Calif. tech world’s saddest invention has been bleeding cash

If someone were to ask you to describe Bay Area tech culture, a few specific images might come to mind. Maybe it’s a pair of pure white Allbirds. Maybe it’s an abandoned Lime scooter, or a fleece North Face jacket bracing the bitter San Francisco wind. Or, maybe, it’s pingpong tables and private charter buses chauffeuring software engineers to their moneyed jobs on the Peninsula. As they hammer code from morning until night, it’s likely that, at some point, a nondescript bottle of Soylent accompanied them at their desks, stifling their hunger and quietly prompting them to continue working.  

When this liquid meal replacement was first introduced more than a decade ago, it became symbolic of the Bay Area’s rising tech scene and the brutal gentrification that followed. Within the past several years, however, the company has faced multimillion-dollar losses, rumors of toxic company culture, and a revolving door of C-suites. Despite these widely publicized issues, the CEO of Soylent’s parent company is confident that the product’s loyal consumer base — along with its taste and “swallow-ability” — will set it up for success within the next two years.

 ‘I felt euphoric’

Founded by software programmer Rob Rhinehart, the first iteration of Soylent was developed in San Francisco in 2013, a time when such a product made perfect sense: Girlbossing was at an all-time high, obnoxious startups were popping up all over San Francisco, and “hustle culture” permeated Silicon Valley. The chemical cocktail, which tasted like bland, unsweetened cake batter, allowed him — and other ambitious founders throughout the Bay Area — to grind without interruption. 

To these gleeful workaholics, food was tyrannical, burdensome and boring. Soylent, on the other hand, was efficient, affordable and democratic, and could free them from culinary oppression. 

The 24-year-old electrical engineering grad, who named his product after the 1973 science fiction thriller “Soylent Green,” wanted to prove that you no longer needed food in order to live. Except, instead of making a liquid concoction from human flesh, as in the film, Rhinehart’s version was made from carbs, amino acids and vitamins. 

At first, even he was skeptical that he’d be able to survive off of his own product for months at a time, he told the Inc. Magazine in 2013: “But I felt fantastic. I felt euphoric. I felt full of energy.” 

Not everyone was sold on Rhinehart’s techno-utopian concept, though. 

“He basically made medical food,” Ohio State pharmacy professor Jay Mirtallo told the Washington Post, explaining that liquid diets are already available; the only difference is that Soylent’s packaging was not designed for hospital wards but for overworked millennials in mixed-use high-rise apartments. 

And, ultimately, it’s just another example of the tech world hijacking a preexisting concept and reinventing it for financial gain. 

Enter the protein wars 

Though their exact origins are murky, protein drinks and supplements have existed for at least the past 70 years. According to a 2004 article published by the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports, a small, cash-hungry group of weightlifting promoters — along with sensational media outlets and deified body builders — helped usher them into mainstream culture.  

Some of the first protein drinks were advertised in Iron Man magazine, a trade publication that covered bodybuilding and lifting events. One of them, a powder called “44 ” made from soy beans, wheat germ and deep sea kelp, first emerged around 1950. It eventually sold in health food stores and fitness studios. 

But it was perhaps Irvin Johnson, a New Jersey bodybuilder, who helped turn protein supplements into the multibillion-dollar industry it is today. Much like mythologized startup founders, early reports said that Johnson experimented in a modernized test kitchen, where he created new and “unusual” foods that allegedly helped him achieve his muscular physique. Despite the dubiousness of Johnson’s claims, outlets printed them.

Slaying the unicorn  

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, athletes increased their protein intake by maintaining a steady diet of high-fat foods like milk and beef, which, as some of them may have found out, don’t exactly pair well with rigorous exercise. They started switching over to isolated protein powders in the 1970s and 1980s instead, and in the decades that followed, experiments suggested that branched-chain amino acids could also become a source of energy for endurance athletes seeking rapid gains. Subsequently, there was an “extraordinary rise in the production and marketing” of these types of protein beverages, scientists wrote.  

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that by the 21st century, 400-calorie bottles of Soylent would fly off the shelves.  

Shortly after its development, Soylent received tens of thousands of orders and $1 million in funding, catching the attention of the U.S. military and space programs that wanted to test it in a series of trials. In May 2014, the New Yorker published a lengthy, detailed profile on Rhinehart, who was working out of a “Miami Vice”-style bachelor pad in Southern California. Suddenly, the young startup founder, who had no background in food science, was expected to become a millionaire, outlets reported.

Around that same period, Rhinehart posted a bizarre, hallucinatory blog post that reads like a sweaty Reddit moderator’s version of “Eyes Wide Shut.” In it, he encounters a secret society of hooded investors who force him to navigate treacherous obstacle courses filled with sharks, alligators and boiling pools of Soylent. In the story’s epic climax, Rinehart literally kills a bionic unicorn with a blade, anime-style. 

In reality, though, he took a much more modest path. 

In 2017, Rinehart stepped down as CEO, surrendering his crown to Bryan Crowley, an experienced C-suite executive with an impeccable hairline and fluorescent-white smile. By this time, the fledgling startup grew into a $75 million company, Business Insider reported, and was poised to ascend to even greater heights. By 2019, the drink rolled out to over 4,000 Walmart stores across the nation, showing “zero signs of slowing down.”

But a year after this aggressive expansion, Crowley, too, relinquished his title as CEO. Meanwhile, online rumors swirled about toxic company culture, and a barren 404 page suggests that Soylent’s Innovation Lab, which promised to provide a collaborative space for other up-and-coming food startups, has since closed.  

However, Ross Sklar, the CEO of Starco Brands Inc., which acquired Soylent in 2023, believes that this is just part of any business’ “ups and downs.” He’s also optimistic that Soylent will adapt to the world of e-commerce and retain loyal customers.

“In our opinion the tech is still far superior,” Sklar told SFGATE over email, explaining the product’s nutritional value, along with its “swallow-ability and taste,” make it a leading meal replacement beverage among consumers. The company has also been exiting retail and pivoting to a subscription-based model instead. After all, the type of “retail consumer walking into a Walmart is a very different person” than the type of customer who orders online, he continued. 

“We absolutely see a path to exponential [e-commerce] and subscriber growth over the next 24 months,” he said.

Erick Bell, an accounting professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, said it appears that Starco — which carries anything from perfume to popcorn spray — is struggling to successfully break into the beverage space. 

“Obviously it has not worked out the way they hoped,” he told SFGATE, citing the company’s downward financial trends. 

“Apparently, they don’t know how to sustain $10M in quarterly revenue,” Bell wrote. Rhinehart, who’s since disappeared from the public eye, could not be reached for this story. The owner of an unverified X account with his name, however, says they’re a goat farmer, and footage seems to confirm this. 

At its core, Soylent feels like an extension of capitalism and a byproduct of one of Silicon Valley’s most harmful ideologies: that we ought to forgo the human experience in favor of productivity. Why spend precious time on Earth connecting with friends and family over drinks and dinner when you could just throw back medical-grade slop alone at your desk instead? Why celebrate anniversaries, graduations, and the beautiful intricacies of religious holidays? Online, Soylent’s true believers complain that food is the centerpiece of every major life event, but the thought of living without it is profoundly depressing.

Regardless, back in 2013, Rhinehart told publications that it became a permanent part of his diet, allowing him to save hundreds of dollars a month.  

According to a short YouTube documentary released in 2021, however, he’s since relocated to a rural Malibu homestead to focus on a new venture, making one of the most indulgent foods on Earth: ice cream.