Rosa Labs

http://www.rosalabs.com

by mundizzle • 13 years ago

47 43 13 years ago

rosalabs.com

jluxenberg• 13 years ago

And they still haven't added anyone with nutritional science credentials to their team:

http://www.rosalabs.com/team/

KevinEldon6• 13 years ago

I think your point is that this is marketed as a "nutritional" product and yet no member of the team has a credentialed background in nutritional science so the marketing claims may be dubious.

If that's what you mean I think "so what?". Don't buy it. The marketing claims, like so many marketing claims, may be wrong. If the product does not help people then people will stop buying it or it will be like any number of other bogus "nutritional" products that survive on marketing and placebo effect alone.

Being skeptical of a product based on the team that created is valid, but doesn't mean the product isn't valuable. The product should stand on its own. I think that is the nature of a start-up, you create something get it into the hands of customers and experiment. Soylent just happens to use food ingredients instead of node.js.

princess3000• 13 years ago

You'd probably expect a car company with the motto "Engineering future cars" to have at least one mechanical engineer on their payroll. Expecting a company whose tagline is "Engineering future foods" to have at least one person with a background in nutrition isn't unreasonable.

Ship it and then iterate works when your product is software, not so much when it's marketed as the only food the human body needs to ingest for long periods of time. If node.js breaks then maybe some websites go down. If Soylent breaks then people could die (though hopefully they'd stop taking it before that point).

timdorr• 13 years ago

They have advisers with strong credentials: http://blog.soylent.me/post/64789154918/soylent-funding-anno...

Dystopian• 13 years ago

It's not so much just "adding" that person to their team so much.

In the medical community, there's very much the idea of keeping your credibility stable. You don't want to be the Chief Medical Officer of a product that has as much hype as Soylent, and then have it turn out to be fluff, or be horrendous for the human body.

Remember, Soylent isn't just being tested - they're already making pre-sales and shipping in early '14. While there's been a lot of talk and debate about the product, there's been a relatively small amount of actual medical studies on how their formula effects our body's chemistry. As a doctor there's also the risk of breaking your own ethics and being the "Dr. who endorses Soylent".

Soylent as a product is incredibly young. Promising, but young. While I'm sure there're a number of MDs working on contract with their team, I'm also sure it'll be a little while before there's a real reputable MD or firm that'll be slapping their name on the product.

From a technical viewpoint, it's kind of like banking your entire career and credibility on a young company that has a lot of technical debt.

web007• 13 years ago

The end-product doesn't technically exist yet - it's still in "development" according to their most recent blog post.

http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-the-...

WalterSear• 13 years ago

His first recipe missed out a number of micronutrients that while not necessarily fatal in the mid to short term, wouldn't be that much fun to go without. IIRC, Creatine, Tyrosine, Beta-Alanine, and a number of others.

cylinder• 13 years ago

The "parent company" is Rosa Labs but the product/brand remains Soylent.

kunai• 13 years ago

Is it just me, or is it suddenly the cool thing to slap "labs" on the back of a company's name to make it sound more professional?

They've turned away from an interesting name that describes and differentiates themselves into a bland and boring "Rosa Labs."

Hmmm. Soylent, vs Rosa Labs.

I damn well know which one I'd pick.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

"Labs" has been around forever to indicate a R&D company. Bell Labs was founded in 1925, and I'm willing to bet it wasn't the first "labs" company.

Picking a more professional name may make it easier to get funding and be taken seriously.

bestest• 13 years ago

I think "research facility" sounds way cooler. as in "black mesa research facility".

kcovia• 13 years ago

'Soylent' will forever be associated with 'Soylent Green is people' in my mind.

nationcrafting• 13 years ago

The way I see it, marketing wise, that's an absolutely great thing. After all, some of the big claims for Soylent are very people-oriented indeed.

Soylent aims to be very cheap indeed.

The net effect, in the affluent countries, will be that we beat junkfood companies at their own game, by providing a fully nutritious diet for less than a dollar a day.

The net effect, in the third world, will be to significantly reduce famine, by turning full nutrition into a staple powder that can be distributed without waste or decomposition to millions of poor people.

So, "Soylent is people", to me, couldn't be a better strapline. It's right up there with "Just do it".

freehunter2• 13 years ago

Well, that title change certainly made this post useless. The original was "Soylent is now Rosa Labs", which is a very informative title. The new title of "Rosa Labs" is infinitely more likely to get passed over or misunderstood (as well as making the comments hard to understand without visiting the site).

sjtgraham• 13 years ago

Don't worry too much about it. FWIW Whenever I see an item on the front page with a contextless title my first thought is that an administrator has changed it.

Back on topic, I'm glad they changed the name. Soylent always seemed like a funny joke they outgrew faster than they anticipated!

cwilson• 13 years ago

According to their website, this is just the name of the parent company that makes Soylent.

"Rosa Labs strives to create innovative nutritional products. Our first product is Soylent."

Doesn't seem like they are ditching the Soylent name for that particular product (I wonder what else they are working on?). For the record, I still like the name quite a bit. I've never understood why a reference to a sci-fi book got under anyones skin (pun not intended).

benatkin• 13 years ago

The new title is better IMO. HN is partly entertainment, and I enjoyed the post much more since I looked at their site without first knowing what it would be about.

jack-r-abbit• 13 years ago

The name is not new... just new to us. :)

We have been doing business as Rosa Labs from the beginning, but wanted to wait a few months before publicizing anything other than the Soylent identity. Soylent Corporation would admittedly have been a pretty great name, but Rosa Labs will be a better platform for Soylent and any other projects we cook up.[1]

[1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/65760097009/as-mentioned-in-the-...

tghw• 13 years ago

Does anyone else find it disingenuous that their homepage has the words "Welcome to Rosa Labs" backed by a stock photo of what must be a much larger lab? I doubt their "labs" look anything like that.

KevinEldon6• 13 years ago

No, it's not a problem for me.

chadwickthebold2• 13 years ago

Good point. Startups can get away with using stock photography to show the use cases for their product, but it does seem a little questionable to have stock photos for a science-based company like this to use stock photos of a space that probably isn't theirs, and a 'guy-looking-into-microscope' that probably doesn't work there.

KevinEldon6• 13 years ago

Small tech companies use stock data center photography all of the time. It's usually kind of tacky honestly, but is it really that different?

tptacek3• 13 years ago

If that isn't actually their lab, yes, that's extremely disingenuous, and potentially even actionable.

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

It may be disingenuous, but actionable? I really, really doubt that.

edwardio• 13 years ago

Reverse image search, looks like its a stock photo: (apologizes for the long url) https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZis1D9mIAbiUBTpGcU...

smnrchrds• 13 years ago

I didn't like the photos either. Specially the second one which shows someone in lab coat looking into a microscope. It gives the sense that the product is being tested extensively by professionals, while the reality is much different.

If the team thinks they can make a food product without nutritionists or doctors, they should just a picture of themselves on the front page.

Nux• 13 years ago

I thought Rosa Linux has finally made it on the front page!

http://www.rosalab.com/

Clearly not the case. :)

christiangenco• 13 years ago

Especially after the admin name change, PLEASE move the soylent picture from last to first in the carousel. It took me a good 20 seconds to figure out what this was.

Here was my stream of consciousness: saw "welcome to Rosa Labs", jumped to the bottom and saw YCombinator, saw tweet about soylent, is this a soylent competitor? A non-related nutrition startup that keeps getting asked about soylent? A company independently reviewing soylent? Back to HN comments -> top post from freehunter about the admin name change -> oh! back to the website, read "Our first product is Soylent." in tiny text.

corbett3000• 13 years ago

I love the fact that this site, the video, the whole thing appears to be entirely a spoof -- but it's just not.

mcphilip• 13 years ago

Solyent brings out the cynic in me for some reason -- Rosa Labs and accompanying boilerplate just sounds like an attempt at preemptively legitimizing Soylent as a staggeringly important food replacement; the list of investors are simply black swan hunters and not indicative of the importance of the product.

I could be wrong and Soylent may actually be an important product spurring innovation in the ever so important food industry.

I normally gravitate towards the middle of the road opinion after identifying polar opposites, but for some reason I just can't shake the cynicism about this. It'll be interesting to watch what happens...

throwawayyyz• 13 years ago

Why would I want to have a laboratory feed me when I can enjoy fresh vegetables and other real foods? What the hell is wrong with this world.

pbreit• 13 years ago

Could we temper the negativity around here about companies like Twitter, Yelp & Groupon and products like Soylent? It's pretty clear the audience here has some sort of aggregated inability to spot large successes. I guess I can understand a certain amount of skepticism but it sure would be cool to see more "glass half full" sentiment here.

tptacek3• 13 years ago

Are these people doing actual science?

Rosa Labs

Related Stories