Karel Malbroukou

Hatch TEK Program 2

16 May 2023

About

Karel Malbroukou is an experienced technical expert with extensive experience as an engineering and devops lead for some of the big names in corporate Australia. He came to food growing about five years ago under the mentorship of an Italian food growing neighbour in a peri-urban setting. When Karel and his young family moved house, he really struggled to grow food on his own and gave up.

A documentary film exploring what the future would look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them into the mainstream, reignited his passion for food and the adoption of innovative technology solutions to strategic problems.

Karel has become a qualified permaculture designer and has his own You Tube channel with a suite of twenty videos, teaching people how to grow food. Karel says his true passion lies in understanding human experiences and finding ways to simplify their lives in harmony with the laws of nature and our environment

The Idea

Karel is developing a platform for communities, individuals and families to utilize to learn how to grow their own food as well as join others in a collaborative space to garner a sense of community, fraternising with “people like them” and being able to swap produce, ideas and tackle problem solving together. The platform will act as an ‘all-in-one’ place for everyone to learn, communicate and exchange goods and services to build a closer connection with local producers and communities in peri-urban Melbourne.

The Hatch program was great, as it is accessible. There was no need to quit my day job and I had access to some really good coaches.

What's Next?

Karel will continue on his customer discovery journey, validating his assumptions and fine tuning his solution. Leveraging his digital engineering skills and network, he plans to develop a prototype in the short term, for his local geographic region, with a focus on rapid testing and iteration. Over the next three to four months Karel anticipates having his MVP ready to go, whilst developing his business model and go to market strategy. He then plans to shift his focus to scaling and growing his team and market.

Karel’s actively engaging with his potential co-founder and channel partner to establish a formal partnership. He is keen to progress to the next stage HoneTEK program, particularly to access the coaching support he has garnered so much value from in the HatchTEK program and is keeping his eye out for agrifood innovation ecosystem events he can participate in, to stay connected to other like minded agrifood entrepreneurs.