Delayed Seeds (😭)

Hi!

Have encountered a bit of a road bump shipping seeds and wanted to fill you in!

Yesterday I came back home to find a huge box of returned envelopes from my last batch shipment of seeds (~500 packets).

According to the post office worker who processed these, these envelopes are not “machine-able” because they are not flat. They apparently require more postage — $4.95 per packet to be exact — bringing the shipping cost up to ~$2,475 for this batch alone.

This is the first time this has happened — the previous 1,000 packets were accepted at the 73 cent fare and sent by the same office — so it was definitely a gut punch.

What does this mean: If you received your welcome email (“It begins!”) on or after March 17th, your seed shipment is delayed.

What am I going to do: Somehow or the other, I will get you those seeds. I need the week to step back and assess the best options for proceeding, but you will get them and I’ll keep you posted.

For transparency, these past few weeks I’ve been working a lot in the business — e.g. packing and shipping seeds — without taking time to actually work on the business — e.g. thinking through the business model and how to continue to fund this goal of rewilding NYC.

I am stoked by the people in this community and the early traction — we’ve gotten nearly 1,500 tree beds claimed — but now I want to come up with a better thesis on how to finance this momentum (other than my savings 😅)—

It could be through any of:

• Converting to a non-profit / co-op / collective — applying for grants, crowdfunding, and accepting donations

• Raising outside capital

• Coming up with an offering that delivers value for which people are happy to pay

As I’ve expressed previously, my first instinct is to go with option three.

Option one sounds enticing. Non-profits and collectives are amazing — the people who work in the city’s non-profits are some of the best people I’ve met — but I’m just a little unsure if the model can generate the velocity of change that we want to produce for the city.

Option two — raising capital from the right investor — could be ok, but I don’t want to lose trust with this community and that feels like a sure-fire way to do that.

And so I’ve settled on option three. I’d like to come up with an offering that you are truly happy to pay for — something that definitively makes your life better — and use it to continue to fund free seeds and this mission of rewilding our city.

Maybe it’s opening a native nursery. Maybe it’s doing experiences and classes. Maybe it’s just selling seeds and plants. I’m not sure, but I’m going to continue operating in the open as I figure it out.

The dream is still the same. To rewild NYC’s unused spaces together so that it’s easy for us all to feel close to nature in the city.

Going to take the next few days to think through the options ahead. Be right back.

Till next week,
Mayank