That's a moonshot. I am a native Nairobian, and would like to know how you will revolutionize the sector. Biggest employer, biggest component of GDP but still extremely low yields, low income and inefficient with lack of adaption of tech.
Agricultural Inputs Procurement, Distribution, and Financing + Uber-style remotely managed field agents + ML Credit Ratings + off taking/market access
Basically, we start from "What is the best/highest ROI product we could sell a farmer" and then work backwards to make the rest of the business happen. It's required a ton of infrastructure and ground game, things that people in the developed world take for granted are huge problems here.
It seems to me that if you want to do this right, you ought ot be thinking about how you can bootstrap the infrastructure and industry to produce the neccesary products and agricultural inputs locally.
Also, can you make it sustainable. AFAIK, industrial farming is destroying soil quality in nations that use it, and some farmers are looking at returning back to techniques like crop rotation...
The good news is our farmers are way too poor to put too much fertilizer/inputs into their fields, they're generally applying fertilizer with a spoon seed by seed.
To be honest, we're not going to tell farmers that they should pay 4x more to produce their inputs locally. These are some of the poorest people in the world, telling them they should continue to have a hunger season every year because of long term concerns about soil quality isn't in me. If you want someone to help lobby for a nitrogen tax in the developed world though, I'm your guy :) .
Do you by any chance think you can make it to Nairobi, Kenya in your outreach? I have applied as many times as I have been rejected but it would be fantastic if YC came closer. Visa Free for all Africans (and most other nations), fantastic weather, and I volunteer to get you a prime location for the interviews(or just meetup) at the oldest most established tech open space in Africa/Silicon Savanna.
Plus you can all adopt and name orphaned elephants :)
PHP. Laravel to be specific. It's easy to code, has large pool of devs and resources, can be easily set up for multitenant operations. Basically any language though will be feasible. It's not the language it's the product that matters.
Am imagining all compasses would suddenly flip, how would it affect our GPS systems built to work in AI environments? Is it possible that nothing will be much affected a la the millennium 2000 craze or will it be impactful?
China has enabled trading to be easier. I have a device, PlusX 5501, just patented across US and some African countries. Officially not launched. Chinese companies have over $800000 in sales for nearly the same device some with innovations not on the original device. As I work on the software front, my bet is that I will make my innovation on the software, potential name brand markup as well as support.
Rollercoaster of emotions. First email came in while I was at dinner with my super nosy girlfriend and I was dejected. Didn't even take my meal well.
Then acceptance email. Good thing I had a long list of things to achieve before I went public with rwjwction/acceptance. I am happy to be accepted.
For all those rejected, I have applied to YC 6 times since 2012 or 2013 I think. All rejects. One business was adapted by government (it wasn't going to be super profitable, but was really key to my government ops plus led to a scholarship at MIT). Two startups floundered but led me to my current startup(pivot after pivot supported by a somewhat sufficient consultancy).
All in all continue executing. That's what important.
Even if hey left, with 200 member countries it wouldnt amount to much of anything. UEFA(Europe's Governing Body) may oppose Blatter, but this guy is a better politician than most politician and the fact that Football is next to religion means he can afford to be as opaque as he can get away with, because how the federations are structured from the grassroots allow for very little oversight.
If a major football country like Germany or Spain left FIFA the FIFA World Cup would lose one of its strongest competitors and it wouldn't be a World Cup- FIFA would fall apart like a house of cards. Blatter would have to step down because of popular pressure on him (my humble opinion). The chance of a national association 'seceding' from FIFA is very, very unlikely though. I agree with your assesment of Blatter's shrewdness.
Spain is strong as a Club League, not so much as a National Team. Germany is important to the World Cup, but it's not enough... Remember that in every World Cup, some "important" countries are left out in the Qualifiers.
To really hit the tournament, you would need the support from several historical and relevant members in each Association. As an example:
USA, Mexico in Concacaf; Argentina and Brasil in Conmebol; Italy, Germany, France and England, Spain (mainly for their leagues) in UEFA.
Let's say Germany 'secedes' from FIFA. I know for a fact that if Holland (I'm Dutch, but same thing goes for England) were to win the next World Cup in the absence of Germany, it wouldn't be taken seriously. I'd say most Dutch football fans would rather not win it at all in the absence of Germany. If they didn't qualify, well that's a whole different story, then they obviously weren't good enough to start with.
