Expertise we need
We talked about active investors and passive investors but we will determine ways for others to participate. We need various skills and expertise and people who want to participate but do not want to be an active investor can participate. We will work out as a group, ways for people to get credit for efforts made on our behalf which will provide a path- to be defined, towards being vested with equity.
Now as you read through this limited list of expertise needed, this list is for a specific purpose to explore the type of expertise and systems we need as a group. We want you to understand that if your talent is not specifically mentioned here; hey, your attitude dictates how well you fit. 😊 Make sure you see Are You a Good Fit?
We will need talent to evaluate, redesign and refine every component and every process that will take the basic ideas presented here to an optimized level.
We will need a hydroponics expert. Do we use troughs or some other configuration?
Our hydroponics system is non-trivial.
We need access to our plants for picking. Our plant density is created by going vertical. This opens up a variety of options with hydroponics and expertise is needed to optimize these options.
We will need a lighting expert. We need even coverage over all plants for top performance. This is not a trivial matter, and a grow lighting expert has the experience and product knowledge to solve this issue.
We also need to understand strawberry plants and deal with bees for pollination. We have resources connected to agricultural subjects through our local county extension agents who can, I am hopeful, reach back into the Texas A & M system and find us the expertise that we need. We have master gardeners in our community and bee keepers who can help us understand how we could work with bees. Who knows a beekeeper who would consult with us?
We need process engineering talent for motion studies to make sure our processed are optimized. We do not want wasted motion that we have to address later.
We will need a project manager who can keep track of all the loose ends as we start from a big idea to first discussions and tracking all the moving parts which must be touched on as we proceed to evaluate this idea, and determine our next steps to move forward.
We need a super organizer using the appropriate software to keep track of all the details. This document is already arduously long for an initial read, but each little piece needs to be detailed down to the actual design to be tested. This is a formidable task and I am looking forward to great input from someone with experience and ideas to make this all more manageable.
This documentation effort and our tapping of the hive brain will require sophisticated expertise in information management systems. We also need a way to measure the top choices in decisions made by the hive mind.
We need an experienced buyer and an accounting system that can keep all stakeholders up do date on expenditures. We will have to purchase some services and we will need a hardnosed but fair buyer to keep bids and proposals reasonable.
We need an experienced commercial banker with expertise in dealing with our unique situation.
We need a professional to handle our stakeholder deposits and deal with the legal and procedural matters of working together within our stock sharing plan. This is going to take a lot of ingenuity. Someone out there knows the perfect person to handle this for us.
We need an experienced commercial realtor who knows the buildings and their general attributes like the back of his hand. We need a facilities team that can evaluate the properties available for best fit for our purposes. We will need a clear picture of strengths and potential obstacles. We will also need to have fairly accurate estimates on the cost of modifications. We will also have to have facilities in the pipeline for future growth.
We need an architect to help out here or at least someone with architectural drawing skills for create our outlines for presentation of designs in the evaluation before we move forward.
We need a marketing team- never to early to talk about a project- We will concentrate on social media and generating PR. PR around strawberries should not be difficult. Social media and images and video of fresh strawberries concoctions make by customers should generate interest. 😋
We will do broad scope influencing of the marketplace but also specifically reach into the next feasible zone for expansion of services. We can use mailers with QR codes to connect between direct mail and social media. Our message will be that they want to share the offering with their neighbors to assure us that we have a feasible number of customers in their neighborhood. This should be pretty easy convincing. 😀
OK, this is by no means a definitive list.
Feel free to add to it. Just send me an email
Stu Langley