Today we’d like to introduce you to Yonatan Girma.
Hi Yonatan, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’m the founder of Adulis, a business-to-business marketplace for green coffee beans in Los Angeles, focusing on offering specialty green coffee beans for coffee roasters. Our vision is to be the planet’s coffee hub, where people and businesses can buy coffee. And our mission is to help coffee-producing countries export more coffee to increase their economic empowerment and, at the same time to provide coffee roasters with the best possible quality coffee beans at the best possible price. My background is in Computer Science – I studied at Jackson State University in Jackson, Ms. After I graduated, I worked for different companies and institutions like Harvard University, Boston University, Brown University, Tata Consultancy Services, and others. I moved to Los Angeles when I received a job offer from Boeing in El Segundo, California. Even though I didn’t join the company, it led me to the great Los Angeles. Being entrepreneurial was always something interesting to me. In college, I always want to build something that can benefit more than me, something I can do to make a difference in the world.
As an immigrant, I see how people come to the United States and then do not return to their home country after receiving the necessary education to make a difference in their home country. This trend always bothers me and gets me thinking about what I can do for my home country, Ethiopia. Ethiopia is known for being the birthplace of coffee beans. Moreover, Ethiopia’s primary foreign currency source is coffee export. But, the country has only a 4-5% market share in the global coffee industry. With the project management skills I have developed while working on projects at Harvard, Brown, and MIT, I have decided to create a green coffee marketplace to put a dent in the coffee industry. The company started with a small team, and we are gradually growing our team as well as coffee trader partners and roasters.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As a technology company, the challenges come in two flavors. The first one is developing the product. A technology company is not one person company. It requires a team that believes in the vision and mission of the company. Building the right team, showing the idea, and managing the team to deliver the product are always challenging. The Hiring process is also a challenge, whether local or freelancer. Both have pros and cons. Hiring local talent is very expensive, as building a start-up and hiring a freelance is challenging because it is hard to build a company culture.
The second challenge is identifying the target audience and communicating with them. In our case, the target audiences are coffee roasters in the United States. But that is very broad from a marketing standpoint. Some giant roasters import containers of green beans by traveling to coffee-origin countries. On the other hand, home roasters roast 1- 60kg bags per month, and others have a roasting facility and roast ten to twenty bags per month. It is vital to create a customer persona and customer segments to clearly understand who to target and what marketing strategies to use to target the specific persona.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We strive to deliver great products and services for coffee roasters nationwide daily. We work hard to onboard verified green bean suppliers who have been in the industry for an extended period and have a track record. Our Values at Adulis are Humility, Excellence, and Customer obsession. We are humbled to know we are a start-up and are taking baby steps to reach our vision. We define Excellence in everything we do – staff meetings, creative works, talking to partners and customers, coding, and everything else we practice Excellence. Last but not least, we have customer obsession meaning we want to take care of our customers – Coffee Roasters. We talk to them to understand their pain points and challenges, the kind of coffee they want, which origin, which grade, packaging, delivery, and everything they require; we listen with both ears.
With this opportunity, I would like to ask potential coffee Importers and Traders in the united states to join our platform to benefit from the sales and product advertising opportunity our platform produces.
How do you think about luck?
I feel lucky to wake up every morning. I don’t believe in luck in business. It is about risk-taking, having a specific goal, starting and failing early, being confident enough to do it, being optimistic, having Consistency, discipline, hard work, and perseverance. I opened my first business when I was 19 years old, a computer Engineering junior undergraduate student in Jackson, Ms. It was a store inside a mall that I purchased for $12,000 from the money I saved from a prior small business I did with one of my friends. The store was a woman’s jewelry store with that I had no experience. As a result, the company bankrupted me, and I failed terribly. Failing at early age makes me stronger to start the next venture. If a person has a clear goal and works day and night to get here, the person will be lucky to be successful.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.adulis.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aduliscompany/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aduliscompany
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/16256162/admin/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/aduliscompany
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVI7tJcLsoEhwcK8tCkM_vw
