Twitter Founders Fund Faux Meat

Could veganism be the next big food-world trend? It seems unlikely, but not only is Subway testing vegan ribs, now it turns out noted ahead-of-the-curve people Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter, have decided to invest some of their cash in meatless meat.

Through their Obvious Corporation business incubator, Williams and Stone have invested in Beyond Meat, which is attempting to create vegan meat substitutes that have a texture and flavor so lifelike that even meat-eaters will like them. And the company may be onto something, as Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown managed to fool Mark Bittman into thinking the company's fake chicken was the real thing.

According to The Huffington Post, Beyond Meat is the Obvious Corporation's first venture into the food industry. Previously it worked primarily with web-focused businesses. Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers is also supporting Beyond Meat, which is a lot of interest for a company that makes meat substitutes.

"These guys are coming at the meat analogue industry not as a novelty kind of thing or hippy dippy," Stone explained to Co.Exist. "They were coming at it from this big science, super practical, scalable angle. They were saying, 'We want to get into the multi-billion-dollar meat industry with a plant-based meat.'"

Beyond Meat's first product is the aforementioned vegan chicken, and next up will be a beef crumble made from pea protein.