I live on a small farm and know quite a few farmers socially. The 5% number seems hard to believe.<p>According to Wikipedia[1], there were 2.2 million farms in 2007. Since the number of farms is decreasing (land development, consolidation, etc), let's say today there are only 2 million. At 5%, that's 100k farms on FarmLogs. That's impressive. I wonder how many of them are paying customers?<p>Especially given that most farmers I know are older (think Baby Boomer age) and are barely competent using the Internet never mind an app/SAAS like this.<p>1 - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...</a>
I wonder how much the Climate Corporation acquisition did to boost investor interest in ag tech startups? Also glad to see success from a Midwestern startup. Congratulations FarmLogs!
One thing I've seen before, but never quite understood, is how a company like this can exist, but have a position for "Lead Engineer" open on their jobs page. Is it usually the case that their previous lead engineer moved onto something else, or that they bootstrapped a functional version until this point, and now they need someone with more experience leading a team?
I think this is such a neat business. The farmers I've met are fairly savvy business-people and will probably be very happy to have better information about their business in a way that Quickbooks and Excel can't easily provide.
Sounds very similar to Nokia Life Tools which launched in India back in 2009 - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Life_Tools" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Life_Tools</a>
"The agricultural part of the service consists of localized information including weather conditions, advice about crop cycles, general tips and techniques, as well as market prices for crops. Farmers in the pilot scheme said getting daily prices on their phones reduced their dependency on agents for basic information, enabling them to negotiate with greater confidence."
From a tech savvy farmer friend:<p>> Yep it is USA only but it's interesting. Especially the market watch on grain price. Farmers never have a notion what the worldwide price for barley is even thou they sell it.<p>> Also the farm log on field performance is something that would work on a smaller irish scale.<p>> There would be a definite appetite for something like that.<p>I don't understand why apps such as this are limited to US only? There are plenty of early adopters in the rest of the world.
The article has a bit of an error when saying current offerings all require PCs. Some of the big companies in Ag have serious websites that do not require PCs that help track finances, crops, fields, and even let farmers sign contracts on the web.
Congrats, and a great pursuit that may not be SnapChat famous, but may have an easier and much needed value proposition. Modern farm machinery is pretty-well wired, but it's also believable that the systems to organize and make use of such data could be improved. Modern combines are fun to ride around in...like a truck, except relatively safe to watch movies while driving given the speeds involved.