🚰 Hiding by the water cooler

✨ North Star: Is it possible to use the 50 Central Parks worth of unused space in New York City to help folks feel connected to nature in their daily lives?

Vision: Miniature farms across rooftops, lush balconies, street-long vegetable gardens, and people feeling just a bit more light, easy, and playful.

In the past few weeks, my focus has shifted from exploring potential offerings to closing deals. Now that I’m confident that there’s demand for feeling connected to nature (e.g. people are willing to pay a recurring monthly fee to be a part of a tiny garden club) — I want to prove that I can repeatedly win business, create community around re-wilding a space, and rinse/repeat.

In the short term, my strategy has been to focus on multifamily apartments (over DTC) because:

• There is usually some unused private space within the apartment building (e.g. a rooftop or terrace). For DTC, it’s a bit more guerilla (find yourself a space to garden) which makes logistics tougher

• The community is hyperlocal by default

• Buildings get secondary benefits that make the offering more valuable: stronger community in building leads to increased retention/lease renewal rates

A few months ago, it was pretty difficult to even get a meeting. I tried cold calls and cold emails but despite my otherworldly charm and definitely-not-lame jokes, no one wanted to chat.

That changed when this kind person replied to a LinkedIn DM — broadcasting for any potential competitors in this space (honestly, New York, and every city, needs more 🌱🤝):

It was a super helpful suggestion. Since that message, I changed course completely — focusing on getting in front of people face to face at BOMA and BISNOW. It’s worked a lot better (led to the first building deal and many more leads). Also, I’ve learned:

• People still use business cards. I walked into a BISNOW event trying to do the iPhone tippety-tap (“NameDrop”) and people were very confused

• Sometimes its hard to introduce yourself — especially if someone is already talking to someone they know (which it feels like they are 95% time). After spending 30 minutes awkwardly standing near folks just waiting for them to finish conversations, I posted up at the water cooler and had much better luck. Everyone I wanted to talk to came by to get a drink at some point or the other — and I got to chow down in the interim.
  

  

  The croissants slapped

Up next:

• More networking events / building deals

• Continuing to level-up operations — starting to recognize common patterns/questions

Mayank