YardSprout is excited to attend today’s Sustainable Business and Social Impact conference at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, where much of the focus is on innovative social business models. We’re looking forward to hearing Jill Dumain, the Director of Environmental Strategy at Patagonia, speak, and will check out this morning’s workshop “How new financial vehicles are disrupting the landscape of social entrepreneurship“, of particular relevance to the emerging local food economy.

We’re also excited to recruit for our Spring Fellowship and Summer Internship positions, and hope to meet candidates who share our passion and can help us advance YardSprout’s mission and vision.

YardSprout is building a national network and web platform, beginning with yardsprout.com, to grow the future’s food economy.  Our services help homeowners, property managers, businesses and other land holders find expert gardeners, landscapers and farmers to expand food cultivation and pursue other sustainable uses of their land.   We are a new, social venture based in the triangle, founded in June 2011.  We help people Learn, Plant, and Grow.

We’re Seeking Spring and Fall Fellows and Summer Interns who:

• Love the rapid, creative, iterative culture of a start-up 
• Aspire to make a big impact
• Have great business, organizing, or marketing skills 
• Have a true passion for local food systems and sustainable land use

YardSprout Internships & Fellowships

To Apply, Submit Resume & Cover Letter by 3/1 for Spring or Summer Roles to: Careers@YardSprout.com

Take the Survey Here!  (Link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22D7ZR4BBL3 )

The survey offers a number of great incentives:

• Win $50 to spend at a garden supply store of their choice
• A Free, 1 year,  $200 value online profile on YardSprout.com
• YardSprout’s “Growing your Business: A Guide for Outdoor Professionals”
• A Free 30 minutes business Phone Consultation on financial planning, website optimization, or social media marketing.

Feel free to share this survey with anyone you know working in this sector!

Cheers,
the YardSprout Team

Best,

The YardSprout Team

YardSprout Wins Carolina Challenge Pitch Party

Three additional YardSprout team members, Andrew Pearson, Stuart Jeckel and Kim Herold, worked the room of the venue, Top of the Hill restaurant and brewery, to share our concept with over 50 judges representing a wide variety of investor, entrepreneur, and professional backgrounds.

Judges had the opportunity to listen to each of 48 teams’ 3 minute pitches backed up by powerpoint slides at one of three stations – and this chaotic pitch frenzy went off like a battle-of-the-bands meets business-plan-competition.  Not only was it a fantastic process, well-organized and well-attended, but for YardSprout, it marked an evolution in our business model as we have further defined our vision since winning the Triangle Start-up Weekend competition 6 months ago which marks our birth.

We’d love to hear some feedback for you in our poll below as we pursue our launch strategy and fundraising process:

[polldaddy poll=5723598]

We thank all of the organizer, sponsors, judges, and participants who made this such a great event.  Congratulations to all of the competitors, and a special shout out to the other finalists: Chalk and Stone, Clave Biodesign, Directed Deposits, and Sanitation Creations. We greatly appreciated the wisdom and offers of future support.  Some of our favorite questions, feedback, and words of wisdom:

• “Make your site sticky”
• “How can you apply national scale to climate-zone specific content and service offerings”
• “YardSprout can help people untap enormous value from their land in a sustainable, profitable way”

The Pitch Party was sponsored by a number of local groups powering entrepreneurial evolution, including Pruvop, UNC’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and Alston + Bird.  Judges came from firms like Southern Capitol Ventures, NC IDEA Fund, Windsor Circle, Statsheet, and Southern Energy Management.

We’re already putting our hard-fought cash to work, upgrading our current blog into our second prototype, purchasing a balsamiq account (our favorite wire-framing tool), and buying another monitor for our new office space at the Carolina Entrepreneur’s Exchange so more of our team can work with healthy ergomics!

We’re also excited to add new members to our growing, passionate, and talented team with our Spring Fellowship and Summer Internship programs, and are beginning the process of building an Advisory Council.

YardSprout will be one of dozens of sustainability-minded companies exhibiting on Friday. We unveil our 2012 Fellowship and Internship program, and hope to meet enthusiastic, talented, and committed MBA students and other candidates this weekend. We’re also looking forward to fantastic speakers, workshops and other events including “Biomimicry Infused Businesses”, “Farm to Table: Sustainability in the Milk Industry’s Supply Chain”, and “Building People & Planet: Lessons in Green Neighborhood Development”.

Fellowships

The YardSprout Fellowship is a 4 month program starting in mid-January 2012 to give students a real life experience with an active, growing start-up social venture, while helping YardSprout expand its knowledge base, product development, and national network. 10 hour/week Fellowships are unpaid, while 20 hr/wk Fellowships include a stipend. The program is virtual and different Fellowship tracks are available to both MBAs, graduate students, and undergraduate juniors and seniors. Fellows focus on key projects in collaboration with other team members, including:

1. Business plan and investor pitch: Assist with research, preparation, planning and presentation of our business plan.

2. Market research on edible landscaping, urban farming, small/medium farms, green-scaping, and sustainable, outdoor land use.

3. Product development through research, surveys, interviews and innovation sessions.

4. Partnership development with local and national businesses.

5. Brand development, marketing & PR campaigns, and social media strategies.

Interships

YardSprout offers both semester long and summer internships. Our semester program is open to students and graduates in the Triangle of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill).

YardSprout’s summer internship program is hosted in Chapel Hill and Durham, NC. Internships will include a living stipend and free or deeply discounted housing for out-of-state interns.

• We are seeking 2 MBA interns focusing on business development for YardSprout’s national website, yardsprout.com, which will help connect food growing and other sustainable land use experts to homeowners, property managers, and other land holders to expand local food production and sustainable urban land use practices. Open to any MBA candidate already authorized to work in the U.S.

• A third MBA summer intern position is available to help us pioneer our second web platform, FarmSprout.com, which will serve small and medium size farmers with technology and other products and services to grow the food economy of the future. Open to any MBA candidate already authorized to work in the U.S.

• We will also offer 5 undergraduate semester & summer internships focusing on marketing, graphic design, web design, finance, and sustainable agriculture research. Open to any junior or senior undergraduate or recent graduate living in the Triangle and already authorized to work in the U.S.

Sprouting at Net Impact

YardSprout’s early roots included insights drawn from prior Net Impact conferences. In 2011, Andrew participated in many of the conference’s sustainable agriculture sessions and workshops while in Ann Arbor, took a bus tour of urban farms in Detroit, and met with a number of urban farmers and edible landscapers after the conference. And while Detroit is one of the nation’s leaders in transitioning urban land from vacant lots, city parks or foreclosed properties to food cultivating gardens and mini-farms, Portland has its own legacy and momentum behind urban farming and local food economics.

Net Impact Roots

While getting his MBA at Kenan-Flagler business School in 2009, the seeds of the YardSprout / FarmSprout concept emerged from Andrew’s involvement in Net Impact, and a paper he wrote on greening the residential rental property market. Andrew’s background as a co-founder and manager of an earlier start-up, HomeTownRent.com, gave him the experience of building a successful internet platform, and the passion for changing the property market. His earlier background as national coordinator for the Student Environmental Action Coalition in the late 90s roots his leadership in a collaborative style of organizing which aims to balance ecological integrity, human need, and economic sustainability.

Net Impact is an international organization originally formed by business school students seeking a forum to discuss business and sustainability, and is now a key network and driving force behind sustainability in business.

Folks at the Pepper Festival Working on the Quiz

The YardSprout team talked to many of the over 500 attendees of the 2011 Pittsboro Pepper Festival.  Over 50 people took our quiz and survey for a chance to win one of 3 locally-sourced Bounty Baskets. Here are the answers to our Pepper Festival Quiz!

Congratulations to Sue Wilson of Pittsboro, winner of our first prize Bounty Basket! Our second and third place winners were Heather Fuller and Chip Kiright. Runner-up prizes went to Meredith Leight and Zoe Willard.

The baskets were filled with all sorts of local goodies, donated generously from local businesses and the Chatham and Carrboro Farmers’ Markets. We’d like to thank the following farms and businesses:

• Abi of Abilicious Bakery
• Hannah of Anole Nook Farm
• Beth of Beth’s Farm
• Mark of Big Spoon Roasters
• Cackalacky Hot Sauce
• Joann of Castlemaine Farm
• Rob of Chicken Bridge Bakery
• John of Eco Farm
• Elise of Elysian Fields Farm
• Emily of Fiddlehead Farm
• Patricia of George Jones Plant Farm
• Pam of Grandma’s Garden Farm
• Meredith of Granite Springs Farm
• Mark of Lyon Farms
• Karen of McAdams Farm
• Bobby of Okfuskee Farm
• Alfred of Sweetwater Pecan Orchard
• Ginna of Vespertine

In response to the survey portion of our quiz, we learned that over 50% of the 63 respondents currently grow vegetables, about 15% raise livestock, and 43% claim food-producing skills of some kind.  35% are ready to get growing, and of those nearly a third were interested in expert consultations.

Our quiz included some fun and challenging questions. For example, did you know that approximately 350 pounds of peppers were used in the Pepper Festival this year? Or that capsaicin, the heat-producing chemical in peppers, is found where the seeds attach to the placenta of the pepper, and not in the seeds themselves?

Raised Bed Veggie Garden Puzzle

One of our favorite questions, which received many creative answers, relates to planning a raised bed garden.  Participants were asked to write in the diagram below the optimal place to plant each of 6 vegetables:  kale, tomato, carrot, squash, cabbage, and green peppers.  Note: the garden is just to the north of a residential home (in the USA), so the south side of the garden actually gets a little less sun than the north.  Where do you think each veggie should be planted?