I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me. | Hacker News Reader

I just launched my bootstrapped startup. Pray for me.

362 pointserikpukinskis247 comments

I'm kind of freaking out. Been working on this for a while (too long), but finally decided it was time to push the button, backlog be damned.

It works. It does something. It has bugs. But that's the point of the MVP, right?

Anyway, I could use some moral support. This is very scary.

Link: http://sproutrobot.com/

View on HN

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 includes soil, pots, etc. for people that have zero knowledge but like the idea - not sure if that's your audience or people already gardening?

Great concept and I think you're on the right track - a "starter pack" would have got my money.

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't think I want to get into stocking bags of soil in my living room, I'll keep the starter kit idea on my radar as I look into drop shipping and such. For now I want to try to get traction with the seed mailing, but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly why I launched. :)

As for option c just raise the price until you're willing to do it. :-)

Or find a place nearby that stocks everything you need and pay a neighborhood kid to run down and buy whatever you need whenever an order like that comes in. The buyer is purchasing your expertise to pick the right stuff.

I pick one millllion dolllars.

Seriously though, the bottleneck right now is my attention, not funding. Although I'll think about it some more when I'm doing my next planning session. :)

OK then, put 1 million dollars as an option on the form. Maybe you'll get lucky and can become someone's private gardener instead of being an entrepreneur. :-D

I'm all for idea C. I signed up for some seeds, but getting pots and soil and tools and whatnot seems like such a pain (and I'm half a block from a hardware store that has all these things). I'd definitely pay some sort of up front fee to get everything at once!

Why think? Just put up the button and see if people click "order now". Worry about your attention when your customer actually demands them.

Awesome idea btw.

IMO, pick something like 999$ for something like that. If nobody does it you are out a few hours, but plenty of people have far more money than time and you would be shocked what people will pay a little help.

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

I'd just like to echo others comments about C being a really good idea. I live in London, and have recently moved into an apartment with large windows that are just screaming out for planter boxers.

My partner and I are trying to figure out what to plant, etc, but all we really want to do is have someone deliver two planter boxes, the right amount of dirt and fertilizer, and some flowers and herbs that we can plant now, as well as in a few months time.

We would pay quite a bit for this privilege - even more so if the planter boxes showed up with the dirt already in them. Doing any sort of work like this in an apartment is an exercise in frustration - there's just not enough room, and dirt goes everywhere.

We can't find anything that sells what we want..

Are you trying to grow plants in your apartment, or outside (on the balcony)? There are many herbs that grow easily in pots: basil, thyme, oregano, chives, parsley. Bay Laurel is good for a big pot.

Check out http://www.windowfarms.org/

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 the message. It is also a great sales opportunity, as lower down the message it suggests things the user might want to buy.

You could do the exact same thing. Don't just send a message saying "plant your seeds now" but send (opt in) periodical follow up emails that explain how the garden should be doing, common gotchas, and so on.

If you ever add any social aspects to the site, it might make sense to expose the 'age' of the user's garden. People at a similar stage of growth have something in common and may want to interact with each other.

Good luck with it!

I am not the OP, but that is an amazing idea. I remember those baby emails, and can just imagine screenshots of baby kale and turnips. Op, you really should do this. It would be amazing.

...and boom goes the crowd-sourcing. Let everybody who is growing turnips send in turnip pictures, pick the best/representative few and promote those as exemplar turnips. That way you don't have to source "real" pictures of everything in every stage of the growing cycle, you just eventually get it all for free.

If done right, you could also start a nice strong community, which would certainly help. I can imagine different users competing for the "best turnip of the month" spot. Love your users, and they will love you back.

I guess one limitation is that gardens probably mature at slightly different rates (e.g. if you have a mild cold spell, development goes on 'hold' for a bit, which might put you out of sync). I guess Eric would have to interview some expert gardeners to ascertain the scope of the issue.

Presumably, to a first approximation, you could track the weather at your customers' location, and know what is going on with their plants. This would allow you to tailor your emails - and your product suggestions - over time.

Gardeners are ferocious, ferocious competitors. They are compelled to post pictures of their plants. Believe me; squeezing as much out of your plot as you can can become an obsession.

All that to say, bragging / help requests are going to be strong motivations for gardeners in the US, and I'm sure they'll be posting information if the OP wants to make a community out of the site.

Yeah, that's definitely where I'd like to head. It's a little more complicated because it's more like having 12 babies of 12 different species that were born at 12 different times, but yeah. On it. :)

Lots of time sensitive information from multiple sources? Time for a feed!

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.

As an atheist, I have to wish you good luck instead :)

Great idea! Mrs Browl has a green thumb and will love this. It might be helpful to take account of companion plants which can often improve the health of a garden when planted together(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants). Agree with some other users that it might be a good idea to expose more of the options before soliciting a signup, but I understand it's early days. Smart market targeting and business model, with great long-term potential.

Once you get the website running smoothly and look to other directions, a mobile app that lets people swap horticulture tips and pictures of their garden's progress would bring you a very sticky community, as well as further sales opportunities ('Oh noes, I haz aphid infestation - need help w/organic pest sprays?').

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 regulations on importing seeds and plants.

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 customers only.

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.

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.

If that "I'm not in the US" button can lead to a page with general planting recommendations for people abroad, it'd be a very nice touch! Maybe a list of tools that are useful, or a link to services that may help, if you're feeling extra kind.

The question you need to ask yourself as a startup is how much time I should spend to not make money. I am sorry, if I already can't ship to you, why do I want to add all these resources for you when I will never receive money from you. Yes if you move to the US the owner might eventually make money, but that amount of time spent on such a low conversion rate is hard for a startup to justify. I think a message of US only would be sufficient for any startup.

Or even better "Enter your e-mail address here and we will notify you when our service becomes available in your country"

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.

Yea, I think many of us didn't understand why the Japanese never send most of their wares overseas until we started being entrepreneurs ourselves.

point 2) perhaps finding a local partner to ship stuff that is already in the country might be a decent way around this..

I just bought a plane ticket on united.com with an Aussie credit card. Had to make up a billing address, since there was no "Other" category besides the 50 states and territories :-/

Homeland Security might not be amused :)

They wont take any more of my time than they already do, and to be honest, they can go fuck themselves.

It only works in the US today, but how is that different from movies or ipads or any other product to be rolled out in the largest target market first?

It's non-trivial to scale this to 'planet wide' so until the home market is established and the concept tested there is no really good reason to scale it beyond the US, there are substantial costs associated with doing that.

Just the shipping alone for a biological product would drive you nuts.

it's different in that we un-americans will probably never visit the site again after finding out it's US only.

To see the next screen you could use the Whitehouse's Zip code: 20500

Since I grew up in the 80s and 90s I've always enjoyed using 90210 -- ahh for the days of bad hair and even worse acting! ;)

This looks like an awesome idea. I would absolutely be interested if I was in the US! (no chance of it coming to Belgium, is there, huh? :( )

haha not just me using 90210. Think I've been entering that as my zip code for US offers for a very long time :)

I guess you could do something with lat,long from GeoKit (on Rails) to avoid asking for zip code specifically.

I signed up for a free account, and now I can't figure out how to upgrade to a paying account. You may want to add a big button that says "Upgrade Your Account."

The price seems very high. Your small garden plan, for example, costs $40 and includes six varieties that will fill an 8' bed.

For $50, I can get a "Garden in a can" with 16 varieties that will fill a bed the size of two basketball courts:

http://beprepared.com/product.asp?pn=FG%20S200&name=Gard...

Are your seeds an heirloom variety? That makes a big difference, because if they are, I can harvest my own seeds and plant them the next year.

It's launch day, so there's room for changes in the pricing. I'm planning to just run tests to figure out what is an effective price point.

But I haven't made any conversions yet, and I should be able to make at least SOME at these price points, so I am planning to focus on that.

This is a cool idea. I know all of this is probably in your todo list, but here are my gut reactions:

1. I only read as far as the "tells you when to plant" before I entered my zipcode, then spent pageload time wondering how you were going to make money. I was pleasantly surprised by the options on the signup page.

2. The payment page needs something visual to differentiate the choices - either photos or illustrations showing the difference (if it's illustrations, they can just be relative).

3. I felt like the green blocks on the front page needed a very faint border or something - the point where the green meets the blue of the background clashes strangely.

4. The frontpage green blocks (again) look like separate items, similar to the ads at the bottom of the apple.com frontpage, so I read them right to left and missed that they were a sequence. For the same reason, I felt they should be clickable.

5. Clicking on the logo should take you back to the front page.

6. Site speed seems all over the place - sometimes pages load near instantly, other times they take up to five seconds.

7. The sign up and sign in pages do not feel like they're part of rest of the site.

8. I'm not clear whether something like this would be useful for someone like us, who live in a garden-less (concreted outdoors) house in Palo Alto with only a few pots that we grow tomatoes and peas in. I wonder if there's an opportunity in starter kits for people who have absolutely no idea - you ship pots, soil, seeds, we supply the water.

9. I love it and I sent it to all my friends who do have gardens.

Firstly, congrats!

Secondly...I love the design. Who did it for you? Alexandria Neonakis?

Thirdly, I too looked for a pricing plan page - to figure out how you were going to make money. When I entered a zip code, then I discovered the pricing page. It looks too wordy. Try to find a more concise way to display that same information. It kinda looks a BIT confusing, maybe it is psychological because the columns for each of the plans are not the same height. I don't understand how the height for each of the columns is decided because the $19.99 & $69.99 columns are the same, the free plan is shortest and the recommended plan is the longest. So something about that display is a bit off-putting/confusing.

Also, have I told you I really love the artwork of the people planting. Love it! As a result of that artwork being so nice, the pricing page feels so bland. The copy is just black text on white columns with an awesome background. Maybe you can try using a little whitespace, and then adding a few other design elements to the columns.

Maybe I am just nit-picking, but the headings for the columns have the word garden, except for the email one...consistency is lacking. I would add a small graphic for each of the gardens, each one getting more 'lush' as the plan increases in cost. Then change the name of the 'email only' to something more inline with the theme. Perhaps 'pot of dirt' or something like that.

Good job on launching though!

Also, make the logo a hotlink to home on all pages.

Alexandria did the illustration, and I did the rest of the design. I suck at color, so it was nice to be able to work off her brilliance!

Thanks for the feedback about the plans page... It's getting an upgrade next week probably, so I'll hold on to your comments.

One of my favorite rooters I've seen inn a while!

rooters? Not quite sure I follow.

Is that a pun on a hacker that usually gets root access to a box, but you are now referring to agriculture?

I am not being a dick, but I seriously don't understand the comment.

Probably forgot a “b”. Ro-b-oters.

FANTASTIC!!! I just planted half my garden last week. Going to do the other half next week. I will use this and recommend to a few others on my garden project...its my first time ;)

I think your pricing segments make sense.

Recommended quick fixes:

1 - first email I received has the "Plant xyz" list. Great, but maybe also include a link in the email that takes me back to my http://sproutrobot.com/<username>; page so I get this same info and also the related instruction links

2 - from the email header it looks like your using gmail directly for SMTP. If so, you'll hit a limit soon on daily sends at 500(?). I've been using sendgrid and critsend for these type of email...both are easy to setup and both are reasonably priced for a startup.

That's a good idea, the link back to the site. I am planning to switch to HTML emails with the links actually in the email, but that would be a good intermediate step.

And I didn't realize gmail had a limit. Thanks for the heads up. :)

Not only does gmail have a limit but you're violated the TOS. Look into http://sendgrid.com/ and check out your ip's to see if you're on any blacklists. It looks like you're using ec2, so there's a good chance that email coming from your webservers will be blocked.

I get: "Ooops. Something went wrong. The right people have been notified of the details, and we'll do our best to fix the issue right away." after signing up and if I try to sign in.

My username is the same as here so check it out if you have a chance.

NOTE: I'm just asking for help why am I being voted down?

I checked into it, and the problem is that SproutRobot doesn't have weather data for Puerto Rico yet, so things are broken for you. I'm sorry about that... the site should've handled that more gracefully.

Support for places outside of the continental U.S. is definitely on the todo list but it will be a while. If you follow @sproutrobot on twitter, you'll be sure to get the announcement when we get Puerto Rico in there.

Thanks for testing, and sorry it didn't work for you.

Since this seems so ideal for my parents and I'm sure others out there who aren't terribly fond of twitter, let me recommend something like the following:

"Oops! SproutRobot doesn't seem to know where that is just yet. It's learning countries quite fast though, so if you tell us your email, we'll be sure to let you know when you should come back!"

To elaborate a bit: starting with a single country is very much understandable, but the assumption that one lives in the continental US is a frustration we encounter daily on the english-speaking web. This way you get them invested into wanting this service by getting their zip code (bonus: instantly gauging most interested international locale) and the promise of just tacking on one's email to eventually get to use it should be "just right" for most users. This is as opposed to geoIP blocking at the homepage level, which really makes me never want to visit those sites again.

Edit: Depending on how much you intend to anthropomorphize the robot, maybe change the copy to "visiting countries" or some such.

No worries! Just one less bug for other people to find!

Wish you the best in your endeavor!

I voted you back up. :) Checking it out right now...

Thanks for the quick response!

BTW, I have a feeling it could be due to my zip-code not being in the database.

It is like FarmVille for real life! I think you should highlight that, definitely would get some eyes on the site. Maybe even a targeted ad on Facebook? Another suggestion (maybe you already do this) is to give detailed info on how to take care of the plant. Spin a user community around it, and they'll be exchanging tips, posting photos and celebrating their flowering plants.

Other than that, I love the idea, and really nicely executed for a launch! I'd signup if I were into farming, and did not live on the 10th floor of an apartment complex.

Agreed on the Farmville angle. I think there are a lot of people who would love to get their kid or S.O. off Farmville and doing something productive. The visual design is already perfect for this.

This is probably on your to-do list already.

Beginner gardeners usually start out with herb pots (i.e. basil, oregano, parsley) because they offer longer-lasting rewards for less initial effort and applied skills.

Having this option may give impatient beginners a sweet preview of what they can do (which of course translates to more revenue for you), as suppose to trying to grow difficult plants, get discouraged by failures and never use your service again.

This is a really cool idea, and I would totally be a user if only I had a yard. A few small things I'd change:

a) If I click the 'Get Started' button without entering a zip code, it says 'Oops! Something went wrong.' I understand what is actually going on here, but if I weren't a developer I'd probably think the site was broken.

b) I want to view pretty pictures of what my seeds will grow into!

c) Re: asking people to pray for you -- I highly recommend scrapping that and instead adopting the mentality of working your ass off to achieve success.

I agree to an extent, but knowing people are rooting for you can sometimes help with the working your ass off bit.

Also, a few kind words do a lot to calm the "oh shit I just pushed the button" jitters.

What's so scary? The worst that can happen is nobody uses it. Even in that case, you'll probably still learn something about programming, and might learn a bit about product development.

If you put effort into it, it will be a good experience even if it doesn't take off. And if it does, so much the better.

The worst case scenario I keep imagining is getting a lot of bad press with key social media folks (blogs, twitterers, etc) and then having my chances for good press be dried up even after I fix the bugs.

You're psyching yourself out. Early adopters (especially people who write about these sorts of things) are pretty understanding about that stuff. Trust me, I've been there. If you have no bugs at all you waited too long.

Very few of the early adopters will dive deep enough to even find a bug before writing up their thoughts, and unless you do something like reveal credit card info to strangers getting a review that's actually damaging to your long-term potential is extremely rare. (And even then it's the internet, just get a new domain name and design and start over).

Much more likely is that you'll find some people who like it, maybe some who love it, and some who have yet to be convinced. If you're really lucky, they'll tell you how to convince them.

I meant the first comment to be encouraging btw, perhaps it didn't come off that way since it got downvoted.

Thanks, that makes me feel better. :) I think you're right.

I doubt that some "social media people" can hurt you all that much. Above commenter was right, the worst is that no one uses it.

Is this a full-time day job sort of thing, or an on-the-side thing?

Also, by posting it on HN, you keep many of the more wanker-oriented SM people away.

It looks like an excellent app. Well done.

What a cool idea. I've been trying to think of how urban farming could benefit from software, but it looks like you beat me to the punch. You might try networking with the people at Window Farms (http://www.windowfarms.org/). This service in conjunction with modern hydroponics would be a match made in heaven.

Congratulations! This is so freakin awesome! What an utterly brilliant idea. I'm signing up right now. Comments:

Why do I have to choose veggies. I'm looking for a select all button because I want to grow everything. I actually have a garden and had a great harvest last year so I'm not kidding about this. Even if I'm not going to grow it I want to know when it should be planted just to learn.

Signed up and I like the calandar a lot. I'm so jealous I didn't think of this. Already emailed your site to a few folks. Grats again!!!!

ps: Love the design. Feels like farmville in a good way.

This business seems like a money maker in a unique niche--if you work it. I think you should try promoting it in forums dedicated to organic living by manually linking it in "hot threads" in addition to buying skyscrapers.

If it were my site, to get some extra money in the door right now I would try upselling a 3 year package for the price of 2 on a special page just before the customer hits the shopping cart. Plus add a little extra something to the deal (like a special info pdf) to increase the chance the customer will pay double.

Also, what about letting the customer choose herbs and some favorite fruits.

Another thing that might help to "build" your business out of the bootstrap phase would be an 800 phone number with regular business hours so customers can call with questions about planting or ask why their tomatoes are dying on the vine. It might help to build repeat orders and add some gravitas to the business vs. just being a website with no track history.

NOTE: Watch your traffic, the site timed me out due to too much traffic (5/10/2010 aprox. 9:15pm Austin Time). I'm sure traffic is light now, but if you get a lot of hits at once you don't want to turn potential customers away by timing them out. It is probably due to too many concurrent server connections not bandwidth.

Thanks for the comments. Yeah, I haven't done any performance tuning yet really, except writing it in such I way that I can easily scale to multiple machines.

Who knew the seat of your pants could fly so well?

I like the concept a lot!

The "how it works" boxes on the first page need to give me more. I kept clicking on them.

I liked the plans list. I want the entire box to be a click target, and give me a mouse-over subtle color change. I also want pictures there.

The checkout page is very weak. A little javascript to count down how many vegetables I have left and gray things out when I don't have any options would be nice. The current plan upgrade link was sloppy-feeling. I also don't like "Oops! We need a little more info. Could you fix the following things?" ..it made me feel like I screwed up, when I think I followed the obvious path through the application. I'd be tempted to split out the joy of choosing what plants I'm going to get from actually paying for things. Also consider making the username the same as the email address, less to remember.

Come to think of it, after I choose a plan, a page where I romped through (conceptually) a bunch of awesome-looking fruits and veggies, dreaming about my awesome garden, with a form down at the bottom that says "where do you want us to send your tasty, tasty carrots, beets, and celery?". Then the address capture is about where my goodies are going, not paying...

This website is a great idea. I wish I had space to plant things, I'd give you a shot.

Nice! I just got to the homepage and thought "hmmm, that's original and pretty cool!"--especially because I have become a closet gardening geek (although all my neighbors know it and love it).

Page 2 after your zip code is also well done, but it is obviously not going to easily convert first-time users, but let's see how this free sign-up goes and then maybe conversion will be a bit more likely afterwards with convenience being the big seller, obviously.

OOPS! Got a bug screen that something went wrong when I was signing up and choosing which veggies I want to grow :/ That's ok, you just launched.

IDEA: It would be even more awesome if you went beyond veggies. I am not into planting veggies yet, but love annuals and perennial flowers.

Clickable: http://sproutrobot.com/

This is a very cool idea! The graphics look extremely good. One little thing you can fix: when I clicked on the "Sign Up" link, I received an SSL certificate alert in the browser. This might prevent people from proceeding further.

Good luck :)

I saw this too, and in chrome it's a pretty scary sign. It definitely makes me not want to put in my credit card info, which is that last thing a startup needs!

A really cool idea though, best of luck to you!

Here's a screenshot of the scary sign in chrome: http://grab.by/4jd4

As you can see, it is indeed pretty scary. Definitely fix that.

Bring on the Internationalization (even if just of the planting calendar)

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 version)

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.

From http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-monthly/index.php:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2

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.

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.

I like the idea, and may sign up closer to my next planting season. (October) -- However, I don't need seeds as much as I need handholding. I can get a ton of seeds at the local store for a fraction of that price. What I need is expertise. I need somewhere to go past the home depot when the spinach is stuck at a tiny plant and I have no clue why. :)

Besides, other than knowing my zone, what other variables are in place? the alkalinity of the soil, for example...

One more... I just got my first email telling me about this week in the garden... October 4-10.

You should definitely assign people to their own message boards according to their zip codes.

While it's nice to know when and what to grow seed, there are a lot more nuances to gardening for each specific region. Having a community of local gardeners is an invaluable resource for material and moral support. This is coming from my observations of a few cities' community gardens.

Not to mention having a social network will make your service a lot more human and resilient.

bug:

Current plan: Family/$69.99 (up to 10 varieties). Upgrade to Small Garden/$39.99 to get 3 more.

also make the logo take the person to the home page

also make the background image wider(at least 1400px wide)...anyone on a wide screen monitor sees the bad blue color.

Ah, good catch. I hadn't seen that bug yet.

The background image is an interesting point. I don't know if I want to have people download a 1400px wide image. I'll maybe make the gradients fade out to blue so there's a smooth transition.

Give the art a transparent sky, then make the sky gradient a repeating background image.

Congratulations! Fantastic idea and really nice MVP site! Some minor feedback that may be in the comments already (I only read through some of them):

- zip lookup was very slow for me

- When I went to checkout on the Patio option, the text at the bottom of the page that says "You can easily change your choices later, or upgrade to a different plan." renders strangely. More specifically, the word "You" is just to the right of the "Radishes" check box, the word "can" is just to the right of the "Spinach" check box, and the rest of the sentence is at the bottom of the third column of checkboxes. (I am using Safari 4.0.5)

- Need a way to get back to the home screen

I'm also wondering if there is a way to draw interest (and user signup) from people who play Farmville. I have never played Farmville myself so I can't offer any concrete suggestions. But maybe there is something you could incorporate that is already familiar to Farmville users. Any readers here that play Farmville have any ideas? :)

What a really really neat and extremely useful concept. I've put a link up on the homepage of ww to send you some traffic.

It reads "SproutRobot, helps you plant your garden! Go check it out if you are in the US.", hope that describes it well enough, if you want a different text let me know.

I don't do prayers but I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for you all day long ;)

Very nice concept and idea. The design is simple and efficient.

Small comments :

1. Living in Europe, the US "zip code" is bit restrictive. In other words, will you make a version for European users?

2. It would a nice idea to extend a bit to the "heritage" and open-pollinated varieties when choosing the vegetables/seeds.

3. When planting in a garden, you have to rotate the culture at a specific interval (depending of the species). Maybe a small info box where you can enter the location in your garden (like area A,B,C,D) and when the reminder is coming is informing the users where the vegetables where previously located.

4. There is also some interesting benefit to use companion planting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants).

5. Some people are gardening and planting following the "moon phases". I don't follow the approach but that could be an option in your reminder email.

Good luck for your work and startup.

Hey Erik,

Congratulations on the launch! It is a very aesthetically pleasing web design. Seeing the product kind of gives me an itch to start gardening :)

Here's some general feedback I had:

1. Instead of "SproutRobot tells you when to plant & sends you seeds," how about an even more general statement, like "We'll give you everything you need (to grow your own groceries)!" I feel as if the current statement limits your what your product does in people's perceptions. Personally, the main reason I don't garden is because I'd have to do a lot of initial work. If you positioned yourself as making the initial work a lot easier, I'm sure a lot more people would be encouraged to sign up. Sure, gardening may mainly be knowing when to garden and having the seeds, but I think most people perceive that there's a lot more to it than that - of course your product will change that :)

2. Why not change the "Get Started" button to "Get Started, It's Free!" and remove the small banner underneath it that says "It's free to sign up!" I like the button, and I think it's one of the more prominent features on the page, so why not use it to induce trial by incentivizing clicking on it?

3. I also agree with one of the comments above me talking about how the actual sign-up page is a bit wordy. While having illustrations like you mentioned would certainly help, you should try to greatly shorten the sentences. It made me think it would take too long to read the page.

4. Sorry for jumping around, but on the homepage, you should also put in some client-side validation to ensure that the zip code field is already filled in before they click "Get Started!" Receiving that error page would be enough to discourage me from continuing.

Other than that, I'm liking the website. I can't comment too much on the actual product itself because I haven't tried it out yet, but I will certainly give you my feedback when I do.

Thanks, David

You should try having approximate location based on IP address already filled in. Something like, "We can get you started in New York, New York. Or give us your zip code:"

- why javascript? Better to eliminate if not needed, or note/detect if necessary. I usu have it off.

- why not divide veggies into categories, eg, root veggies, flavour(herb/spice), etc.

- Very dependent on local climate, eg, sun/shade, N/S/E/W exposure, ph of ground, sand/soil, etc. - may need to ask about the planned space.

- Seems very pricey.

- You should at least send them a personalised guide about how to arrange their garden, eg Corn to the North, and a suggested map.

- Included some bonus marigolds, etc., for looks & pest control

- Having a forum section for sharing tips might build support, categorised by growing region

- Great idea to include the weather, if possible, especially spring & harvest times when it matters most. Much more dynamic, tho! Perhaps initially just report the forecast for the zipcode for the next week, then tell gardeners what to do if -snow -rain -hi temp -lo temp and let them make the adjustments.

Weekly updates, say on a Friday for weekend gardeners, would be ideal.

tOM

Good stuff. Really like the artwork and the idea.

I just dug out a bed in the back yard which is waiting to be planted, so I would seem to be your target customer. However, I'd be inclined more to use your free email reminder service and buy seeds and seedlings from another source. I wouldn't describe myself as cheap; just that I want control over the source/type of the seeds and would like to know whether I'm paying a reasonable amount. One thing might be to make it clear what kind of seeds I'm getting earlier in the purchasing process. Bulk? Heirlooms? Makes a difference, I think. But maybe I'm just a snooty gardener.

And I know this an extreme suggestion, but I think a heftier garden planner would also make me more likely to buy... work on summer/winter layout and buy the calculated seed quantities. That gets away from the subscription model though.

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.

First off... Congratulations on getting it out the door. For me that is by far the hardest part.

Second, please forgive me if someone else mentioned this but I did find a bug. I first entered a zip code for a place in Arizona. I then was telling a guest how interesting the site was and what a great idea you have. I went back and tried to enter their ZIP (Idaho). Unfortunately it was a pretty new one so it wasn't in your DB. They told me to try another one that is near their location and a bit older. It acts like it finds it by taking me to the sales page instead of an error but when I click on "preview your calendar" link it takes me to a calendar for the previously entered AZ ZIP.

This isn't a super big deal and again I apologize if someone else mentioned it already.

Great Work

Very nice, Erik!

I put in an NYC zip code, so a "Small garden" won't work for me. Patio/rooftop would. Maybe something that accounts for urban/suburban/rural?

In fact, urban gardening is a nice niche and people here like having things packaged and served up for them. Might be an opportunity. :)

Yes, I heart urban gardening. :) Definitely something we want to support, going forward.

Yeah, this is something I definitely want. I don't have a yard, but seeds for a few things that I could grow in pots on the patio would be awesome!

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

All your "Instructions" pages go out to "Feeling lucky" google searches. That makes the site seem very incomplete. I'd consider getting all those setup in a Wiki or similar page on your own site so you can keep everyone here.

There are lots of places where I just did the simplest, easiest, stupidest thing I could to get it to work. Definitely we're going to have on-site instructions, but I wanted to get it out there as soon as possible.

Thanks for the feedback!

Your market is the new gardener and your competition is the local seed store where they can get advice, if they visit.

But you can hold their hand every week with customised advice. So that is what you can sell. Make sure you differentiate the vanilla free plan from the pay plans, and include more info in the pay plans.

Also, tell them what should be happening if they're with the program. Tell them what should be appearing, what it looks like, how to handle pests or other problems, how much to water, etc., etc.,

New gardeners will pay for handholding.

Wow, what an awesome idea. I don't have a garden, but I sent a link to my parents in law who do. And if I ever get off my ass and clean up my yard, this will be how I get a garden going.

Totally like this idea ... very clever, and I've never seen anything like it before.

Concur with some previous comments that price page needs attention. Sounds cliche, but go back and look at some of the older 37signals.com/svn posts on making purchase process easy/intuitive/good design.

Also, can confirm that page is dorked somewhat in IE8 ... pretty sure it's not the look that you were after! Let me know if you need a screen cap / don't have IE to take a look.

Nice job! You're hard work has paid off, but it AIN'T OVER. Keep the press.

If only Microsoft would provide a version of IE8 that would run on Ubuntu, I could test it... :)

That's no excuse though. I'm definitely going to find an internet cafe and do some more testing. Thanks for the reminder.

Adobe Browser Lab is nice too: https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html?sdid=EWRQK&...

http://browsershots.org/

You could always establish relationships with local mom and pop local growers who can do all the shipping for you locally and deliver pots/soil as well - As a potential iteration.

Facebook only displays a url in facebook's convenient box where images should show up (the thing, where, if you add a URL to your status, it parses the page for the first image, and includes). I'm assuming there aren't any images small enough, or something...to which I'd suggest you cut out the "sprout Robot Beta" in the top left, and let it be its own image...seamless enough on the website, but adding an image to facebook...which could help a great deal.

Good idea... I had no idea that Facebook worked that way for status messages. I'll add it to the list.

Lovely design. Extend this to Canada and you have my usage.

Was the first thing I did, and was disappointed with the result.

1. You have no pricing information available. I have to give you information before I get any pricing information.

2. Screenshots. Basically, I just see you sending seeds and an email saying "Plant this now!"

3. Do you provide information on how best to plant the seeds. I know certain plants are best planted in a certain manner, or things to consider.

4. Options. I tell you want I want to grow? Cool. I want to grow herbs. What herbs are you going to send me? Do I have to be specific? Do you have specific packages? "Basic Herbs - Great for beginners!"

5. People who know how to plant and garden probably don't need your service. People who do won't have a clue, and might be in a situation where a big garden isn't feasible. Any thoughts to 'apartment gardens' or growing herb gardens out on the balcony?

Me too. Any chance this would happen? Or are import/export laws too restrictive to make it feasible?

Would definitely try this out from Canada!

I like it! my parents are avid gardeners and I've always wanted to get an idea of what/when to plant things.

Suggestion: add a select all / select none on the veggies page. Also, I think there has to be a better way to convince people to pay.

I found myself selecting the email only mode, then wondering if I could "upgrade" my account to a pay version, but I seem that there's no way to do that unless I create another account.

also, copyright info needs to sit on the bottom of the screen.

Terrific concept!

The site is beautiful.

Feedback wise: I signed up for the email and initially it wasn't obvious that all the checkboxes of vegetable varieties were applicable to the zipcode that I entered (so have something that states "these varieties apply to zip code: -----_. Also - it would be great to have a "check-all" option. I am a total newbie when it comes to gardening and I just checked off everything.

Great job - keep at it!

It might be buggy. There are things you could and should change soon. But the fact that you know this and are ready to start the iteration process already means you're really a million paces further than most bootstrapped startups that are still vying for perfection. Congratulations on the launch and best of luck in the most exciting, anxious, and valuable time in your startup!

I always wanted to plant something, but I never get around to it. Even now I am book marking your site. I guess my lazy ass is going to be the greatest threat to your business. How are you going to effectively combat my/user laziness. How are you going to get the user excited enough - feel this need enough? These are the questions you have to ask yourself going forward.

It's a great looking site but I can't do anything unless I signup. I entered my zip expecting to see some results but all I get is a link to sign up form. Is there a demo that visitors can check out? Or maybe allow Google/Twitter/FB logins so I don't have to sign up?

I do like the idea of growing my own veggie garden. The site concept and design is very promising. Good luck!

I agree with this. In my mind the ideal workflow is Zip Code -> Choose your Veggies -> Show your Personalized Calendar in the top half (with more details than just "carrot, June"), show signup options underneath.

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 the todo list.

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).

1. The artwork is very inviting. 2. My error that people will likely repeat: typing http://sproutbot.com into the seach bar -- twice. Buy that domain and redirect. 3. I'm interested, but disappointed that I can't try it from the UK. I'd make that the first feature to add - people love gardening over here.

Great job on the homepage.

Simple "How it works", a low barrier way to get started, and nothing else. Exactly how it should be!

I'll tweet it to my friends for you. You may have thought of this already, but you might try experimenting with a monthly plan to show some smaller numbers (although I see some benefits to going only yearly with this model to). Great job!

Erik, the design is really good. The signup page could get improved, but many people have suggested how so I wont get into that.

When I see how HN reacted on your idea and execution(which is simply ... FANTASTIC in my opinion), I immediately got more motivated to work. I'm confident that this will be a badass business!! :D

Congratulations, once more.

Hm... You'll know who is planting what, where? I'd love to build a local produce exchange on top of this!

It's a great way of advertising too. For example, it could be integrated into facebook too, this way, people know what their friends are planting, which helps spread the news about your site and service.

I like it the idea a lot.

But, you could really do with some performance optimization on that first screen. I think you'll loose a lot of people waiting for their zipcode lookup.

If you can't find a way to make that quicker (e.g. caching popular zip codes) you should at least put some good visual interstitials in.

IP geolocation / HTML5's location API could be an option too.

ah, cool idea. Hadn't thought of that.

Thats actually pretty cool. I was wondering if something like this existed...i just planted a garden, and cannot stop thinking about how its like building a website (or vice versa).

Feedback: I would like to pick my own seeds though, rather than you telling me what i should plant. I signed up.

I don't know if this is a good thing, but my wife thought I was signing up for a facebook game when she was looking over my shoulder. Probably the logo and the planting mentions caused her to think that.

Other than that she and I both love the idea of the site. Good luck and congrats.

Great idea and great website. I'm nearing the launch of my own MVP so I appreciate the fear that accompanies a launch.

That being said I do agree with profgubler. If I didnt' stumble upon your site via Hacker News I might just assume it's a Farmville competitor and click away.

Definitely a clean and nice looking entry website. I agree with many others, don't overdo it. Feedback link at landing page is important & missing. Hear good things about uservoice, but have not used it, just an example.  Good luck with your endeavor.

Great concept. I've just submitted it to the gardening subreddit that I moderate.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gardening/comments/c2dz5/enter_your_...

http://www.deliciouslogic.com/. Here is a startup my friend launched. He automatically plans your meals and sends recipes on a weekly basis. This might be a good complement to this site.

Cool idea, looks nice. I live in an apartment with no gardening area and the cats attack any indoor plants so I can't make use of it right now, but I just wanted to drop a quick post to say great job and keep it up! Best of luck.

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.

Awesome idea. I don't have a place to do it, but I just signed my sister up. Good luck man!

Also: try marketing this in particular areas. I live in Berkeley, for example, and know that people here would go Gaga over it in a second.

I love the design! The first thing I thought of was that this would be a great gift for my sister who just bought a house and loves gardening. Maybe you could add a "Buy as a gift" option or sell gift cards?

Stellar! I just got into gardening, so you can't have my money because I've already planted.

You can have my money though, if I can choose what I've planted and then get a calendar of care instructions with email reminders!

This might sound naive and OT but how hard was it to implement a payment gateway for this project? Please consider I am a lowly PHP programmer and am merely curious of how hard this is to implement in RoR.

Great job! Fantastic design! I'd love to peek at the back-end code. I know my fiance would go crazy for this too. The only thing I hope for is that you don't go out of business and I lose my seeds :(

Not having read all the other comments, so this has probably been mentioned: the subscription page has too much text. Apart from the size difference I don't immediately see what distinguishes products.

Good luck!

This is one of the better concepts I've seen here on HN. Best of luck. I'd defn echo the other people on here saying that I'd do it if you also sent pots and dirt, since I don't have a yard.

Congratulations on completing and launching--the site looks great and it's a cool idea.

A totally non-snarky recommendation: require the zip code! I got your "Oops" page with your phone number on it. ;)

Well done, great idea overall and I like how "fisher price" (in a good way) the site looks.

I would like to see more fruits and a "select all" when I sign up for the email, but overall very well done.

Just a couple questions before I sign my sister up. She's been talking about starting a garden.

Do you send out genetically modified seeds? Would she be able to use seeds from her crop on a new crop?

Good luck! As everyone is saying this is a great idea. And has great potential, tapping into a new market.

Props to the illustrator. As I live in Australia, can't really see past the main page, haha.

This is very cool! Great idea, good luck on this. (ditto on the US centric approach but then a shoestring startup can't always go global from day 1. You will get there though.

My zip is 10005 and you recommended a small garden, but i would almost expect recommending a patio garden for my zip. How to you decide which of the 3 options to recommend?

The small garden is a balance between feasibility and ambition for the novice gardener.

In other words, I'm just emphasizing the plan that makes me money. :)

> In other words, I'm just emphasizing the plan that makes me money. :)

If you truly want to make money, emphasize the plan that makes me happy enough to share your site with everyone I meet.

Good point, good point. I'm redesigning the plans page this week so I'll definitely give this some thought. Thanks for the feedback.

What I'm implying is that the fact that you ask for my ZIP, I assume you take into account the kind of climate / space that is typical of that zip. But maybe I'm wrong.

Love the idea! Love the simple and appealing site design. Don't over-polish it!

Wish you nothing but the best. If I can get a raised bed set up in time, I'll be a customer in a few weeks.

I just wanted to say good luck, and as soon as start supporting international please let us know, because my wife's parents would love this , but located over seas.

This is just like Farmville, but in real life :)) No, seriously, great concept. Maybe more people will find it easier to eat health thanks to this.

Best of luck! Fabrice Talbot

FYI when I clicked the "Sign Up" button on the plans page, Chrome gave me the "invalid secure certificate" warning.

I love the idea though. Any chance you'll include Ireland?

Awesome idea, and a great MVP at that, congrats!

I don't live in the US and I don't have any place for gardening right now, but other than that, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

What does the MVP acronym mean in this context?

Minimum viable product

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.

Genius concept. Wish I could use it, outside of the US.

For those of us who aren't in the US or don't want to sign up, can you add an example or a video of the other side of subscription jump?

There's not much on the other side yet. :) It looks like this:

http://sproutrobot.com/gardens/426/calendar

I am in the process of adding more instruction and more interaction, but right now you just get a planting calendar and, if you pay, seeds.

Congrats!

BTW, thought you might like to know: Your buy page is using SSL certs from an unrecognized CA, as far as Opera 10.53 is concerned. I got a nasty warning.

This is great! Really good visual design, too. It looks quite featureful already - perhaps you should have launched earlier?

I'm going to pass this on to people.

Do you have a facebook page? Would be nice if there was a like button on the homepage. Really like your concept! I stumbleupon.com it too.

Yea, there's a Facebook page but I haven't started promoting it yet: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SproutRobot/122403899553

So much social media, so little time. :) The like button is a great idea too, I'll add it to the list.

Also maybe add a note that it is US only? Or have an option for us folks in Canada? Otherwise, idea is great, I would sign-up for sure!

Congratulations on getting things going. I have forwarded your link to a couple friends that I think would find your startup interesting/useful.

Cheers.

I'm not much on prayer, but I will think for you.

I love that upon error, you have your name and cell-phone number available for support. (FYI I tried a Canadian postal code thats why)

Refreshing!

Beautiful design, and neat concept. I think you are on to something good. Keep it up! If only I had a yard, I'd be signing up!

Well the patio plan is only $19.99. ;-D

Design looks amazing, great work. I really like the concept, and the pricing seems very reasonable.

If I had a yard I would definitely sign-up.

Sample size of one, but I just showed this to my wife and she thought it was very cool. Neat idea, best of luck with it.

My first thought was, "Thats kinda cool!" =)

Great idea. I don't have the love/attention/time to garden but I'm signing up my mom as a belated mums day gift.

Self-funded? Are you looking for funding?

https cert shows up as not being trusted

Really, a great idea. I'll be signing up for a paid account as soon as we get settled into our next house.

I liked the Reddit alien in the logo :)

It reminds me of EVE from WALL-E :D

Really love it! My wife and I have started a couple of raised beds, and this is just a fantastic idea!

Where did you find the database?

Very nice idea! Do you plan to send out some special seeds (like okra, etc.) as well?

Farmville for real life, nice :) I wonder if you could build in gaming mechanics too?

Cool. The logo needs some work.

Agree. The illustrations are nice but the logo could use improvement!

Did you use any seed money to start this? ;)

Best of luck, it's a great idea with lots of potential.

I always love seeing not-entirely web startups. This seems awesome. Best of luck!

The look and feel of the site is fantastic. Good job there. What's it built in?

It's Ruby on Rails, deployed on Heroku.

Cool concept. My wife and I are wanting to start planting our own vegetables.

Would be great if you can share your sales figures 24 hours post release.

So it's the anti-Farmville?

Generally speaking, this is a great idea! I think there are many other sites out there with the same theme, but totally different delivery. There's tons of available info out there, but if your site could pull it all together, sell seeds, offer tutorials to new people, etc, I could see it being a big hit.....you definitely have the right product "idea" at the right time, but you also have a lot of competitors in this area.

clever - this is the marketing thread that could be very valuable - as a marketing guy I think this is brilliant

Great concept - good luck!

This is awesome, adding herbs/spices would be what makes me use it.

I can only agree with everyone else - fantastic idea. Good luck.

I like it.. just wish it was available outside of the States!

Good idea! I just tried to sign up and got the Oops page :(

Brilliant. Hope you'll expand the service across the world.

What a cool idea! Congrats on launching. Yeah, way to go!

That's great! I can't believe what a good idea that is.

Ah - damn. It'd be great to have this in the UK.

Neat! How do you handle shipping right now?

Truly wonderful - hoping the best for you.

Oh man, this is cool. Very neat. Congrats.

Great Idea!

- Future Customer of the "small garden" package

I love the 'something went wrong' page

very nice site! this is something i never knew i would even be interested in until i saw it - kudos.

The page comes up funny on IE 8

wow this is super clever. i wish i had dirt to garden in so i could use this.

how would praying help?

Awesome idea!

Awesome.

like the graphics

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 variety off-hand.) Kentucky Blue Pole Beans, not 'Beans' and Organic Red Velvet Okra, not 'Okra'.

I wasn't sure I understood how large of a garden each seed pack is supposed to service. When you say '3 10 foot beds' does that mean 30 linear feet, or 300 square feet?

I'd also make sure you get real-world feedback about the plans and the pricing. If I was you, I'd go talk to people at local garden centers, and I'd bring my iPad and I'd ask them for help. If you're young, claim you're a student and it's a school project. If you're older, claim you're writing an article about this service and want to know what they honestly think.

I was surprised that the seeds weren't all organic / heritage (or that if they were, that wasn't marked.) I could be wrong, but I'd expect the sort of person who goes through this trouble would likely prefer those varieties, and would be willing to pay accordingly. After all, somebody who is looking for the cheapest seeds isn't your dream customer anyway.

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All in all, I really like the idea. It's a bit like joining a CSA, except that it's located in your backyard, with the 'assortment of foods, for a fixed price.'

+1 on the "fancier" sounding names/varieties being a good idea. Makes the comparison to random packages-of-99c-seeds more in your favour.

Nifty idea overall! But add me to the list of I-don't-have-a-zip-code.

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.

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, target women (that sounds awful but most gardeners are women), I think that's your target demo. Anyway, best of luck, I'll share your site with the 2 or 3 garden clubs I indirectly know of, although I'm not sure if you're targeting beginner gardeners or advanced. If you post your email on your profile or here, I can get you some direct feedback from advanced gardeners, FWIW.

kevin (kapauldo)

Agreed with the facebook integration. I generally dislike Facebook but this is a great way to get more users for this type of service.

Agree those Facebook wall posts are worth a ton of traffic. We did a microsite for a client and they promoted it with a "splash" page on their main site 15k views a day. Well the 100 or so Facebook wall posts a day sent more traffic, almost double. Don't wait to long to get that in there!

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.

Great concept, feels very original, great attractive web design, also a positive for the environment and community to be promoting more gardening and locally-grown plants -- all around full of win! Good luck!

This is cool man.

You make some political sensitive comments on your personal blog linked directly from your product site (affirmative action). I personally would not buy from you having read those as I disagree with your position.

It seems like putting out stuff like that while your trying to build a brand is risky, while some/many of your target may agree, I can see some not e.g. Libertarian types who believe in self reliance i.e. your own garden, but not affirmative action.

Up to you, personally I think why take the risk?

Did you even read his blog post? Or just see "affirmative action" and kneejerk it?

And what do his political leanings have to do with buying plant seeds?

1st Point Yeah I read the blog post, he stated a position in support of it and articulated his reasons.

2nd Point What does if a presidential candidate is bald or not have to do with his/her capacity to run the country? What does Whole Food's CEO"s John Mackey position on health care have to do with buying groceries?

Your question implies a lack of understanding of the motivations and impulses that drive consumers to take actions such as voting and purchasing products.

My questioning of the value of putting and linking such rhetoric with a product or company represents an understanding of impact of the overall messaging around a product/brand that can very far removed from the core value/solution a product/brand/person is delivering.

It is possible that the rhetoric is part of the brand.

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