What does Manna Insect actually do? Part 2
Business validation and feasibility study mentoring
Here’s the 2nd article giving clarity into what we actually do at Manna Insect other than just post research results, ABCs, FAQs, and run free webinars.
Along the FARM Hub content, we also give lots of face-to-face or rather screen-to-screen support and feedback to our existing and potential customers on all things related to farming Black Soldier Fly, including lots of feedback and even mentoring on the business cases people and companies consider operating their BSF businesses on.
And the feedback and advice is not just tapping someone’s back and saying “go for it”, but it may sometimes be rather brutal, killing someone’s dreams, if we don’t think the business case is solid enough.
You see, we believe in a rather old saying familiar to many in the startup world; “fail fast, fail cheap”.
It means that it’s much cheaper and less risky to make the mistakes early on in your BSF career, when the chances are your slides and calculations may not be realistic after all… You want to fail – or rather pivot, change your plans or fix the problems – while your business is still small, you haven’t invested millions of dollars or even thousands of dollars yet, you have a chance to test different farming tools, methods and business models before committing your money, time, and even your well-being to something big, that may not carry on in the long run no matter what.
This is why we sometimes tell people that before they start planning the factory they’ve always dreamed of, they might want to learn and try things in small scale, do some backyard farming or step by step going to professional level farming with 20-foot sea container size production or rent a warehouse where you can start your operations, test the climatization’s effect on your farm and then review your calculations based on real-life experience rather than “slideware” and strong beliefs.
And once you’re ready, you can start scaling up and investing more money. Raising money from investors or banks alike, is so much easier when you can show the results in reality and can explain the farming method with pictures and videos rather than sketches, mock-ups and animations. Show that you have the experience and the plans are based on scaling up rather than starting from the scratch.
And who knows, your plans may change quite dramatically once you get your hands dirty in smaller scale.
When someone approaches us with their plans, we always tell them to start with the FARM Hub and free content, and once they’ve reviewed those, then let’s talk about business validation and feasibility studies, where we help you build your business plans based on our experience of seeing hundreds of BSF business cases and helping dozens of people to get started with BSF farming, and last but not least, having farmed BSF ourselves.
Business validation and feasibility studies are so much cheaper than setting up professional level production, that’s it’s a “no-brainer” to do one before wasting tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars to a business case that makes no sense to those who’ve seen and done it all themselves.
Business validation and feasibility studies are needed to:
• Reduce Risks
◦ Identify potential risks and challenges early in the process.
• Save Time and Money
◦ Avoid investing in non-viable business structures.
• Build Confidence
◦ Provide evidence and data to support the viability of the business idea.
• Attract Investors
◦ Offer a well-researched foundation that can attract potential investors.
Typical business validation & relevant feasibility studies mentoring is produced with 4 x 1.5 hours of remote one-on-one mentoring sessions, and the price of the program is 1850 EUR.
You can ask more about these services at https://www.mannainsect.com/contact-manna-insect-company/
Written by Tom Laine, Head of Marketing
Read also: What does Manna Insect actually do? Part 1