Meet Sam Korn | High-Tech Mushroom Farmer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sam Korn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sam, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Like many people out there, I originally got interested in starting a business when I realized that I needed a way to make money while I sleep. I value the opportunities that free time can enable, but if you have to go into the office 5X a week, even if that office is at home, then for most of my life I am limited in what I can do. where I can travel, etc.

However, I was never really able to put the idea of starting a real business in motion until I was unfortunately laid-off from my job at a tech startup company. In my past, I’ve never really worked for a company larger than maybe 100 people. Ranging from employee #2, #10, and #20, I’ve always been willing to work at small companies. However, even though I have always been an early employee, I had always wondered whether I would be more successful if I got to be a founder.

After getting laid off, I looked for a new job, but at the same time slowly started building my business. As time went on, and I understood the opportunity I was trying to tackle, I realized that true focus is what I needed. This business was ripe for me to take a piece, and if I did not do it now, someone else would.

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle is that with AI (do it all yourself) and Fiverr (find talented folks for what you can’t do), the barrier to starting is the lowest its ever been. Really all it takes is an idea, and enough focus to work on your idea long enough to get it good enough to get your first couple customers.

What should our readers know about your business?
LightningSpore, is sometimes hard to define, because we do a wide variety of things and the day-to-day is often non-linear.

We offer mushroom genetics and mushroom cultivation supplies, which is the easy to explain part of the business. There are lots of mushroom supply shops out there, and in our mind that is a very good thing! LightningSpore is never going to dominate this industry, but we chose “mushroom supply shop” as the beach-head market, because it allows us to get the muscle memory of running a product focused business. It requires that we can make biological (and otherwise) products, have a working and compelling online storefront, and the ability to quickly fulfill orders when they arrive. I would also like to mention that “Lightning” means fast shipping!

The business gets more complicated from there, and is the longer term vision. The “Lightning” also means electronics. We have developed our own electronics, and integrated with existing platforms, in order to build a suite of highly functional grow room management tools. This means, monitoring the temperature, humidity, and CO2 of a mushroom or plant grow room. In addition, there are other repetitive cultivation tasks, which we have made better with technology.

What is difficult about “grow room tech” is that you need a very reliable product to get started. People buy tech, not because they like tech, but because they want to solve a problem. As these products are being developed, improved, and iterated upon, it isn’t always easy to get the beta tester feedback that I would like. Therefore, we have to eat our own dog food, and use our tech to grow mushrooms. We literally get mushrooms as a byproduct of our product testing. We sometimes sell the produce, or make it into value-added products like tinctures, or we just eat it ourselves. To me, this is just a bonus, because the scale necessary for a actually profitable mushroom grow operation, is quite large.

The last alternative meaning of “Lightning” is the Lightning Network. This is an 2nd-layer payment protocol, which allows using Bitcoin for instant and low-fee payments. We run our own Bitcoin infrastructure, and accept bitcoin for our products. People who are into Bitcoin is also one of our primary target markets. This is potentially a blessing and a curse, because we are marketing toward a niche group, within a niche group. I think if you are genuine this can be a quality niche to pursue. It is still up in the air, whether or not the niche is too small, but at least I can for sure say that the niche is growing.

The “Spore” part of the name also has a less obvious meaning with a connection here. We are trying to advertise the power of a bitcoin-focused business, and who better to share the good word about Bitcoin to, than people interested in mushrooms. These are already people who “think a little different”, and those people tend to get Bitcoin.

LightningSpore is more than just a mushroom growing supply. We have an eclectic mix of products, often with a Bitcoin-focused slant, and all we need to do is survive, iterate, and keep providing value, and if we can do that, we have high hopes that something with hit a chord, and make it all worth-while.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Mishawaka Amphitheater – Fort Collins
The Space – Denver.Space – RiNo
Odie B’s – RiNo
Mission Ballroom – RiNo
Flatirons Hike – Boulder

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My wife – Without her advice, mental support and, flexibility she has provided, there is no way I would have had the opportunity to work on this business for as long as I have.

The Space – https://denver.space – Bitcoin education hub in Denver

Sahiba Zahid – WordPress Developer – (somewhere in the world) – Without her cold linkedin requesting me, at just the right moment, my website would be in shambles.

Website: https://lightningspore.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightningspore/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-korn/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lightningspore

Other: nostr: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqsgqh3unz6z5gt45zqkv66wqaa6kvsnd6nv7juew654y45ezlv7x2gwv6h5v