A New Chapter

This is the fourth of what we hope will be a long-running annual Silver Fern letter. Our goal with the letter is to review the past year, share our expectations for the upcoming year, and publicly process what we're learning. Last year, we missed writing, so this year's letter covers two years.

A New Chapter: Merging with Advanced Grower Solutions

Our recent merger with Advanced Grower Solutions (AGS) combines two complementary companies, creating a unique platform for growth, innovation, and support. AGS brings over two decades of industry experience and a loyal client base, while Silver Fern contributes next-generation technology designed to scale. We initially planned to run the companies separately and integrate gradually, but about a month before closing, we pivoted to an aggressive 90-day operational integration. Today, we operate on the same financials, processes, meeting cadences, and technologies - dramatically improving our ability to deliver for clients.

AI: An Accelerant

The second major shift over the past two years has been our adoption of AI. This has happened in three ways.

LLMs (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, etc.) have dramatically enhanced our ability to deliver high-quality software in unexpected ways. Our Product Owners, for example, are able to complete product backlog work faster than ever, our finance team can query our financials directly from Microsoft Teams using Co-Pilot, and our sales team can prepare for demo calls with just a prompt or two.
Our adoption of AI-first tools has streamlined operations beyond what we imagined possible. These tools include Ramp (expense management), ClickUp (project & task mgmt), Attio (CRM), Guidde (product documentation), Navattic (interactive demos), and more! These are in various stages of implementation, and while we've already seen huge productivity lifts, we expect most of the benefit is still to come.
Most importantly, we are evaluating how we can best utilize AI in our products to make life easier, simpler, and better for growers. We want our tools to lift productivity for grower operations like the tools mentioned above have for us. Expect to see additional communication from us throughout the remainder of the year on this topic.

2024 & 2025 Updates

Completed countless major product updates, including a revamped kit-building workflow in RESTOCK™, improvements to our forecasting to production planning workflow, upgraded event/task tracking (particularly chemical tracking), enhanced pricing and order management features, and much more! You can see our Q1 '25 updates here.
Invested in our Client Success (Support) functions. One platform for support (Freshdesk). All tickets tracked - still a work in progress but getting to a good spot.
Continued investment in Business Coaching. Our growth as leaders directly corresponds to the company's ability to grow and deliver for clients.
Implemented first phase of a Business Operating System. This has proved invaluable in maintaining a cohesive, focused, and highly effective work environment.
Established a director-level team that leads the lion's share of our day-to-day operations. This freed Stephen for consulting engagements, which has been a strategic unlock for two key reasons: 1) the engagements provide deeper insight into grower needs, directly informing our product roadmap, and 2) they enable right-fit sales.

Traditional software sales follow a sell-then-consult model, requiring extensive technical and process consulting during implementation. We're flipping this approach by consulting first to ensure perfect alignment before the sale. The goal: better client matches and dramatically reduced onboarding time. If you're interested in consulting services, reach out to stephen@silverfern.com.

Looking Ahead

As we move through 2025 and into 2026, our focus remains on building tools that help growers flourish. Our key initiatives include:

Continue, outsize investment in product development. Product remains our biggest area of investment - and we expect that to be true for years, maybe decades, to come. This year, we’ll see many large product enhancements, a formalization of our AI roadmap, and perhaps a new product or two, all aimed at making life easier, simpler, and better for growers.
Migrate to FULFILL™. We’ll continue working with interested growers to migrate to FULFILL™, our modern order and fulfillment platform. The goal is a smoother, more intuitive, and scalable experience across devices. We’ve been selective with the first few migrations to make sure they’re successful and impactful but hope to expand this effort soon.
Clarify our brand. With the help of world-class creatives like Filip Matous, we aim to decide how we show up in the market. That could mean a rebrand or choosing one of our existing brands to lead. Either way, the goal is clarity for growers.
Reimagine Client Success. We’re exploring new support platforms to drive faster response times, enable real-time chat, and provide more self-service options. We want every grower to feel supported and confident using our tools - and we want better insight into how we’re doing.
Establish better feedback loops. We’re rolling out more structured ways to listen - NPS, product usage insights, and regular check-ins. The more we hear from you, the better we get.
Build sales and marketing functions. After nearly five years of massive investment, our products are feature-rich, stable, and getting predictable improvements. We're dipping our toe back into sales & marketing with initial investments focused on systems. We hope to make the purchase of software a delightful and effective experience - no b.s. and no buyer's remorse.
Implement Phase two of our Business Operating System. Our goal is to self-implement all aspects of Scaling Up, then hire a coach to review and improve our implementation. This is critical for keeping us aligned and focused as a team and for improving our client support and feedback functions.

Market Trends & A Call to Collaboration

Over the past year, we've engaged more with our competitors than in the previous four years combined. We're all working toward the same goal: building technology that helps the horticulture industry flourish.

Across the market, we're seeing consistent trends: growing interest in analytics, widespread demand for better inventory control tools, increasing operational improvements driven by software, a second wave of retailer demand for online pickup and delivery visibility with improved data management, and an urgent need for mobile-friendly, scalable grower tools.

We're committed to continuing these industry conversations and welcome dialogue across the horticulture technology landscape.

Closing Thoughts

Building a healthy business is still hard, but we are filled with gratitude when we consider the industry we get to participate in, the incredible A+ team we work with, and the growth we've each experienced personally because of Silver Fern...now Silver Fern & Advanced Grower Solutions.

Thank you for being part of our journey.

Sincerely,

Adam, Kevin, Stephen, & John