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Surprising Science

Soylent: Moving One Step Closer To A Store Near You

What started out as a personal experiment to reduce a typical human’s nutritional needs to a single drink has now grown into an actual business, thanks to US$3 million in preorders and seed funding. One goal: Improving the taste.

What’s the Latest Development?


Last year, as an experiment to see if he could remove actual food from his diet, Rob Rhinehart spent 30 days living off of Soylent, a drink of his own creation that contained only the raw materials needed for a typical human to survive. Last week came the announcement that Soylent the company received US$1.5 million in seed funding from venture capital firms including Lerer Ventures, Initialized Capital, and Andreesen Horowitz. This is in addition to $1.5 million in preorders raised through crowdfunding.

What’s the Big Idea?

Apparently lots of people were intrigued by Rhinehart’s scientific approach, especially after reading about his 30-day experience online. In addition to reducing the work of eating to a simple pour-and-chug, he wanted to challenge the many problems he saw with global food production. To that end, Soylent is being marketed as an affordable and easily available nutrition solution. Plans for the seed funding include moving the company to Los Angeles and bringing in “a culinary director who can work on [Soylent’s] taste and mouthfeel.” Version 1.0 of the product is scheduled to ship to customers in the next few months.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Read it at TechCrunch


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