I will give a very brief introduction to our
guest for today. I’ve known Simon since I met him in person last year. So it’s been over
12 months that we have known each other. He was in a session of mine on an on-campus
session. Back when we did those. Back in the day, remember? And it was a really, really great
session, and we’ve stayed in touch since then. Simon has some upcoming interviews that are
pretty important that he is going to share with you about today, so as we talk about what
we are going to focus on in the case. So Simon, I’ll let you introduce yourself before I introduce
what we’ll do in the case and what we’ll do today. Great. So hi everyone. I’m Simon. I’m a JD
MBA student at Fordham, and I have a McKinsey interview on the 16th, and I’m interviewing with
KPMG on the 8th. So looking forward to those two. Absolutely. Me too. And so our focus for today is
going to be on the McKinsey interview, even though KPMG is no slacker. I’m going to work through
this in a way that I think is going to be maybe a little bit more intense. I’m going to be a little
bit more abrupt in the way that I’m thinking about things to push to another level of insight. So
Simon, I think that this will feel like somewhere between a McKinsey first round and a KPMG second
round based on what we’re going to do in the session today. And so I’m going to introduce the
case. I’ll walk through the intro of the case. I’ll set a timer, and I will walk through how
long it takes you to do each part of the case. At the end, I’m going to give a reflection on
both the timing for each of the pieces, as well as segmented performance. So we’ll highlight what was
happening in each part of the case. And overall, your mission is to solve the case, but probably
most importantly have a really good time. So we’ll keep it lighthearted and fun. Everyone
who’s watching you, you know, you guys have the opportunity to do one half of the case, which is
to work in your head and on paper with what you would do. You are also on mute, so as long as you
are on mute, you can keep yourself accountable by talking through it. When you’re talking through
a structure, you could walk through the math assignments walking through the math. You can
also do that later on. But please, work along with us. It creates a better experience for you
from the learning side. So Simon, are you ready? I’m ready when you are.I’ve always been ready. Born ready. So, great.
We’re going to get started in just a second. Great. Our client today is a company called
Agrochem, and the case is named Mango Maker. Agrochem is an agricultural chemicals producer
based in North America. The company manages a wide portfolio of goods that includes specialty
seeds for commercial producers, pest-control and soil additives. An R&D, this company developed a
slow-release fertilizer that helps accelerate the ripening of produce. When produce goes to market
off cycle, it provides farmers with more assurance that it will be purchased and can even achieve a
price premium. The product was patented 10 years ago but has recently come back up into development
as something that they would like to finish and commercialize. In testing, the chemical
worked especially well with tropical fruits, and one of those tropical fruits is mangoes.
So the company decided to call the product, for now, Mango Maker. The majority of mangoes sold
in the world are produced in tropical regions. Non-frost zones, and Mexico is one of the top 10
producers, with 2.2 million tons produced a year. Your client would like to know if they should
attempt to commercialize the chemical Mango Maker, specifically in Mexico. Do you have
any questions about the background? Great. I’m first going to run through what I heard from you to make sure that I heard
everything correctly.Sounds good. So our client is Agrochem. They produce
agricultural and chemical products special – pretty much specialty seeds,
pest-control and soil additives. They sell these to commercial clients in
North America, and they are looking at bringing to market a fertilizer which works very
well with mangoes, and they are specifically going to launch that product in Mexico because
that’s one of the largest mango markets. And so the goal is sort of to see whether
or not they should enter this – whether or not they should bring this product to
development. Is that correct?Absolutely. That’s it. Anything you think you missed,
or any questions that you have about that? Sure. So just wondering sort of the size of
Agrochem and their current – their current size and generally how big they are so I can understand
how big of a deal this product is to their overall business.Yeah. I don’t have data on it,
actually. And, you know, normally I would, but I didn’t pull it together. I think we can assume
that it’s big. This isn’t necessarily a complete deal changer for them, so it would be a part of
a portfolio of products. So I wouldn’t assume that it’s everything. I also wouldn’t assume
that it’s nothing. How’s that for a non-answer. That’s great. And do they sort of have a timeline
of when they’re expecting the product will be fully ready to launch?I think that right
now, it’s gone through all of the testing that they would need, so I think we can
assume under a year would make sense. Great. I’m going to take a moment
to structure my thoughts and I’ll let you know when I’m ready to work on
this question.Sounds great. Can’t wait. All right, Jenny Rae, I’m
ready.Sounds good. Ready for you. So there is three main things that I would want
to look at. The first one being the mango market, the second being deciding whether Agrochem
is the right – has the right capabilities, so looking at the company, and then the third
is thinking about how to enter the market. And so starting off with the – with the mango
market, I want to look at the overall size and growth of the mango market in different
countries. I think that that would help Agrochem understand whether or not Mexico is right
market for them. And then I also want to look at competing fertilizers to see if their market
share and see if this is a very fragmented or centralized consolidated market. That will
impact how easy it is for Agrochem to break in. And then the third thing in the mango
market that I would want to look at is whether – who the major producers are of
mangoes, and see if there’s, let’s say very few mango producers, and then it’s - you got to try
to win contracts from them, or if it’s a very fragmented market and it needs a wide – a diverse
marketing team, something like that. And so that’s what I want to look at in the overall mango
market. And to look at Agrochem as a company, I want to look first at their financials and see
how been doing recently, and also importantly look at their cash position to see if they
have enough money to make this investment, or if it would – if they would need to take
out debt, and that would then sort of make the investment more risky. The second thing I would
want to look at is their current capabilities in, in manufacturing, distribution and marketing to
see if they can use the same capabilities with this new product, or if they would have to create
new capabilities. For example, if their Mexican distribution is not very strong, then they
would need to build that up and that would be an additional cost. And it would also affect the
timeline. And the third thing I would want to look at in the company is their current portfolio of
– of fertilizers to see if this would cannibalize from other sales. If they are – if Agrochem
is already the main player in this market, it, they would be taking away from their current
revenue. And that’s what I want to look at in the company. And the third thing, looking at
how to enter. There’s two main ways I would think about right now of entering this market.
First is to organically go in with distribution and marketing teams, and then the second way would
be to license the product to a major player in the Mexican market. And so this deciding whether to
do an organic entry or licensing approach would – would sort of be based on the barriers to entry
in that market and see if, if they’re very high, then maybe licensing is better. And some
barriers for entry could be, let’s say, the government’s regulation on fertilizers,
and if it’s really strict, and the current product doesn’t need it, then maybe you license
the product and have that company figure it out.Sounds good. Where do you want to start? So I would first want to look at the mango market
and try to figure out if it’s an attractive market to enter.Great. I want to do the
same thing. What data do you want? What kind of data do you think would
be interesting and powerful here? So one of the – the biggest data point
would be to look at the size of the market, and the overall trend recently. And then
compare that to Agrochem’s like expectations for their – for their return on an investment
to make sure that the market is big enough for them to actually – for it to be worth their
time.Okay. And how are we going to actually – what are the metrics that are going to tell
us if it’s big enough for us specifically? Sure. So some metrics would be market size
in dollars, percentage change in market size from the previous year, and then also looking
at the number of competitors and their market share to see if it’s a fragmented market.
So easy it would be – how much market share we can reasonably expect Agrochem to be
able to take.Good. So I do have some data on the overall market. Let me give it to you
now. Mangoes are grown throughout the world, and the top five production countries control over
65% of the market. In total it’s 36 million tons out of a 55 million that are total globally.
Our client for the moment is only concerned with Mexico as a test market. What they figured out is
some of the data on the market. So their Mexican producers can make average revenue of $6000
per acre for mango orchards in the given year. The market is growing at about 7% per year.
There are approximately 125 orchards in Mexico, and there are 250,000 acres that are
devoted to mango orchards in Mexico. So how would you identify how big the
farm market for mangoes is in Mexico? Great. So I think I heard all of the
information correctly. There was one data point at the end that I would like to
clarify. There’s overall about 250,000 acres dedicated towards mango production.
Is that correct?That’s right, yep. All right. And the question that you asked was
to see how – how much revenue is sort of produced in a single orchard?No. The question I asked was
just how big is the mango farm market in Mexico. Oh, how big the mango farm market overall. Okay, great. So may I take a moment to structure
the logic of this math?Sure, a quick moment. Okay, sure. So overall, the market would be the
number of acres available for production, which it was 250,000 acres, and then $6000 per
acre for the overall size of the market.Okay. And so the overall size of the market would be $1.5 billion per year.Okay.
What do you think about that? So that – that number is quite large. And it’s
also very – it’s a good number because Mexico is just a very – is a small part of the
overall mango market in the whole world. And so for a test market, this is quite a
significant size. And it also would likely mean that it’s worth the Agrochem’s time
and effort to – to launch it because this – my guess is that this is larger
than most markets that they are currently in, but without more information on the company,
it would be hard to know.So let’s just be clear. What is this market, the market for? And is at
the market that we are thinking about entering? So this – this is the market for overall mango
sales, and we are looking to – we’re looking to – or the client is looking to sell a
fertilizer, which would help and improve the off-cycle production of mangoes, generally.
And so the - the size of this market is good for the client because it means that
mango producers in this market are going to be willing to spend money to improve their
mango production.Gotcha. Okay. And so tell me what else you can see from this data on
the kind of market that this is for us? So this is –For us, for
Agrochem. Not of mangoes. Yep. This is generally a fragmented market
because there’s 125 different orchards, and so for the client to then go into this
market, they would need to consider how to target many different orchards in Mexico, rather
than if there were only five orchards, they would need to look at – it would be a different sales
and marketing approach. And so probably 125 orchards is probably a good thing for the client
though, because it likely means that the – it – there’s more clients to be able to take. If
there were only five – let’s say five orchards, they would probably already be locked up in
contracts with other major Agrochem players. And so with 125 orchards, it’s probably more
room to start to develop market share.Okay. So interesting – interesting insights there.
So based on this, is there more data that you would want before you are ready to say let’s
enter the market? If so, what would it be? Sure. So there’s probably three different types
of data that I would want to look at. First is the competitors, the second is the overall financials
of the of the entry, and then third would be the general, I guess, what we are expecting
the customers to – the customer benefits and their willingness to pay for this product. And
so, yeah.I have – I have some data on that. There are no competitors right now. This is a
patented product. Because we issued the patent 10 years of go, no competitors have worked on
developing anything that similar to it or like it. So, so that’s, I would say in general good news.
But then in terms of the customer benefits, we might calculate that in just a minute.
Before we do that, I have a question for you. This is related to the customers, right?
What do you expect the sales process would be like if we decide to pursue this
product. You mentioned just a little bit about the fragmentation of the market.
What factors should the client consider specifically when they’re thinking about
building a sales pipeline for this product? Sure. So with 125 orchards in then, then each
orchard is – none of the orchards are going to be in the billions, or likely none of them are
even in the $100 million. So this is small, I, I imagine that their, I guess, procurement
teams are very small as well. And so I imagine that the sales process would be first developing
a, a marketing team that’s pretty, pretty large because we’re going to need multiple sales reps.
And then developing marketing materials that are tailored towards the products and towards the
local, the needs of the customer. And then it would probably be going from
sending the sales reps out, trying to convince them that this product is worth
it, and that would probably need some forecasting on potential increased revenue for the
customer, and then securing hopefully long-term contracts, or at least annual contracts with the
– with the orchards.Sounds good. Anything else? Yeah. So the – the sales team would definitely have to
consider the, the length of the patent when considering contracts, negotiations
and the marketing materials because depending on how much longer
the patent is, the patent has, then competitors may enter the market very soon.
I imagine since the patent was 10 years ago, I think patents are normally around 20 years,
and so there’s probably plenty of time. And so the sales team would be able to tell the different
orchards that this is going to be the only product on the market for many years, and all your
competitors are going to be using it. So you should use it.Okay. Awesome. Well, you mentioned
a little bit about the benefits to the orchard owners. But let’s talk about that next. So there
are two primary benefits that orchard owners get from this product. The first one is better
consistency of the mangoes. The orchards split their harvest between the whole mango market,
which is 75% of a crop, and the commercial food market, which is 25% of the crop. That includes
juices, baby foods, and canned and frozen pieces. For the whole mango market, the farm’s staff
sort through the harvested mangoes and separate any mangoes that are not ripe, or that are
deformed by pests. Our client’s product protects whole mangoes from pest damage and improves
the yield of the whole mango market by 6%. The second benefit is increased sweetness. For
mangoes dedicated to the commercial market, this product improves the overall sweetness. The
sweetness does not seem to make a big difference to the whole mango market. Therefore, it takes
fewer mangoes to make pressed products. About 50% of the commercial food options are pressed. It’s
estimated that the sweetness factor improves the yield by 10%. So what is the estimated incremental
value for a farmer by using this product? I’m just going to repeat some of the information
that you gave me to make sure that I heard it correctly. The – there’s two main benefits to
the – to the fertilizer. One is that it improves, that it has better consistency. It protects from
damage from pests and improves the yield by 6%. And then for the – the second benefit
is that it improves the sweetness, which is mostly for commercial use. And so,
and that was for 10%.It improves it by 10%. By 10%. Okay. So the – I would – in
order to try to quantify the benefit, I would – I would try to convince the orchards
that since it improves the yield by 6%, and improves the sweetness for commercial use
by 10%, that it would increase their – that the first benefit would increase their yield
– would increase their revenue by 6%, and then the second benefit would increase
the commercial use by 10%.So Simon, does that apply to the – 6% and the 10% apply to the
whole yield and the whole revenue therefore? The 10% definitely only applies to commercial.
I imagine that the 6% may only apply to general because the mangoes that are for the commercial
use don’t have to be as perfect, and so I would actually only use the 6% for the general.That
seems to make sense to me. In addition, for the commercial market, there’s, the only part that it
really makes a difference for is pressed products. Okay.So which is only 50%
of the commercial market. Got it. So the 6% addition to the general – to
the general market is an increase of 4.5% of – of the total.How did you get that?
Just walk me through the numbers. Sure. So I multiplied 75 x 6%, or by
six, and, or by 6% and got 4.5%. And then for the commercial, I would multiply the 10%
times half of the commercial, which is 12%, and that would be an additional 1.25% overall.
And so the general benefit of the fertilizer would be 5.75% additional revenue for the
– for the orchard. And I think that that would be generally a significant amount.
I think –What is that actual number? The, so I could turn it into, I could do
5.75% times the 6000 per acre and get a – get additional revenue per acre, if
that’s what you’re looking for?Sounds good. Okay. So then 5.75% times 6000. That should be an extra $345 per acre. And so depending on the – on what
the client – what Agrochem is expecting to sell the fertilizer for, this could be a benefit to the
– to the orchards and so I would next want to look at the general pricing to understand whether the
orchards would find any benefit from this.Okay. So we do need to determine the potential pricing as
well as the profit of the product. Specifically, we are interested in identifying a kind of an
additional benefit that’s related to that. So I have some more data for you. The, the other
benefit that is included is earlier harvesting. And we mentioned before that there was a potential
price increase related to being able to harvest earlier, and basically getting your product to
the market off-cycle. So our client gave a sample of the product to a farmer that produces only
locally. It’s a small acreage of about 200 acres. The farmer was really able to harvest his crop
about 30 days earlier by using the product. 10 of those days are within what we call the price
premium capture window, where the farmer gets a 4% price boost. A study of technology innovation
in the agriculture industry have shown that new products typically capture some portion of total
benefits created for users. The standard median percentage is about one-half. In addition, it’s
estimated that the product will cost us about $3000 per kilogram to produce fully loaded. And
that fully loaded cost includes transportation, warehousing, as well as sales and marketing.
Tests indicate that 1 kg of the product can support 12 acres of mango crop. So now my question
is how should we price it and what is our profit? Great. So there was a lot of data there and
I think I heard most of it, but I’m not – I’m honestly not sure that I heard 100%. So the
additional benefit is early harvesting where the orchards could harvest 30 days earlier based on
the research that our client did. But only 10 of those days is in the price premium window, which
was 4%. Then there was – there is a 1.5% in there, and I honestly didn’t catch what that study
was.Yep. So basically a study of technology innovation in the ag industry, and there is a wide
range of percentages. Basically there’s a benefit to the user, but then how do we price it is the
question. And so the median number is one-half. Okay, so the overall price premium for the orchard
would be 4%, but then the – our client would look to take about 1.5% of that premium?Not
of the premium, of the total benefit. Okay. Total benefit. Great. And then the – the cost to produce was $3000 per kilogram,
and one kilogram supports 12 acres.Correct. Great. So here we have two separate calculations.
One would be the cost to produce, and then the second calculation is the additional
benefit to the orchard.Okay. And so the addition – I’m going to start with the
cost to produce, and so we said that one acre, the benefit was $345. No. The cost
to produce, we have 1 kilogram being 3K, so the – the calculation isn’t cost to
produce, it’s overall like profit driven from it. And so I would want to look at the 12
acres multiplied by the $345 per acre to get the benefit of 1 kg of, and then
subtract that from the 3K to get the potential profit from 1
kg.We could do it that way. Okay. So 345 times the 12 acres gets us a total of three – $3840 as the benefit from
1 kg of fertilizer. We subtract that from 3000, we get $840 in benefit from
the 1 kg of fertilizer to the – to the orchard. And then, okay. And then the
second thing is the additional benefit of earlier harvesting to the orchard. And we have a
price premium of 4%. And so we can increase the – we increase the total yield from the acre
by 4%, or the total price by 4%. And so for 1 acre that was selling was we had $6000,
we increase that by 4%, you get an extra $240. And then 1.5, the tech innovation
from that, the 1.5% that most people in this area are selling
for is 1.5% of the benefit of that 240 to the – to the acre, and so that would
be a total of $90.Where’d you get the 1.5? So that was the average number from the – from the data that you gave me about
general tech innovation.It was one-half. One-half. Oh, one-half. Okay. So –And basically just
Simon, to, to explain that. Basically what it means is that there is a value that’s a
benefit to the client, and we’re going to give them half of the value, and we’re going
to take half the value, right? We’re going to price at what we believe half of the value is
so that they get some of that residual value. Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. So in a general
acre, the average benefit is 240.Is that for all general acres? Is that across the whole
portfolio, or is that for some general acres? I think that was on the average acre of
the – of the market was six, was 6000, so I took 4% of the 6000 to get
240.And that would be true if we could price all of them at the premium.
Can we price all of them at the premium? We can price the ones that are 10 days that
are in the price premium window, which would be 10 days of the price window times 30 days and that
means divided by 30 days earlier is one third. Is there some other factor that is preventing
us from pricing all of them at the price premium window?It’s just that if they – we can’t
– we can’t actually get them all to the market during that period. So the other 20
days will have to be at the original price. So only one-third will be able to
make it into the price premium window. Okay, so then we can divide 240 x 1/3 to
sort of add the average benefit for all acres, and so that would be $80.Okay. And then the average benefit or
taking half of that benefit for the – for the com – for the client
would be $40 per acre.Okay. And so the – since 1 kg can provide for 12
acres, we would multiply that 40 x 12 and we get 480.Okay. And so the – we could price it
somewhere I would think between 800 – we would price it around $480.Okay.
Walk me through the pricing just in sum. Sure. So the average benefit is – is $80 per
acre because to and then taking half of that is $40 per acre. If we were to –
oh, we would have to sell it at $3480 to cover the cost and take the
benefit for the client.Okay. $3480, but, but so far, like where does the $3000 come from?
Where does the coverage for that come from? I did this earlier. Okay, so the other parts, the
other benefits for the – for using the fertilizer. So the - the – the benefit of better
consistency and improved sweetness, that was going to lead to $840
in benefit, plus the $480 in benefit from the earlier harvesting. Those
combined to $1320, $1320 in benefit. So actually our client should be taking $680 in
benefit.Walk me through that 840 one more time. So the 840 we got from using $345 of benefit per
acre times the 12 acres. So that was a total of $3840. Maybe there was no reason for
me to subtract it from 3000, and so the actual benefit was going to be $4320, and then
half of that is – now I understand. Half of that is 21 – 2160, which is below our cost
to produce.There we go. What you think? So it seems like we wouldn’t be able to
price at high enough to produce it.You sure? No.You’re not sure of anything anymore, are you? That’s a hard fast. So 3 kg. I’m going to take a moment to double
check my math and logic here.I like your math. I’m looking for insights. So – so the client could price it higher. This 1.5%
here is just an average. And so if we were to try to take more of the benefit, then if the
client was trying to take more of the benefit from the tech innovation, then it could price it
over the 3K mark. But then –What percentage would we have to be at? Right now it’s 50/50. What
percentage would we have to take of benefit? Sure. So I’m going to divide 4320 by 3000. No. I’m going to actually
subtract it, then divide. So the – I think 1320 over – we need to be
taking closer to two-thirds of the – of the total benefit. And that’s just to break
even. We definitely need to be taking closer – more than two-thirds in order
to have a profit from this. And that is – it may not be likely to get
that. Also considering all the upfront costs of entering a new market, the client would probably
be taking almost all the benefit for it to cover all the other costs involved in selling
the fertilizer.Okay. Can you think of anything else that we should do? Based on the
restrictions that we placed on the concept so far, is there anything that we should remove, any
other alternatives that we should look at, etc.? A main alternative that I had back in my
structure was licensing the product and trying to find potentially a different company that could
sell this. Maybe they could produce it cheaper, and so they would get the benefit. Additionally,
our client could try to produce it for cheaper. And a third option would be to and to
look at different markets other than Mexico where they may have a higher
yield per acre.All right. Like where? So there was tropical – it’s a tropical
fruit produced in tropical areas, and so also considering the size of general economies,
Brazil would be a very large economy to look at that hopefully – that likely fits the
climate that would be necessary for this type of – for it to produce
mangoes.Okay, awesome. Anything else? Another option would be to test the –
to test the Mango Maker on other fruits that have a higher yield
per acre. There’s no reason that I see to stick to mangoes except there’s been
a lot of effort that’s already been put into that. And so if, let’s say a lot – if this works
well with other tropical fruits that have a higher yield, then that would make sense
to me.What would be some examples of those? Other tropical fruits. Papaya. I think it dragon fruit is a fruit.I love papaya. Anything that would fit this sort of – this chemical without knowing all the details
of the chemicals, this would likely be the other tropical fruits are the most likely
candidates. There could also be fruits that would benefit from the – from the benefits of the Mango
Maker in ways that are larger than other tropical fruits. For example, earlier harvesting. This
doesn’t seem to be a big benefit for mangoes, but if it’s a big benefit for a specific
other fruit and its fertilizer could prove to give that option to that fruit, or the orchards
of that fruit, then you could try to position this product in other markets based on the benefits
to mangoes. Sounds reasonable to me. Okay. Well, at this point our CEO of Agrochem is interested
in an update. What would you say to the CEO? Can I take a moment to structure
my recommendation?Sure. So the, unfortunately the – we’ve
ran the numbers and it doesn’t seem like - it would be very difficult to
sell the Mango Maker in Mexico because the benefit that the orchards get is not – is not
significantly higher than the – than the client’s cost to produce the fertilizer. And so trying to
take – there trying to get profit there, it would be hard to convince orchards to buy it. So the
recommendation is to look at other markets where Mango Maker could be more successful. And those
other markets being other tropical fruits, or other regions where they sell –
where they produce mangoes. And so the – the next steps would be to try to identify which
markets to enter. One of the markets that we were talking about in our discussions was Brazil. And
then try to do some test and market research in those markets to make sure that it’s a profitable
market center.Awesome. You ready to be done? Yes.Awesome, Simon. Thank you so much. That
was – that was maybe better than you thought, but I’m sure that people will kind of pop some
thoughts for you in the chat bar. I’m excited to go through the background and the recap and
talk through each of the pieces of the case. Before we do that, I’m curious what you
think. What were your thoughts about it? So I thought my structuring was generally okay. I
was – I was – I’m generally nervous about my math, and so I’m looking. So I’m not sure – I – while
I’m going through these, I’m never sure that my math is right, unfortunately. It was – it was
nice to hear that - that you liked my math.I could tell that you had some
uncertainty about your math. The question about the sales
process, I think I wasn’t giving what you were looking for. So I’d
be interested in and hearing about that. And then I didn’t quite understand the trying to
do that calculation at the end. But I got there in a little under 40 minutes. So maybe
it wasn’t – it wasn’t too late.Exactly. It wasn’t too late for you. Yeah. So I think
that’s really great feedback. Just – just question for you. What about the experience
of doing the case like that, and with me. Did you notice anything different about that
versus maybe other practices that you done? So there was definitely a lot of what else for some of my – when I was thinking
about like brainstorming. Yeah, that was the main difference. And I yeah,
I guess it’s hard to stay structured in it when you get what else because you want to just
respond with the first thing that comes through your mind. And I don’t know if that’s correct or
not.Great. I want to talk about that specifically. So overall, I just want to let you know if that
was a first round interview I would’ve passed you on. I liked – I thought overall it was a really
strong performance. I felt like you did, you know, quickly get the points, got the math. Was it we
were able to capture everything, there was an appropriate amount of dialogue, a decent amount
of structure. It was still a B. I want to get you to an A, right, because we want to – we, we
need you in that final-round and we need you to be able to play in the final round. So let’s –
let’s get the A. That’s what we’re going for. There – it actually started at the beginning.
There were just like little tweaks in a lot of the different sections. So I don’t have any major like
you have to just burn this house down and build it back up again. But I do have tweaks in almost
every piece. So for the first part, the recap it was great. Took 41 seconds. Super clear, kind of
high level. I felt a slight lack of enthusiasm. I don’t know if you were like oh crap, the case, or
oh crap the audience. Or just oh crap what. But, but I, you actually I just want to like really
get a sense of your like confidence in solving the case right from the very beginning. And
I feel like you could have built that in just a little bit more in the early recap. So you
kind of talked about it at the high level. And there’s actually one thing that happened right at
the very beginning that was an insight that I was looking for that I would look for in the second
round. And you never picked up on it in the case, and I wouldn’t have expected you to in the first
round, but I just want to tell you what it was. So Mexico was the fifth largest
producer, and I gave you some numbers right at the very beginning. I said
that they are 2.2 million tons a year. You didn’t actually recap that number. And so
later I gave you other data inside the case that said that the top five producers produced
36 million out of a 5.5 million total globally. And that probably would have been a clue
to you that there are bigger producers of mangoes other than Mexico. And so that was like
a secondary insight that I just want you to start watching out for as you are practicing cases.
Because the more that you can pick up on those, the more that you can come up with alternatives,
or new ideas, or the big picture insights that are really the game changers. When you
talked about the two clarifying questions, they were good, but not great. The good was that
you asked them, the great would’ve been if you would’ve told me what you thought and asked me
to verify. So you were like how big is Agrochem. Instead, I would have wanted you to say it sounds
like Agrochem is pretty diversified. I would imagine that this product is not a deal breaker or
a game changer for them. It’s something just like that they’re going through a standard process for,
but I want to make sure that that’s something that is appropriate in my set of assumptions as I’m
thinking about it. So I make sure there is nothing that’s kind of like grave, right. The whole
success of the business or the failure of the business is on the line. I could just say yes to
that instead of kind of like explaining a bunch of stuff. I also get more from you. The second
question was the timeline for the product. So I told you in the background that there were 10
years on the patent. I don’t know if you know this, most patents are 20 years in duration.
So like if you had just told me I think we’re a little bit under the gun here to make the best
use of the remaining 10 years on that patent, so I would probably look at a one-year launch process.
Is that okay? Too aggressive, anything else that I should be thinking about. So again, like just add
a little more color right there in the dialogue at the very beginning. Your structure took you
one minute and 39 seconds. It was a little too short. And the only difference that I would have
made in what the content of your structure was was specifically focused on a few more
metrics. So I felt like you really hit a very good diversity of the concepts that
you wanted to cover, and as you notice, we fairly clearly walked through some of the
structure that you had developed. But you said, for example, competing fertilizers, right?
Are they fragmented or consolidated? So just start that by what’s the percentage
of all of the competitors of fertilizer. For producers, are there very few, right? And
I think like one of the other insights that you didn’t pick up on inside the case I was looking
for you to mention at some point was that like if there are 125 producers, there are probably
only 20% of those that are like big enough for us to sell to, or that would make a big enough
difference for them to add a new product to their process or their time – their pipeline. And so
you kept talking about the how the market was fragmented but didn’t really highlight like
what percentage that would end up meaning in terms of you know, it would basically reduce
some of the value overall in the market. And then you – when you were talking about the like
distribution and marketing teams versus licensing, I just wanted a little bit more detail on the
data. And here’s what happened. It took you three minutes – let me actually just confirm this. Three
minutes and 22 seconds to read out your structure, which is actually too long. So what I would do as
a next step right after this case, after we get off the call is go read out your structure under a
two-minute timer and try to get it all out there. But one – the other final thing is that you
numbered your categories very well. You did not number your data. And so I wasn’t totally
sure. I think I got it because you were fairly clear about it, but just as a safeguard,
write data point 1, data point 2, data point 3 when you are walking through your data.
Because otherwise it could sound like this big glob of data. So just make that super,
super explicit, especially for McKinsey. That – great. And then we kind of go into some
of the math questions. So the first – first math question, I would say that you got through to
the level two insight, but not the level three. So that one was the size of the market question.
And so you are like it’s a big market, and then you kind of heard me. I was like but is it? You
know, because if you – you are sizing the market for mangoes, and that is – that’s not the wrong
way to size it, but then like what we really could have sized on top of that, there was a second
calculation which would’ve been the number of acres per orchard on average. And identifying,
right, there’s 125 orchards, or orchards, 2000 acres per orchard probably would’ve made
more difference rather than the 1.5 billion of the total market size. So I just pushed you
on those insights there. I want you to do those on your own. I would also, as just a tip for all
of the math, you did an amazing job of structuring all three of the math questions. Although
the last one the structure I kind of like interrupted because it wasn’t the structure that I
was looking for. But I still liked that you did it across the board. One thing I would add to your
structure is just like why are we doing this, right? Like so tell me, you know, I’m
going to do this math and this math, and here’s what we’re going to find. We’re going
to discover whether the market is big enough for us to enter. We’re going to identify if the
revenue in the market, you know, with some upside would be material enough for these Mango Makers
to actually, you know, change their production processes, right? Like tell me what you’re
looking for in the data before you even get there. I think your biggest opportunity for improvement
is on the creative questions. And so for the first one, at – what – what you did was what I would
consider to be the old-school, nonvirtual way of doing creative questions. You came up with a
list where like develop a marketing team, multiple sales reps. Tailored toward the local market needs
of the customers. Focus on long-term contracts. And it was just like this like kind of rambling
list. What I would rather have had you do, whether you take time, which you can in McKinsey,
and whether you don’t which is better for KPMG, I would have rather had you say there are
a couple of things that I would want to do with the structure. And I wanted more up front
structure categories that you then filled in information with, rather than a list. You also
never recapped and never prioritized at the end of it. So it kind of just felt like you were going
through the motions rather than using it as a thought exercise to get new ideas on the table.
The second one, the what should we do different, was a little bit better, but it
was the same. It was super linear. So if you kind of said hey, I think we’ve got
three options, right? Produce cheaper, you know, give someone else a license and they could produce
it cheaper, focus on a higher like price point, and then you kind of added the fourth one, which
is the higher yield per maker. But like I would’ve liked some sub bullets under each one of those,
and I would’ve liked for you to tell me that that was your kind of across the paper structure,
and then build it out a little bit further down. Does that make sense to you? Because I really want
to make sure you catch that specific feedback. Yeah. If the case was easier I think I
would have done that.That’s such a copout. I know – no, I know to do that just when, when
the questions are hard, it’s harder to come with the categories. It’s easier to come up with
one-off ideas, I think.Yep. Yep. And so, so if you do it that way, then kind of come up with
one or two, and then when you feel like you’re starting to diverge from it, call that
category like okay, so those are ideas for marketing. Let’s talk about the sales team,
right? Let’s talk about partnerships. Let’s talk about capabilities of the sales team. Like once
– once you like build the first one, that’s okay. Name it something, but then go on
and build some other ones as well. So your brainstorming for each time was like under
two minutes. That’s why I what elsed it so much. Okay.And so you’re going to get fewer what else’s
if you are more comprehensive in the first place. Great. And then the final math question, oh
sorry, the two benefits to the orchard owners, I thought you just nailed that one. I just
want to make sure that you know you can do as much recapping as you need to, so that was
the one where I had to clarify that it was like 6% of the 75%, and then 10% of the 50%. Of which
was also of the 25%. So you actually kept really good clear record of your math at that point, but
I just would want to make sure that you recapped it adequately so the fact that I had to jump
in there was like a little ding, not – not bad, but that would’ve been better if you didn’t need
to do that. And then finally, on the final math question, this one was the doozy, right? The
– the kind of like I gave you both costing and a pricing benefit both in the same thing.
And so you got a little bit lost in that one. What do you think happened there? Was that note
taking, was that recapping, what – what you know, what was kind of the – was it I – I intentionally,
by the way, because this is a McKinsey style case, I mixed up the per kilogram and the per acre to
make you put them into the same metric sizes. So was that the funky thing that happened
there? Or was there something else going on? I think realizing that the first math I
did was for the first two benefit – or adding all three benefits together, that
that’s what took me the longest. And then realizing that some of the math was only for
the first two benefits maybe it was also about staying organized. And honestly I may not have
100% understood the business model and what was going on.I felt like that at the beginning,
yeah. Totally. Totally. I’m a hobby farmer, so. I haven’t done a tropical – I
haven’t done a tropical fruits case.Weird, right? Weird. You know, that’s –
that’s one of the reasons why this once such a fun one. It’s quite an equalizer because
there’s not a lot of people that are like I had an internship in agricultural
chemicals last summer, right? You know, so it doesn’t necessarily apply. This would be
the one that I would go back and redo again. And just, you know, you can either listen to
the recording, or you can just do it on your own now that you have the data. And just work
on kind of walking through the interpretation again of it, and then like telling me again
why are we calculating this. I think if you add that to each one of your math questions,
it’s going to help clear up what you do. So that one took a really long time. I think that
one took us right over – over eight minutes. And that was like – that was back and forth.
And this number and what about this one, and what about the insights. And I was
like really, you know, not letting you go on and that one. That’s one of the ways that, by
the way, if that’s happening, you can know that you’re doing well in the case. If somebody wasn’t
performing as well in that, I would be like oh, what an interesting number. Let’s move on. So
the fact that I was kind of pushing back on you was not a bad thing. Well the second question
around like what else should we think about doing, and then I thought your final recommendation
was strong. The one improvement I would of made to that is just provide what I believed could
have been a more adequate recap of what we’ve done in the case. You kind of dove pretty strongly
into the recommendation and then the next steps, and really missed out on like here’s what you
looked at. So I would have either put that before or after the recommendation. And prior to the next
steps. So I hope that that insight and feedback and those tweaks are helpful and productive
for you. Do you have any questions about this? This was a great learning experience. And no, I – I understand the feedback, and
I’m looking forward to hearing the recording. Also not so looking forward to it. But this was
very interesting and something new, which I’m glad I got to do.Good. Simon, I have a question
for you. So now you can reveal to us how long have you been prepping, what
if you been doing. Because I, you know, I think that was a great example for a lot of
people to see. So what are some of the things that you found successful as we move into
the final Q&A with the rest of the group? Yeah. So I did the Black Belt program
last summer, and then I sort of took the - from October to April, May off, and then
I honestly didn’t put in enough time last summer into the Black Belt program. It still needs to do
stuff outside of just working with the coach. And so I learned that for this year, and so I’ve been
doing some practice cases with other people who have interviews. I – I’ve been working with the
coach this – this round for this recruiting cycle. And then I’ve been trying to write out different,
different frameworks and not to memorize them, but I think it helps to have like a really broad
sense of what your – of what you’re doing and why. For example, for – for this case, I, the
really broad idea is is this the right market and then can we do it. Does it make sense.
Is it feasible, and then how should we do it. And yeah, so.And I love this one. This is a very
like business fundamental case, right? If we can create value for someone else, we can capture
some of that value. It’s kind of one of those like very basic concepts. One of the reasons
I love business, right? You know, the whole reason that business should exist is that it’s
creating value for somebody that they are willing to pay for. Great, awesome. I think those are
awesome tips. Well, I don’t know if some people might of questions for you, but now I’ll
open up the floor to questions. You guys can put them into the chat bar, or you are
welcome to unmute. But thank you, everyone, for coming, watching, and I will stick around
for about 15 minutes to answer questions. Thank you Simon, so much. Appreciate you. Thank you.
