nhorob67

I heard about a whiteboard app that has fading gestures that were highly reviewed. Does anyone know which app has these?

Process was very smooth with our local bank in North Dakota. Was funded yesterday.

Putting the finishing touches on a side project that will enable two-way, threaded SMS with Help Scout and other help desk software.

https://relay-sms.com/

After the 2019 corn crop is harvested, the USDA is projecting 51.5 days of excess stocks in the United States

Good luck!

I'll be following as I'm in the middle doing something similar but a bit longer in length....Starting a Software Company in 100 Days via a daily video journal.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsBrSVYhydBgazekw-YixSA

Other than alfalfa, the vast majority of the farms that I know of that supply large dairies take advantage of crop rotations. These are from crop farms that supply large dairies in Minnesota and South Dakota.

Thanks Russ! Hopefully we will get the opportunity to collaborate!

I'm the founder of a company called Harvest Profit. We build a suite of profitability and risk management tools, trying to help farmers better manage their operations.

Farming is a unique business where the average farm generates $1+ million of revenue and is self-managed.

I agree with this article. More farmers are taking on the duties of merchandising their commodities and we help them with that. It's a fun challenge.

As an aside, selling intangible goods like software to farmers (who love equipment) is not for the faint of heart!

A similar story is detailed in a booked called The Power of Moments. In particular, they focus on the shaming that they do to change behavior

I was doing consulting work in the space, saw a need, and built the product. I came into it knowing the traits of farmer, the lingo, etc. That and a good product have helped us gain trust

I ran a one man side gig for a couple years (farm management software). Got it to $200k and growing after 6 months in the market but I needed to bring the development in-house.

Could've used outsourced talent for all dev and customer support but interestingly enough the reason why I hired was "what happens to all of our customers if I die?". I felt like I owed it to them to put a team in place, albeit a small one.

I launched a farm management software tool in Dec 2016 and spent 2017 iterating on it. Hired two developers in the last 5 months and made a big hire last week, myself. I'm going to transition out of my consulting business into this full time. Bootstrapped with $300k of revenue in '17. https://www.harvestprofit.com

I haven't published anything or sought to. I should look into that. I've been laser focused on the blog and email list. I need to broaden my reach though.

I targeted a broad set of farming interests. My research told me that Facebook will optimize your interests based on which are performing better.

I would simply see which blog posts are getting the best organic reach and boost those. Grew my email list to 2,500 in six months.

https://www.harvestprofit.com/blog

I have a side project that's turning into a full-time gig. Farm financial analysis software.

I did a year of blog posts and email marketing before launching last December. Launch generated 30 customers and $45,000 in ARR.

Edit: I don't have the numbers in front of me but I spent $5-10k on FB ads prelaunch

300 lbs of urea or .65 boe of NG (1 bbl of oil = 20 gallons of gas and 11 gallons of diesel). So let's just say 20 additional gallons of fuel to account for the N

Edit: the land would be planted to wheat if not planted to corn. Wheat uses approximately 80% of the N as corn. The land wouldn't sit idle.

We have a small North Dakota farm (500 acres) but I work with some larger farms (10,000+ acres). Farm management consulting and software is my full time gig

300 lbs of urea or .65 boe of NG (1 bbl of oil = 20 gallons of gas and 11 gallons of diesel)

My farm. 6 gallons in tractor fuel and 2 gallons in truck fuel. If we didn't raise corn, we'd raise wheat which has similar fertility requirements as corn. Maybe a bit more urea on corn, 50 pounds or .11 barrels of oil equivalent.

Growing one acre of corn takes approximately 8 gallons of diesel fuel (directly) and produces enough corn for 485 gallons of ethanol.

Anyone have any boot camps they think are "best-in-class"?

Keep up the great work!

I built a farm management SaaS product. It's basically a managerial accounting platform. I've written a bunch of blog posts (75 I think) over the last 2 years.

I see what posts perform well on FB, then boost them.

I've spent $22,000 on Facebook ads and have acquired 6,000 leads from the spend.

Facebook Ads -> Blog Posts/Lead Magnets -> Email List

Bootstrapped Solo founder. Beta launch in June 2016. Full launch in December 2016. Crossed $200k in ARR last week.

My family farms in W ND. I worked in private equity for a few years in Minneapolis.

Saw my friends and family turn down crazy good risk-free profit opportunities during the AG commodity bull market of 2008. "It's going higher!"

So I quit private equity and started consulting for family farms in the Upper Midwest. That led me to build a software package that I wanted my clients to use and started selling it to others.

Good points and true.

I really enjoy a lot of what YC puts out, especially the philosophy that growth is the ultimate no-BS filter. That was eye opening for my when u heard Jessica Livingston talk about it.

All-in-all, my initial comment is likely misplaced given the nature of startup school.

But I do believe that most businesses should aim for, and be happy, with linear growth.

Fair enough. Forgot about that essay.

I'm more of a linear growth type of person but that's likely a product of my end market.

I don't think a startup is defined as a company aiming to be a unicorn. I simply consider it a new, for-profit business

Try to simply keep your eye open for problems people are having. Ideally, one that is in a B2B space. Wish I had more insight for you.