Soylent gets a lot of hate (I'm looking forward to skipping out on this thread before the inevitable negative comments from people who assume that Soylent consumers will eat nothing but Soylent for the rest of their lives), but to me, it's solved a large problem in my life: what to eat when I'm hungry but I don't have enough time to prepare a full meal. It can happen every now and then when I'm rushing around, and so…
For other readers, a caution - I found Ample to be inedible, taste wise. I took a few sips of the first bottle, and didn't touch the rest of my order.
What advantage does Soylent have over say, other meal replacements e.g. Slimfast, weight watcher shakes, juices etc that have existed for years before it and will continue to do so for years after? All I see is SV hype and marketing. In fact you just showed that Soylent is easily outplayed because you switched to a different drink already.
Pro GMO: they are not hiding that they used a lot of GMO product, instead of selling you something organic with a huge premium. Glycemic Index/Glycemic Load: a quick search doesn't give me SlimFast's GI/GL info, while Soylent does post the number.
> Glycemic Index/Glycemic Load: a quick search doesn't give me SlimFast's GI/GL info, while Soylent does post the number.
It's available. Seems weird to decide based on the availability of the number versus the number.
IIRC Soylent is not patented and the creator has said that if someone can create the same thing, then that's fine because the goal is to help people. So... it doesn't matter.
I can't imagine that the creator of Soylent really feels that way, at least from a business perspective. I doubt investors would put their money into a business that was fine with getting beat in the marketplace as long as it helps people.
>>I can't imagine that the creator of Soylent really feels that way, at least from a business perspective.
Why not? Elon Musk did the same thing by basically saying Tesla's patents are "open-source" and free to use:
What people gloss over about soylent on their way to the oft-repeated "it's just like slimfast wtf" point is that it's not the specific product that's interesting/innovative/valuable (it is kinda like slimfast...), it's taking that product to an entirely new and arguably larger market - I have no idea many 20 to 30 somethings working in tech were out there buying slimfast 10 years ago, but I'm guessing (and I could be wrong!) it's fewer than the number of folks who buy soylent today. assuming it can maintain appeal to "hard-working tech folks", then it's arguable that they can also successfully appeal to other professionals in other markets who, again, I would guess were not buying slimfast or other meal/diet drinks. it's all about marketing and "telling a new story", and i don't mean that in a bad way at all - sure, any company can quickly copy the ingredients, but they will also have to sell the same story, which is totally possible but arguably harder to do as well. that all being said, marketing IMO is only so good of a moat and there's only a few co's who really dominate relying mostly on it (coke, hermes, nike to name a few), so i'm not sure the new market and their story is worth this large of an investment, but who knows it very well could be!
I'm curious about the naming choice as the end of the movie with Heston reveals that eating "Soylent Green" is a form of cannibalism. Does the term "Soylent" signify something outside of the movie?
It's intended as a reference to the novel that the movie is "based on", Make Room! Make Room!, By Harry Harrison.
Which doesn't involve cannibalism, but is an odd choice in other ways.
I'm curious about the naming choice as the end of the movie with Heston reveals that eating "Soylent Green" is a form of cannibalism. Does the term "Soylent" signify something outside of the movie?
No, the name is directly referencing the movie. It's a tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating, much in the spirit of programming culture.
I wonder how many of its customers are too young to appreciate the reference or the irony. To them Soylent means one thing - this product. It'd be tricky to find out though, without spilling the beans. Kind of a quantum question in that way.
It amazes me that VCs find this type of business interesting because it's not defensible in many of the ways a software company is. I am also not sure why the company wants to raise this much money -- they need to continue growing like crazy (outside of tech regions where engineers who are unwilling to cook live) or go bust. Nonetheless, the drink is ok. I tried it for a few months. Instead of avoiding cooking, I hav…
What meals are you cooking for $3-4 on the Joule? Looking at getting a Joule soon.
What advantage does Soylent have over say, other meal replacements e.g. Slimfast, weight watcher shakes, juices etc that have existed for years before it and will continue to do so for years after? All I see is SV hype and marketing. In fact you just showed that Soylent is easily outplayed because you switched to a different drink already.
> easily outplayed because you switched to a different drink already. Not really. Soylent is much cheaper than Ample, and that's a major plus for the cost conscious (which is a lot of people!) As for the other ones - honestly mostly marketing I'd imagine. I've never heard of any product billed as a "nutritionally complete" meal. SlimFast to me sounds like a dieting product (as do weight watcher shakes), which isn't w…
Can you point to that story? I know some got caught putting "cures cancer" on the label and that is a big no-no.
Yes that was the one. He had a client cliaming she got cancer free. http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-02-23-amish-farmer-facing-68...
Yeah, that's a whole different thing. The FDA is a bit nasty to anyone claiming any health benefit without a study. Ask the cereal companies, they got sued quite a lot. Soylent and others just have to put labels on the food and that can be done without some prior approval.
The killer FDA rule that is going to impact a lot of people goes effective for enforcement on May 5.
I'm trying to understand what Soylent's business moat is. My inclination is economies of scale to drive cost of goods down, like many food companies. To that end, I don't see their product as all that unique or difficult to replicate, and I also foresee headwinds for them if/when they try to market to a broader base of consumers who already have powders, shakes, bars, and hundreds of other meal substitutes to choose…
Brand defensibility also seems to be a real thing when you have food products reaching 100m+ people (e.g. Coke, Mars, Pepsi).
So brand defensibility + economies of scale. Though somewhat tenuous.