SHR!MP - The Startup Saga - Season 2 (Part I)

Episode 04: Evoke(n) – Part 2 - Farming Is (Getting Too) Hard, Mate (but still better than Aerospace?)

Language became even more direct, reflecting on “reckless” new regulations driven by urban environmentalists that are enacted without consultation or consideration for the people they actually affect, and an emerging urban/country divide that some likened to the early developments that led to a similar division in the US. 

Many (if not all) were very concerned about climate change and any risks affecting trade and seemed to more in touch with reality and a lot more strategically thinking than many others.

And as growing crops is becoming increasingly harder (for environmental, economic and regulatory reasons), alternative land uses become increasingly attractive, even for enterprises that own the whole supply chain, as I learned from a large landowner (large, here means areas that they are bigger than some European countries), who also handles everything from the logistics around to the actual “farming”, processing and export of final products on a large scale. For them, the greatest value and their future value creation opportunity lay in the land alone, not in their (high-quality) animal and plant-derived products. For example, the idea of switching from producing food to either plastering the pastures over with solar panels or good old mining, both being low-risk and low-effort and regarded more highly in comparison, seems to become an appealing alternative business opportunity.

I also met a French aerospace engineer! Who, however, turned sheep farmer in Australia – taking care of thousands of animals. My rather curious question about why I can’t find good Australian wool products here hit a nerve, explaining that they had to export all raw wool (according to them, some of the finest in the world) to Italy, as Australia had no processing facilities that could turn their raw wool into yarn, and therefore, as with so many other exports, others would make the high-value products that only make it back to Australia as finished, expensive imports. 

As I didn’t take any pics, I stole this one without permission from @Clare Nock (who also wrote a nice conference summary!) 

Thank you The Age for reposting the article just when I was looking for something like this & also for the history of Victorian Number plates.. 

Episode 07: SHRMP.edu – Spicing Up Student Lives

With the pivot decided, SHRMP.bio's board approves (re)capitalising the company sufficiently to build the prototype and continue with the development for 2025 - subject to finding a home to build it at within Q1/2025 (= 6 remaining weeks). 

So we get going. From a reasonably short target list, I try to get in touch with any course coordinator who I thought could be interested in spicing up their students’ educational experience, and/or could have a professional interest in a project like SHRMP.bio. 

Focussing on Melbourne CBD locations at first (to be able to get to it easily) - for every 5 emails sent, I get 4 replies, 3 that convert into really enthusiastic face-to face meetings… 

And, for once, the stars aligned: with the beginning of March 2025, we have a potential home at the University of Melbourne, the most incredible support at the School of BioSciences, four great biotech students signed up to embark on the SHRMP.edu adventure in 2025 and a whole lot (a whole year!) of SHRMP action in front of us.

The contracts are signed, there is no going back, I am equally excited as I am mortified – we are now responsible for the academic fate of four students, setting up operations, spending real (our own) money, and we have an ambitious goal: 

A batch of SHRMPies on the Barbie for Christmas. 

Episode 08: University Project Olympics

Entirely coincidentally (or call it fate), just as the ink on SHRMP.edu is dried, a former colleague at Swinburne asks whether I might have a good topic for some health sciences students to work on to learn how to apply research methods to real-world questions. 

Funny enough, I do.. my first year of my SHRMP “sabbatical” had filled my notebook with a few potential research questions that could provide excellent study topics. 

“How many do you need? (Some are a bit left-field, however.)”

“How many do you have?”

I end up suggesting a first set of 5 project ideas that have real-world research questions at their core: 

One contributing directly to SHRMP.bio.

One that is a new idea in Blue-Ocean Ventures, a potential opportunity we discovered while assessing the Future of Aquaculture. 

One that's sailing-based (yes, who would have thought).

One that's derived from the intersecting insights from our Blue-Ocean Ventures work on the Future Scenario for Aquaculture and… Scouts (yes, really, it could hardly sound more far-fetched - stay tuned for this one.. )

And a final one, that has been sitting in the somewhat "crazy" HBTX.art box for quite a while. However, at this stage, even I  struggle to construct it into a suitable “Health-Science” project, so it's shelved for the time being.. (but not for too long as the year would throw in another twist).

So by March, I also have a few teams working on three other Industry projects at Swinburne University, feeding into SHRMP.bio, (newly, just for this occasion created) “Aurora Sailing” and Blue-Ocean Ventures. 

A purchase order is issued for a crate of Red Bull…