What do you do?
Navigating questions about my job title, discussing primary farming ecosystems, and exploring the concept of uncertainty in startups.
What do you do? What have you done? What you plan to do?
These set of questions have been the topic of majority of my discussions, past week. It culminated with a dinner this weekend where elders who happen to be family friends asked me, "what I do".
I told them I work as Product Manager. Phew! Finally, one single title was what I was thinking. To my dismay, this elderly gentleman reverted with, "Oh, IT". I meekly nodded to dodge the bullet and cut short the topic.
Again to my complete surprise, he went on to tell me about why I should do post graduation (PG like MBA), because degree's always help. In short, he mansplained me about the importance of PG to increase my exposure, mindset and possibility to reach the higher echelons of corporate world.
On the other hand, this entire week was filled with meeting my new peers, bosses and super bosses at work. I had to initiate conversations, explaining my complicated journey of a career in a coherent introduction. I sufficed it with ex founder and operator in startups, logistics domain expertise and moonlighting in product roles.
I wish in the both the cases, I could tell them about number of words available on my site talking about what I do , what I did and what I plan to do.
To bury the lede. I have a new job. It has nothing to do with agriculture and logistics I knew off. The choice of joining is again filled with multitude of factors and much nuance which for the elders out there can only summarised with pay-check I receive at the end of the month.
Lastly, to answer the question on the PG in my future. I don't think academics suits me. So, never pursued it. But, if one more elder tries to mansplain me about career, I am going unleash my own post on them, career lessons for you and me.
Reframing problem in primary farming ecosystem
I was active on LinkedIn this week. To be honest, quite active. Posted every day in the format of Brevity by Axios. I have these bouts when I download the app on my phone (a device where I do most of my writing).
I am sticking to the brevity format because of LinkedIn. Nuance and structured thought is only encouraged till 300-400 words by people attached with an image.
I posted with a visual illustration of concept that was being discussed. This week it was all about Primary farming ecosystem. These illustrations help the reader understand the concept through the illustration.
Plotting Stakeholders of Primary Farming Ecosystem on a smile curve
The smile curve is a concept distilling the supply chain with value created across the supply chain. The blog post that wrote about this well is Chaitravi’s post. In laptop manufacturing, Acer CEO, Stan Shih, innovated by outsourcing its manufacturing to other plants by keeping tight control over marketing and sales.
The motivation behind making this was to outline the futility of just being farmer focused. Farm and Farmers create the lowest value across the value chain in primary farming ecosystem. The cultivation of food on either sides, pre-harvest and post-harvest treated as commoditised. So, every other stakeholder above the farmers looks at farming similar to manufacturing on laptops.
Total addressable market of agriculture is smaller for startups
Often times when I am talking to agripreneurs, I can determine the productive nature of the conversation basing on how they formulate the Total addressable market (TAM) of their startup.
If they drop an overall number ranging in billions. I know, they are going to give me their fundraising schtick and grandiose problem statement. I plan for quick evacuation from this conversation.
On the other hand when they talk about individual value they create. My interest to engage increases.
Entrepreneurs don't do it knowingly but they often default to talk about agriculture with a single number as TAM. The overall market is not your startup's market. So, the illustration tries to segment the market. Not in actual numbers but through a mental model.
Now, the discussion around value creation and realistic TAM comes into picture.
None of what I have written is new information. Yet, by presenting it in a new format. I was trying to bring common backdrop for people operating and people who are funding this operation in agri-space.
Links that resonated
Reaction Wheel is a blog written by an operator, academician and venture capitalist , Jerry Neumann. He writes on fundamental concepts of startups, innovation and venture capital. He also happens to teach entrepreneurship. You can see the clarity of thought in his posts.
Addressing Uncertainty, an overview
The pedagogy of uncertainty is essential if building a startup is something that one is interested. The reason is postulated by Jerry at the start of the essay.
If a startup founder wants the best chance of succeeding, they must choose to start a company that faces uncertainty in some crucial way. This allows them the time and competitive space to build without having to compete with better resourced incumbents. Uncertainty here means unpredictability, as distinguished from mere risk: risky things are predictable if you do them often enough. They are insurable. Risk is quantifiable; uncertainty is not.
The essay unpacks systematically why uncertainty and what is the genesis of this field. I want to shed some light on range of known, unknown and unknowable in business.
The two primary types of uncertainty we care about are novelty novelty—when you can’t predict something because no one has done it before—and complexity—when you can’t predict something because the system you are in is changing in an unpredictable way.
All the learnings that I am making public about the primary farming ecosystem come from addressing a novel uncertainty in the space. You will know what I mean once you read the essay.
If you are interested to read a personal point of view of addressing uncertainty. I wrote about it in the context of the startup I ran.
Prologue
You are receiving this essay 1 day delayed because I could only find time to peacefully type these alphabets into the note taking tool on the preceding Sunday.
With the change of job, multiple intellectual pursuits and ageing body. Mind has been more restless than relaxed.
Lastly, coming back to "what do I do". For the elders of the society, peers at work , nerds on the internet and yours truly, the answer can never be the same.
Signing off till the next time,
Vivek, working at a job on the side.