Small business/startup thread

Where are you located

>How did you got into this "startup community"? And where do you find these investors pitch? I don't know if i have these in my country (or at least not as open)

Mostly through google and research about the community, VC and financing opportunities. Most places have a incubator or two in a mediumly large town so that's where the startup community really is.
The main thing with finance is that thousands of people before you have been through the exact same thing and are willing to give you localized tips. Other than that keep googling opportunities to get finance. The applications may take time but you'll get really useful feedback (most of the time the negative feedback is the best).

Europe.

Another thing we noticed is that due to how we set up the business we were not really in that much need of finance so we had the luxury of saying no to a lot of investors.
Make sure you really need the funding before you try to get it.

What do you mean by precision agriculture ?

Think of it as data collection and processing for agricultural producers, so that they can make better and more data driven decisions.
There are other aspects of it but that's the core point.

So, it's more like a consulting firm in the agriculture business

To a certain extent, but much of the industry for example also manages the actual spreading of fertilizers through analyzing the crops. So it's very integrated with the tools they use.

Does anyone else have a startup?

Going to a startup Weekend in my local city soon. Have you got any advice for brainstorming/ coming up with ideas besides the usual advice of "think of a common problem". If I read that again I'll go mad.

I work in the industry.

OP your data is the only value in your business.

Honestly you won't be more knowledgeable than people like me. I worked my way up from working on the phones of this company accruing agricultural data to practically managing it- your company may be valued at 2 mil, but its the selling that that is the difficult part.

In short, I don't really want to help you, but you need to persuade companies how your data will be more accurate than mine and the others who have been doing this for years and have well fleshed out pools of information on agricultural trends that go back about 20 years.

Good luck kid.

Think about what means you have and what has happened or not happened that enables you to be a player in the marketplace. I mean countless people come up with ideas that can businesses but feasibility and risk is a very important component.

Thanks for your input, right now we are mostly avoiding selling directly to farmers and going through already established and state sanctioned agricultural services. The main hurdle would be convincing them they need us so we all together avoid building up a b2c sell side. If we do that we get to free-ride on their salesforce while taking on of the costs.

What do you think of this strategy? We don't operate in the US and we only operate in a small part of a country in Europe so I hardly think we're competing XD

My company operates across the U.S. and within a few bigger European countries. We could be, who knows. I'm not concerned though- the company is preeminent and desu I'm thinking of jumping ship soon.

Selling to farmers is a bad idea unless they're large estates or partnerships. Farmers generally have a very good idea of the state of the industry and how it affects them (e.g. British farmers are currently crying about prices constantly) so selling to them is a no-go. Instead I would suggest offering the information in a limited form (like a 10 page pdf covering general trends) in exchange for exact information on their farm etc.

B2c doesn't work well in the precision industry in my experience- but with that said you could build a smaller department offering very in-depth data to interested large estates and the like.

Your targeting of established agricultural services and the state is the best manner of conducting business in my experience. However, even if you do secure them as clients it is impractical to think you'd have a free ride using their salesforce instead of investing in your own (plus sales are cheap- just make your OTE too high for most to attain, training is easy).

Your strategy is pretty sound but in this business you need to be good at:
>Getting new data.
>Updating existing data.
>Putting the data into useful statistic blocs.
>Selling said manipulated data.

Two last things- firstly, how are you building new data stores? Second (a bit of advice) have you considered selling data to magazines, agricultural or economic? Even tabloids occasionally need farming data.

Not really, our company focuses exclusively on drone based precision ag. One of the main reasons for that was the low barrier to entry, we didn't have the time or the capital to make fully encompassing service.
Furthermore the most powerful player in this industry is basically doing everything for free (government funded) so trying to offer what they're offering but better is a no go.

When it comes to agricultural trends we have access to the government data and reports on the issue and our active usage of that system is in part let us establish a comprehensive strategy for segmenting the market. Data collection for trends are public info and who farms what, where is also public info so we have all of that. In terms of actual maps and image analysis of farmland we don't have too much of that, just the pilot project with a select few big players.

In that sense we are more of a direct data gathering and analysis service rather than a macro-consultancy firm.

Ah alright I see.

Honestly I don't know what to tell you then. Obviously drone agri tech looks set to increase tenfold in activity over the next few years so it is a smart time to enter than niche, yet if your major competition is already pivoting to accommodate the early market within its free services then it could be very hard to penetrate it.

As a direct data gathering and analysis service I suppose you could sell yourself as a micro-consultancy firm to potential clients? As for combating larger company spread in the established agri services you could play to your youth and try to forge a reputation as a young, innovative company? I've done my best with my company but most firms are populated with old, knowledgeable, yet OLD fuckers.

In light of this new information, for your trade show you both need to go smart- but not stuffy- and just be approachable. Give out business cards liberally and really play up the drone aspect of the business (but tailor it to the audience, old farmers 50+ tend not to give a flying fuck about new tech) and how it and your analysis could benefit their output and overheads.

>like anyone knows what fucking precision agriculture is
Isn't it obvious?

Is it a good idea to startup a tech company (website) without any knowledge of coding?

I was going to outsource the website/app design to a company in the city (I know it will be expensive, I'm prepared to pay) and once I have everything ready I can start the marketing side myself.

The startup is similar to Uber but for something other than rides (it's specific to what I have researched in my city, so I'm not sure about scalability across the country but we will worry about that later). So generally all I need programmed is the site where people can request someone to provide the service, browse through people, and perhaps a simple messaging system.

I am currently learning ruby on rails in order to create some sort of prototype, but this will likely take months and I would prefer to take action now and get it over with.

>outsource the website/app design to a company

That's like Basics 101 on how NOT to run a tech business - when it comes to the core product offering you'd want to keep it to people who have as much skin in the game as you.

If you guys need help with GIS stuff, I gould probably help.

Could*

So linkedin, glassdoor etc?

The main issue with making money doing something like that is you either have to go mass market in order to reach a large enough scale to make money from ads (while providing a free to use service) or integrate the product closer to the consumers which basically means you become a staffing company.

How do I get going

Need a developer/sysadmin?

You will never operate in the U.S. without being raped by Monsanto/John Deere. Every JD tractor now comes with GPS and monitoring tools that collect and process data in real time. By using statistics they can project annual growth/decline in certain areas, predict rainfall, moisture, alkaline in the soil etc

Basically you are fucked and your company is worth pennies the only thing keeping you alive is the fact that Monsanto is banned from your euroturd country for being too American. After brexit you won't have big brother to protect you and you WILL be anally devastated.

Why do people so clueless make such sweeping a baseless assumptions?

HE'S GROWING DANK KU$H

Confidence.
you did all the research, technical work etc

now its up to good ole salesmanship. you must appear confident and act like you know more then the next guy at alll fucking times. you must live breath that shit, if you dont you whole company wont be taken seriously aka failure. youll be scrutinized more because you might look too young. its confidence my son

"........that's entertainment!....."

In fairness my company is currently contracted by monsanto to test the waters in the UK for massive expansion should they brexit

Oh wow

> we don't look proffessional (legit) yet

just takes time nig. Time and experience. There's no tip for that. It will happen bro. Then you'll look in the mirror one day and see the people you used to be jealous of.

Would be interested. I'm thinking of just buying a turnkey script that offers basically what I need. I would require some changes to the site though, if you can provide them.

The script is written in:
Server Side Scripting: PHP 5.5+
Framework: MVC
Client Side Scripting: JavaScript, AJAX, Jquery
Database: MySQl 5.6+
OS: Linux
Web Server: Apache
HTML Structure: Div Based Table Less Structure

Can you make sense of this mumbojumbo? Is it using good code or shitty outdated code?