Hi all!

Let me introduce myself as an entrepreneur.

I dedicated few years of my life to build world’s first subsea sustainable aquaculture startup company Marine Garden.

I am not pretending to be a startup guru. Just want to share few things I learned the hard way. I hope it will be helpful for fellow entrepreneurs.

1 – It is never enough of market research

One of the main reasons most of startups are failing is when founder is pursuing his dream idea without ensuring there is a real market need for that.

In our case, we knew that there is a real market need. We spend significant time working on validating our hypothesis and reducing our risks.

But then it comes to false feeling of security and certainty. It is a dangerous situation, especially if you are planning to target other markets, where you have a limited knowledge about. In our case if was an Asia-Pacific.

We assumed that we know enough, but when I moved to Philippines, established and started to manage our local branch of the company, I was hit by few unpleasant surprises. For example:

• Many components we planned to use in our design were not available locally and delivery times from China were too long. We had to improvise a lot to simplify our design and find local components who can do the job well. Remember that startup is all about pivoting, being creative and making things happen.
• Logistics of everything turned out to be way more complicated than planned. Wikipedia says: “The Philippine archipelago comprises about 7,641 islands” Hell, yes!
• There is an expression: “Filipino time”. It applies to everything: from delayed ferries and planes to documentation and formalities.

How to mitigate that risk? There are few ways:

• Do your homework! Always challenge yourself and be hungry for knowledge. Ask yourself question: Do I know enough about my customers and the market?
• Get someone to your startup team who has an experience in market you are targeting.
• Find local partner (institution, company etc)

2 – Focus is power

Remember, as a startup you have limited resources (time, people and money). It is a race and winner takes it all. And, I ensure you will have few “make it or break it” moments during your journey.

In our case we had only couple of month funding left and needed to get an operating license in APAC. The only thing we knew is what countries we should target, based on natural habitat of our premium fish we wanted to farm sustainably and deliver alive to Hong Kong.  Then you end up in a quite a list of options and it starts to look like “mission impossible”.

Honestly, mood in the team was close to panic…. But we made it!

We managed to achieve an exclusive 25 years license in Philippines with no corruption involved and at fraction of the cost it will cost you in Europe. And I extremely proud in my team.

What works:

• Razor sharp focus!
• Discipline is a key.

My martial arts instructor nailed it. He said: “I don’t care about your motivation, I care about your discipline. Why? Because motivation goes up and down, but discipline stays”

• Use simple but efficient project management tools to support you.

Don’t try to impress the team with MBA diploma (if you have it) and complicated methodologies. There is no time for that and most probably it will not work.  Again, simple but efficient. In our case simple Kanban wall helped a lot.

Wall in our office was full of post it notes. It takes time to establish and follow routine, but in return it gives you helicopter view, helps to prioritize and track the progress.

• Not just “start with why”, take it with you for the journey.

Remind yourself and your team about why are you doing it. Why are you in this together? That is what makes a leap. That is what makes you and your team wake up in the morning and stay until night at work. If problem you are solving is big enough it definitely worth the fight.

Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley the following to lure him to Apple: “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

3 – Things will never go as planned

Everyone says that startup is a rollercoaster. I totally agree. In our case if was and still is an extreme one.

Here are few things I personally experienced:

• Our local branch of the company was supposed to be managed by our colleague. Unfortunately, he got a stroke and was taken to the hospital… He is still there and gradually getting better…

I had less than 1 month to move out from my apartment in Oslo, sell unnecessary stuff (I did not recognize how much of it I had) and move to Asia to establish and manage the company.

That was a great challenge for my personal relationship and I am extremely thankful to my love Katarzyna for support and helping to navigate through this turbulent times.

• Just in a couple of weeks after my arrival, military conflict between militants and government army has started at the neighboring island (just less than 300 km away).

Not a nice feeling, but in our place, everything was quiet. Just military started to guard the ports and more police controls appeared at the roads. It is not impacted our operations.

In those moments, the main things are not panic, see the perspective, trust your judgement, but not the mass media, trust in your team and your network.

4 – Don’t do trade-offs with your integrity and values

Establishing value chain in a country, which consists from more than 7000 islands is not easy. Besides it corruption is always a risk. And once I encountered it face to face.

I have been establishing a supply of live fish fingerlings to our facilities from the remote and not easily accessible location. Normally it needs to be done by airplane due to long distance.

Then I was asked to pay the cost of airfreight to the authorities to secure air freight permits. Yes, it means double my planned spending. What would you do?

I decided not to do it. Instead I decided to arrange sea transport of life (!) fish, which has never been done before for such a long distance.

It took almost 4 days, team met some stormy weather, we lost 30% of stock on the way, but we did not support corruption and I am proud about it.

5 – Follow your gut pays you back

Once we had an issue with one of our suppliers, and local team said they can not solve it.

Obviously I was not happy with this answer. I decided to jump into the plane and have a meeting at headquarters in Manila. And… I end up meeting with the company president, which was not planned at all.

And you know what, we had a good conversation and our problem was solved!

Be brave and just do it!

6 – If you think it is the end, it might be just a new beginning.

A lot of startups fail. We are not an exception. We failed many times. The most important is what you learned, and we learned a lot.

We had to freeze our operations due to inability to raise required funds in a timely manner. Fish was sold, subsea cages retrieved and put on storage together with an equipment for onshore processing facility. That was end of 2017.

What happened later? Apparently, we did not give up on it.

We achieved 2 EU’s seals of Excellence for Horizon 2020 project. In short, it means: “fantastic project and application, but no more funds left for this year” We did not give up again …

And…. I am proud to announce that Marine Garden is successfully granted EU Horizons 2020 phase 1 funding! *champagne opening sound*

Another important milestone: Marine garden was ranked at a Nordics top 50 impact company by The One initiative: https://www.oneinitiative.org/top-50-impact/ (!) after more than 2 years of research and among more that 7000 participants.

What is next? Future will show.

Watch us out =)

P.S. Keep an eye on my blog for more startup, innovation and technology posts.