An Entrepreneur’s Journey as an Urban Mushroom Farmer
I would never have thought that the combination of a pandemic and growing mushrooms would teach me about entrepreneurialism and uplevel my business skills, but life is full of surprises. This past year, I enrolled in a 9-month business course to learn about business but learned more over a few months starting Mushrooms from Mars. I am excited to share my personal growth story as an entrepreneur; my learnings about the market, identifying and testing assumptions, and coming to terms that failing fast is actually a big accomplishment.
I didn’t set out to start a business. A couple of friends asked me to make them mushroom-growing kits. I realized I was going to have extra materials, so I extended the offer to my community through a facebook post. I was totally surprised by the response. Not only did I receive an overwhelming amount of interest, but over 80 growing kits were ordered and purchased within 3 days! I accidentally discovered that this product had product-market fit. This idea clearly matched a customer group’s needs and their desire to buy.
I was overjoyed by the response and said an enthusiastic “yes!” to the opportunity. Thus, I entered my first phase of Mushrooms From Mars (MFM), and dove in with complete confidence. Without realizing it at the time, I had a set of assumptions that I began to test:
- My current home-growing system would be easy and work on a bigger scale since I’ve had 100% success in the past.
- Distribution would be easy.
It may have been naive at the time, but I had no doubt in my mind that that system was going to work. I believed that the majority of the mushroom kits would successfully fruit, so I sourced, ordered, and picked up all the supplies I needed. I even walked a mile through Oakland rolling a noisy trash can behind me to use for preparing the substrate the mushrooms would grow on. I felt excitement throughout my whole body as I did all the steps to prepare and build the growing kits, track them, and get them out quickly to my friends. I was so excited for each of these 80 people to experience the fun of growing mushrooms at home!
In the midst of this process, Christian (my sweetie) and I did some business planning and projections. We completed a Lean Canvas to narrow down and define the problem and the solution MFM was addressing, the unique value proposition, as well as key metrics for success. Ideas were flowing through me as I imagined that this could turn into a reusable and regenerative mushroom grow-kit CSA type system! I even imagined that I could supply decorative mushroom growing decor to restaurants. How cool would that be? We made a proforma, using a number of different assumptions, that outlined and projected potential expenses and incomes into the future. According to our evaluation, we really thought that this could be a viable business with the potential to turn into full-time work.
It all felt too good to be true. The name was catchy and unique, the first round of grow kits were ready with tracking labels and funky, artistic stickers, and friends came by my house totally thrilled to pick up their grow kit.
Then the waiting game began. As I waited, my mind wandered and I felt anticipation. When the expected fruiting date range approached, I began to get messages:
“There are many gnats in and around my bucket.”
“I don’t see any white mycelium.”
“Nothing is happening yet. Should I have left my lid off?”
This was concerning, so I decided to do a lot of research. I reached out to many friends asking if I could either visit their grow kit or set up a zoom call. I personally visited 15 friends’ mushroom kits and hopped on the phone with at least 10 more. As I peeked into each person’s bucket, my stomach hurt seeing sad results, but I continued to be methodical and science-based as I gathered data about where they stored their bucket, what colors were present in their buckets, etc. I reassured them that, if not this round, I would replace them in the next. After gathering the data, it was clear that this first round failed to produce mushrooms. Only two out of ninety buckets produced mushrooms! I felt distraught and ashamed of myself.
In addition to collecting information from my early adopter friends, I stuck my head in the books and got on the phone with some mushroom farmers and came up with a new set of assumptions to test for my second phase. My new assumptions included:
- Practicing clean protocols will reduce contamination.
- Sourcing fresh mushroom variety grain spawn would lead to higher success rates, and reduce contamination.
- Controlling the environment of the colonizing phase by storing the grow kits myself will reduce contamination.
- Exchanging and distribution of the grow kits will be easy with delivery or pick-up options.
Again, I sourced, ordered, and gathered my materials and prepared 3 ninety gallon trash bins with fermented straw. Christian and I were disciplined about sanitizing and cleaning as we built the grow kits. We varied the inoculation rates and diligently labeled each bucket with variety and the measured amount of mycelium spawn. The amount of straw we could process was a limiting factor as we only had space for 3 big trash bins. I put the second round of straw into the trash bins and we continued on to the second round of grow kits for phase two.
The first round of grow kits built looked ready to be distributed before my backpacking trip. I was concerned that they may fruit during my backpacking trip, and definitely wanted to make sure they were distributed in time. For quality control, we opened up the lids to check on the health of the mycelium. There was a lot of mycelium growth, however we began to see contamination, specifically, trichoderma mold. Trichoderma mold is a parasitic mold that reduces the yield of mushrooms. Seeing this mold was heart-breaking.
After I got back from the backpacking trip, there were many grow-kits showing great signs of growth and even some fruiting. We assessed the 2nd round of grow-kits and immediately set up dates for distributions of the healthy kits. In the second round, I concluded that we reduced contamination by about 50% and have had about 50% success for fruiting. This is a big improvement from 2% success. However, these were not the numbers I was aiming for. Also, it became clear that distribution has its challenges between timing a living organism just right and working with many people, each with their own schedules and needs.
With these results, I have come up with new assumptions again:
- Contamination is a really big deal.
- Setting up a controlled, clean indoor environment would significantly reduce contamination from happening and spreading.
- I would need to rent a space and renovate it to meet these needs.
- Additionally, distribution is not easy and I would need to set up an efficient and effective system.
As a full-time garden educator, I do not currently have the time or the capital to resource and test these assumptions. A part of me is really sad about this, but, on the other hand, I am also really proud of myself. I practiced a cycle of quickly testing assumptions with relatively low costs and have come to a conclusion. I will be putting Mushrooms from Mars on ice and maybe, just maybe, it will thaw out and fruit again. If I were to try this again, I would run a kickstarter, raise the capital upfront to get the proper set up, and then, with my new set of assumptions I could make this as success! Alternatively, if you feel inspired to take this on, you could hire me as an advisor!
In the end, I’m glad for Mushrooms From Mars. I am really proud of the work that I did to test whether this was a viable business. I “failed fast” and that’s a good thing. I invested about $3000 and three months of my time into the business. I recouped about $1500 through sales, and learned a ton along the way. Many entrepreneurs pour a lot more time and money into an idea before discovering that the business was never viable. Overall, I am grateful that this entrepreneurial journey helped me learn a lot and has me feeling ready for my next venture.