Hello everyone!
It has been only 6 days since my last progress report, but a lot has happened that I wish to share. My co-founder Anja’s and my enthusiasm is through the roof! I am simply amazed at how helpful and open everybody in this community is. With every call, my knowledge increases immensely. People are not holding back, are willing to connect us with others and give us priceless advice and information.
To everyone we have spoken with this last week – thank you!
What have we done in the past week?
- spoken to people from growth media companies, fermentation, NGOs, equipment manufacturers, and various other founders
- got prices for the equipment we need in the near future
- expanded our product ideas to not only include lion meat (more on that below)
- defined our new pitch deck and recorded a video walkthrough
- started with our product visualization design process
- built a financial model in Excel and gathered a lot of information to make assumptions more accurate
- started negotiating with several labs in Zagreb
Anja’s next challenge is to figure out how are we going to get the sample cells we need and set up our lab. This is a good segway into our most important decision this week – think of other potential product ideas, other than a lion.
If not a lion, then what?
After speaking with some people, we realized there’s a possibility to encounter an obstacle we cannot overcome. On one side – legal, since lions are wild animals and on the list of CITES. We contacted them with our questions and will know more when they reply back. On the other hand, we still don’t know how hard will it be to get to a cell line that works. Taking a cell from a lion is harder than from a cow. So we are looking more into this.
This led us to consider other product ideas to have as a backup. We initially chose a lion burger since it fits perfectly into what we want to achieve in our first step – sell a $900 cultured meat product to 10.000 people.
But if we can’t for whatever reason make a lion, what will we make instead?
That’s something we will share in our future progress reports!
Dear diary
I am still having so much fun. I know it will probably soon end, but I am now enjoying every single minute of this process. I sure hope it will continue, but as in every business – it’s super hard to make it work.
These past few weeks have been amazing due to the people I met. It’s been such a great experience exchanging ideas with smart people from Australia, Europe, and the US. This is a global industry and a global movement. And if these people continue working this hard, then I am 100% certain we will see a world without animals suffering.
All the best,
Anja Eloise & Davor
