In December of 2012, three young men were living in a claustrophobic apartment in San Franciscos Tenderloin district, working on a technology startup. They had received a hundred and seventy thousand dollars from the incubator Y Combinator, but their projecta plan to make inexpensive cell-phone towershad failed. Down to their last seventy thousand dollars, they resolved to keep trying out new software ideas until they ran out of money. But how to make the funds last? Rent was a sunk cost. Since they were working frantically, they already had no social life. As they examined their budget, one big problem remained: food.
They had been living mostly on ramen, corn dogs, and Costco frozen quesadillassupplemented by Vitamin C tablets, to stave off scurvybut the grocery bills were still adding up. Rob Rhinehart, one of the entrepreneurs, began to resent the fact that he had to eat at all. Food was such a large burden, he told me recently. It was also the time and the hassle. We had a very small kitchen, and no dishwasher. He tried out his own version of Super Size Me, living on McDonalds dollar meals and five-dollar pizzas from Little Caesars. But after a week, he said, I felt like I was going to die. Kale was all the rageand cheapso next he tried an all-kale diet. But that didnt work, either. I was starving, he said.