I tried the Soylent competitor that YouTube's cofounder just invested in - here's what it tasted like

AmbroniteThe Ambronite team.What separates meal-replacement startup Ambronite from its famous competitor, Soylent, isn't as much function as philosophy.

Ambronite cofounder Mikko Ikola tells Business Insider that his team started the company based on one theory: the healthier you eat, the better you feel.

This stands in stark contrast to Soylent founder Rob Rhinehart's expansive vision of a world without food, and of hacking nutrition to solve things like world hunger.

Ambronite is simply about saving you time and energy, and helping you lead a more nutritious life.

"We want our customers to not just survive, but to thrive in their daily lives. Our demographics care about their health, and what they eat."

Ambronite bills itself as a "drinkable supermeal," and is aimed at the same types of people who are into adventuring, hiking, or fitness. These are not people who are so absorbed in their computer screens that they don't have time to eat.

Ambronite just closed its first seed round, raising $600,000 from investors like Jawed Karim, a YouTube cofounder, and Lifeline Ventures. Their total funding stands at $750,000, with a further $150,000 coming from grants.

These investors are betting that Ambronite can continue its double-digit month-to-month growth.

The company started in 2013, and launched its first product in May 2014 on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding site. The campaign raised $102,824, and since then Ambronite has sold products to over 30 countries from its website.

Ambronite's founders come from backgrounds in nutrition, fitness, and the "quantified self" (a movement to make our lives full of trackable data). And the success of the company seems to hinge on whether they can carve out a niche among those communities.

Abronite

Ambronite is not competing with Soylent on price. Its base monthly subscription is $84.15 for 10 meals, compared with Soylent's $54 for 28 meals. But Ambronite gets its ingredients from organic farms, and only uses "real food," as Ikola puts it. There is an emphasis on making a "better" meal, from a nutritional standpoint, not a cheaper one. And at that price point, it certainly is quite expensive for what it is.

When I tried Ambronite, it tasted like a product that wasn't artificially sweetened in any way. It's not made to be inoffensive to your taste buds. You feel like you are drinking nutrition - which is to say, it tastes a bit like hay. The best way I can describe it is a raw protein shake.

Ikola says his company is building a lifestyle. And it does seems that, for all the Soylent similarities, this lifestyle is quite different from the one espoused by Rhinehart and company.

I tried out the Ambronite "lifestyle" myself, and here is what the experience was like: