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Rob Reinhart

Partner, Mars Bio · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestorengineer@robrhinehart ↗robrhinehart.com ↗

Rob Rhinehart is the co-founder and former CEO of meal-replacement company Soylent, which raised over $70 million in venture funding. After stepping down as CEO in 2017, he became an early-stage biotech investor as a partner at Mars Bio.

16statements → 12claims → 7claims resolved → 57%fully supported → 3.69/5average certainty → 2.06/5average debate potential →

4 supported 1 partly supported 2 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 predictions · 6 assertions · 2 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Rob argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Rhinehart: Modern crops like corn and watermelons are not strictly natural
“If you look at the crops we have today, I mean, calling them natural is just you know, a misunderstanding. I mean, corn is not supposed to be yellow. You know, pumpkins are supposed to be this big. Watermelons aren't supposed to be this big. You know, soy has …”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:10 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Reinhart: Soylent conducted a clinical study on Soylent consumption for Nature publication
“We run a peer-reviewed study it'll be published later this year in a nature journal, using a controlled study, studying the effects of tolerability of a People living on Soylent and measuring a lot of biomarkers, vitamin, mineral nutrition, and otherwise, and,…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:10 a16z Podcast | The Future of... You

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
63% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

278 words/min while actually speaking · 56.7 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Rob Reinhart: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,938 words across 2 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Rob Reinhart said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reinhart: Single-celled organisms and synthetic flavors will produce synthetic meat and nutrients
“So I think we're going to use single-celled organisms to produce the same proteins and fats and carbohydrates that we used to wait an entire growing season for, that we can have organisms that double within hours, and I think we can use, ah, the front-end tech…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:30 a16z Podcast | The Future of... You
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Reinhart: Food will be grown in steel vats instead of agricultural fields
“I think that a lot of food is going to be grown in giant steel vats rather than fields, but that means that we're never going to run out of arable land, because all you really need to make food is sunlight and air and water.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:59 a16z Podcast | The Future of... You
Assertion Contradicted
Reinhart: Soylent conducted a clinical study on Soylent consumption for Nature publication
“We run a peer-reviewed study it'll be published later this year in a nature journal, using a controlled study, studying the effects of tolerability of a People living on Soylent and measuring a lot of biomarkers, vitamin, mineral nutrition, and otherwise, and,…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 16:10 a16z Podcast | The Future of... You
Insight
Reinhart: Sustainable products must offer direct consumer benefits like lower cost
“Asking someone to pay more for a more sustainable product is, is a long shot. You know, most of the market is probably not going to be up for that. I think you have to confer some benefit directly to the consumer, but I think that's entirely possible because i…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:07 a16z Podcast | The Future of... You
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rhinehart: Soylent aims to manufacture its bottles using engineered microorganisms
“The goal is, is total vertical integration. I think, in theory, we could make everything, including the bottle out of you know, out of microorganisms that have been engineered to produce these components far, far more efficiently. Than traditional processes.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:38 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Rhinehart: Countertop photobioreactors could eventually produce food for individual homes
“I think we could have the Mr. Soylent sits on your counter, or you put it on your porch, and it gets sunlight, or you have your solar panel, which powers the LEDs, and you know, the fundamentals, there's certainly no physical limit that would make this impossi…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:08 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Rhinehart: Soylent is developing a therapeutic food paste for $1 daily
“One thing we are working on is what's called an RUTF, ready to use therapeutic food, which is kind of like a paste. So it's between the powder and the drink so that it is ready to consume, but it's cheaper to ship because it doesn't have as high moisture conte…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 25:45 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Assertion Supported
Rhinehart: Modern crops like corn and watermelons are not strictly natural
“If you look at the crops we have today, I mean, calling them natural is just you know, a misunderstanding. I mean, corn is not supposed to be yellow. You know, pumpkins are supposed to be this big. Watermelons aren't supposed to be this big. You know, soy has …”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 29:10 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Insight
Rhinehart: Returning to ancestral farming romanticizes a much harder past
“Maybe they think that if we go back to being farmers, things are going to be easier, but our ancestors didn't have it very easy, and I think it's largely a romanticization of the past, and that we have, we live in a very beautiful more peaceful world than we h…”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 30:54 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rhinehart: Tourists will visit LA to see Soylent's glowing photobioreactors
“Going to the Soylent factory in LA in a few years is going, people are going to come from all over the world to see these giant blue glowing, glowing orbs.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:50 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Disclosure
Rhinehart: SpaceX and Orbital Sciences have reached out to Soylent
“We actually have heard from people that places like SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, I think, stocks the food for the ISS.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:40 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Assertion Partly supported
Rhinehart: Enough food is currently produced to feed the world twice over
“So yeah, there's plenty of food is produced to feed the world twice over.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 26:35 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Assertion Supported
Rhinehart: Ready-to-drink Soylent has a one-year unrefrigerated shelf life
“To have it sit on the shelf to have a shelf life of over a year and not require refrigeration.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:25 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Disclosure
Rhinehart: Soylent uses algae oil grown in single-cell bioreactor tanks
“One example of this is the algae oil that is present in the products. So it's not it's not grown like a traditional crop in a field. It's grown in a large tank in a bioreactor with single cells.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:57 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Assertion Supported
Rhinehart: Soylent powder costs under two dollars per 500-calorie meal
“The powder is less than two dollars per meal. This is a full meal, 500 calories. The bottle is around, is two dollars and 50 cents for 400 calories.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:39 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food
Prediction Held up
Rhinehart: Soylent aims to lower its powder cost to $5 daily
“Yes, that's eight dollars a day on the powder, and I'm trying to get that down to five dollars a day.”
Rob Reinhart Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 24:53 a16z Podcast | The Future of Food

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | The Future of... You Jan 2, 2019 5m
a16z Podcast | The Future of Food Jan 2, 2019 16m
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