Let me tell you a story: just over 10 years ago, I worked on a project to create a foreign exchange trading tool for small and medium sized businesses in Europe. My company (well the company that employed me, you know what I mean) had been commissioned to write a custom version of our existing trading software for it, and some other company (a big consultancy) was doing the, err, consulting bit of it, systems integration, branding, whatever you want to call it. The technology was great, worked perfectly, easy to use, got the best quotes from major banks, yadda yadda.
The project was a complete, utter, dismal failure. Why? Because when these companies wanted to do a deal, old Uncle Otto from the back office at company A would go and have a nice long lunch with cousin Beppe from company B, then they would shake hands, and that was that. They weren't interested, and they were getting great rates anyway, because these were long-term business relationships, some had been going on for generations!
So I am a bit leery of young hip geeks with soft hands telling honest sons of toil how to improve their businesses...
The founders are farmers. Their families have ties to many other farmers in the Midwest. The company is based in Ann Harbor to leverage this legacy network. During YC, they made deals with farms in California and expanded their network.
It's 2013. Are 20 something year old farmers supposed to be wearing suspenders, sucking on wheat, and carrying pitch forks?
Let's be a little more supportive. Advice on how you think a young company can get around these legacy relationships would be more helpful.
Farmers in the high plains have a lot of downtime. The farmers in the area I grew up in often spent winters coaching hockey, or if their kids were out of school, lived in Florida. Might be different in places where there's a year round growing season.
Hmmm... I grew up in Iowa and the "old" farmers I knew used GPS units that measured fertilizer distribution to the square foot so they could compare it to yield in that square foot and adjust the flow on that micro level next spray to even out yield.
I don't think farming is what you think it is these days.
Its not the same at all, do a search for "farming robots" on Google. Factor in the age of a lot of US farmers, and price of farmland, and things really start looking like they are about to undergo a significant change.
A nearly complete takeover by automated machines is already underway with farming. Robots coupled with software are really how software will eat the world..
The reason capitalism works so efficiently is it forces change. The "old boys" may have monopolies today but they won't have those same monopolies tomorrow. Its happening everywhere. So many opportunities.
I grew up spending half my childhood on the farm and half in the city. My uncle after surviving Korea, farm-raised fish decades before most, diversified into real estate and finances, had leading edge GPS, radio, sat computers and irrigation gear and sent his sons to college to get an edge in business, biology and computers. The family farm(s) and related enterprises are worth somewhere in the nine figures. (Not to mention the wind and solar power farms which they had been playing with on a smaller scale since the '70s to power pumps...)
I am the co-founder of a cash-positive company that provides services to the crane industry, and while we do encounter a few problems with the older generation for the most part they are very receptive. I think that the older generation is losing that distrust for young innovation, and they actually enjoy and appreciate youthful interest.
> So I am a bit leery of young hip geeks with soft hands telling honest sons of toil how to improve their businesses...
It doesn't really matter if the software provides savings and greater yields for the farmers though. Any farmer that refuses to use it will either continue getting the same results as the past years or go out of business due to the majority of farmers using FarmLogs to squeeze out inefficiencies.
This is obviously anecdotal, but the farmers that I know are very conservative. I can't imagine any of them paying $200/month to a couple of kids in hoodies for software. This hip, trendy, presentation of FarmLogs is not how you sell to conservative farmers. Look at the About page on their website.
Thirty years back I worked with farmers working with engineers to make sheep shearing robots, they made a couple of generations of actual working robots which are in the agricultural museum not far away from where I am now.
Twenty years back I worked with farmers that were tracking sex with horse sex (race horse stud farms, agistment, et al) - it was a million dollar business with bloodlines, top dollar vets, field certified portable top range medical gear, etc.
At about that time I worked with farmers developing advanced laser systems for micron scale measurements of wool fibres.
And yet, all these farmers were and still are very conservative in very particular ways - the questions they would be asking are what does Farm Logs do that we aren't already doing? (answer: not much, they already track field usage and markets) and (more importantly to them) does it work when the internet isn't working? (answer: it seems to be cloud based so I guess if the signal drops out then so does the software).
Who owns the Farm Logs data? Who has access to the cumulative total data across all farms? How are the profits from granting third parties access to pooled data redistributed?
I wonder how well they can actually get farmers online. I grew up with lots [of farmers], and most of them would hate this only because it's on the internet. Most farmers are not that [internet] tech savvy. Also, the pricing structure seems like a farmer would look at this and be like "Uhh..? Why?" I wish them luck, but I grew up with that culture and still know a lot of them, and I just can't see this taking off by the way their mindset is.
This is just not true, or, at least, it's only true where inefficient farming practises are propped up by subsidies and protectionism.
A modern farm is a hot-bed of innovation and my initial thoughts about FarmLog is that they're far far too late to the game. This was already discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5118984 but I'll duplicate my comment here:
"So, the problem with the SaaS model is that selling to farmers is a lot like selling to a demanding enterprise customer. They know what they want, they have specific requirements and the benefits of a well-matched solution will pay for itself. That isn't, generally, where you want to be if you're looking to scale out a SaaS platform."
Through my work at a ISP that serves a lot of farmers I'd have to disagree depending on what you mean by "internet tech savvy". I haven't run across any that sling code in their spare time but other than that, watch out!
I know of multiple groups (usually extended families) that have microwave radio links between their farms. They use this to monitor each-other's grain bins, crops, and security cameras. Not to mention WiFi To The Tractor for monitoring, IM, etc. There's no cell coverage so they find a way to get connectivity. I'd call that pretty internet tech savvy.
This is a large enough market that there's a company that essentially rebrands Ubiquiti radios, marks them up 100%, and markets them through farm magazines. I suppose in a way that's arbitrage on ignorance BUT it shows that there's a need.
You're saying they are tech savvy, but not internet savvy. If you are right (and I disagree that they're 'not internet savvy') then you've identified an opportunity, not a blocker.
The point gaius is saying above is exactly what I'm trying to bring across, but in a different phrasing. I just don't think it [Farmlogs] will be something they want/like to use.
With my experience, they are tech savvy in the sense of technology, but they are pretty anti-internet and don't trust a lot of apps and such on the web. For example, this Farmlogs site. For this companies sake, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm just going with what I know on my 2 cents here. And from what I see constantly from that culture, from a first hand view, is that they would never take an app like this serious (especially at that kind of monetary cost).
Not sure what farmers you grew up with, but the ones in the upper plains are fine with tech (heck, most of them had cellphones and GPS before the rest of us). You run combines for a living and you cannot avoid tech these days. They are conservative, but get that from all the people who keep trying to sell them wonder stuff.
The biggest problem with this startup is that they are going to run into farmers who electronically sign their contracts on company websites that already have other value added services to attract the farmers in the first place. These companies also have local elevators and sales reps who sit in the cafe and have coffee with the farmers or visit them in their fields. Many are staffed by people who have done farm work (hired hand, kid not taking over for the parents).
Farmers are not exactly afraid of technology, and, in my experience, are often on the forefront. As far as the internet goes, you can buy tractors today that come with mobile internet radios built right in. Many farmhouses in my area even have fibre installed to the home. I don't think you'll find many farms that aren't online.
I would, however, suggest that farmers tend to not care about implementations. The fact that FarmLogs uses the internet is irrelevant. As long as it solves the problem, whatever dependencies come along with that solution are just a fact of doing business.
I've worked with a lot of farmers on cutting edge R&D tech, in their experience the internet is just another point of failure that's more than likely to "down" at exactly the time you need it most. It follows that relying on anything that relies on internet access is lunacy, the same attitude that results in farms having on site power generation, on site water tanks, on site fuel & gas tanks, etc.
Now, a system that functions standalone and can get by with occasional internet access ... now you're talking.
I grew up on my Grandfather's farm in California. I learned QBASIC on his computer. I connected to my first BBS from his computer. Together we used MS-Paint to draw maps of his land for planning.
That experience and my occasional trips to the Tulare farm show make me think farmers are generally pretty able to embrace new technology.
The one issue I can think of is that internet access in rural areas can really suck.
I have a hard time replacing or adding another layer of data input on top of (insert accounting software i.e. quickbooks) especially with an established system in place.
Farm accounting is not something I would delineate across more than one system, and it seems the remake is far more profit focused, which is good, but it still does not support a disconnected workflow afaik.
Still think the real money to be made is in the weekend gardener/farmer not the big guys, for a project like this. There is no way to have a partial farm management tool that does not go from nut to bolt, and still convince someone to break an incumbent process.
> Still think the real money to be made is in the weekend gardener/farmer not the big guys
Funny, I had the opposite reaction. We currently run 350 acres and it really doesn't seem like enough land to lose track of. I could see the farmer with a few thousand acres benefiting from this though. Large enough where accounting for the details starts to become a problem, but small enough to not have all the latest gadgets that automatically record all of the details for you.
With that said, I like the idea of having the data. I'm just not sure I could see myself recording everything. Now, if my cell phone would use its sensors to determine what I'm doing in the field and record the information automatically, that might be rather interesting.
Agree completely, and think the same thing that would keep you from using FL prevents a 1k+ farm from picking it up, which is the action of usage itself is a barrier. An idea would be to track you through the day and create a log that you could then markup/import into FL at night.
As for the weekend users, I was talking more about a well executed "garden planner" with lots of learning and reference information. The look and feel on farmlogs is already in that space sorta, with the trendy ui. Before I had grown for a couple years, and then moved out to 50 acres, I would have payed and did pay for tools, but they all failed pretty hard below the some form of row crop range.
I did have a look at http://www.growveg.com which was surprisingly good, but still does not tie in the fact that most of the users are going to be novices, that need education with the tools. The suggestion/education/local tie in for a garden planner is a space that is as of yet untapped, and there are a lot more weekend warriors to pay monthly or annual fees than farmers.
I guess my thinking on thousands of acres is that management of people starts to become an issue. Keeping track of what your employees have done, and should do next, is something that needs to be communicated anyway. Whether FarmLogs beats the two-way radio remains to be seen, but I think there is potential there.
Of course there is competition in that space too. John Deere has an integrated management solution on this level built right into their equipment from the factory. It actually looks very slick, reporting all kinds of data that FarmLogs will struggle to access without the same level of integration. I expect it is a little too costly for the average sized farm though, which is where FarmLogs may fit in.
I do think they have hit the mark on grain storage management. While that is not a big problem on my farm, as we send all our grain straight to the elevator, it is a real problem other farms have. It is a request I have heard many farmers make. That is data that is easy to lose track of and one you want to have at your fingertips.
I'm quite keen to watch where they take the company. I think they could use what they have as a good starting point to solve some of the deeper problems in the industry.
My anecdotal evidence, from probably about as much experience as that of the rest presented here, is that (midwestern US) farmers "manage their business" by working hard and being in debt until they decide to retire and sell their farm equipment to get out of debt far enough to fund said retirement...
...or selling to a conglomerate, said conglomerate being the only consistently viable target for "hi we're revolutionary" software like this.
I'm a bit surprised to see a startup addressing the farm market. Back in the 1980s, there was software from Pro Farmer that was used with the Radio Shack Color Computer(!). All this time I figured Pro Farmer had a lock on things, with that early start. I see I was wrong to think that. Good luck.
Yes, we have farms all around the world using FarmLogs. I actually had a video chat with some farmers in India today! We are working on making it even better for our international customers by learning their specific needs.
Do you have any plans to integrate with grain elevators? That is the biggest pain point on my farm. Being able to sell and manage inventory stored on someone else's site would make this worth every penny.
The project was a complete, utter, dismal failure. Why? Because when these companies wanted to do a deal, old Uncle Otto from the back office at company A would go and have a nice long lunch with cousin Beppe from company B, then they would shake hands, and that was that. They weren't interested, and they were getting great rates anyway, because these were long-term business relationships, some had been going on for generations!
So I am a bit leery of young hip geeks with soft hands telling honest sons of toil how to improve their businesses...