FINDING A GAP IN THE MARKET DURING THE PANDEMIC
Magno Guidote ‘11 | Scholar Magno is a senior associate with Kearney, a global management consulting firm. In this article he shares his most recent venture – the Singaporean start-up Yuan Collagen. During the pandemic, I started a business, and co-founded Yuan Collagen, which I started with my friends (including 2 other SJII alumni), as I saw a gap for an natural collagen soup base for home-cooked hotpot. The business has grown to become one of the top online collagen soup brands in Singapore as featured in several news outlets such as Straits Times, CNA, Vulcan Post and many more.
Secondly, it provides real-life examples of what the journey is like, including all the ups and downs – while this is applicable to other careers, my hypothesis is that the volatility here is amplified. the more examples there are, the more familiar students become with the journey. Thirdly, it provides some themes on what works and what does not work in entrepreneurship.
There should be more case studies shared of what entrepreneurship is like (what was the product, what was the inspiration, what need in the market was being address/ created, what were the key success factors to bring the business to life, what was the journey like) – currently these are being shown more in business schools (both undergrad and postgrad), but it would be great to see a lot more of these in high school/ Junior College.
As cliche as it sounds, it is true that you miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take. That said, you also don’t want to dive into something without understanding the risks. In fact entrepreneurship is largely all about taking risks (hence the reward for entrepreneurship when you study high school economics is profit – which is the reward for risk taking!)
This helps with several things. Firstly, it underscores the message that each path in entrepreneurship is different. 22
A structured way of doing this is balancing the risk of failure with the opportunity to bring something to the market. This can be done by spending some time up front really understanding what it is (product or service) that
