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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.

#231

Post by vessenes »

I really like this! And, congrats on the startup! It looks like you're off to a great start.

I live in a fairly unique climate in the US (maritime, like England), and as a gardener, I'd say your planting picks are reasonable for my area.

A few general thoughts:

People have said it here already, but container gardening+++. It's how a lot of people get started gardening, and therefore is a compelling product for your market niche, inexperienced gardeners. Pick a great product and sell it, I think the 'insta-garden' pitch is likely to be a big seller for you.

I would personally recommend you resell earthboxes, they're fabulous and have good online marketing if people care to learn about them. Partner up with local organic soil and fertiliser providers, and get them to do the shipping for you if you're worried about logistics. Earthbox might cross promote you if you got in touch, your site is cute and cool.

Second, I think you should find a better source for gardening advice than google lucky searches. There are a lot of possibilities here, and eventually crowdsourcing _local_ tips would be awesome -- as you know, gardening is always a really local activity -- but you might just hire a well-'spoken' vegetable gardener to write up instructions, or look for a gardening book writer who wants to cross promote on your site.

That is all, and good luck!

Also, your site is overloaded and Heroku is complaining sometimes. Congrats.

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

#232

Post by vessenes »

nandemo wrote: post #173
mixmax wrote: post #153

A lot of people from the US seem to forget that they're excluding the majority of customers by asking you to enter a zipcode that will only work in the US. It's incredibly annoying if you're part of that majority. With that said - good luck :-)

Being from outside US, I sympathize with that but: 1) It's a new service. It's reasonable to restrict your audience at first. Making it more international requires more work (shipping, billing, etc) which might end up being useless. It makes sense to test with domestic users first. 2) You should take a lot of care before shipping seeds internationally. Some countries (well, all countries I have flown to) have strict…

It seems like the best thing to do would be to get names for an e-mail list, and ask for country and locale so that he can decide if/when to go international. This particular business does not scale well internationally, though. Food, climate, local restrictions, plant import laws all make this a tough go.

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

#233

Post by foleyfoley »

I could have actually used this instead of botching my garden by putting everything out too early.

I signed up for the free one, when you get to the calendar view its for the entire year. I would maybe limit that and keep it within three months or even two, so it is immediate, more so then what I am supposed to do next February. I would also, when you click instructions it links you an entirely different page, it would be so much better if it just dropped down there were illustrations in the same style as the home page in an easy 1,2,3 style.

But you should not be scared I think it will definitely catch on. It might be nice to expand it to flowers

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

#234

Post by Mistone »

i think this has a lot of potential - many people here have mentioned the pain points of the urban/apartment gardener and you guys seem like a goot fit. Someone mentioned the anti-famville - which I love from a marketing angle. Prepotted ready to go is a bit harder to do but I think that is a killer service for urbanites. I live in the country (Petaluma, Ca) and there is an abundance of amazing nurseries near by so tuning in to the urbanites seems like were you want to go. could be cool to run a few very geo-targeted (one city) adwords campaigns to see if you get some early pickup.

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

#235

Post by erikpukinskis »

mos1 wrote: post #152

A design thing that confused me a bit, 'plant more foo' was displayed very differently (lighter and italic) than 'plant foo'. I initially thought that there was nothing for those weeks. I don't want to say "I'd buy this if you made this change" because I live on a farm, but I would be a LOT less price sensitive if the seeds were described in a manner that made them sound more special. (even if I didn't know the varie…

Thanks, those are all good points. The seeds will be organic/heritage, and when we talk about beds we're talking linear feet.

Lots of good ideas, thank you.

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

#236

Post by erikpukinskis »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #184
lena wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with you that it makes a lot of sense for this kind of startup to focus on one country/region first. I do wish that startups would at least mention somewhere that they are aware of this. Something like "Sorry, US only for now" in the HN message, or a "I'm not in the US!" link on the frontpage with a message for international users, even if that message is simply that the company will focus on US custome…

Exactly – non-us folk (me) feel like you just don't care about their existence when you just ask for a zip code, or US phone number etc. Bigger companies have pulled this off so many times, restricting their customers to the US for seemingly no reason, that we get irked by it now. If there was a message saying how it's super complicated to send seeds abroad, then we'd understand and all would be well.

Thanks for speaking up! The other posters are right that it's basically a time issue. I struggled with whether to even release at first in the entire U.S. or just San Diego.

I do care about non-us folk. One of the main reasons why I built the software the way I did (using weather data to calculate planting dates) is that I can theoretically extend the site to anywhere that I can get weather data for.

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

#237

Post by erikpukinskis »

lena wrote: post #179
nandemo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being from outside US, I sympathize with that but: 1) It's a new service. It's reasonable to restrict your audience at first. Making it more international requires more work (shipping, billing, etc) which might end up being useless. It makes sense to test with domestic users first. 2) You should take a lot of care before shipping seeds internationally. Some countries (well, all countries I have flown to) have strict…

Totally agree with you that it makes a lot of sense for this kind of startup to focus on one country/region first. I do wish that startups would at least mention somewhere that they are aware of this. Something like "Sorry, US only for now" in the HN message, or a "I'm not in the US!" link on the frontpage with a message for international users, even if that message is simply that the company will focus on US custome…

Yeah, sorry about that. I'll add a message to the site and in the future be more sensitive about this. I didn't think about it enough, and I'm disappointed that I didn't even do the minimum amount of acknowledgement that there is a world outside the U.S.

My other post below explains things a little, but support for other countries is definitely planned.

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

#239

Post by adk »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #5
aresant wrote: post #3

Very cool concept - a few comments: a) The "buy" page screams out for some pics - people eat (and buy!) with their eyes :). b) "We choose seeds that are perfect for your climate and the time of year" then the next page asks me to select my own choices? A little confusing - maybe you're building a list of options dynamically? c) Consider for future "upsells" on the buy page or a more expensive $99.95 starter pack that…

Thanks for checking it out! a) I know, I've actually got the illustrator working on some illustrations for that page. That page is 1st on my list for some design love. b) Ah, interesting. So, you choose whether you want tomatoes or cucumbers, but we pick the right variety of cucumbers for your climate. I'll think about making that clearer. c) Yea, that's a great idea! Definitely targetting first time gardeners. I don…

I wonder if there are places that will drop ship these for you.
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