37signals has been one of the most influential companies to how I think about software, software development, and business. It is amazing how it has even crept into how I think about the family farm that I grew up on and am now working to become a larger part of.
One thing has become abundantly clear since getting more involved: the software space for agriculture is terrible. Not that there are not options (there are plenty), but that the options look so terrible or offer no ability to work on anything other than Windows 95 (exaggeration on my part) as to be almost considered criminal. The sites don’t show pictures of the software working, there are very few web options that are easy to find, and mobile? What is mobile?
Farming is in need of a 37signals. A small firm to come in and blow up the farm management space with a lean, attractive, small farm software option that takes some of the pain away. The “big win” here is that any metrics or historical record keeping would be a huge step up for many operations, and digitizing the whole thing and storing it “in the cloud” (I hate that term) would mean that backups would be handled and it would be a simple thing to get up and running on a new machine.
Do I know what this software would do? No, not yet, maybe not never. However, I do see a need and with the farming economy where it is right now I also know that there is money available in the industry. I hope that someone, anyone, will fill this void.