Planting the Seed to a Money Tree - SaaS in Agriculture

[GoranS]

After jumping from idea to idea and not executing on any of those ideas I decided to go with this one. I feel that I finally have to start something and stop being a wantrepreneur. This thread will serve to keep myself accountable and hopefully receive some advice.

My introduction post ---> Introduction - A bit late, but here it is...

One of the biggest problems that farmers face with is putting their produce on the market. This is a HUGE problem within the agriculture industry. They struggle to market and sell the product and they often underprice their goods because of lack of information.

The idea is to create a web platform which will connect farmers to buyers and make it easier for them to sell their crops. It will enable users to post their crops to the website so that the buyers can contact them if they want to buy. Also, buyers will be able to post ads for goods they're looking for which will inform farmers about demand and which crops to plant for the next year.
When there's a match between a buyer and a seller, farmers will receive SMS notifications with buyers' contact info. This is crucial because a large part of the market consists of older people who don't know/want to use a computer.

My biggest challenge now is building the platform. I started learning Ruby on Rails and I'll approach it as @MJ DeMarco suggests - learning on a problem by problem basis.

If you have any questions or advice feel free to comment...

 

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[Ika]

Sounds promising!
How did you come across this problem?
Have you worked in Agriculture and experienced it firsthand? Did you talk to farmers?
Or did you observe the problem?

Oh and if you are saying buyers - do you mean consumers or do you mean businesses (aka local supermarkets, distributors etc)?

 

[GoranS]

Sounds promising!
How did you come across this problem?
Have you worked in Agriculture and experienced it firsthand? Did you talk to farmers?
Or did you observe the problem?

Oh and if you are saying buyers - do you mean consumers or do you mean businesses (aka local supermarkets, distributors etc)?

Hey Ika, thanks for replying.

When I said buyers I meant supermarkets and other business, not consumers.
I came across this concept accidentally - found a company in another country that is doing this and realized that I could apply it to local market. I never worked in agriculture myself, but my father works in a company that sells fertilizers and similar stuff. Farmers complain about this problem all the time. Last week I was watching news and they showed a farmer who destroyed all of his crops on purpose because he was so frustrated that he can't sell it at a decent price. There was a company here that was already doing the same thing and they were pretty successful, so it's a proven concept. They were even featured on major TV channels. Not sure why they're no longer in business.

Right now, I'm pretty clueless about how to build this platform. I'll just dive into it and see how it goes. No more wantrepreneurship!

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

 

[Marco Cuevas]

Right now, I'm pretty clueless about how to build this platform. I'll just dive into it and see how it goes. No more wantrepreneurship!

You are gonna come across some frustrating moments... Push through them! Code isn't easy... Problem Solving isn't easy... But the effort is totally worth it. Keep your motivation up, and when struggling, re-read the story in TMF about the Pharaoh and the task he gave his sons.

 

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[GoranS]

You are gonna come across some frustrating moments... Push through them! Code isn't easy... Problem Solving isn't easy... But the effort is totally worth it. Keep your motivation up, and when struggling, re-read the story in TMF about the Pharaoh and the task he gave his sons.

Hi Marco,
It definitely won't be easy and I don't expect it to be so. I'll always try to keep the bigger picture in mind.

Thanks for support!

 

[Scot]

Saw this thread title and thought of this podcast I listened to

The Food Startups Podcast by Matt Aaron on Apple Podcasts

If it doesn't redirect you to the right episode it's called "The blockchain and food"

Check it out, it sounds like they're doing something similar to you.

 

[GoranS]

Saw this thread title and thought of this podcast I listened to

The Food Startups Podcast by Matt Aaron on Apple Podcasts

If it doesn't redirect you to the right episode it's called "The blockchain and food"

Check it out, it sounds like they're doing something similar to you.

Hey Scot,
Looks really interesting, will check it out. Thanks for sharing!

 

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