Actually to edit this comment - the main (only?) reason I bought the car is because if I'm in an accident I want to try to be in safest car possible and if my sig other is driving I want them to be in the safest car I can find. I thought that paying a premium at release in model X 2020 was well worth the premium if people I love are in it.

AJ

My name is AJ Forsythe and I'm the Founder / Chief Chicken Tender at Coop! We're an Austin TX based company on a mission to build the world’s largest decentralized food production network, starting with AI powered chicken Coops. We’ve been in the market for about 18 months and our customers are in 48 states and will generate about >5M eggs this year. It's insanely fun to work on and we have a shot at building a huge business in the connected urban farming space. If you’re big into computer vision, consumer products that are fun, and an awesome team we would love to chat. The Coop has an automatic door + cameras doing computer vision work (predator detection, egg alerts, remote health monitoring, etc). It's a super exciting time and are seeing directional product market fit which I'm thrilled about. Seriously go check out our website, it's a super fun + amazing product.

We’re a tight-knit team of 6 people with 15+ years of experience working together. We’ve been through YC, started and scaled multinational million-dollar businesses together, taking them from idea to acquisition by a Fortune 50 company. We’re gritty and passionate without taking ourselves too seriously - and we’re here to build something really exciting that helps people reconnect with their food and the planet. We're VC backed (call it $5M) by some of the world's best investors but we are a scrappy small team that moves fast.

We have an absolutely fantastic CTO Ryan that I'm looking for his / our right hand person to work alongside with. I think the term full stack is overused but that's closest to what we're looking for. Also this really isn’t a traditional Eng role, I look at it as we’re a small growing team and you would be one of us working on a ton a cool projects on day 1. Also, we LOVE working with founders so if you've started a company before that's epic.

You can also reach out to me directly at: aj[at]coop.farm - Just email me your LinkedIn / GitHub / portfolio + why you think you'll be an awesome fit and I'll respond. This is my 3rd company (2 have exited) and I want to build the super solid core team and you might be the perfect fit for us and vice versa.

Bwok Bwok!

AJ

We built this for the family that has always wanted chickens, but doesnt know where to start. We also include 6 chickens with every coop, which I think is hilarious. The plan is to vertically integrate everything from the supply chain (feed, treats, supplements, vet visits, etc) and make it SUPER easy to have a backyard flock. It's been a fascinating and fun company to build - If you want to see some of the stuff we're doing on the tech side feel free to check out www.Coop.Farm - Also one of the things that we track where we think our thesis is playing out is how many people use us that haven't raised chickens before and we're at 71% of our customers are new to backyard ag. Also, we make standalone cameras for existing flocks and other animals and I have been super surprised to see the amount of people using our predator detection and remote health monitoring models for rabbits, goats, pigs, ducks, etc. Super fun company to build.

Most people don't get that eggs usually are 30-60 days old when you buy them at the grocery store and they have to travel up to 1000 miles to get there in cold storage.

Want to know how old your eggs are? On every egg carton there's a 3 digit number from 1 to 365. That is the day of the year the producer of eggs handed them off to the distributor. Producers have up to 30 days to hand it off to distributor and the distributor has an additional 30 days to hand off to retailer. Kinda wild!

Avg hen lays about 250-270 eggs a year depending on breed. So 6 chickens (our coop is designed for 6) throws off about 1500 eggs a year. Avg American eats around 291 eggs + egg products per year (which is crazy!).

Most people build their coops or buy one from Tractor Supply or Amazon for $300 and day-old chicks are around $4 each and feed is inexpensive (50lb bag at Tractor Supply is $21). You can make the economics work super well if you want to but as most backyard chickens are treated as pets (I am leaving out large farms and homesteads, etc) a lot of people pamper and spend $ on their hens because it's more than just getting a lower cost egg if that makes sense.

We spent 2 years building and designing a AI / smart coop and it's been a fascinating company to be able to build. We've trained our computer vision model on around 25 million videos and have gotten extremely good at doing specific predator detection, egg alerts, remote health monitoring, specific chickens in a coop and behaviors etc. We're at the point now where we can say, "Hey AJ, there's 2 raccoons outside your coop, the automatic door is shut, all 6 chickens are safe, and you have 10 eggs that can be collected". Super fun project and would love y'alls feedback. If you're interested in seeing what we're doing we're at www.TheSmartCoop.com