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Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

grassdx.com

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Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#1

Post by andrewbr »

I know, it's kind of weird. What is a veterinarian doing creating an analysis tool for lawn problems?

Frankly, the idea was born of my own lawn care struggles. Endless lawn care company fees without any actual improvement. Googling problems and finding generic solutions without regional considerations. One time I overseeded my grass not realizing I had to actually put soil down too.

One day, I decided to run lawn pictures through AI and found some pretty helpful information. So I decided with my clinical background (the idea of treating the cause, not just the symptoms), as well as tech savvy, I would create an AI tool where homeowners can upload pictures of their lawn, enter their ZIP code, and get a diagnosis tailored to their location with actionable next steps in just 15 seconds.

Completely free. The platform is monetized with affiliate sales (if a user elects to purchase through one of our Amazon or other links) and by selling exclusive rights to individual ZIP codes to lawn care companies seeking warm leads. Users can pursue their own DIY plan, purchase a lawn care subscription service, or contact a local lawn care system.

I'd love if you'd test it out, toy with it, try to break it, and give me your feedback. Any feature requests would be super helpful.

Thanks! Excited to hear your thoughts.

Andrew

Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis
grassdx.com

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#2

Post by goda90 »

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something.

It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money."

Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of their lawn. On top of that, many people become focused on a particular aesthetic that usually requires non-native grasses and harmful pesticides. In some places, scarse water supplies are used just to maintain a certain color.

I encourage everyone to look into replacing grass lawns with native plant landscapes, and where you do want it short cut, look into a mix of plants like clover that require far less work to keep alive than most grass monocultures.

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#3

Post by jna_sh »

goda90 wrote: post #2

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something. It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money." Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of t…

Kill your lawn!

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#4

Post by daviding »

A nice idea and good luck! My lawn is dead as our local data center took all the water (I'm kidding!).

We do home property and inventory services using AI on photos as well and the key thing we've found so far is that the biggest rival to those features is just people dragging photos into chatgpt and asking away. So the key here is differentiating from that and making something better and more accurate. What we did was to basically build a better and deeper prompt and history, e.g. context is king in a vertical. So that means the other info the user has put about the property, the memory of previous things asked or seen, combining with publicly available property info we already gather - this would make the information more valuable than straight gpt usage.

So what more can you bring to the bare prompt on the photos to help? What can you build in terms of info about the zip, so you do more 'vertical stuff' before the api call.

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#5

Post by andrewbr »

goda90 wrote: post #2

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something. It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money." Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of t…

I appreciate the sentiment, perhaps it would be wise to include some lawn alternatives or eco-friendly lawn techniques, or even drought tolerant landscaping. Though my site is not likely to change peoples' behavior around traditional lawns, perhaps we can eliminate needless application of pesticides and fertilizers by focusing on the right applications at the right time, rather than via guesswork. I also appreciate the irony of a lawn site using AI which itself uses a lot of water. Seriously though, this is helpful in that I can also be considering ways of encouraging users to seek alternatives. Maybe they don't even want the pressure of trying to keep a short cut, green lawn.

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#6

Post by andrewbr »

daviding wrote: post #4

A nice idea and good luck! My lawn is dead as our local data center took all the water (I'm kidding!). We do home property and inventory services using AI on photos as well and the key thing we've found so far is that the biggest rival to those features is just people dragging photos into chatgpt and asking away. So the key here is differentiating from that and making something better and more accurate. What we did w…

Great callout, I saw something similar on another site. Essentially instead of just entering your ZIP, you can also enter your estimated lawn size as well as various other parameters to generate a better prompt. I think that would be helpful to build in the next iteration, both to strengthen the results and also differentiate ourselves from GPT. Another thought I had was to potentially build a database of specific, authoritative lawn care information, such as industry journals, textbooks, university extensions, etc from which the GPT must draw upon and reference, rather than using context clues from the internet to try and invent some kind of analysis or treatment.

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#8

Post by andrewbr »

haaz wrote: post #7

Great idea, and really good job on the website. Can't use it myself as I'm not in America but I'm sure it's great. Please ignore most of the people on hacker ews, most of them are losers who complain about everything.

Hah! Thanks. We plan to roll out in other markets. Stay tuned! I appreciate the compliment on the website.

Re: Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

#9

Post by Carrok »

goda90 wrote: post #2

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something. It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money." Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of t…

I agree, broadly, with your statement. I am removing my entire front yard to xeriscape. I compost and am otherwise environmentally active and conscious.

That said, plenty of people _do_ actually use their lawns, especially those of us with children. My actual grass lawn is surrounded by native and low water use plants, but my small patch of green (around 2k sqft), will stay green until my kids move out.

I think it's much more useful to target the endless industrial and commercial parks that have far more grass than a normal size neighborhood. Let people have some joy in their lives.

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