5 ms·
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 e
by zorbadgreek 9y ago
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 from.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Gracana 9y agoIIRC 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.
- blueatlas 9y agoI 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.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>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: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- dsacco 9y agoCynically, I think Musk did that because 1) it buys good will and 2) the patents aren't Tesla's moat.
- alexbeloi 9y agoWhile at the same time he pitched the idea to his investors as a business-smart move to grow the market faster and increase adoption.
- jonknee 9y agoSetting up a factory to manufacture vehicles at scale is a lot different than mixing together some supplement powders.
- samdoidge 9y agoSupportive case: Huel in the UK.
- arikr 9y agoBrand 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.
- ecspike 9y agoThey don't really have one. If you go to https://www.completefoods.co/ https://www.completefoods.co/ , you can find a bunch of meal replacement recipes many of which are soylent inspired because they couldn't get soylent shipped to them. Some people also ship their custom blends. /r/soylent is a popular place where people talk about meal replacements. I think they are kind of like Kleenex, they will become the common name for the genre. As for taste, I tried Soylent and it tasted like wet cardboard to me. I ended up switching to Schmilk (you mix the powder with milk) and the now discontinued 100% Food.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- seanalltogether 9y agoYou could ask the same thing about dollar shave club. companies pushing subscription based services benefit greatly from peoples desires not to change something that works well enough.