Is there a template out there for these types of "farewell letters", it feels like every leaving CEO, every startup that pulls the plug and every company that is bought by one of the big ones, these letters all have the same buildup and delivery.
As I read this, it's the standard shorthand for "after a product setback, the board got worried that I'm too eccentric and not managerial enough, so they brought in an MBA". I mean, that's a bit harsh, but I don't think I'm wrong - the dot com bubble produced so many of these letters that they really are down to a standard template.
If this isn't a respectability move after Soylent's recently quality struggles, I'll... drink a bunch of Soylent, I guess.
Soylent hasn't had any quality struggles in the past 6 months that I'm aware of.
12-18 months ago they had multiple issues: sporadic mold under the caps, some people severely allergic to the algae-based ingredient they used, and occasional long shipping delays. But all of those issues have been ironed out while Rhinehart was still CEO.
I honestly think this situation is closer to young Larry Page stepping aside for 10 years while Eric Schmidt ran Google than it is to anything particularly bad that Rhinehart has done. By all measures I've seen, Rosa Labs is highly successful and growing fast.
While I agree with you, I want to point that last October Health Canada decided that soylent could not be sold in Canada anymore, because it doesn't meet the minimum requirement of a meal replacement.
I'd be interested to hear what requirements it failed. Because on the surface (which is as deep as I've looked into Soylent) it seems pretty comprehensive, no?
This is a good point, thanks. I don't think Soylent has ongoing problems, and while I had the mold in mind Rhinehart seems to have done well with that.
My thought was less that Soylent had a consumer confidence problem, and more that Rosa Labs may have a board confidence problem. Meaning the 12 month old issues still floating around, but also meaning that Rhinehart has magnets in his fingertips and is generally a "weird futuristic tech dude" stereotype. That was great for getting Soylent going, and I expect Rhinehart will keep coming up with fascinating new stuff. But if the board is looking for mainstream appeal and enormous returns, they'd do better with a "nutrition on the go" image than a "posthuman meal replacement" image. And part of that would be moving Rhinehart to product, where he'll shine regardless, and out of the spotlight, where he might be image-incompatible.
It's the same move as something like Good Day Chocolate; they're basically a bog-standard nootropics company, but they put the stuff in chocolate instead of pills and packaged it for the Whole Foods checkout line. I'm not sure that's the goal with Soylent, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was an attempt.
Are you referring to the fake problems with the delicious snack bars? Or something else? I don't keep close track of Soylent as I only consume their products now and then (its shelf life is one of the things I love about it... and now I fear they'll cut that because it stunts repeat sales and encourages the kind of consumer they don't want) but that's the last I know of. Was bummed when they discontinued them, I ate loads of them and never had an issue. When they accepted returns and proceeded to eat them to prove they were fine, I appreciated that response and felt it the appropriate one but I know they backed off of that and apologized.
Not particularly - I never kept up with the snack bar controversy enough to even know what the complaint was.
I was thinking foremost of the mold issues with liquid Soylent. That's fairly old (12+ months?) and seems to be solved, but it's a long-term reputation problem in the same sense as Chipotle. Less crucially, I'm also thinking about the digestive issues people have reported - that some people talk about nausea and terrible gas when consuming lots of Soylent.
Neither of those things seems to be a "our product is nonviable today" issue, but both have raised a specter among the people I talk to of "Soylent is weird and maybe not healthy". Swapping the CEO to someone more mainstream seems like one step towards fighting that perception.
I used to think the same about some things (like design docs). Then when I became slightly senior and started writing those, I realized that for such common things, following best practices can lead to template-like things (which is not bad, IMO. The goal of this letter or a design doc is to deliver information to you, constrained by company needs. Not to tickle your creativity or something).
I understand the need to have departure announcements like this but still resent that this kind of boring corporate blather is the go-to thing to do in this situation. It’s a very robotic kind of action that dehumanizes everyone involved.
The art of design is creativity, can’t we be a little more creative than shallow platitudes when we depart from something we built from the ground up?
What a refreshing letter that serves as the perfect counter example to the above. Thanks for sharing.
Just reading this kind of letter makes me have so much respect for this guy. This is the kind of human being and leader we should strive to be. Not because he failed, but because he showed humility and humanity and a touch of humor in his departure. If that isn’t the ultimate human response, I don’t know what is.
