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I always wonder how people can say things like this: "They've created a wifi-enabled immersion circulator called the Nomiku so every home chef can prepare simpl

by CPLX 10y ago

I always wonder how people can say things like this: "They've created a wifi-enabled immersion circulator called the Nomiku so every home chef can prepare simple, Michelin-starred meals." I mean, I bet that literally zero Michelin-starred meals have been prepared with this device. And the phrase "Michelin" or "Michelin-starred" is trademarked and has a clear meaning. If I was a marketer for this company I would feel uncomfortable using a phrase like that. With that aside, it's odd to see so many YC companies on this list with the same faddish business models of "send some stuff to you every month you don't get to pick the stuff but trust us" and "do something that's already pretty simple in your kitchen or home but now using an overcomplicated device with machine learning and wifi" The former model isn't really a technology empowered business model at all, it's really a buying or deals club driven by marketing. And the latter is ostensibly technology but it doesn't seem to have really any of the accelerative effect on efficiency that real genuine networked software based businesses have. Seeing all of them in one place like this, backed by YC, is pretty disheartening.

joncrocks 10y ago
Not this specific device perhaps, but Sous Vides (as I understand it) can form part of a commercial kitchen, at high-end restaurants. A quick google shows: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/michelin-restaurant-ends-up-in-hot-water-over-sous-vide-hygiene/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/michelin-restaura... - A Michelin starred restaurant, which uses a Sous Vide. They are generally quite expensive to by for home use. I won't comment on the rest, but I'd agree that the list doesn't exactly fill me with wow.
- CPLX 10y ago
  But that doesn't make sense. If I'm selling a stainless steel bowl like they use in commercial kitchens can I say "now every person ever can whip up Michelin-starred omelettes" or something? I mean I suppose I could, but it makes me sound like an idiot. It's also plainly factually untrue. No Michelin reviewer will ever see my meal, no meal I make will receive a Michelin star. It's literal nonsense. And Sous Vide has been around awhile and totally solid units can be had for about $100. I remain confused about what value-add YC and/or this company is bringing to the space.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > But that doesn't make sense. If I'm selling a stainless steel bowl like they use in commercial kitchens can I say "now every person ever can whip up Michelin-starred omelettes" or something? People who are selling, say, chef's knives absolutely say that kind of thing. It's kind of silly but not obviously more so than any other marketing puffery.
  - joncrocks 10y ago
    I wouldn't disagree, I guess I was targeted at >I mean, I bet that literally zero Michelin-starred meals have been prepared with this device. i.e. If this was a type of device that no-one would use/was using in high-end restaurants then it's clearly a ridiculous statement. But Sous Vides are. And I'm sure that there are providers of bowls, pans, knives and other kitchen miscellanea that are marketed to the public as 'professional grade', even if they won't make your food taste better. That's advertising :-) As to why this is a 'start-up', not sure, not a huge amount to disrupt.
- azinman2 10y ago
  They also use stoves -- that doesn't automatically mean you're creating Michelin worthy meals because you have a stove. Like any cooking equipment, you need skill + technique + great ingredients to create a professional-class meal.... and a lot more than just a sous vide machine.
  - bennyg 10y ago
    And marketing. The best chef, with the best ingredients, with the best equipment isn't getting a Michelin rating at home. It obviously needs to be in a professional restaurant with top-notch marketing to even get a reviewer to think about coming in.
- ben1040 10y ago
  That's like saying a MacBook Pro is often used in high-end programming shops, so buy one and you'll be churning out remarkable software. The skill of the person wielding the tool matters way more than the tool.
- sushid 10y ago
  Not exactly that expensive these days. Anovas broke that barrier years ago and they retail for $99 - $125 during this time of the year.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
kepano 10y ago
Nomiku is in use at Michelin-starred restaurants. e.g. Noma: https://twitter.com/nomacph/status/527325007014543361 https://twitter.com/nomacph/status/527325007014543361
aaachilless 10y ago
With regard to the comments after the aside: The former model has become a “fad” because of technological progress in e.g. logistics and predictive analytics. The wording “send some stuff to you every month you don’t get to pick the stuff but trust us” belies the fact that this is actually a very difficult problem with a very interesting solution. If some instance of this model succeeds it will be because it managed to create a service that improves lives at _essentially zero cognitive cost_. To cultivate and then engage with certain preferences takes some amount of time and energy and to be able to offload those costs to software is, at the very least, interesting. The latter model is only uninteresting under the assumption that the products will never work in the sense you mentioned (efficiency improvement). I’m not sure there’s any reason to assume that “smart”, “connected” products won’t improve substantially in the relatively near future. I also think there’s plenty of simple tasks that could be automated in a meaningfully useful way. For example, cooking rice. More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion.
- CPLX 10y ago
  > More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion. I do understand this view, and I share it to some extent. It's easy to be cynical and it's hard to try to make things work. I understand that far more now in my old age than I did back in the fuckedcompany.com days, for example. With that said, I think people who espouse this view can be a little oblivious to the downsides of frivolous investment bubbles in tech. If you take a million dollars of investment and do something like take cases of wine, open the bottles and pour it into little glass size vials, and mail it to people for a couple months before realizing that service is not really useful to anyone, then that's a real life tragedy. Asset bubbles are bad and have real life consequences. Those million dollars belong to someone, often someone's retirement fund or similar. That million dollars can help people. It can help them directly, by giving to those in need, or more relevantly, it can support business ideas that aren't frivolous, people who aren't privileged graduates of prestigious colleges or connected to hot incubators. Maybe a system that is funding that idea but leaving so many prospective entrepreneurs and ideas completely out of the system, is somewhat broken. Maybe we're allowed to notice it and find it problematic if we want to. Maybe we can say hey this is disappointing because it is.
smacktoward 10y ago
> the phrase "Michelin" or "Michelin-starred" is trademarked and has a clear meaning. If I was a marketer for this company I would feel uncomfortable using a phrase like that. The person who would feel really uncomfortable is (or should be, anyway) their lawyer. "Prepare Michelin-starred meals!" makes it sound like the product has been endorsed by Michelin, which puts a big fat target on them for a lawsuit from Michelin if it hasn't.

by CPLX 10y ago

joncrocks 10y ago

Not this specific device perhaps, but Sous Vides (as I understand it) can form part of a commercial kitchen, at high-end restaurants. A quick google shows: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/michelin-restaurant-ends-up-in-hot-water-over-sous-vide-hygiene/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/michelin-restaura... - A Michelin starred restaurant, which uses a Sous Vide. They are generally quite expensive to by for home use. I won't comment on the rest, but I'd agree that the list doesn't exactly fill me with wow.

CPLX 10y ago
But that doesn't make sense. If I'm selling a stainless steel bowl like they use in commercial kitchens can I say "now every person ever can whip up Michelin-starred omelettes" or something? I mean I suppose I could, but it makes me sound like an idiot. It's also plainly factually untrue. No Michelin reviewer will ever see my meal, no meal I make will receive a Michelin star. It's literal nonsense. And Sous Vide has been around awhile and totally solid units can be had for about $100. I remain confused about what value-add YC and/or this company is bringing to the space.
- lmm 10y ago
  > But that doesn't make sense. If I'm selling a stainless steel bowl like they use in commercial kitchens can I say "now every person ever can whip up Michelin-starred omelettes" or something? People who are selling, say, chef's knives absolutely say that kind of thing. It's kind of silly but not obviously more so than any other marketing puffery.
- joncrocks 10y ago
  I wouldn't disagree, I guess I was targeted at >I mean, I bet that literally zero Michelin-starred meals have been prepared with this device. i.e. If this was a type of device that no-one would use/was using in high-end restaurants then it's clearly a ridiculous statement. But Sous Vides are. And I'm sure that there are providers of bowls, pans, knives and other kitchen miscellanea that are marketed to the public as 'professional grade', even if they won't make your food taste better. That's advertising :-) As to why this is a 'start-up', not sure, not a huge amount to disrupt.
azinman2 10y ago
They also use stoves -- that doesn't automatically mean you're creating Michelin worthy meals because you have a stove. Like any cooking equipment, you need skill + technique + great ingredients to create a professional-class meal.... and a lot more than just a sous vide machine.
- bennyg 10y ago
  And marketing. The best chef, with the best ingredients, with the best equipment isn't getting a Michelin rating at home. It obviously needs to be in a professional restaurant with top-notch marketing to even get a reviewer to think about coming in.
ben1040 10y ago
That's like saying a MacBook Pro is often used in high-end programming shops, so buy one and you'll be churning out remarkable software. The skill of the person wielding the tool matters way more than the tool.
sushid 10y ago
Not exactly that expensive these days. Anovas broke that barrier years ago and they retail for $99 - $125 during this time of the year.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

kepano 10y ago

Nomiku is in use at Michelin-starred restaurants. e.g. Noma: https://twitter.com/nomacph/status/527325007014543361 https://twitter.com/nomacph/status/527325007014543361

aaachilless 10y ago

With regard to the comments after the aside: The former model has become a “fad” because of technological progress in e.g. logistics and predictive analytics. The wording “send some stuff to you every month you don’t get to pick the stuff but trust us” belies the fact that this is actually a very difficult problem with a very interesting solution. If some instance of this model succeeds it will be because it managed to create a service that improves lives at _essentially zero cognitive cost_. To cultivate and then engage with certain preferences takes some amount of time and energy and to be able to offload those costs to software is, at the very least, interesting. The latter model is only uninteresting under the assumption that the products will never work in the sense you mentioned (efficiency improvement). I’m not sure there’s any reason to assume that “smart”, “connected” products won’t improve substantially in the relatively near future. I also think there’s plenty of simple tasks that could be automated in a meaningfully useful way. For example, cooking rice. More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion.

CPLX 10y ago
> More generally, building a profitable, sustainable organization of human beings is intrinsically useful and interesting. This last part is less a reply to your post and more a response to a cynical (in my opinion) tone throughout this discussion. I do understand this view, and I share it to some extent. It's easy to be cynical and it's hard to try to make things work. I understand that far more now in my old age than I did back in the fuckedcompany.com days, for example. With that said, I think people who espouse this view can be a little oblivious to the downsides of frivolous investment bubbles in tech. If you take a million dollars of investment and do something like take cases of wine, open the bottles and pour it into little glass size vials, and mail it to people for a couple months before realizing that service is not really useful to anyone, then that's a real life tragedy. Asset bubbles are bad and have real life consequences. Those million dollars belong to someone, often someone's retirement fund or similar. That million dollars can help people. It can help them directly, by giving to those in need, or more relevantly, it can support business ideas that aren't frivolous, people who aren't privileged graduates of prestigious colleges or connected to hot incubators. Maybe a system that is funding that idea but leaving so many prospective entrepreneurs and ideas completely out of the system, is somewhat broken. Maybe we're allowed to notice it and find it problematic if we want to. Maybe we can say hey this is disappointing because it is.

smacktoward 10y ago

> the phrase "Michelin" or "Michelin-starred" is trademarked and has a clear meaning. If I was a marketer for this company I would feel uncomfortable using a phrase like that. The person who would feel really uncomfortable is (or should be, anyway) their lawyer. "Prepare Michelin-starred meals!" makes it sound like the product has been endorsed by Michelin, which puts a big fat target on them for a lawsuit from Michelin if it hasn't.