Show HN: Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

Off topic question and probably a far too ambitious idea... but as a veterinarian, have you thought about working on improvements to the software that vets use?

About six months ago I was spending time with a vet friend, and was hearing stories about terrible user interface and ways the software was getting in the way. The story I most remember was a 60 second timeout requirement to enter patient data before the workstation locked and required logging in again, and that a logout while still typing would cause the current notes in progress to be deleted. I have no idea if those problems are caused by regulation (a kind of kitty HIPPA compliance) or just terrible UX.

I worry that vet software is probably a terrible market as well, with regulation and established providers, maybe it's a lower margin business (certainly not a profit center) and maybe edge cases for each vet practice in the US.

As someone with domain knowledge, perhaps that's a challenge you might consider, now that AI makes coding so accessible across domains now? Since I have zero domain knowledge, it seemed like something I could never help solve.

I am committed to some projects now, but I did a full analysis of projects to invest, used AI to validate ideas and so on.

My main goal was "solo founder projects as programmer" and one of them was software for veterinarians (second one was for golf tracks).

It is an interesting niche!

I've been slowly working for years on letting clover take over my lawn. I have amazing flows of white flowers in the spring, with the red clover now starting to come in as well. I mow it once the flowers pop up to force the growth back down into the root systems, and I've converted more than half of my 5 acres into clover at this point. It also is speeding up, and will probably be fully clover within a year or two.

My point being - your UX doesn't ask what people's goals are. Not everyone wants a "perfect lawn". Even people who do want grass may have different priorities for their grass - low maintenance vs. low water usage vs. really green, etc.

If you want your product to be different than what the lawn care guys will say, then you need to actually let people do different things in the app. Or, if you are dead set on making this into lead gen for lawn care guys, well... I personally find that somewhat disheartening, but clearly I'm not your audience.

The real proposition here is diagnosing the specific problem and offering specific fixes for said problem. I think the platform provides a good opportunity to present alternatives to the user other than "just fix the problem" and says "have you thought about this instead?" But since the primary user is trying to fix the issue, I don't want to necessarily try to force alternatives my audience isn't looking for. That being said, one option would be to give an option in filling out the form to ask what their goals are, such as "I just want to fix the problem" or "I'm open to exploring new ideas for my lawn."

It's not "just" for lead gen. I'm actually trying to help people and solve a problem. I want the tool itself to be free. It monetizes by means other than making it a paid tool.

A nice idea and good luck! My lawn is dead as our local data center took all the water (I'm kidding!).

We do home property and inventory services using AI on photos as well and the key thing we've found so far is that the biggest rival to those features is just people dragging photos into chatgpt and asking away. So the key here is differentiating from that and making something better and more accurate. What we did was to basically build a better and deeper prompt and history, e.g. context is king in a vertical. So that means the other info the user has put about the property, the memory of previous things asked or seen, combining with publicly available property info we already gather - this would make the information more valuable than straight gpt usage.

So what more can you bring to the bare prompt on the photos to help? What can you build in terms of info about the zip, so you do more 'vertical stuff' before the api call.

Great callout, I saw something similar on another site. Essentially instead of just entering your ZIP, you can also enter your estimated lawn size as well as various other parameters to generate a better prompt. I think that would be helpful to build in the next iteration, both to strengthen the results and also differentiate ourselves from GPT. Another thought I had was to potentially build a database of specific, authoritative lawn care information, such as industry journals, textbooks, university extensions, etc from which the GPT must draw upon and reference, rather than using context clues from the internet to try and invent some kind of analysis or treatment.

I know you probably worked a bunch on the website, but the amount of AI slop and obvious AI design is an immediate turn off for myself. And I’d theorize more “normies” are getting “spidey senses” on these types of generic Claude-designed products. I’m seeing them pop up weekly on my small town subreddit.

I’d highly recommend telling Claude something like (untested myself): redesign the website, remove all emojis and all letter-spacing CSS, use non conventional typefaces, no italic serifs, limited cream/beige colors

Something along those lines.

Fun idea, good luck!

This is really sound advice, thank you.

How comes there is this one very specific style the AI makes websites look like with little to no variance?

I don't have a lawn, but I could use some more software around native habitat restoration for Green Seattle work parties. I end up using Claude or ChatGPT for plant identification because iNaturalist isn't as good, then getting the background on each plant - native? non-native? invasive?

When I'm planting, site selection is important but I'm really slow at it, even when using AI.

I also use AI for some plant diagnosis but that hasn't led to any meaningful action, except that I'll be more thoughtful about site selection for some plants in the future.

Most of this could just be a collection of documents in a Claude project, but hey if more people are working on it I'm all for that even if there are competing tools.

What are you actually providing here? What makes this more useful for someone than just uploading a their lawn images directly to their favorite frontier chatbot?

Did you craft a rich prompt template that's untuitively helpful? If so, what did you see go wrong before you had that figured out? How did you determine it was a positive improvement? How will you make sure that your prompt's benefits hold up as your original model is retired and it needs to be run against whatever new model you're left to use instead?

Or is it just that your website acts like a kind of inspiration a la "Hey, did you ever think to ask AI about your lawn problems?"? If so, how do expect people to find this inspiration when link-delivering search is being agressively retired in favor of synthesized chatbot responses already?

Our differentiator is that we provide a richer results experience than the typical text-only chatbot response. Rather than a few bulleted sections, we provide a visual guide, a grass health score, 2-3 specific diagnoses with information about each, and three distinct treatment pathways to choose from. A lot of chatbot responses are somewhat wordy or generic and may be based on general internet slop rather than favoring reputable sources. But it's also true that many people never even think to ask a chatbot about their lawn. So to some degree yes, the website also exists to remind people that they in fact can use AI for this purpose. Of course we are targeting Google search for traffic, but to your point that will continue to decline. We plan to use content to drive traffic where possible, as well as good old-fashioned local marketing and direct outreach to service professionals (realtors, hardware stores, etc.).

How do you know the diagnosis is correct?

added make no mistakes to the prompt so it can not be wrong, ez.

To be fair a lot of good product ideas come from personal experiences like yours, not weird. Seems like a solid idea, when you say tailored to location does that account for the different types of grass across geographies? If you're interested in a market snapshot to look at competitors I built a one-time competitive intelligence report tool at stratica.ca covering competitor positioning, market gaps, SWOT, growth action items and more. Could be useful if you want to make it real.

Cheers!

I’ll definitely try this out. I have a Claude project for our home and many chat conversations about my lawn.

What I don’t know yet is if the DIY I’m doing with the help of Claude is going to materialize into a lush lawn.

It has me doing pre-emergent spray, broad leaf weed killers, and moss killer.

It’s a lot of work and I’m sure there is a much better UX than saved chats.

Yes, please try it and let me know! I think you'll find the output a little nicer than a chat, which is exactly why I made this. If it sucks, let me know why so I can improve it. Thank you!

That’s a great point! However, I think it would be better if your service better reflected the fact that you’re a veterinarian. For example, determining the appropriate grass or turf for grazing horses, or checking whether they’re being cared for in a way that prevents injuries.

Besides lead gen, how about having ready to go packages for the diy people? You can probably have it drop shipped by other online providers. Lead gen is fine and all but I already get postered by a ton of lawn care sales people who basically provide the same service.

A lot of the lawn care lead websites don't offer ZIP code exclusivity, which we do. And the leads are already warm, because they are actively seeking a solution to a definite problem. This all hinges on a large amount of traffic, but when the leads do come, their conversion rate should be pretty high. We also rely on affiliate income to monetize. Ready-to-go packages could be offered in the future, not a bad idea.

"Googling problems and finding generic solutions"

Your product links are just generic search terms in amazon and local lawn care providers just goes to the angi.com home page.

This feels like an AI play without any real effort.

Any chance you will support Canada?

Support for Canada is in the works!

icelawn.com is registered

Soil science!

Soil Food Web!

Can topdressing fix lawn problems?

Can mulching clippings instead of bagging fix lawn problems?

How to avoid worsening nitrogen runoff algae blooms with liquid fertilizer? Granulated fertilizer if you must.

White Dutch Clover is a nitrogen fixer that fertilizes soil and feeds the bees.

All broad-leaf herbicides kill clover and dandelions, which bees prefer.

Feature ideas:

- refer for local free soil testing; ?q=soil+testing+{zip code}

- follow-up reminders

---

Thanks for helping lawns and thereby animals.

From "Show HN: Dog Rescue Transport Coordination Website" http://puptransfur.org/ .. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45154345 :

> Notes re: "Veterinary Animal EHR FHIR" and SPDA: Shelter Pet Data Alliance: https://shelterpetdata.org/ and Petco Love Lost, and a list of shelter and sanctuary softwares that don't yet support FHIR: https://github.com/jupyterhealth/jupyter-health-software/iss...

How do you get dogs to drink more water?

Golf courses fill with sand and seed and mix.

You can buy divot fixer bottles and a holder for a golf cart, because of soccer in the backyard

Love the monetization idea. Something like this might actually be the future.

Appreciate the positive words! Lots of work to be done but I'm hopeful.

Let’s waste more water so we can waste more water. Lawns. Yay. Yawn.

I had the same anti-reaction. Yay, lets all try to tightly control a piece of land and spend an inordinate amount of effort making sure nature will not get a grip on it. Oh piece of land, you shall behave according to my rules! Noise, genetic engineering, pesticides, herbicides: Take that you bad piece of land, Oh my dear 50 m2, you shall remain out of balance and no insect shall ever be happy here! For as long as I live here! Hahaha!

There are many people that do really get happy with a nice lawn, like most of my neighbors. They are even putting up with all of their gasoline leaf blowers that sounds like a motocross is taking place right in our rural street. What is a nice development though is automatic electric lawn mowers, some (some not!) are completely silent and keep that lawn as far from equilibrium as one can with little effort (as in: Some would say it looks "nice", at least it looks "homogeneous".)

So for many people this website is a nice idea! And I do appreciate the effort, for free even! Nice work! If I'd make this I'd add silent and non-toxic methods as the first options. Maybe stimulate some planting some patches of wild flowers for our bug friends that are going through a rough patch atm ;)

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something.

It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money."

Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of their lawn. On top of that, many people become focused on a particular aesthetic that usually requires non-native grasses and harmful pesticides. In some places, scarse water supplies are used just to maintain a certain color.

I encourage everyone to look into replacing grass lawns with native plant landscapes, and where you do want it short cut, look into a mix of plants like clover that require far less work to keep alive than most grass monocultures.

I agree, broadly, with your statement. I am removing my entire front yard to xeriscape. I compost and am otherwise environmentally active and conscious.

That said, plenty of people _do_ actually use their lawns, especially those of us with children. My actual grass lawn is surrounded by native and low water use plants, but my small patch of green (around 2k sqft), will stay green until my kids move out.

I think it's much more useful to target the endless industrial and commercial parks that have far more grass than a normal size neighborhood. Let people have some joy in their lives.

I don't disagree at all. I have a fairly large area I keep cut short for playing with my dog and having campfires. But I'm converting my front yard to native fruit bushes and flowers. And the parts I do cut short(either for recreation or just for code compliance until I get the time to convert it) never get sprayed or fertilized besides from the natural falling of leaves and the clover fixing nitrogen. It's a mix of various grasses, clover, creeping charlie, wood violets, dandelions and other plants that all survive a few mowings per month. I do manually pull out things like thistle since I like to walk barefoot sometimes, and aggressive invasives like garlic mustard.

I appreciate the sentiment, perhaps it would be wise to include some lawn alternatives or eco-friendly lawn techniques, or even drought tolerant landscaping. Though my site is not likely to change peoples' behavior around traditional lawns, perhaps we can eliminate needless application of pesticides and fertilizers by focusing on the right applications at the right time, rather than via guesswork. I also appreciate the irony of a lawn site using AI which itself uses a lot of water. Seriously though, this is helpful in that I can also be considering ways of encouraging users to seek alternatives. Maybe they don't even want the pressure of trying to keep a short cut, green lawn.

If you were able to translate chronic problems like drainage/poor soil/etc into broader alternatives like landscaping or LA/engineering, that could increase your market on the service provider side.

Great insight. Never would have thought of it. Thank you

> Maybe they don't even want the pressure of trying to keep a short cut, green lawn.

I think offering a range of options and leaving it up to people could go a long way. Especially since people could just try out all options to see what it would involved, how they might imagine (and like) the results, before committing to anything.

As in, here's the lawn, I want it to a.) keep it trim and green, b.) keep it decent looking and still human friendly, but also make it low maintenance and better for biodiversity c.) turn it into a jungle of flowers.

I have gone full "pocket forest" / Miyawaki Forest - planted 100 trees in my tiny back yard.

Technique developed by the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki: planting seedlings close together makes them compete for sunlight, thus growing tall quickly. Get a forest in under a decade!

https://www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk/blog/the-miyawaki...

Huh! Seems quite obvious in retrospect, but the forced competition for limited resources that encourages growth, while fairly dystopian* if applied to humans, is an interesting idea in terms of forests, as long as you don't believe trees can experience qualia such as grief, a fear of death, unhappiness, etc.

[0] I was thinking of this kind of human dystopia: "overpopulation could never be a problem: if people run out of food they'll either invent a better alternative to farms or simply arrange themselves in groups where people who can achieve the highest metric that the head/quorum of their society wants the fastest will be fed and the new growth that can't be supported and can't reach that level will simply "select themselves put of existence", increasing our evolution by >10x"

P.S. ..that being said, if a confirmed traveller from the future tells me that in 100 years we discover that trees have feelings (just like we discovered that plants communicate about threats and exhibit behaviour that is definitely anthropomorphized by a tiny, but loud portion of people as selflessness), I would not be at all surprised. I mean I would be surprised, but about as surprised as I was when I learned that a captive octopus that lived in a tank kept shorting out the electrical system in his room at night. No one had any idea wtf was happening until they put cameras and found out that when it wanted to go to sleep at night, it would turn off the lights by spraying salt water into electrical outlets until the breakers tripped so he could get some nice dark sleep.

It seems to be a trait from the time we became _the_ apex predator that we are way too overconfident about our understanding of our environment, especially the other creatures that share this rock with us. Are we the baddies?

I'd add more but this already went on a huge tangent. Thanks for the link.

>Are we the baddies?

As a like minded person wrt the environment I'd like to ask what makes you think that this should be a question (I know the skit)?

I tried clover. Eventually it just got replaced more and more with grass, now there's not much there. It was meant to be more drought tolerant than grass, but it didn't work out that way. I probably need to do more research.

I did look into it but neither the state, the county, the city, nor the HOA allow for that to happen. It’s gotta be Bermuda and it’s gotta be green.

What (U.S., I assume) state do you live in that has a state law requiring green grass? I've never heard of that.

Georgia, but doesn’t require green, just doesn’t allow for wild grass to grow. The HOA can set any kind of rule it wants grass wise. Please prove wrong!

While in some ways I am against HOAs, I've also lived in neighborhoods without them and inevitably someone always ends up with a rusted out old Buick covered in a tattered blue tarp in their front yard for 400 years

One of a whole list of reasons I would never buy into an HOA.

I do realize that in some localities you don't have a lot of choice, though.

Kill your lawn!

*Advice only applies to neighborhoods without an HOA.

If you build it on LLMs you have no business...

Helpful

It was argued at length by people brighter than me so not sure it's worth repeating.

I'll have to look it up. Black and white statements like that don't usually prove out.

One of them was just on HN like yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48529101

You do you, just letting you know.

Um, are your testimonials AI generated or are they real people who really said these things?

[flagged]

Great idea, and really good job on the website. Can't use it myself as I'm not in America but I'm sure it's great.

Please ignore most of the people on hacker ews, most of them are losers who complain about everything.

Hah! Thanks. We plan to roll out in other markets. Stay tuned! I appreciate the compliment on the website.

I recommend to change the title of this submission to:

    > Veterinarian turned founder, AI lawn diagnosis

When I first saw "vet", I assumed that an American was trying to virtue signal using their armed forces veteran status.

Ok, we've erinarianed the title above.

Thank you for the suggestion, however it appears I am outside of the allowed editing window