It's been six months since my last update, and a lot has changed. As Dr. Seuss would say, 'How did it get so late so soon?!' Plenty of ups and downs, but here are the quick highlights:
I’ve pivoted from the idea I was working on, shifting into something bigger and more ambitious.
I’ve partnered with a co-founder who, coincidentally, shares my first name!
We’ve secured some funding and more importantly, we’re part of a vibrant builder community.
We've made our first hire and even snagged our own little office.
Evaluating Viability with an Objective Framework
If you've been following my journey, you might recall that I was exploring ideas in the climate tech space, specifically around agriculture. After evaluating a few concepts, I spent several months building an LLM-based farm management app for small and medium-scale farms.
Agriculture is the least digitized sector in the U.S., with much of the record-keeping still done on paper and in binders. I saw an opportunity to streamline operations for farmers by digitizing their processes using voice, text, or pictures. The potential to save time, money, and reduce headaches was clear, and I envisioned how farmers could leverage that data once digitized. I’ll write more about it in the future, but if you're curious, you can learn more about what I was building at www.farmally.io.
The feedback from farmers was encouraging, and I had successes like winning pitching contests, SW innovation challenges, and securing free booths at farm tech expos. I quickly built prototypes and saw early traction.
However, there were two key reasons I had to pivot away from this idea:
The growth trajectory in terms of sign-ups wasn't strong enough to give me confidence in building a viable business.
More critically, the engagement levels from the farms participating in pilot programs were lower than I expected. This suggested that, while the problem was relevant, it wasn’t their top priority.
It’s always difficult to drop something you have put your heart and soul into, but the signs that the timing wasn’t right for this idea were too strong to ignore. It’s easy to get emotionally attached to a problem, but having an objective framework to evaluate viability is crucial and in a way I’m glad that I had the clarity.
I remain passionate about agriculture and will always cherish the relationships I've built with various farmers over the past year. While the technology I'm currently developing spans multiple sectors, agriculture is one of the sectors where it can be effectively applied.
Optimize for the people you work with
Although I had a few great people helping me in various capacities, I was mostly operating as a solo-preneur. This brings me to an important takeaway: optimize for the people you work with.
Ram Jayaraman and I worked together at a startup called Automatic Labs. To avoid confusion, I’ll refer to him as Ram J :) He was part of the founding team, and I was one of the first engineering hires. We developed a hardware device that plugged into your car’s OBD-II port. If you are used to analogical positioning, it was like a 'Fitbit for cars' or a 'Nest for cars.' The company was eventually acquired by SiriusXM.
While I moved on to work at Google, Ram J founded Plate IQ, a company that automated accounts payable for industries with fragmented supply chains. After scaling the business to serve over 20,000 companies, he had a successful exit through acquisition.
While I was working on my project, I often bounced ideas off Ram J. We would brainstorm about various concepts and how we envisioned the future, especially with all the recent rapid advancements in technology. When I finally decided to pursue a new direction, we decided to join forces to turn our shared vision into reality.
Over the past few months, we’ve spent countless hours brainstorming, talking to customers across various industries, prototyping, and strategizing. While it’s obvious that having a co-founder is essential—'tis the season of co-pilots, after all! :)—what's even more critical is finding one who is fully committed. It’s a bonus if you’ve already collaborated in the past, and even better if they share your first name! :)”
Joining the South Park Commons Fellowship
After exploring several ideas and validating them with customers, our vision has solidified. Recognizing the ambitious nature of this vision, we felt it was essential to seek support from partners who share our enthusiasm. This journey led us to South Park Commons, and we are thrilled to announce that we have joined their Founder Fellowship cohort. I’m grateful to Aditya and his incredible team for their belief in us. Already, I can say this has been one of the best decisions we’ve made for our company.
So, what’s next
I started this blog series with the intent of sharing my journey as I navigate the exciting and unpredictable world of entrepreneurship. While I will continue to write about it, I won’t be able to share much about the details of the product we are building. Yes, the irony is not lost on me :) While there are many opinions about the merits and drawbacks of operating in stealth, I believe there are moments when it is not only prudent but also necessary to focus on building our vision away from the public eye. Won’t be for long though!
Here’s a quick teaser though: We envision that the next wave of computing will be centered around embodied AI and that’s the future we are striving to create.
Our vision is ambitious, and as I learned at Google, you reach your moonshots through roofshots—this is exactly what we've been focusing on.
In the meantime, I have a wealth of content lined up. I plan to share all the pitch videos, product overviews, and the customer and market research I conducted for my farm management idea. I hope this will be much more tangible and useful than the fictional companies typically used as examples in business courses. And who knows, maybe I’ll also write about my version of the Founder Mode vs Manager Mode :). So, stay tuned!
Until next time!