Learn Unlearn Relearn The Mindset for Success
[Applause]
hi everybody
so i’m actually quite sure that a lot of
you guys actually want to be future
entrepreneurs right
you know but at the same time there are
plenty of us also asking ourselves um
what if i failed so i’m also a
first-time entrepreneur
and this is my my very first startup and
you know i asked myself this question
every single day
um you know what i’m going to share with
you guys um today um you know it’s a
certain
mental framework of learn unlearn and
reason
that i have adopted so far throughout
the process of
running the company so by no means this
framework um will help me achieve
everything that i want
you know but it is a framework that have
actually helped me get closer to my goal
so far
so i’m hoping it will do the same for
you today
so so i come from your typical brown
family you know like my mom is seriously
old school
you know extremely annoying you know but
she cooks and feeds us quite well
i mean she’s also quite lovely um you
know also when she cooks for the family
today
and if we do not consume everything
today she is going to incorporate to
this meal into something new tomorrow
you know so as to not have um wastage
basically
um you know she even reuses a lot of
packaging materials um you know
plenty of times you know up until it
there’s certain wear and tear
before she finally discarded so
my dad on the other hand was a total
opposite she was extremely strict
and you know i had curves still i think
i was like 22 years old
um you know which was quite old you know
also when i graduated from my old levels
um when i was 16
um you know the congress that i got from
my dad was um this basically
so he came back home from work and he
just told me so i’m a big boy right now
and you know from the next day onwards i
will have to start funding for
myself um you know so he’s not going to
give me a single cent basically
so from 17 onwards um we are 17 years
old onwards you know i started doing
part-time jobs to survive in school
thereafter
essentially i am product of my own
environment
and my upbringing was a huge part of
shaping
the whole upcycle and maximizing my
resources sort of mentality that i
adopted
when starting cross groups um you know
so
when i got the idea i mean i set my
parents down we
i brought them out for lunch um you know
and then the first question that my mom
asked
was when she looked at the table and she
saw there was only three
chairs and she looked at me and she was
like isn’t there a fourth
chair so basically she expected
that i was going to introduce her to
some girl but apparently it was it was
very disappointing day for her
so now back to how i started cross group
you know i’ve always wanted to start a
value based company you know whereby we
put value and profit hand in hand
um you know at the same time i’m also a
huge fan of beer and have been home
brewing for a while then
um you know so my eureka moment actually
came when i was researching like the
origins of beer
not so much when you know i first
started homebrewing
but a couple of years after um you know
where i came across quite a number of
articles stating that the preservation
of bread
was one of the oldest form of making
beer so this was sometime in august 2018
um you know so that sparked the whole
interest
you know it was the start of my learning
process so i then started making bread
beer
you know i got a few friends to come on
board
you know we went we did a couple of
batches um you know and the first two
was
so bad i mean we basically threw away
like 60 liter worth of beer in total
then
and you know so i was still quite
adamant you know about making it work
you know so i traveled to california in
january 2019
i’ve been for about a month and a half
to learn from various breweries there
you know learn as much as i could came
back to singapore after
uh did a couple more batches at home um
you know with bread
with much better success rate a couple
of months after that
crust group was born with the mission to
maximize our resources and minimize food
waste
through beer so
the underlying problem that we are
trying to help or assist in
there is approximately 1.3 billion tons
of food waste
globally yearly you know and as we dive
deeper into our research of food waste
worldwide
and research on like the various
different companies who are helping
to minimize food waste we found one
thing in common
and that was that plenty of these
companies
with relevant solutions um you know they
had relevance
relevant solutions but for lack of
better word they are
extremely boring solutions you know so
they were mostly functioning in the
background and more b to b than b to c
we felt that ultimately if larger
consumers do not understand the critical
nature of food waste and how it impacts
climate change
then we will never be able to solve the
bigger problem
of food waste so from business
perspective it also made perfect sense
for us back then right um you know like
we
why like why should i be paying more
for my raw materials um to produce my
products
when there’s plenty of unsold and unused
food that i could then use as a
replacement
and in fact by doing so that might even
bring my costs down
so um you know we felt consumers needed
to be educated
i mean on the risk of climate change and
we thought um you know we could help
provide that solution
um you know and we started focusing a
lot on the branding side of crust and
you know like what better way
um to start a conversation revolving
around food waste
you know then having a couple of beers
made from food waste so you know we
started the conversation going when we
launched in singapore in september 2019
so the idea was to start with small
steps to build trust
you know basically a fun idea of using
beer to start the conversation going
you know and very much like the topic of
this tedx talk big questions and small
answers
so as we continue progress in singapore
um you know this was just before kobet
you know we realized that building an
ecosystem
takes small efforts from many different
stakeholders you know one
company cannot do as much um and cannot
have as much impact
and it’s definitely not easy but um you
know going into the
weeds is the way we can shake things up
and
at the same time show a better way of
producing things so
we do believe um you know that the
future of food should be more
collaborative and less competitive
basically so
we started collaborating with a lot of
fmb businesses
um you know whereby we will come in as
the r d partner and we will up cycle
their food waste and create
co-branded beers for them you know but
before that could take off kobe happened
i mean when things changed
drastically you know both in terms of
consumer behaviors and businesses
who were pretty much in survival mode um
you know most would
not be too keen on new ideas um you know
so we had to
unlearn a lot of things that we knew
from before um you know and relearn new
methods and processes in order for us to
survive now
as a company so this was when we set up
our own e-commerce platform
you know in order to sell online um you
know true you know though at that point
and there was only two people in the
company so me and my ceo ben
who’s a dear friend of mine and we only
had one vehicle
and we knew that we won’t be able to
fulfill all our orders on time
but we had to at least try during the
whole process there was one instance
where we had 18 deliveries a day
and i think it took us like 11 and a
half hours to actually complete
everything
i mean it was a lot of painful times
um you know but we managed to recover
and during that process you know when
engaging with our customers through our
deliveries and you know other people
through
zoom meetings you know we were asked
plenty of times um
why just bread and why just beer so why
not think a little bit bigger and expand
your portfolio and therefore expand your
impact
so this big question sparked us a little
bit
you know and then we realized that the
company is just scratching the surface
um and also there’s so much more that we
could do to shift our production method
you know we did we then decided to pivot
the company from a brewing company into
a full tech company
um you know therefore expanding our
portfolio and this happened sometime in
may 2020 onwards
and that was also the start of um some
of the most difficult times i’ve had
you know running in the running the
company um you know
i was um you know a very confident ceo
of a brewing company but
to be the ceo of a food tech company is
a it was a whole new different ball game
all together
so it’s a very steep learning curve you
know but at the end of the day
i mean it was also the most fulfilling
time i’ve had within the company
so the amount of unlearning and
re-learning i had to do during this
period was also
huge you know it was a lot of new stuff
that we had to
learn so we then hired a couple of food
signs in turn you know we started r d
on you know non-alcohol beverages um you
know but we also wanted
our alcohol beverages to be a functional
beverage so kind of like a beverage that
kills tubers with one stone
and you know and then of course
definitely still you know using upcycled
ingredients as a substitute for most of
our raw materials
um but the non-alcohol beverage will be
where we
will be fighting mostly fruit and
vegetable wastage
so aside from our r d for the
non-alcohol beverages um you know for
the beer site
our cost price was still quite high um
for the beer site um
due to the fact that we contract
manufacture because we don’t have our
own facility
um you know we also had additional
delivery points compared to most
breweries or fmcg companies because we
need to collect
additional surplus ingredients from
elsewhere so we basically are more
moving parts in what we do
so initially we focused a lot on the
branding and the narrative of
sustainability in general
right in order to justify our higher
price to the market
and we found out the hard way that um
you know everything still comes down to
price
um you know at the end of the day right
i do not want to appeal to the people
who already
understand what i’m doing i want to be
able to appeal to the people who
don’t really care about what i’m doing
and everything then then bows down to
price
um you know so this was another instance
of us you know unlearning and
re-learning within the company
you know we knew that we had to focus um
you know on the production cost
as much as our sales and branding so
production cost plays a huge part um you
know because
the act of kindness kindness or what we
term as sustainability these days
can only get used so far you know and
ultimately if we can’t bring our course
down
or you know go mainstream in general we
will always continue to produce a
smaller scale like we currently do
and we will always rely on the narrative
of sustainability right
um you know to justify our higher cost
and you know we will never be able to
tackle the bigger problem in terms of
food waste and lost
um you know so we knew we needed to show
the market that there are better ways of
producing beverages and you know we are
adamant about taking that lead right now
so at the end of the day um you know
that trendy term sustainability
um you know can only bring you so far um
you know the idea is to
not make sustainability into a trend but
um into a norm instead
and only with that focus in mind right
we can then create real solutions and
you know have a real shift in how we
produce
so in all this um you know our mental
framework of learn unlearn and relearn
was implemented
you know technology and everything
around us is moving
increasingly faster than before and at
the end of the day
um you know we can’t rely on formal
education to bring us forward
you know and improve the future for
future um you know formal education is a
good guide but it should not be
dependent upon um you know we need to be
able to unlearn and read them quickly
and you know adapt accordingly as we
grow as well
so learning is part of the process and
you know if we don’t change our ways
i mean we are always going to be stuck
in the past and you know we will never
evolve
and within crust amino we would have
remained just a growing company you know
with very little impact if not for this
framework
that we implemented right now from next
month onwards um you know we will
already have brought our costs down by
15
you know at the same time we will be
launching uh you know our line of
non-alcohol beverages branded as crop
and you know this was only possible you
know as we are constantly evolving
you know at the end of the day um you
know the the smaller your reality
you know the more convinced you are that
you know everything you know
i hope what i shared today you know
might prove useful um to someone else in
the future
um that is all i have for you today
thank you