomes important if you don't want to eat rice & beans and various stews for every single meal, but works well for the most part.
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#23I tried Soylent. It made me fart. A lot. Really a lot. It was pretty unprecedented in my life, and I'm generally pretty gassy and have even had the bout of the vegetarianism thing where I pressure cooked and ate lots of beans. Right now, I'm "changing my relationship with food" but by cooking everything myself. I almost exclusively roast and steam things. So long as you can plan things ahead a little bit, on about a…
Oh, the peer pressure of not farting in front of people...
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#24How did Soylent manage to secure VC funding for a product with absolutely no intellectual property protection?
Didn't Tesla give all of their patents away? And are at ~$200/share?
Knowledge is cheap. Execution is where value is delivered.
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#25So this is the "Video killed the radio star" food
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#26I wonder, why the gender gap? Could it be associated in some way with these products' resemblance to existing products with a strong marketing differential between genders? Men might think of protein shakes: you know, whey protein GMC-type stuff, that kind of thing. Women, on the other hand, might think of diet shakes: Slim-Fast and the like. These might both have a broadly "body improvement" type outlook, but one of…
> I wonder, why the gender gap?
- For new foods and drugs that are potentially dangerous, the early adopters are almost universally men. Just look at the demographics of the various online research chemical communities.
- The product almost seems like it's marketed toward people on the autism spectrum.
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#27With Soylent, employees will only need 5 minutes for lunch. Once somebody starts bottling this stuff premixed, it's going to be huge with startups.
I really hope that's not what we've come to.
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#28"Click-bait headlines" may have claimed it, but Rob Rhinehart himself was always clear: Soylent isn't the end of food, it's the end of having no alternative to food . I eat Soylent about 50% of the time, so I'm not surprised the data show others doing the same.
P.S. Weirdly enough, I crave it most in the morning. There's no better breakfast than a simple Soylent and coffee (roughly one part Soylent, two parts coffee). Somehow, Soylent ended up being the best non-dairy coffee creamer of all time.
Assuming you mix it hot, how does that effect the Soylent? Does anything break down and lose nutritional value?
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#29How did Soylent manage to secure VC funding for a product with absolutely no intellectual property protection?
Just like pretty much every other company. Very few have protectable IP.
Re: Results of the 2015 Soylent Eaters Survey
#30I wonder, why the gender gap? Could it be associated in some way with these products' resemblance to existing products with a strong marketing differential between genders? Men might think of protein shakes: you know, whey protein GMC-type stuff, that kind of thing. Women, on the other hand, might think of diet shakes: Slim-Fast and the like. These might both have a broadly "body improvement" type outlook, but one of…
GNC used to have (still has?) two entirely different wrappers on their store-brand protein shakes. One bottle proclaimed "lose weight! get lean!" (light colors, blue/white) and the other boasted "build muscle! grow bigger!" (dark colors, red/black). The contents of both bottles was exactly the same. They were exactly the same price. One was just marketed to women and the other to men.
And the claims are identical, it's only the wording that differs. Compare it to pink and blue toothbrushes.