Seed funding

At launch, we will have a "seed funding" round where our community can help us raise the capital to grow and improve the site. The name "seed funding" comes from the venture capital world, where it indicates a first round of investment in a new startup; we're using it for Growstuff because "seed", ha ha, get it? But basically that's what it is, with our community as investors instead of some rich dude.

Who do we expect to take part in this?
We see our potential "seed investors" as fitting into an overlapping Venn diagram that has the following three areas:


 * People who are really excited about Growstuff and want to use the heck out of it.
 * People who want to support environmental sustainability, community gardening, and the like.
 * People who want to support our development practices, especially our commitment to Inclusivity, mentoring/training, etc.

Our seed funding levels are intended to appeal to all these three groups.

Levels/rewards
Here are the levels, and their "rewards" (to use Kickstarter terminology). Each reward level includes everything in the reward levels below it.


 * $150
 * A "seed account" on the site. It's like a paid account (see: Account types) but it never expires, and you'll be noted as a seed account holder on your profile page.


 * $200 (this will be the default)
 * All the above, plus your choice of really nice, environmentally friendly schwag item: we'll offer organic cotton Ts, canvas tote bags, and aluminium water bottles. We'll get a really gorgeous design done by a real artist, and it'll be something you want to wear/carry/be seen with.  Tshirts will definitely come in a wide range of fits/sizes/colours to suit, if not everyone, then most people.  Plus there will be other options for the non-tshirt-lovers.


 * $350
 * All the above, plus you will fund a community garden account (i.e. a free, non-expiring paid account -- see Account types) for an eligible community garden, "give one get one" style.


 * $500 and above
 * All the above, plus 20% of what you pay us will go into a fund to support our volunteer developers, many of whom come from non-traditional tech backgrounds or are learning software development through us. We will use the funds to buy them books and other resources, send them to conferences, etc.

All prices are in Australian dollars, which are roughly on parity with the USD.

Seed account cap
We will cap "seed accounts" at 500 total.

Anyone who holds a permanent account is someone who will never pay us a yearly renewal. This means that seed account holders, while giving us initial capital for early growth, cannibalise our ongoing revenue stream. That wouldn't be sustainable.

Therefore, we'll cap the seed accounts available at launch, and be very careful about releasing any more in future.

(This issue also applies, albeit somewhat differently, to community garden accounts.)

What will the seed funding go towards?
Primarily: making Growstuff great and supporting the community.

We want to make sure our site is fast, responsive, and stable which means paying more than your average hosting plan. Having a decent amount of capital in the bank soon after we launch means we can be confident about keeping things running smoothly for a good long while.

We want to make Growstuff gorgeous and a delight to use, which means contracting out certain parts of our work to skilled graphic and user interface designers.

We want to support our volunteers (those who help us build the site and those who help support it once it's launched), which means showing some appreciation for their labour. For instance, we want to help our developers get to tech conferences they might not otherwise be able to afford.

The founders are living on ramen (ahem, actually, a government grant for small business), and won't be paid a salary at least at first. So rest assured, this seed funding isn't going straight into our pockets.