ANNUAL LETTER

2021

Getting Started

This is the first of what we hope will be a long-running Annual Silver Fern Letter.

Starting

We started Silver Fern a year ago to bring modern, grower-friendly software to greenhouses. In doing so, we combined two passions: 1) the greenhouse industry and 2) technology.

In the greenhouse industry, we work with people we trust. Ninety percent of our deals are handshakes; we rarely sign contracts. And when we do, the deal is complex, necessitating clarification. As we grow, our need for contracts may as well – for now, we prefer simple deals and handshakes with people we trust. We like technology because it demands constant innovation and humbles us daily. It is a bit like trying to keep a clean diaper on a newborn…nearly impossible; but if you don’t try, you end up with an even bigger mess. Two of us had newborns this year, so we are well acquainted with messes!

Learning

To continue the baby analogy; in year one, we warned many of you we would be a baby company – hiccups, crying, and even a blowout or two could be expected. Unsurprisingly, we had several such occurrences. RESTOCK™, one of our flagship products, required updates during early spring. We did not anticipate how much some of you would stretch the flexibility of our products! A few frustrated emails and late nights later, we have a faster program with even more flexibility.

We also made a bad early hire by moving too fast. Big mistake. Very expensive.

We hire at a snail’s pace now. In shorter races, this means the hares sometimes beat us, but we are running an ultra-marathon, and working with the right people suits us better than going fast.

Hiring

Speaking of the right people, we are thrilled with our current team of nine and looking for more.

We look first for people who fit our culture and values. Skills matter as well, but they are secondary.

Relationships | Listen, empathize, engage - people come first.

Innovation | Look at the problem from a different angle.

Humility | Defer praise and build up your team.

To help us with hiring, we co-opted Permanent Equity’s playbook and added a Silver Fern “Orbit”.  If you know any developers or account manager types interested in a flexible, fast-paced, autonomous company, we would love to have them in our Orbit.

2020/2021 Summary

Much of our summer/fall 2020 was spent traveling, so by November we felt like we were working from behind. Since then, however, we made significant progress.

Our Past Year

  • Onboarded our first 9 customers.
  • Hired 6 exceptional individuals.
  • Wrote more than 400,000 lines of code.
  • Traveled over 50,000 miles collectively.
  • Moved from coffee shops and home offices to a permanent office at 348 E. Main St. in Lexington, KY.
  • Went live with version 1.0 of our website.

Plans for the Coming Year

  1. Execute on commitments to existing customers.

  2. Improve our onboarding experience.

    1. Better training.
    2. More documentation. 150+ videos and newly written documentation.
    3. New data migration and importing features.
    4. And more.
  3. Develop a strategy around data cleanup and integrity for customers. This is currently unstandardized and time-consuming.
  4. Add features to existing products, especially PRODUCE™.
  5. Complete rebuild of FORECAST™.
  6. Finish FULFILL™ and ANALYZE™ MVP development.
  7. Scale our CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous deployment) practices to efficiently release new features and updates.
  8. Hire 2 - 3 developers, 1 - 2 client partners, and 1 software technician.

Personal Note

On a personal note, we feel undeservedly blessed to have the customers (and team) we do. We won’t attempt to say it better than Brent Beshore, of Permanent Equity:

Someone once joked to me, “Business would be great without the people, especially the employees and customers.” While cynically funny and too often relatable, people are neither the means to success, nor the obstacles. Employees aren’t automatons to be directed, or cogs to be wheeled. Customers aren’t money piñatas to be beaten, then discarded when convenient.

Employees and customers, as well as vendors and communities, are people and people were created in the image of God. All of them, especially the difficult ones like you and me, are wonderfully made. We’re also hot messes of self-obsession, self-righteousness, and self-interest. And while daily life is largely mundane, it’s the people that make it spicy, sweet, and savory. People are the ends, not the means.

When put in proper context, people, including all their flaws and shortcomings, become the best of business. The kind and generous ones offer a glimpse of what was intended, while the more difficult ones provide an opportunity for love and forgiveness, and a reminder of how much we’ve been forgiven. A life of kindness and understanding solely towards those who agree and flatter inevitably results in the shallow emptiness of self-preservation. We’re meant to be poured out, not stuffed full.

Cheers,

Silver Fern

P.S. Cultivate

Visit us at Cultivate this year, next to Uncle Rich of Van Wingerden Greenhouse Company!