Soylent isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Meal replacement alternatives have existed for decades and there are numerous brands out there that have a medical proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the Soylent we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from the startup culture is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing Soylent offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/tLIC_oIeeORWgna6kbpW1...
The Soylent has more protein, a more balanced nutritional profile, less wasteful (and annoying) packaging, and is lactose free too.
Edit: and the Ensure has 0 fiber!
A lot of the time, it's not the specific artifact that is disruptive, but it's the vision behind it. The iPhone is Unix on a phone. Qt had that years before Apple. Apple actually shipped, and added freedom from the carriers' horrible user experience.
Ensure and Shakeology and Slimfast and Garden of Life have been around forever, but Rob is interested in Soylent being a complete replacement for your normal, everyday nutrition. He's not just resting on his laurels, having an obviously desirable product, but he's continuing to work on improving it, and he inspired a community to join him. Soylent is not big enough to disrupt the food industry yet, but if he succeeds, then it will.
The iPhone isn't "new". It isn't "disrupting" anything. Smartphones have existed for years and there are numerous brands out there that have a commercial proven trackrecord that can be obtained for cheaper than the iPhone we're seeing pushed today.
What we have here is a case of "forward thinkers" believing that some crackpot idea from Apple is suddenly revolutionary because they marketed it best to this subculture of life. You're a sucker to believing iPhone offers anything revolutionary yet paying above market to have them feed you that lie.
How did I do?
The main problems with them were that the screens sucked.
But the real disruption was the disruption in the carrier relationship. A lot of smartphones didn't have WiFi, and the carriers would nickel and dime you for every kilobyte. Apple convinced them to do the flat rates and big chunks of data. Apple introduced manufacturer control of the user experience, instead of Verizon disabling every feature that would allow you to avoid the carrier's fees. When the iPhone was announced, the feature I was most impressed by was the visual voicemail. Voicemail was so tedious and inefficient before iPhone.
Ridiculing an argument is not the same as countering it.
What if Ensure had a cool name and didn't carry connotations of age and disease? What if it was sexily marketed? What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious? What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again? What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready? What if it came out of a tap? What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced? What if it was surrounded by a devoted and inventive community of DIY hackers? What if the creator of Ensure was rapidly iterating it and discussing engineering microbes to produce pure versions of it?
Oh, or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
Besides, I already conceded that Soylent is marketed to hipsters. If its creators had "creativity" or "vision", they wouldn't have reinvented Ensure. It's marketing over substance.
"Soylent" carries connotations of being made of the ground up corpses of the poor, so...
> What if it was easy to flavour and make delicious?
Is it easier to do with Soylent than Ensure, or any other drink? You can put sugar into anything, and "delicious" is relative.
> What if you signed up for a subscription and never thought about it again?
Other services offer food delivery, and arguably, just going to the store is often more convenient and cost effective.
>What if you got it from vending machines that were everywhere you went and recognised you as you approached, having a glass perfectly formulated to your tastes and needs at that precise moment ready?
Soylent doesn't have vending machines networked to some sort of facial-recognition AI.
>What if it came out of a tap?
Soylent doesn't come out of a tap.
> What if your home 3D printer could form it into a multitude of shapes and textures (bar, cookie, cereal) and it would still be nutritionally balanced?
That's an argument for the transformational nature of 3d printing, not Soylent.
> or is it easier, instead of using your imagination and a bit of enthusiasm, to point to how it's similar to a crappy product that nobody bothered to market, and imply that it won't be sucessful - because we all know the success and impact of a product has nothing to do with the creativity, perserverance and vision of the creators, right?
It is similar. Everything you've mentioned about how revolutionary Soylent is, appears to be either marketing hype (Ensure doesn't iterate, it isn't hip, it's associated with old people, etc etc) or pie-in-the-sky stuff that doesn't even relate to Soylent as a product, and doesn't even exist. The argument that the Soylent which actually exists is basically Ensure for hipsters still seems valid.
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Where in the hell did you get that idea?
It's interesting. HN is supposed to represent some of the world's most dynamic, forward-thinkers. However almost every truly disruptive development is greeted with small-minded negative thinking and parochialism. Bitcoin is scam money for paranoiacs who don't trust banks. Inflation is good for economies. The rich are too rich. We need more and higher taxes and more socialist redistribution of wealth. Soylent tastes bad and destroys traditional food cultures. Uber is too powerful and going to become a monopoly. Google is evil. Without the protection of friendly governments capitalism will exploit the poor. People are too stupid to protect themselves from predatory opportunists (and the government is somehow a perfect vessel to counteract them.) Everything is scary and the way things should be is how a small group of white men who are very good friends with the US government tell us how it should be, which happens to be very similar to today but with more friendly government intervention to fix everything white male programmers are scared of and don't understand.
I guess it'll be entertaining to watch people changing their tune over the coming decades.