As E-junkie has recently started serving you killer creative start-ups, after Crispy Cones, here we bring another one called 'Eggzy' that says 'Love Your Food'.
The creative mind behind 'Eggzy' is Mark D. Thompson, a web developer by profession and a chicken flock manager by choice. He started his flock in 2008 and stepped into backyard chicken keeping. For Mark, "chickens are beneficial pets with benefits of being eggs, fertilizer and funny stories."
The whole concept of 'Eggzy' is well thought of and very well projected. It takes care of everything you need to manage your flock without much effort. All you need to do is just sign up with them. Eggzy has a lot more we should know about and trust me, it is engaging plus beneficial. Let's learn more about it from its owner himself in the interview below:
Mark, you're the creative mind behind 'Eggzy'. What Eggzy is all about?
Eggzy's a response to some of the issues we're seeing in the current national (and global) food system. We're very concerned about food security—with world food prices at record levels, too many people are finding it increasingly difficult to get enough food to eat. We're also concerned about food safety, particularly the alarming increase in both the number and scale of food-borne illness outbreaks worldwide. And we're concerned about local economies, and the ability of local communities to become more self-reliant, in particular with respect to their food supply.
Our goal with Eggzy is to develop a platform that enables individuals at the home- and neighborhood-scale to produce and distribute some portion of their own food supply. In doing so, we hope to increase local food security by increasing local supply, food safety by promoting traceability and the number of sources for eggs, and support local economies by keeping more income local.
Tell us about the inception of 'Eggzy'. How did this idea strike you?
Since becoming parents, we've been increasingly aware of some of the issues with our food system. That, coupled with the growing awareness generated by films like “The Future of Food” and “Food, Inc.”, led us to start growing some of our own fruits and vegetables. We also started keeping chickens a few years ago, and being software developers, started tinkering with a database to track our flock's production. When we started getting more eggs than we could eat ourselves, we would share our extras. Eggzy really started out as a tool for us to manage our own production and distribution.
What all can one do with 'Eggzy'? What are its main features?
Eggzy's a tool to manage backyard chicken flocks and to coordinate distribution of eggs from those flocks.
Basically, backyard flock owners can enter their chickens into the system, including their breed and other annotations. Flock owners can also enter their monthly expenses and their eggs as they collect them. Eggzy will automatically calculate lay rates and average cost per dozen eggs. Together, these figures can be used to estimate production and assist with pricing decisions.
Flock owners can also choose to turn on their own online Egg Stand, where they can present a description of their flock and egg availability and tell their flock's story in words, stats and pictures. Friends and family can also subscribe to Egg Stands. Subscribing unlocks a Pickup/Delivery field where the flock owner can present information on when/where/how to pick up or purchase eggs. Flock owners can also message subscribers whenever eggs are available.
As it is stated on your website that Eggzy is still in its developmental stage. What kind of response it has received so far?
So far we've received very good response. We're an open Beta, but have chosen to grow organically to measure our growth and maximize our feedback/development iterations. So far it's worked well and we've been able to gather a lot of great user feedback and market information.
How was the pre-launch experience for you? Did you face any hurdles? If yes, then what were they?
For us, there really wasn't a whole lot of “pre-launch” in that we had developed a pretty solid understanding of the problems we were trying to solve and had a basic tool we had developed for our own use. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible and just get it out there for feedback. Even so, we actually needed to scale back a bit on features. Another hurdle was putting together a more consumer-friendly user experience than what we had been using for ourselves.
Share with us one memorable moment that you encountered on this journey from conceiving the idea till present.
There have been a number of memorable moments, it's been a great experience. One in particular was the first time we got a mention in one of the larger forums.
All of a sudden we got a spike in traffic and traced it back to the forum. We watched as the discussion wound down, the forum topic dropped to the bottom of the list and our traffic settled back down. When the topic dropped to the bottom of the topics page, we commented in the forum, and the topic bounced back up to the top of the page and our traffic bounced up again. It was very cool to experience affecting an audience of your own creation in real time—to work the levers and record the results.
What do you think is the most important ingredient in cooking this recipe of launching a product or starting up a new venture?
Perseverance.
We talked about the pre-launch difficulties. While launching, what do you think every start up business goes through?
It's very exciting to have what you believe to be the greatest idea since sliced bread. I believe every start up inevitably has to reconcile the fact that at some point or other, not everyone is going to share the same level of enthusiasm, and that can be a difficult challenge. Perseverance is the key to working through it.
What all methods or tools you've adopted or plan to adopt to spread your word around?
We've experimented with a number of tools for getting our word out. From 4-H presentations to backyard poultry forums; post cards at feed stores to Facebook and Twitter, our subject, food production, is inherently social so social media, clubs and meetups are particularly relevant to us. Word-of-mouth is really important.
Since you've recently started up your business, one can look up to you for the best advice. What message do you have for them?
While research and planning are key, we're both very hands-on oriented. And considering we actually come from New Media backgrounds, it was almost easier to build Eggzy than to explain it. So for us, we needed to build it to actually articulate it. As such, I guess my advice would be to know your strengths (and limitations) and to play to them.
Our other bit of advice is something we actually heard a lot of once we started researching how to start a business, and that is the reality of self-funding. You'll need to have access to enough money to live off of until you can either get investors or get your business making money. No one really understands the fact that starting a business is full time work for no/little pay, so you will need money in reserve if you want to work on your vision full time.
Mark, thanks for this great interview and enlightening our readers with the great concept of 'Eggzy'. We wish you all the very best!
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