Most of what I write about here is new: apps I started this year, tools that did not exist a decade ago. This one is different. I am back inside a company I helped start in 2008.
It is called SeedMatrix, and I am rebuilding its engine now through Senternet. Returning to an eighteen-year-old product has taught me more about what is worth building than any greenfield project has.
The problem that would not go away
SeedMatrix exists to answer one deceptively simple question a farmer asks every year: will this variety actually perform on my field? A seed brand can say its variety yields well. Proving it in that grower's county, on that soil, under that irrigation, against the variety they planted last season is a completely different problem.
The data that would settle it exists, but it is scattered across dozens of independent trial networks, each with its own format and its own corner of the country. SeedMatrix pulls that official variety trial data together with a company's own plot results and lets a sales team slice it down to the conditions of the field in front of them.
