Toja (Toja Koi – TojaFarm)

The name says it all

Toja is the founder's abbreviation. Koi is a fish that people keep for their whole life.

Combined into a commitment that few people pay attention to: he put his name on something he intended to keep for a long time. There's no turning back in doing business like that - broken products are broken people's names. I accepted the advice because of that type of bet, not because the koi fish industry is getting a good price.

Play quality of koi players

Playing koi is not a hobby for those in a hurry.

Koi players care more about water than fish. There is a saying in the world: water before raising fish. If the water level is not yet reached, the tens of millions of fish that return to the lake will also perish. New people put money into fish; Long-time players put a lot of effort into the filtering system.

I sat down with Toja and found myself talking about my own profession. It's the same with businesses - people often spend money recruiting "big fish", while the lake is not yet finished. A person who is good at an organization without a system will perish like a koi dropped into dirty water. It's not the fish's fault. It's the lake's fault.

Koi players look at the small fish and guess the shape of the big fish. They pay for potential, not for today's shape. My job is the same: sitting with a startup that's still in disarray, my job is to see what this model will look like in three years' time — and to prevent wrong cuts right now.

And koi players live on prestige. The community is small, whoever sells a defective fish is known to the whole world. There is no room for cleverness. That's why from the beginning I didn't build a beautiful shirt for Toja, but built something that could withstand scrutiny: a clear process, a clear commitment to quality, where mistakes can be traced.

What do I do?

This is the project I went with from number 0, don't just sit on the sidelines and give comments:

• Shaping the brand and logo — to turn the founder's own name into a viable brand
• Website — build tojakoi.com, an official place for customers to verify who the seller is
• Build a content channel — choose a storytelling direction, set up a posting rhythm, create content that touches the right players: TikTok, YouTube, Facebook
• The platform operates two branches — Toja Koi and TojaFarm are two completely different problems, each with its own model
• Scanning rhythm and early warning — see the bottleneck before it becomes a problem

Visible thing

Website, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook — Everything is built from scratch, inherits nothing. The channel is running, and there are successful videos 5.4 million views.

@tojakoicenter

A tragedy that everyone who plays Koi has encountered 🥹 #TOJAKoi #koifish #kienthuccakoi #drama

♬ Dramatic Tension - Litne

But I don't count that number as a trophy. Millions of views only prove one thing: the story has reached the right people. If there is no proper delivery process behind, the larger the number of views, the faster the cracks will be exposed. Views bring guests in the door. The new system keeps them there.

Something I want to leave behind

Koi fish have offspring that live for hundreds of years, passed down through several generations of owners. People do not raise koi to watch for a season.

I also don't build something nice for a quarter and then withdraw. I built something that still worked after I left it — because that is karma, what people build all their lives.