7 ms·

Soylent raises $750k on Crowdhoster – what’s next for open source crowdfunding?

106 points by garry 13y ago

weston 13y ago
Hi Garry, With all due respect, isn't your headline a bit backwards? Crowdtilt is just the platform. Soylent raised most of this on their own, due to their own efforts and the press they've been receiving. Even the original headline is: "Soylent raises $750k on Crowdhoster." Why switch that around? I'm not trying to diminish Crowdtilt and their efforts, but your headline makes it seem like Soylent didn't do anything.
- shawnc 13y ago
  Well Said.
- Peroni 13y ago
  What was Garry's original title? It appears to have reverted to the article title now.
- garry 13y ago
  Fair point! Did not mean to imply that; I love and support the Soylent team too!
  - weston 13y ago
    No problem! :-)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dnautics 13y ago
I'm going to try to raise money to bring an IP-unrestricted anticancer compound up to the point of FDA clinical trials. (i.e. as far as you can go without involving humans). I'm pretty sure that I'll be using crowdhoster as the platform.
- Blahah 13y ago
  This is awesome. Are you developing it unfunded at the moment?
  - dnautics 13y ago
    Work on it was discontinued when my boss quit her job at the university of maryland. The 1 year patenting period has expired, I have no love for patents anyways, so I'm going to generate several analogs and register them as something called "US Statutory Invention Registration" which prevents them from being patented. I have her blessing (not that I would need it from a legal POV) to continue work on this project. Since then I've been accruing a lot of synthetic biology experience (I'm currently probably the most experienced person in the world at a new technique called "gibson assembly" - I've done upwards of 100 successful gibson assemblies on a wide range of molecular biology targets), which should help the process go even more smoothly. Details are at: http://indysci.org http://indysci.org, currently we're waiting for the IRS to approve our application for 501(c)3 status before launching our fundraising. Our target launch date is January 2014
    - Blahah 13y ago
      That's an awful lot of Gibson! What tools are you using to design your constructs? I briefly joined the developers of Gibthon (FOSS gibson assembly design software; http://gibthon.org/ http://gibthon.org/) last year - they will be thrilled to hear if you use it. In fact, if you would be willing to share some of your experience, no doubt it would be invaluable for improving the design tools. We've also got lots of people in our department doing lots of Gibson assembly. If you ever want to compare notes or anything... my email is in profile. How are you doing for computational biologists?
freshbreakfast 13y ago
I know you're probably dealing with 2 different systems, but I'd love it if Crowdhoster campaigns could also be hosted on Crowdtilt.com. I get that Crowdhoster is supposed to enable all types of cool group transactions way beyond the controlled scope of Crowdtilt, but even just generating a secondary Crowdtilt.com landing page for a Crowdhoster campaign would be cool. I also get how this isn't a big issue for now. But as Crowdtilt grows, I would think it becomes a "brand" that people trust to handle transactions, and would tip a certain % of the market to then give up the CC digits. So for example, as a consumer, I might be more inclined to purchase something on crowdtilt.com, as opposed to xanga.com. Just like how right now, your average consumer might be more inclined to support a Kickstarter project over a Crowdtilt project, due to inherent trust he feels in Kickstarter as a curator/brand. But since I'm bullish on Crowtilt, I think Crowdtilt eventually develops and trusted brand name. As an campaign director/organizer, in and ideal world, I want both the flexibility of Crowdhoster and that brand stamp of "Crowdtilt". Just a suggest... otherwise, these updates are actually really cool, love where it's going!
nhangen 13y ago
I think what's next, and quite frankly, what's already been happening, is that crowdfunding will move away from platforms and onto self-hosted websites.
- rdl 13y ago
  One of the things I like most about Kickstarter is having the "activity feed" of friends who have funded other projects. I'm sure there's a way to recreate that without having the restrictive ToS kickstarter has, though, or it could be solved by publishing "I've funded this" to twitter/fb/etc.
- jljljl 13y ago
  I'm not so sure. This seems like a brilliant idea for projects that can successfully generate their own hype and buzz (as Soylent did through HN before launching their campaign), but that may not work for Joe Everyman who has a cool idea that they want to fund. Kickstarter provides an aggregation of fundable ideas in one place for curious people to browse. It's similar to what you see with musicians and comedians. Radiohead and Louis C.K. can probably host and fund their own releases/campaigns easily, but your average local band probably doesn't have sufficient reach. Edited for grammer/typos
- brackin 13y ago
  Reward based crowdfunding will become a payments/distribution mechanism for an already engaged audience rather than a free source of money for people with an idea and no way to execute on it.
asdfologist 13y ago
Am I the only one surprised by the choice of name "Soylent" for a nutritional drink?
- baddox 13y ago
  It's an apt name. In the film "Soylent Green," soylent was just a line of meal-replacement rations. The green variety was the newest one released, and the one that happened to be made of humans.
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    Additionally, Soylent Green wasn't even in the book that the film was based on ('Make Room! Make Room!'). The book was about the impact of unchecked population growth.
cupcake-unicorn 13y ago
I keep seeing Soylent pop up on blogs and stuff and I don't know what the big deal is. He made some shady claims before about things like "suffering from a severe iron deficiency" in just a few days, which was magically fixed when he remixed the formula. I'm also shocked that he's marketing it to this extent and still doesn't say anything about the ingredients. People have allergies, people have dietary restrictions. How is this at all different from a protein shake at the Health Food store?
- robertlaing 13y ago
  I agree. (And it reminds me too much of baby formula, which is proven to be less healthy than the real stuff)...
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  > I don't know what the big deal is. It's basically junk science (or a de-facto scam) by a guy who is doing well at marketing himself. Food replacements already exist. The biggest is a product called Ensure. There are others. It's not clear that there's a need for Soylent at all. You're right, iron deficiency can't be detected in a few days (3 months would be closer to the time frame required assuming you had healthy iron levels to begin). Most of the other continual reformulations he discusses also seem pretty ridiculous on the timeframes involved. Basically, this guy doesn't seem to have any understanding of stochastic experimentation, limiting confounding factors or limiting free variables.
  - baddox 13y ago
    What about the product itself is "junk science"? All you've said is that there are already similar products.
    - gilgoomesh 13y ago
      The junk science is Rob Rhinehart's ad hoc approach, as documented here: http://robrhinehart.com/?page_id=184 http://robrhinehart.com/?page_id=184 Adding ingredients, perceiving a difference in how he feels and then modifying the formula, claiming that he has "improved" based on testing. He's not controlling for multiple changing variables, not sampling over a decent time period, not comparing to a control, not measuring his blood, vitals or other basic properties. He might as well be throwing things together randomly. Using measurements and scientific terms without the rigour and actual method of scientific experimentation is junk science, by definition.

106 points by garry 13y ago

Hi Garry, With all due respect, isn't your headline a bit backwards? Crowdtilt is just the platform. Soylent raised most of this on their own, due to their own efforts and the press they've been receiving. Even the original headline is: "Soylent raises $750k on Crowdhoster." Why switch that around? I'm not trying to diminish Crowdtilt and their efforts, but your headline makes it seem like Soylent didn't do anything.

shawnc 13y ago
Well Said.
Peroni 13y ago
What was Garry's original title? It appears to have reverted to the article title now.
garry 13y ago
Fair point! Did not mean to imply that; I love and support the Soylent team too!
- weston 13y ago
  No problem! :-)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

dnautics 13y ago

I'm going to try to raise money to bring an IP-unrestricted anticancer compound up to the point of FDA clinical trials. (i.e. as far as you can go without involving humans). I'm pretty sure that I'll be using crowdhoster as the platform.

Blahah 13y ago
This is awesome. Are you developing it unfunded at the moment?
- dnautics 13y ago
  Work on it was discontinued when my boss quit her job at the university of maryland. The 1 year patenting period has expired, I have no love for patents anyways, so I'm going to generate several analogs and register them as something called "US Statutory Invention Registration" which prevents them from being patented. I have her blessing (not that I would need it from a legal POV) to continue work on this project. Since then I've been accruing a lot of synthetic biology experience (I'm currently probably the most experienced person in the world at a new technique called "gibson assembly" - I've done upwards of 100 successful gibson assemblies on a wide range of molecular biology targets), which should help the process go even more smoothly. Details are at: http://indysci.org http://indysci.org, currently we're waiting for the IRS to approve our application for 501(c)3 status before launching our fundraising. Our target launch date is January 2014
  - Blahah 13y ago
    That's an awful lot of Gibson! What tools are you using to design your constructs? I briefly joined the developers of Gibthon (FOSS gibson assembly design software; http://gibthon.org/ http://gibthon.org/) last year - they will be thrilled to hear if you use it. In fact, if you would be willing to share some of your experience, no doubt it would be invaluable for improving the design tools. We've also got lots of people in our department doing lots of Gibson assembly. If you ever want to compare notes or anything... my email is in profile. How are you doing for computational biologists?

freshbreakfast 13y ago

I know you're probably dealing with 2 different systems, but I'd love it if Crowdhoster campaigns could also be hosted on Crowdtilt.com. I get that Crowdhoster is supposed to enable all types of cool group transactions way beyond the controlled scope of Crowdtilt, but even just generating a secondary Crowdtilt.com landing page for a Crowdhoster campaign would be cool. I also get how this isn't a big issue for now. But as Crowdtilt grows, I would think it becomes a "brand" that people trust to handle transactions, and would tip a certain % of the market to then give up the CC digits. So for example, as a consumer, I might be more inclined to purchase something on crowdtilt.com, as opposed to xanga.com. Just like how right now, your average consumer might be more inclined to support a Kickstarter project over a Crowdtilt project, due to inherent trust he feels in Kickstarter as a curator/brand. But since I'm bullish on Crowtilt, I think Crowdtilt eventually develops and trusted brand name. As an campaign director/organizer, in and ideal world, I want both the flexibility of Crowdhoster and that brand stamp of "Crowdtilt". Just a suggest... otherwise, these updates are actually really cool, love where it's going!

nhangen 13y ago

I think what's next, and quite frankly, what's already been happening, is that crowdfunding will move away from platforms and onto self-hosted websites.

rdl 13y ago
One of the things I like most about Kickstarter is having the "activity feed" of friends who have funded other projects. I'm sure there's a way to recreate that without having the restrictive ToS kickstarter has, though, or it could be solved by publishing "I've funded this" to twitter/fb/etc.
jljljl 13y ago
I'm not so sure. This seems like a brilliant idea for projects that can successfully generate their own hype and buzz (as Soylent did through HN before launching their campaign), but that may not work for Joe Everyman who has a cool idea that they want to fund. Kickstarter provides an aggregation of fundable ideas in one place for curious people to browse. It's similar to what you see with musicians and comedians. Radiohead and Louis C.K. can probably host and fund their own releases/campaigns easily, but your average local band probably doesn't have sufficient reach. Edited for grammer/typos
brackin 13y ago
Reward based crowdfunding will become a payments/distribution mechanism for an already engaged audience rather than a free source of money for people with an idea and no way to execute on it.

asdfologist 13y ago

Am I the only one surprised by the choice of name "Soylent" for a nutritional drink?

baddox 13y ago
It's an apt name. In the film "Soylent Green," soylent was just a line of meal-replacement rations. The green variety was the newest one released, and the one that happened to be made of humans.
- nbouscal 13y ago
  Additionally, Soylent Green wasn't even in the book that the film was based on ('Make Room! Make Room!'). The book was about the impact of unchecked population growth.

cupcake-unicorn 13y ago

I keep seeing Soylent pop up on blogs and stuff and I don't know what the big deal is. He made some shady claims before about things like "suffering from a severe iron deficiency" in just a few days, which was magically fixed when he remixed the formula. I'm also shocked that he's marketing it to this extent and still doesn't say anything about the ingredients. People have allergies, people have dietary restrictions. How is this at all different from a protein shake at the Health Food store?

robertlaing 13y ago
I agree. (And it reminds me too much of baby formula, which is proven to be less healthy than the real stuff)...
gilgoomesh 13y ago
> I don't know what the big deal is. It's basically junk science (or a de-facto scam) by a guy who is doing well at marketing himself. Food replacements already exist. The biggest is a product called Ensure. There are others. It's not clear that there's a need for Soylent at all. You're right, iron deficiency can't be detected in a few days (3 months would be closer to the time frame required assuming you had healthy iron levels to begin). Most of the other continual reformulations he discusses also seem pretty ridiculous on the timeframes involved. Basically, this guy doesn't seem to have any understanding of stochastic experimentation, limiting confounding factors or limiting free variables.
- baddox 13y ago
  What about the product itself is "junk science"? All you've said is that there are already similar products.
  - gilgoomesh 13y ago
    The junk science is Rob Rhinehart's ad hoc approach, as documented here: http://robrhinehart.com/?page_id=184 http://robrhinehart.com/?page_id=184 Adding ingredients, perceiving a difference in how he feels and then modifying the formula, claiming that he has "improved" based on testing. He's not controlling for multiple changing variables, not sampling over a decent time period, not comparing to a control, not measuring his blood, vitals or other basic properties. He might as well be throwing things together randomly. Using measurements and scientific terms without the rigour and actual method of scientific experimentation is junk science, by definition.