I’m aware each barn is not going to go out and get a custom built solution, but my ballpark for that build would definitely be higher than 30k, unless developers are considerably cheaper in your area (or, I guess, outsource to India). Again, they only built out one of the suggested modules.
The indoor example was probably too much hyperbole, guess I didn’t explain myself too well there. Oopsies.
You building a personal-use app in your spare time that does not need mass-market appeal nor extensive user testing (with a notoriously non-tech crowd) is not the same as someone pitching a new consumer facing product to build from the ground up. I’m assuming you have some sort of hourly rate, even though you didn’t charge yourself to build your app, and I’m betting that landed in the 5 figures, and would likely require a fair amount of refinement (and testing) to go public.
But hell yeah, if I were you I’d throw in the rest of the work and see if it floats. Really have nothing to lose.
the only horse we had boarded was back in the 1990s, I got a credit card for her own that the trainer held to be used to pay for stuff he needed for her (horse was well taken care of, her groom I saw was bringing the mare apples and carrots as the groom really like the horse so I made sure the horse bought her groom lunch at least once a week in addition to sending her a monthly stipend- I made sure this was OK with the trainer before starting the stipend )
Having a credit card specific to the horse made life simpler for all, the card’s monthly statement made tracking of expenses fairly painless
All good. I don’t mind hyperbole, I just didn’t want people to feel like tech was out of reach for them if they DID have a barn and wanted to be better at business.
I wish I made 5 figures in 3 weeks of the hourly work I put in. It wasn’t 40 hours a week, it was maybe 10 hours over 3 weeks - that’d be a heck of an hourly rate. But yes - it would need refinement for sure. Heck - maybe I’m undercharging there too
The ERP system I built for construction project management took about a year. That IS why it was so easy for me to build the equine one - it’s the same stuff just different terms. (Ask me how many times I’ve written the same LMS for different people).
It’s sold now to customers for ~$79/mo. Has basically the same conceptual features but for a different industry. So even that was back in my days of making sub $100k as a dev. There was no QA - customers were our first QA, which is horrifying but that’s the way a lot of small early startups were built (I was not the CEO).
I’ve been writing a new one for business sales to keep my skills sharp and because I enjoy RoR dev. It’s a contract job. Almost ready for launch. They spent $5k on design and roughly $15k on development. It’s getting easier and easier to launch pretty decent looking stuff. It is NOT going to be like Facebook, but it will be like facebook when facebook was still a party app.
My interests have definitely moved on, which is why I was considering open sourcing it. I’d love to help other barn owners, even if I’m not interested in running with it anymore. Plus, if I’m not boarding, I’m not my best customer so I kind of just dropped it. I’ve got an innovation platform in the works to help my husband’s job which is a great side gig. Only so many side gigs one can take on
It is kind of rekindling my interest to have this convo though!
Ooh, now that’s an interesting idea. I need to noodle on that as well. Could you use credit card technology to help facilitate the process? I was thinking QR codes just because stickers are cheap, but that’s interesting!
ALL of our animals have microchips, we have a reader that can read the chips, we needed to chip the goats when they went to Hollywood for a TV show, we had to carry the reader with us for the animal inspectors to use incase their readers would not read the chips we used,
So I would think an interface between the reader and a data record could be used?
Did you inject your own? Do your horses have them too?
It’s definitely an interesting thought although people would likely balk at chipping their horses.
But to get REALLY futuristic, since this is fun to ideate on, what if you could have all of your horses records easily transferred from barn to barn on that chip? So if you do move, all of your crap - just on the chip. No more “where the heck did I put that coggins” or “what did he eat at the last place”?
Unless it’s able to be read by the new barn by scanning the chip.
There would have to be some careful deidentification of data (this is a very half baked idea) but - you could in essence transfer that data to anyone with a license.
Edited to add: it’d be in the cloud - not a physical db that people have to buy and transfer.
Jockey Club now upload coggins and the image transfers with the horse.
Having records tied to the microchip requires a dbase of that info. The microchip is just a number. And any future barns would have to buy into that same dbase, and have a reader to access that number, for it to be viable.
yes wife is a RN and was a vet tech before that, one daughter also is vet tech so they know how and were to inject a chip
The chips and reader were bought on-line. Reader cost under a hundred dollars. The chips are used to prove the animal on the paperwork is the correct animal for the papers. The chips if I remeber correctly were under $4 each
That’s the way they work now, yes. But there are chips now that carry significantly more info. It’s still in its infancy for sure - the injectables with more data.
I wonder if there is an API to that DB. You could use that for easier registration.
And yes - definitely not an easy sell - but in the ideation process it’s useful to explore everything!
Did that chip register it with a central DB? It’s been a long time since I’ve had goats and I never showed mine (mine were dairy only) so I didn’t get that deep.
So you expect people to not only use an additional microchip in addition to the registration chip, but for barn owners to purchase a reader and subscribe to whatever platform?
Wow. That’s a lot for boarders who are to stupid to understand the costs of caring for their horse, and barn owners who are too stupid to set a realistic business plan.
I’d love a link to these implantable chips that are storing this info. How is that info even added to the chip itself. If that exists (which I don’t think it does) there must be a power source on the chip, and a means to connect to it. Someone is providing updates, at an expense of time or dollars, or both.
This is better/cheaper than just verbally passing on info…how?
It’d still be on a physical server somewhere that someone’s paying for, and I assume that would be this theoretical “app” the BO is licensing. If your new barn is using the same app then yeah, easy move. If they’re not, then you’re going to have to get that data off those servers and… probably print it out lol. USEF and FEI aren’t going to go into storing coggins and what not. And if you do get a chip that can store all that info, it won’t be the same one those governing bodies use.
Anything else using an API to pull data from the original app (read: server) is probably a competitor app, so the originating app is not likely to share.
I didn’t expect anyone to do anything. In fact, I had the same initial reaction you did. But maybe you didn’t notice that?
And yes - if you go back to where this particular line of conversation started it was dreaming up high tech solutions. We weren’t being “prescriptive in any way”. It was a fun conversation! Such a weird interjection!
Maybe it could be in an easily readible format that could be read by other systems. That way if another competing company wanted to do it it would be possible.
I’m trying to think of similar formats but I’m running dry right now.
