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This is definitely something I'm facing. I have a pretty deep interest in farming and have a bunch of approaches for "disrupting" it. But you know what my hangu

This is definitely something I'm facing. I have a pretty deep interest in farming and have a bunch of approaches for "disrupting" it. But you know what my hangups are? Penetrating the culture and getting involved with the industry. Case in point -- where's the best place to buy zoysia seeds? Amazon? eBay? Some random mom and pop place with a ecommerce page? No. The best place to go is to "Bill" who is friends of friends of friends. Who won't take cold calls. Who doesn't sell wholesale. Who only finds new customers once a year at the local fair and he only shows up after 5. For the blue ribbon ceremony on prized pigs. Why is he the best? 99.999% reliability on seeds. It's 100, but he'll never claim that. Price? 1/10th of anything I can find online. What's rough is you can't just google this stuff. It takes knowledge and experience in these industries to know what's up. We believe we can do a lot with technology but we're going to make a lot of BAD decisions getting there.

huac 10y ago
Sounds like there's asymmetrical information, a great place for a startup to break into. Or create a better marketplace for seeds!
- paavokoya 10y ago
  I'd venture to say the reason there is 100% reliability is due to the personal and "non-corporate" aspect to the way he does business. When you stop having face-to-face transactions and stop seeing your customers the interest in maintaining quality plummets. People become numbers. Also, p2p transactions work so well and are cheap because of the lack of middle-men taking unnecessary "fees".
  - aalbertson 10y ago
    Coming from the Farm culture/environment growing up, I can support this idea that it is in part the "non-corporate" aspect. It's very very much the personal, non-technological, Stay out of my business, get off my lawn, view points and feelings that drive some of this. In many cases you have a "handshake and your word is your honor" system in place that drives business forward. No one is stressing about much, beyond the weather, and they have a more peaceful perspective on life in general. That CERTAINLY has room for some technological improvement, but would have to be done in a very careful, well thought out and implemented way. Case in point, if it quits working or requires data fulltime (try getting data/cell/internet on a 10,000 acre farm in the middle of nowhere), then you will fail because even if you CAN convince a large portion of farmers to adopt the tech, once they start having enough problems with it? Out it goes, back to paper, phone calls, and a handshake.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
  The question is there really anything to "disrupt" and is the market worth it for a startup? I live on a horse farm and as a result, need to buy hay. Our main "hay guy" is a farmer and his son who lives about 1/2 hour away, has great prices and charges a low fee (usually: sometimes he doesn't bother charging) for delivery. There are online hay markets, and Craigslist. They don't bother with any of that. They just ask us to tell other horse owners about them so they have a market. When I drop by to pickup some hay, they are almost never there: I leave cash in the mailbox. If I don't have exact change and I overpay by $5, he gives it to me the next time. There are many, many, many people who are perfectly happy doing business like this. They like their work, make enough money at it (going by the shiny new tractors!), and have no desire to get online or grow their business. I have more anecdotes about other similar people I've dealt with just this week alone, but you get my point: many of these markets aren't remotely large enough to interest a VC and the participants only want to do business face to face.
  - ckozlowski 10y ago
    Good story. =) So much success in business is still meeting face to face with people, building interpersonal connections, and performing classic networking. When I'm mentoring younger family members and friends, I stress this a lot. I'm not knocking e-commerce, but you cannot underestimate the power that a friendly 5 minute conversation has.
    - pmyjavec 10y ago
      I dare say this is probably what separates very successful people from the rest. It really is not what you know, but who you know, even in 2016.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        I think I enjoy the idea of that sort of success far more than the guy banging out code 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. It takes far more skill and experience to be human than it does to write code.
stcredzero 10y ago
What's rough is you can't just google this stuff Now we call that "rough". Back in the day, that was just how it was. Vernor Vinge, who popularized "The Singularity," observed this phenomenon in his Sci-Fi book Rainbow's End. Now it's possible for the government-business complex to effectively suppress knowledge while technically not suppressing anything. Now, just make it sufficiently hard to search. As far as the general populace goes, it might as well not exist.
Vivtek 10y ago
Yes. Come to Puerto Rico, where I'm working in coffee. Never in my life have I had so much human contact.

huac 10y ago

Sounds like there's asymmetrical information, a great place for a startup to break into. Or create a better marketplace for seeds!

paavokoya 10y ago
I'd venture to say the reason there is 100% reliability is due to the personal and "non-corporate" aspect to the way he does business. When you stop having face-to-face transactions and stop seeing your customers the interest in maintaining quality plummets. People become numbers. Also, p2p transactions work so well and are cheap because of the lack of middle-men taking unnecessary "fees".
- aalbertson 10y ago
  Coming from the Farm culture/environment growing up, I can support this idea that it is in part the "non-corporate" aspect. It's very very much the personal, non-technological, Stay out of my business, get off my lawn, view points and feelings that drive some of this. In many cases you have a "handshake and your word is your honor" system in place that drives business forward. No one is stressing about much, beyond the weather, and they have a more peaceful perspective on life in general. That CERTAINLY has room for some technological improvement, but would have to be done in a very careful, well thought out and implemented way. Case in point, if it quits working or requires data fulltime (try getting data/cell/internet on a 10,000 acre farm in the middle of nowhere), then you will fail because even if you CAN convince a large portion of farmers to adopt the tech, once they start having enough problems with it? Out it goes, back to paper, phone calls, and a handshake.
HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
The question is there really anything to "disrupt" and is the market worth it for a startup? I live on a horse farm and as a result, need to buy hay. Our main "hay guy" is a farmer and his son who lives about 1/2 hour away, has great prices and charges a low fee (usually: sometimes he doesn't bother charging) for delivery. There are online hay markets, and Craigslist. They don't bother with any of that. They just ask us to tell other horse owners about them so they have a market. When I drop by to pickup some hay, they are almost never there: I leave cash in the mailbox. If I don't have exact change and I overpay by $5, he gives it to me the next time. There are many, many, many people who are perfectly happy doing business like this. They like their work, make enough money at it (going by the shiny new tractors!), and have no desire to get online or grow their business. I have more anecdotes about other similar people I've dealt with just this week alone, but you get my point: many of these markets aren't remotely large enough to interest a VC and the participants only want to do business face to face.
- ckozlowski 10y ago
  Good story. =) So much success in business is still meeting face to face with people, building interpersonal connections, and performing classic networking. When I'm mentoring younger family members and friends, I stress this a lot. I'm not knocking e-commerce, but you cannot underestimate the power that a friendly 5 minute conversation has.
  - pmyjavec 10y ago
    I dare say this is probably what separates very successful people from the rest. It really is not what you know, but who you know, even in 2016.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      I think I enjoy the idea of that sort of success far more than the guy banging out code 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. It takes far more skill and experience to be human than it does to write code.

stcredzero 10y ago

What's rough is you can't just google this stuff Now we call that "rough". Back in the day, that was just how it was. Vernor Vinge, who popularized "The Singularity," observed this phenomenon in his Sci-Fi book Rainbow's End. Now it's possible for the government-business complex to effectively suppress knowledge while technically not suppressing anything. Now, just make it sufficiently hard to search. As far as the general populace goes, it might as well not exist.

Vivtek 10y ago

Yes. Come to Puerto Rico, where I'm working in coffee. Never in my life have I had so much human contact.