500 growers on Truleaf.org.
Three months ago we were at 300. We hadn't run any ads. No paid campaigns, no influencer deals, no launch on Product Hunt. Every new grower came from another grower sharing a link.
That kind of growth tells you something. People share tools that are actually useful.
What brought people in
We looked at the data. The most visited pages were nutrient-by-growth-stage profiles. Tomatoes, peppers, basil, lettuce. Growers searching for specific information and finding structured answers instead of blog posts full of filler.
The second most common entry point was the hydroponic nutrient calculator. Growers building their own nutrient solutions wanted a tool that did the maths for them, not a generic table.
What we heard
The feedback from those first 500 growers shaped the platform more than anything we planned internally. A few themes kept coming up:
"Add more plants." The original database had around 50 species. Growers wanted their specific varieties. We heard requests for everything from moringa to lemon balm to Carolina Reapers. We started a pipeline to systematically add plants with full research-backed profiles.
"I need this in my language." Growers in Brazil, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France asked for translations. Growing is global, and so is the need for reliable data. This pushed us to start working on multi-language support.
"Where does this data come from?" This one made us proud. Growers wanted to see the sources behind the numbers. That's exactly why we built Truleaf.org the way we did. Every data point traces back to its origin.
What we learned
Building for growers is different from building for most software users. Growers are practical. They don't want features for the sake of features. They want answers to specific questions at specific moments. "What's the right EC for my lettuce in week 3?" That's the product.
We also learned that trust matters more than polish. A beautiful interface with unsourced data is worse than a plain page with cited research. Our growers taught us that.
What's next
500 is a small number. We know that. But it's 500 people who found Truleaf.org on their own, used it, and told someone else about it. That's a foundation worth building on.
Over the next few months, we're expanding the plant database significantly and launching the platform in multiple languages. The growers asked. We're building.
Thank you for being part of this.