I had the chance recently to speak with Julian Mitchell, co-founder of Life Cykel. These guys are mixing tech startup knowledge and learnings with mushroom farming – how awesome is that? The idea intrigues me, here is their story.
//SN: Hey Julian, tell me a little about what Life Cykel is.
Life Cykel is a food start up founded by Ryan and myself with the vision to move the future of food towards a more sustainable, tastier & healthy model. We have created Australia’s first urban mushroom farm in Fremantle. Here we utilize coffee waste to grow gourmet oyster mushrooms.
By repurposing this waste stream, we are preventing the release of greenhouse gas emissions which are usually created in landfill. Secondly, the oyster mushroom ticks all the boxes for sustainable agriculture; no chemical inputs, minimal water use, no deforestation, very low electricity usage and no waste products as the leftover mushroom substrate is a premium compost.
We supply mushrooms to restaurants and food outlets as well as having our home grown mushroom boxes. These boxes enable people to grow oyster mushrooms off of their kitchen bench with simplicity, connecting people back to locally grown healthy food is big motivator for us.
//SN: So where did the idea for this come from?
Ryan and I are health professionals and passionate about impacting people’s health in a positive way. With the understanding of what we put in our mouth determining how our DNA is expressed, we realised the right food can be used as medicine.
So with that in mind we researched for many weeks and came across the idea of coffee waste being a good growing substrate for oyster mushrooms. Once we read this we begun trials (many unsuccessful) but enough success for us to say to eachother, “lets start Australia’s first urban mushroom farm”.
//SN: This is more a foodtech startup, rather than pure tech, right?
I would have to agree, while we focus a lot of our energy on harnessing technology to optimize everything we do, we are in the game of fresh food. We are handling a product with biological parameters that are outside the scope of optimizing through technology.
//SN: What makes you different from a small produce farmer?
The biggest difference would be that at the core, we are entrepreneurs while on the surface, we are mushroom farmers. So while we are heavily focused on growing mushrooms, we also understand the requirements to become a successful start up that has a meaningful impact in the community.
This translates to a lot of time focused on; building an online community, scaling, team culture, extreme customer satisfaction, constantly running small experiments and constantly seeking feedback. These areas, I imagine are foreign to a small produce farmer 10 years ago and perhaps even to some of todays small food producers.
//SN: You crowd funded initially – how did that go, and what did you learn?
Crowdfunding, wow what a tool for start-ups! We were successful in raising $30,000 through startsomegood to kick start our mushroom farm which was obviously great. Crowdfunding is a really good introduction into what is involved in a start up, it’s 24/7 with plenty of rollercoaster moments.
The opportunity crowdfunding provides is much more than the potential of capital raising. It enables you to test many of your start ups’ hypothesizes such as, is there a market need for your product or service?, are people willing to buy your product or service? Who is your ideal customer? and many other questions.
//SN: What lessons can you share with us in the process to date?
Ah yes the lessons there have been many, and many more to come I’m sure. Which to be honest is the great part about being an entrepreneur (if I can call myself that). Its about learning really fast and all the time.
The lessons come in many different forms from failure, mentors, friends, customers, books, podcasts, experiments and competition.
//SN: How are you planning to measure success?
I guess there are micro and macro measures for our success. Beyond your typical growth, sales & retention KPI’s our focus is on customer satisfaction. What is most important is that our customers love the taste of our mushrooms as well as the fun & simplicity that comes with growing your own oyster mushrooms. If we can do this, we can hopefully ignite an interest in people growing more of what they eat.
On a macro level Life Cykel wants to play a large role in transitioning food production into a more sustainable model. I should note this also means a tastier model. One thing shipping food around the globe & keeping it in cold warehouses for weeks and months does, is remove nutritional value and taste from it. This means more mushroom farms in urban areas across Australia and an overall decentralizing of food production. Essentially igniting a movement / interest towards locally grown food.
//SN: If you had to give one tip to fellow founders, what would it be?
Persistence is key, things will go wrong all the time and you will hear the words ‘no and it wont work’ many times. Believe in yourself, your mission and take action today.
Thank you for spending time with me, Julian, and all the best for Life Cykel. I look forward to watching you grow this business, and sharing the goodness of mushrooms with the larger community.