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I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

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Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#211

Post by nekopa »

whatusername wrote: post #178
eb0la wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case internationalization is not trivial: you may have to deal not only witch different languages; but with different climate, plants, etc. (the UK or German climate is much different from the Spanish or Italian one). Focus now on making your business GREAT for the market near you, and later expand to other countries.

Different plants? As to the climates - if you cover California, Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, Ohio, Maine then I would assume you would have most of the worlds climate types covered. If I was running it - I would do exactly what you suggest though.. Make this awesome for the places you have data. (But if you have a tool that says my climate is the same as zipcode XXXXX (just 6 months out) - then I'd love the australian ve…

If someone knows of a place where I can get good worldwide weather data-sets, this would be a very interesting project for me to try.. I don't think it would be hard (given good quality sets) to match the US zip-code data to other places. It sounds like a very fun logic problem.

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#212

Post by nekopa »

tjmc wrote: post #119
cubicle67 wrote: post #34

If you could extend this to Australia, I'd sign up in a heartbeat

Not feasible without Australian distribution centres unfortunately - all the seeds would be seized by customs. Even inter-state transfers are quarantined in some cases (you can't take fruit into WA for example). Add to that multiple, totally different climates and plant species and it's essentially a separate business in another country. Good opportunity for a partner site though!

Seems like a simple business problem: find someone or some company that has the seeds you need in country, set up an account with them to ship to local addresses. Or worse comes to worse, set up an affiliate program, find a citizen of that country here on HN and have them go to a shop, buy the stuff and mail it on time for cut of the action. These people could also become great forum moderators as they want the site to be a success.

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#214

Post by nekopa »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #9
erikpukinskis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, there's a link on the plans page to preview your calendar, but it's not coming up because of a bug I overlooked! Fixing....

OK, it's fixed. So, once your calendar is ready you can click "preview your calendar" and see the calendar. I definitely want to streamline the site for non-signer-uppers. Basically I'm planning on having a page for every city in the US (automatically generated) with a planting calendar that people can check out right away without signing up. I think that will be good for SEO, too. But that's a few notches down on th…

I think you should move this up a few notches in your todo list. If you can generate the pages for every city, do it, publish them, I think you will gain great google juice. Especially as a lot of people are looking at growing there own veggies in the US right now (my opinion, judged by a recent spate of 'grow your own' articles I am seeing nowadays)

Technically this shouldn't be too hard: You have the info from zip codes already, just make a nice template to feed all the info into. Collate by groups of zips that are in, say, the top 100 US cities(by population).

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#216

Post by nekopa »

Just one thing about the email you send out. It has a fairly boiler-plate message about "how's the gardening going?" Then you sign off. After this is the list of what I should be planting. If you put the list into the main body of the email, it wouldn't seem so form letter like. Also, maybe as a later feature, put the planting list, or actions list into a downloadable attachment, I may not want to take my laptop into the garden to read the list, and Grandma's may not know that email can be printed, plus, they could get confused by all the email-headers that may get printed.

Plus, if you give a separate text file to be printed, maybe you could format it nicely so that they could save it in a gardening diary. Just like the old cooking magazines that let you compile a recipe book.

Great idea and best of luck.

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#218

Post by megamark16 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #29
kapauldo wrote: post #21

Congratulations on pushing the button. You've done something incredibly rare and you and your team should be proud. A few suggestions- get on the new Facebook connect (facebook login) right away, and add a few social features (like add a check box that says "also post this on my wall" when you guys email people) so people can easily share what they're doing. That has a huge potential effect. Also, for what it's worth…

Sure, I'll take all the feedback I can get! They can reach me at erik@sproutrobot.com. And thanks for the tips! I agree Facebook integration would be great for spreading the word. It's a good reminder for my todo list.

I hate getting all of those stupid Facebook updates about my friend's farms on Farmville, I don't care if Bob had a good harvest this year, it's all fake!

Now you start talking about real plants, a real garden (even if it's just a few pots) and you've got me much more interested. I might actually pay attention when some of my friend's SproutRobot Gardens are doing well, something is ready to harvest, etc. "Hey Bob, can I get a few of those peppers you just harvested?"

Anyway, definitely go this route, I can see this being huge.

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#219

Post by kixxauth »

harrybr wrote: post #133

Thought you might find this interesting. When you have a baby, various stores encourage you to sign up for monthly emails. Because the store knows the date of birth, they can send accurate developmental updates. e.g. "Your baby is X months old. You may notice she is starting to pay more attention to the world and is able to hold up her own head..." (etc). This is fascinating for the parent due to the timeliness of th…

Fantastic idea. I remember having a baby put my wife and I on a bunch of mailing lists. However, some of the niche targeting they used worked very well. For instance, my wife now subscribes to the parenting mags which were sent to her for free.

A news letter seems like it would be spot on here, but I would take advantage of the two way internet and allow comments and reviews too.

Re: I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

#220

Post by saturdayplace »

smokey_the_bear wrote: post #162

The site looks really cool, but it's telling me to plant a lot of stuff today... but we got 6 inches of snow today. Does it take elevation into account?

I think it 'knows' when the right time is usually to begin planting, not what the current weather is. Although, if he could get ahold of that data, and incorporate it intelligently, that would be pretty killer.
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