31–40 of 92 posts
It's interesting to read updates about them as they pop up.
Damn; I wouldn't have thought farmers would be a good group to target software towards, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Out of curiosity, I wonder how these guys actually manage to get those millions of dollars in savings. Nice to see a new startup is trying and succeeding to make a positive difference for some pretty critical customers :) Going to keep an eye on this group for sure. Something tells me they'll…
The other major early infusion of tech into farming I can think of is the growth of GPS guided precision application in the early 00's. I was in college at the time and my dad worked for a farm services company; they had people that went out and drove around fields with equipment figuring out exactly where to spray the right stuff. I recall it being a big deal because it saved the farmers a lot of money on chemicals.
As an early user of FarmLogs (and as a programmer), I found it really useful. All I wanted to do was find out average rainfall on my land and make a way to denote the prime spots for crop planting on the land (purely as a hobby). It was super useful and intuitive for that, something that I couldn't get to make happen easily trying all sorts of things with Google Maps, various mapping APIs, and Google Earth.
Just curious, did you try ClimateBasic from Monsanto/ClimateCorp and compare some data for "ground truth"? http://climate.com/products/climate-basic/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
that second one [edit] isn't a con. it doesn't even (reading literally) imply that the hours are bad, just that they start at 10 or 11/noon. It doesn't make your point at all, but just says schedule is flexible, with a bias toward working late. great.
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This has become more of an issue with farmers over the past year, as they realize their data is a commodity just like what they raise--whether crops or livestock. How much of an issue? Two examples.
First, the Iowa Power Farming show was last week. One of the largest ag shows in the nation, and the back of the program had an advertisement from Ag Leader which started with the line: "Settling for a precision farming partner that wants control of your data just doesn't cut it." Additionally, several vendors in the precision ag and sensor/drone areas were stating similar lines. Whether BS or not, they wouldn't be saying it if there wasn't a need for them to.
Second, the January 17, 2015, edition of Iowa Farmer Today also addressed this issue in their editorial page article "Who own precision technology data?".
It's not that I'm against using technology for ag. It's I'm against others using my data about my farming operations AND MY LAND and making money off of it without cutting me in--or selling/providing it (raw or as a "derivative work") to other entities I may not want to have it.
Incredible. How do they do distribution? Quite a feat to reach so many farmers in 3 years.
> And importantly, they started out doing something that any two programmers could have done. Which is funny because many VCs in SV ask the question (explicitly or implicitly) "is this something two Stanford CS students can do?" If the answer is yes, they move along. I want more FarmLogs stories to exist.
This is a silly question to ask, and I don't think most people ask it (or at least, not in this way). For almost anything any team can do, you have to assume there will be five other teams, just as good or better, doing the same exact thing. So the right question to ask is "what is the distribution edge of this particular team?" For example, if you're first to market and have incredibly high growth, there is a good c…
That may be true for your typical cloud / SaaS / consumer internet / AirBnb for XYZ -kind of startup but there is many many fields in technology where killer teams are exceptionally rare.
Most of these technology fields are not as sexy as building the next Dropbox but very often all the more sophisticated in their core tech. Think about bio-tech, energy, nanotech, lasers, (space) flight, AI, etc. It is never bad for a startup to assume that there is competition and to research it but it is very possible for the right people in a particular field to team up and be the best.
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You went through an anonymous internet forum looking for dirt, and the worst you could come up with are things like everyone has given it 5 stars and benefits could be better? That's evidence for the opposite of what you say. Anonymous employees at a sweatshop would dish out stronger sauce than that. Something tells me they might not all give their employer perfect scores, either.
So I got curious and followed your link. The site has three reviews of FarmLogs. Here are their titles:
One of the best engineering jobs I have had in my career!
An Exciting and Fulfilling Job
Mission-driven culture, fun work environment, lots of autonomy, cool technology
It turns out you did it by doctoring quotes. Where one reviewer suggested that "benefits could be slightly better", you took out slightly. Where an "Advice to Management" section said "promote more work-life balance", you turned that into "doesn't promote more work-life balance". The same reviewer's advice said "Make sure that you seek out feedback". You stuck a doesn't onto that as well, and then added "passive management", a phrase that appears nowhere in any review.
You then referred to your doctored version as "the core gist". But the core gist is just what you eliminated. Find me a founder of any fast-growing startup whose heart wouldn't swell with pride to see their anonymous employees, despite all the inevitable growing pains, talk about their company that positively.
The company seems very cool. One off topic thing that I can't help but note - just loading their homepage requires 113 HTTP requests. It's crazy heavy with tracking and designy tags. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/ZMQov/https://farmlogs.com/
> And importantly, they started out doing something that any two programmers could have done. Which is funny because many VCs in SV ask the question (explicitly or implicitly) "is this something two Stanford CS students can do?" If the answer is yes, they move along. I want more FarmLogs stories to exist.
"And importantly, they started out doing something that any two programmers (with domain expertise in their market) could have done."
and the key part of that is the "domain expertise in their market."
Our socioeconomic system very carefully prevents most students with farming domain expertise from ever getting near the Stanford CS Dept. It seems like most of the value add here is from the domain knowledge, not from the technology.