Let me tell you a story: just over 10 years ago, I worked on a project to create a foreign exchange trading tool for small and medium sized businesses in Europe. My company (well the company that employed me, you know what I mean) had been commissioned to write a custom version of our existing trading software for it, and some other company (a big consultancy) was doing the, err, consulting bit of it, systems integration, branding, whatever you want to call it. The technology was great, worked perfectly, easy to use, got the best quotes from major banks, yadda yadda.<p>The project was a complete, utter, dismal failure. Why? Because when these companies wanted to do a deal, old Uncle Otto from the back office at company A would go and have a nice long lunch with cousin Beppe from company B, then they would shake hands, and that was that. They weren't interested, and they were getting great rates anyway, because these were long-term business relationships, some had been going on for generations!<p>So I am a bit leery of young hip geeks with soft hands telling honest sons of toil how to improve their businesses...
I wonder how well they can actually get farmers online. I grew up with lots [of farmers], and most of them would hate this only because it's on the internet. Most farmers are not that [internet] tech savvy. Also, the pricing structure seems like a farmer would look at this and be like "Uhh..? Why?" I wish them luck, but I grew up with that culture and still know a lot of them, and I just can't see this taking off by the way their mindset is.
I have a hard time replacing or adding another layer of data input on top of (insert accounting software i.e. quickbooks) especially with an established system in place.<p>Farm accounting is not something I would delineate across more than one system, and it seems the remake is far more profit focused, which is good, but it still does not support a disconnected workflow afaik.<p>Still think the real money to be made is in the weekend gardener/farmer not the big guys, for a project like this. There is no way to have a partial farm management tool that does not go from nut to bolt, and still convince someone to break an incumbent process.
My anecdotal evidence, from probably about as much experience as that of the rest presented here, is that (midwestern US) farmers "manage their business" by working hard and being in debt until they decide to retire and sell their farm equipment to get out of debt far enough to fund said retirement...<p>...<i>or</i> selling to a conglomerate, said conglomerate being the only consistently viable target for "hi we're revolutionary" software like this.
I'm a bit surprised to see a startup addressing the farm market. Back in the 1980s, there was software from Pro Farmer that was used with the Radio Shack Color Computer(!). All this time I figured Pro Farmer had a lock on things, with that early start. I see I was wrong to think that. Good luck.