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SINGA Ideation Lab 2.0: the value of a meaningful entrepreneurial community during uncertain times
The SINGA Ideation Lab is a two month entrepreneurship program, in which the SINGApreneurs (program participants) test and validate their business ideas, through conducting a market research survey. Due to COVID-19, the SINGApreneurs in Zurich and Geneva, as well as the SINGA team, quickly adapted to an online version of the program and learned together how to get the most out of the webinars and the 1:1 virtual support.
After many intense sessions and hard work, during the months of March, April and May 2020, two teams of SINGApreneurs are sharing in this blog article what they learned in the past weeks, how their project pivoted since joining the program and how the lockdown impacted their ideas.
Taro Hosoe and Alessandra Salvin, SINGApreneurs in Zurich and founders of Hosoe Caffè, are working on an ethical artisan coffee roastery, which focuses on social values, ethical and sustainable principles. After importing coffee from South America, Asia or Africa to Switzerland, they want to roast it themselves, provide specialty coffee to ethical consumers, package it and sell it to coffee lovers: private customers, offices and stores.
Assurance of a good standard of living and fair treatment of the farmers, importers and even the IT support; as well as an ethical production/supply chain when selecting any type of coffee, is key to Hosoe Caffè. After working many years in the finance sector, Taro realized that one of the reasons he was happy to wake up was to prepare himself a good cup of coffee. So he decided to leave his career to start the artisan coffee roastery business with Alessandra.
On the other side of the country, Anna Born and Rana Jarwa, SINGApreneurs in Geneva and founders of The French Jungle, are working on an e-learning platform that offers face-to-face and online French language courses to foreigners in Geneva, who would like to become operational in French within a short period of time.
Why a jungle, you might think. For Anna, when you arrive in Geneva and in Switzerland in general, “you join a society where everything seems to be smooth, well organized and clear at first”. In her eyes, however, the city of Geneva looks more like a jungle: many aspects of the everyday life in the city are difficult to understand when you don’t speak French. This is why at The French Jungle learners will become adventurers who, while learning French, will also explore and become more familiar with the intricate ins and outs of the Swiss Romande.
How did the SINGA Ideation Lab support you and your project?
Alessandra: It was enlightening to learn that our story, the emotions behind it and the feelings we have for our activity, really matter! The human factor of the SINGA Ideation Lab was important. From the SINGA Team and the other participants, the inputs were something that you cannot get from any book. We are able to research the theory from books, but it is completely different when you have the human factor and direct feedback from other people, even in these different times we are experiencing. It all worked, which is very interesting.
Taro: A key learning was to look more at things from the point of view of the customers; which you do, theoretically, but probably at the beginning was something we didn’t do so often. We did not have any idea how to dig more in that direction. Now we do.
Anna: I had a lot of fun being part of the SINGA Ideation Lab. The valuable support and guidance during the program, as well as the positive atmosphere, enabled us to be part of a community of passionate entrepreneurs, share our difficulties without being judged, exchange feedback and learn together while working on our project. Each entrepreneurship journey is unique, so the human exchanges made the whole experience very valuable. I also met other passionate entrepreneurs with whom we might continue working together.
“The human factor of the SINGA Ideation Lab was very important: the inputs received from the SINGA team and the other participants were something that you cannot get from any book. It is completely different when you have feedback from other people, especially in these different times.”
Alessandra Salvin, co-founder of Hosoe Caffè
In the opinion of The French Jungle team in Geneva, the whole market research process allowed them to take the time to sit down and speak with their target audience and understand better their frustrations, using concrete tools and resources to collect and analyse the data. Many inspiring ideas also arose when discussing the Golden Circle or the Blue Ocean strategy.
For the SINGApreneurs in Zurich, however, it was positive to see that when doing the Lean Canvas and the reverse financial model, their business idea fitted and worked. They were also obliged to think in a more concrete way and to go deeper into understanding the pricing of their product, customer needs and putting the numbers in a practical way.
What makes your project special?
Anna: What makes The French Jungle a special learning experience is that we don’t want to focus on grammar, but on real life language experiences: the French you actually need to successfully interact during informal and formal conversational situations. We offer blended learning in real life situations, which can help you to learn to speak French with confidence, faster and at a lower cost.
Taro: We are paying close attention to the whole supply chain process – from the cherry picker to the web designer – and to treating everybody fairly. We are spending a lot of time trying to assess the full process. Of course it is not always easy because the production of coffee is far away from home (South America, Central America, Asia or Africa) but we are doing our best to establish good and trustful relationships with the producers. We also want to visit them in the near future.
How has your project pivoted since the beginning of the SINGA Ideation Lab until now?
Anna: At first, the project was to launch a simple e-learning platform with videos presenting different conversational situations from the FIDE exam – the Swiss program for the promotion of linguistic integration – that has gained importance in recent years in naturalisation procedures as well as in residence and establishment permits for foreigners in Switzerland. After holding 15 interviews and an online survey that reached more than 50 people, it became clear that the standard learning platforms were not enough for customers who want to learn French. Learners are looking for something that gives them more motivation to improve their French than only a digital platform. We also realized that more than 60% of the survey respondents still have a lot of trouble speaking French with confidence, even after one or two years of learning, no matter what their original level was.
Rana: This is how we decided that our platform will offer both: digital learning videos and face-to-face courses in order to make learning French easier for foreigners! We would like to create a community of “French explorers” with all types of backgrounds. Inclusion is the only way towards a life in a new country. This is why we will also organize events on a range of themes where people can also get to know Switzerland better.
Did you know?
81 % of SINGApreneurs feel that their professional confidence increased a lot or significantly while participating in the SINGA Ideation Lab 2020.
Alessandra: Before, we were focusing more on the content of our website or the technical aspects of coffee and on explaining what ‘specialty coffee’ is, etc. Now we are focusing on explaining where we are coming from, our story, our passion, and telling the story behind the farmers and the coffee we import. In our case, our project was already structured so I think it has changed more in the communication approach. In terms of market research we also started asking different questions to people: what do they want, what are they looking for as customers. It helped us to switch from our perspective to that of the customer.
Taro: I also think that the suggestions we received during the Ideation Lab to go for the low hanging fruits was very useful. In the sense of: we understood that it is difficult to educate people about a product (ethical and specialty coffee) if someone has no idea about it, but there are potential customers already inside the ethical sphere or the specialty coffee sphere. These could be both corporations or offices who could buy coffee – who already have certain ethical aspects in their DNA’s – and who will be interested in buying products with our same values and quality. We can maybe find customers with that potential. Some people may already be buying from organic stores, looking at the label of the product or searching for specialty coffee. These are the customers we should aim for!
“What motivates me the most to be part of this project is that I recently had to learn French myself and it was a very difficult process. Knowing that I can contribute to an innovative project that makes it easier for others makes me very proud.”
Rana Jarwa, team member of The French Jungle
After hearing many inspiring stories, exchanging ideas and learning valuable lessons from each other’s feedback and experiences, the next phase of the program for the SINGApreneurs is the 4 months SINGA Factory, where their business ideas will grow and further develop in other key areas such as Project Management, Legal Aspects, Finances and Co-founding, as well as Marketing and Communications.
Taro and Alessandra already installed a coffee roasting machine at DasProvisorium in Zurich (specialised in supporting food startups) to start working on the coffee production. For the founders of Hosoe Caffè in six months “the full production should be ready to start making a profit”. The first batch of roasted Brazilian coffee has already been distributed to some friends and family members as a test, and the next coffee they will experiment with is a wild Ethiopian one.
For Anna and Rana, in the next coming months they will be developing the ‘Minimum Viable Product’ of The French Jungle and start working on the pedagogic aspects of the project. They are creating their first video prototypes and looking for the right format to make it attractive, to test it and better adapt it to potential customers.
…and how did the Covid19 lockdown impact the projects of the SINGApreneurs?
For Taro and Alessandra the lockdown slowed the implementation of their project a bit, however, it gave them more time to think and reinforced the idea that a webshop/e-commerce is a good strategy to continue developing the project because they saw that online deliveries were still functioning during Covid19.
For Anna and Rana the lockdown mainly impacted on how they could work together as a team, as they did not have the chance to meet in person during the past months. They learned new ways of working and exchanging ideas; and also how to communicate efficiently while not being able to see each other.
Good to know:
At this stage in their project, Taro and Alessandra are looking for packaging companies who produce compostable, ecological or recyclable packaging, which is simply designed and provides an easy way to supply their customers with their specialty coffee. You can contact Taro Hosoe and Alessandra Salvin, founders of Hosoe Caffè via email at: info@hosoecaffe.ch or visit their website: https://hosoecaffe.ch
If you would like to support The French Jungle with your video editing skills or if you have experience in e-learning platforms, please send a message to: anna.born11@gmail.com.
