Introduction
Been following the intense program of Agtech & Foodtech Bootcamp which is organized by MaGIC and lead by 1337 Ventures and it has been a fruitful journey so far. Rather than just needing to know the technicalities of our own profession, setting up a business and running it is another story. Hence, this bootcamp has given me a chance to go through from ideation to market validation in short period of time. Within a month, we could launch our Minimum Viable Product and see whether it could get a market fit. This is very relevant to what I want to pursue in the long run which is setting up a business. Two key aspects of getting it right is through fast actions in getting something done to be delivered and open ears to listen to the customers & users.
Compilation of Ideas
Some ideas that are being brought up to the table during the Boot Camp:
- Food sorting technology
- Fresh fruits marketplace
- Gamifying farming experience
- Vertical farming through aeroponics
- Agriculture management
- Platform for home cook recipe and materials
- Cloud service for small and medium farmers
- Rating system for farmers
- Fetigation technology for the small and medium farmers
- Extraction of KPC to be used for reducing tension
- Precision agriculture
- Food tracking system through blockchain
- Black Soldier Flies farming system
In Getting To The Top of The Game
These are all great ideas that the founders are very fond and believe in. Thus, bringing all these ideas to the boot camp to be grilled and fine-tuned so that it could be transformed into a realistic, viable business. There are several aspects that would ensure we have the advantage of winning the market share:
- With proprietary technology that is exclusive and patented, it could become the core advantage whereby licensing the technology to the industry is one way to go.
- Building up audience and forming a community under a brand could be also a way to go that it will form a network effect whenever the brand want to sell something to the community. This also links back to building trust among the community members and maintain it with care.
- It is important to understand the economics of scaling as it would drastically affect how we could expand our business and grow it into a profitable cash cow.
- Super team is one of the key elements to see whether a startup can become a success or not. The commitment and belief that the idea would turn into something big should be firm and someone needs to be the key driver to keep on pushing the team forward. Thus, even with a crappy idea, a super team could fine tune it into a super idea and make things happen in an unimaginable way.
- As startup, we need to remember that grants and incentives are not the way to earn and it is not the real revenue. Always focus on the sales of product and that is what makes the startup grows to become a sustainable business.
- Build an MVP in haste and do the Proof of Concept as soon as possible. This would save up a lot of time that we are “shiok sendiri” or living in our own utopia that thing would turn up as what we imagine. Most of the time, it does not and we need to get the market to respond then only we know.
- Remember to build something that users love and not something that we love. Regardless how in love we are with our own masterpiece, we have to remember that our product are meant to serve the customers (in most cases) to get us growing and not for our own.
- Bootstrapping is the key to survive through the hard times especially in startups that have limited funding. The ethos is always spend less than you earn, that would make us survive longer to see the traction building up.
4 Aspects
The VC summarized to us that there are these 4 key elements that we would need to think of to make a startup successful which are Time, Ideas, People and Money. Without any of those, we would have not make it as it just does not add up into something that is viable.
TIME
Time here talks about the right timing to get our ideas realized. Before the age of smart phone, the idea of doing an app is non-existential and if someone thinking of putting some function into an old modeled phone, that would become a laughing topic and it would not have been a thing that time. However, if we put the idea to our current timeline, then it would have been something brilliant.
IDEAS
We all have the capability to imagine things, especially when we are kids and not bounded by any prejudice perceptions about the society. Idea is cheap but with strong execution ability, it could become something brilliant, especially with great ideas. Nonetheless, to get to a great idea, it is not something that can be like a one night thing. It is sort of an accumulation of ideas and information that we had gone on for months or years before we could get to it. It just doesn’t make sense when we have totally no idea about the industry and suddenly we have a brilliant idea to solve something for the industry.
PEOPLE
Well, like what I had mentioned earlier, the super team element is the key to get a startup grow into a viable business. In all startups, it started in a very constrained environment with different limited resources. Thus, having a resourceful team is utterly important to make things happen. Personally, I do feel a lot of difference when I mix with different people with variety of energy level. Being with people who are always on the move and striving for the best, it just makes the whole team burn with fighting spirit and we could keep each other motivated when the down time comes.
MONEY
Of course, without money, no one could survive through the hardship of startup. This is the most realistic scenario for anyone who wants to go into an entrepreneurial journey. It is either we have strong background whereby we would not need to worry about financial for survival or our commitment is kept to the minimal so that the money we had saved up is sufficient to get us through the tough time.
Personally, I have no regret in getting into this bootcamp as I learned a lot in terms of execution skills and know what to do in different stages. Regardless of what business we want to venture into, the procedure is almost the same. As long as I could hone myself towards starting one successful business, I would have the ability to continuously make more things happen for me and also the people I cared about. There are just so many things to learn out there and I would like to share as much as I could.