Well, there are laws preventing outright fraud, so lying catches up with you eventually. But customers are also smarter than you think: http://www.cluetrain.com/ In the long run, the best form of marketing is having a great product. Google is a good example: they entered a crowded search engine market and focused mainly on just having a better product. Now they’re one of the world’s most valuable companies.
On the other hand: our biggest competitor is Soylent, whose sales volume vastly exceeds ours, mainly because they were first to the market and got a lot of attention. But people who understand nutrition are much more interested in eating our product. So we’ll see if we can oust them in the long run.
To comment further on your build vs rent a factory point: My general model of how building a business works is that you are constructing a plane as it takes off. At the beginning, a cheap biplane will do as long as you have all the basics in place: landing gear, wings, propeller, etc. Once you’ve gotten in to the air and your concept has proven itself, you want to gradually be upgrading your plane’s components: replace wooden wings with an aluminum alloy, replace your propeller with a better one. Then through gradual upgrades you get all the way to supersonic fighter jet. You don’t want to invest all of your time and money in an expensive jet engine while you’re still on the runway: it’s not going to fly your plane by itself (you’ll also need wings, a fuselage, etc.) and you’ll waste a lot of money if it turns out you’re building on the wrong runway. So in general when starting a business you want to prove your concept as cheaply as possible before going to the next stage: survey customers to make sure they actually want what you’re making before you make it, experiment with prototypes before doing batch production, etc. We left the cooking in a kitchen stage of our operations component a while ago and are now in the rent kitchen space stage; if we’re lucky, we’ll eventually have to upgrade our operations component again as demand grows.
If you’re interested in learning more about starting a business, especially one that eventually grows to be large and profitable, I recommend Paul Graham’s essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html He’s a brilliant and extremely knowledgeable entrepreneur/investor.
Stupid question: I looked up Soylent, and I am confused: you have a large group of people who totally doesn’t care how their means feel in the stomach? I mean, who don’t care about the joy of eating as such, and don’t want the kind of warm and glowy effect in the stomach that comes from say a good greasy Chinese takeaway? (Taste in the mouth is IMHO not so important, things like the greasy feel in the stomach, the weight felt from filling meat, or the carb high on rice matter more.)
At least your product looks like some kind of a wholemeal cake, although I still doubt I could feel satisfied from something not warm and not greasy, but that is a step closer to a normal meal. (But why five a day portions? Because the kind of health-oriented people who buy this are also the same kind of people who buy the health industries many small meals thing instead of the standard 3? I personally think 3 meals work better because you get to feel stuffed and enjoy that, with 5 you are never hungry but also never feel a full house feeling.)
I think the next best thing could be health food that does not taste like healthfood, for people like me who don’
t go anywhere near health food. Say, the least bad carb is probably wholemeal rye. The issue with wholemeal pastas is usually that they feel like chewing sand, but if ground down really fine, like Graham, maybe one could make borderline enjoyable noodles from them. Stir-fry vegan mystery meat and vegs with spices and souce in an ample amount of coconut oil, as coconut oil is close enough to grease, add to the noodles and you probably get a health food that feels like a not health food.
Well, there are laws preventing outright fraud, so lying catches up with you eventually. But customers are also smarter than you think: http://www.cluetrain.com/ In the long run, the best form of marketing is having a great product. Google is a good example: they entered a crowded search engine market and focused mainly on just having a better product. Now they’re one of the world’s most valuable companies.
On the other hand: our biggest competitor is Soylent, whose sales volume vastly exceeds ours, mainly because they were first to the market and got a lot of attention. But people who understand nutrition are much more interested in eating our product. So we’ll see if we can oust them in the long run.
To comment further on your build vs rent a factory point: My general model of how building a business works is that you are constructing a plane as it takes off. At the beginning, a cheap biplane will do as long as you have all the basics in place: landing gear, wings, propeller, etc. Once you’ve gotten in to the air and your concept has proven itself, you want to gradually be upgrading your plane’s components: replace wooden wings with an aluminum alloy, replace your propeller with a better one. Then through gradual upgrades you get all the way to supersonic fighter jet. You don’t want to invest all of your time and money in an expensive jet engine while you’re still on the runway: it’s not going to fly your plane by itself (you’ll also need wings, a fuselage, etc.) and you’ll waste a lot of money if it turns out you’re building on the wrong runway. So in general when starting a business you want to prove your concept as cheaply as possible before going to the next stage: survey customers to make sure they actually want what you’re making before you make it, experiment with prototypes before doing batch production, etc. We left the cooking in a kitchen stage of our operations component a while ago and are now in the rent kitchen space stage; if we’re lucky, we’ll eventually have to upgrade our operations component again as demand grows.
If you’re interested in learning more about starting a business, especially one that eventually grows to be large and profitable, I recommend Paul Graham’s essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html He’s a brilliant and extremely knowledgeable entrepreneur/investor.
Stupid question: I looked up Soylent, and I am confused: you have a large group of people who totally doesn’t care how their means feel in the stomach? I mean, who don’t care about the joy of eating as such, and don’t want the kind of warm and glowy effect in the stomach that comes from say a good greasy Chinese takeaway? (Taste in the mouth is IMHO not so important, things like the greasy feel in the stomach, the weight felt from filling meat, or the carb high on rice matter more.)
At least your product looks like some kind of a wholemeal cake, although I still doubt I could feel satisfied from something not warm and not greasy, but that is a step closer to a normal meal. (But why five a day portions? Because the kind of health-oriented people who buy this are also the same kind of people who buy the health industries many small meals thing instead of the standard 3? I personally think 3 meals work better because you get to feel stuffed and enjoy that, with 5 you are never hungry but also never feel a full house feeling.)
I think the next best thing could be health food that does not taste like healthfood, for people like me who don’ t go anywhere near health food. Say, the least bad carb is probably wholemeal rye. The issue with wholemeal pastas is usually that they feel like chewing sand, but if ground down really fine, like Graham, maybe one could make borderline enjoyable noodles from them. Stir-fry vegan mystery meat and vegs with spices and souce in an ample amount of coconut oil, as coconut oil is close enough to grease, add to the noodles and you probably get a health food that feels like a not health food.