Y Combinator Mixes In Smoothie Startup LivBlends

It really didn’t make sense to me why Y Combinator’s Sam Altman let a smoothie delivery service go through his startup incubator. Were the Fresh Mint Immunity and Cafe Mocha Energizer flavors delicious? Yes. But I scratched my head at how the next Jamba Juice had anything to do with tech.

The two young founders of LivBlends, Elise Polezel and Matthew Udomphol went into how much less sugar was in their product (14 grams as opposed to 56 in Naked Juice or 50 in Odwalla), how they planned to deliver smoothies sans pasteurization to the SF market, the process, the ingredients and which tech startup chefs were currently ordering from them. But how was a service like this possibly scalable and what was it doing in Y Combinator?

And then they showed me “the machine.”

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It doesn’t have a name yet, but it promises to be a Keurig-like smoothie maker without the messy cleanup of most juicers. Designed by a team of MIT engineers, including Udomphol, the machine is a self-cleaning blender that can process fruits, seeds, veggies and nuts within 30 seconds.

While Udomphol didn’t want to go into too much detail about the tech, he and co-founder Polezel did say the machine will come with pods of smoothie-making ingredients that you just pop into the open compartment and let the LivBlends magic take care of the rest.

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LivBlends is just smoothie delivery to SF-based tech startups and individuals who order through the LivBlends website for now. It’s $3.25 for the 8 ounce bottles and $6 for the 16 ounce size.

Polezel says Twitter, Dropbox and Stripe chefs are all currently ordering the smoothies for tech workers. Her goal is to add more smoothie blends every three weeks. LivBlends will be demonstrating the machine at the upcoming Y Combinator Demo Day this August 19.