1. List five compelling take-aways from the Art of the Start. 

• I loved the first tip from the Art of the Start video because money comes and goes but as long as you you have a good product that boosts the quality of life, then all you need to do it focus all of your energy into the product and money will come automatically.
• Instead of waiting for opportunities, it is imperative that you get started on something even if it is doing little things.
• It is vital to set up milestones for your projects to always be on task. Achieving these milestones not only boosts the morale of the team but also makes sure that everyone is always doing what they are supposed to be doing.
• The tip about hiring better than yourself was quite fascinating because if you hire someone that is better than you, you will learn from them and have someone to compete against.
• Lastly, not letting people discourage your work is a very valuable tip because people always say whatever comes to their mind. However, this should never get in the way of your work because it does not matter what others say. As long you believe in yourself and your work, you can attain anything. In other words, there is no limits as to what you can achieve if only you have a strong willpower.

2. Articulate your value propositions for your diverse customer segments. 

We are providing a source of nutrition at a low cost to malnourished families in less-developed populations. The food item can be integrated into the families’ everyday meals.

3. Discuss your Total Available Market and Total Addressable Market. List all your assumptions and hypothesis.

Total Available Market:

The population of Makeni is 124,634. Almost 90% of the people suffer from some sort of malnutrition.

All of the people that visit the local market in Makeni could be interested in our product. Malnutrition exists in almost all of their lives so a cheap source of food would be enticing to all.

Total Addressable Market:

Our goal is to reach at least 1 to 3 percent of this population which is between 1,246 to 3,739 people. This can be done by making our product reasonable enough that people can actually buy it.

We are hoping to reach mothers who shop at the market for their family at home. We are specifically fighting malnutrition and stunting within the child population. The mothers would be the ones purchasing the food for their families.

1. Summarize and report out on the results of the SKS exercise.

Start doing: more work on papers, more work on presentations, every time we meet we should have a rundown on what each person achieved individually that week

Keep doing: quick and helpful communication, having everyone present when working

Stop doing: relying too much on Belle, relying on the team to do small things that would advance our project like refilling the humidifier

2. Develop a detailed Collaboration Plan for your team clearly articulating your Goals (Small g and Big G), Roles, Procedures, and Relationships.

Personal Goal: To develop a process that yields high amounts of mushrooms with minimal effort. I want to achieve this goal by experimenting with different types of substrate and inoculation process.

Project Goal:

To scale mushroom production in Sierra Leone to a level that can fight malnutrition in the youth within the country as well as make year-round farming and circular agriculture viable within the existing culture.

Roles:

Belle: leader/expert – relays information to new members and facilitates overall progress of the project, helps wherever is needed
David: analyst – prepares and conducts experiments regarding scaling and other subjects that can move the project forward
Asgar: recorder- helps document the process/experiments that the team is conducting so that teams in the future can easily refer back to our work.
Jawara: implementer: turns our plans and ideas into tangible products that can be sold in the market.
Khanjan: facilitator – monitors the team’s progress and provides guidance to the project team

Procedures:

Decision making: deference to expert; we all give our input but usually follow Belle’s informed judgement as she often has more valid opinions based on her experience on the team

Effective meetings: we meet up 2 to 3 times per week to conduct experiments and work on our research paper. Other than that we have a weekly meeting with our advisor where we go over our plan for the week and other pertinent information.

Communication: we use a text group chat where we are all very responsive to questions and scheduling meeting times; we have never had a problem reaching out to one another

Relationships: Our small team and similar dynamics allow us to get along and work together extremely well. We are all dedicated to the success of this project and enjoy working alongside one another.

3)If we can’t do fieldwork the summer, what will we do?

If we can’t go in the summer we plan on solidifying our process of growing mushrooms. Ideally, we would conduct experiments in the summer to see how to seamlessly grow approximately 100 kilograms of mushrooms per week. However, with the Corona virus situation, we are planning on experimenting individually at home and giving our results to the team to see what can be done in Sierra Leone whenever we are there. Also, we want to continue our weekly communication with Jawara and keep him informed of our experiment results as well. Lastly, we want to learn as much as we can about cultures and communities of Sierra Leone before we actually go there.