This one might have been inspired by the author’s excitement for Pokopia 🤭 But just like how Ditto learns to cultivate its island by copying the other Pokemon’s abilities… I hope you are able to cultivate wealth and prosperity by copying our startup ideas
Overview:
Imagine pointing your phone at your tiny yard or balcony and literally dropping raised beds and planters into the space like Lego. It shows where the sun will travel in your exact spot through the seasons, tells you if your tomatoes will get enough light, auto‑spaces plants so you don’t crowd them, and gives you a harvest timeline so you know when you’ll actually be picking stuff. When you’re happy, it spits out a shopping list and build guide so you can go from idea to dirt-under-nails in one weekend.
The Trends:
Rising consumer interest in homegrown food and urban gardening — more households are growing food at home for freshness, cost savings, and health, boosting demand for planning tools that maximize small spaces. (1, 2)
Rapid growth in spatial computing/AR — forecasts project large market expansion and investment in AR/VR hardware and software, creating an opportunity for AR-first home- and garden-design apps. (3, 4)
Smart gardening and IoT adoption — sales and market reports show rising uptake of app-connected indoor and raised-bed gardening systems that automate watering, lighting, and monitoring. (5, 1)
Demand for small‑space and modular raised‑bed solutions — urbanization and smaller yards push homeowners toward raised beds, vertical gardens, and compact layouts that an AR planner can visualize and optimize. (2, 1)
Sustainability and local-food resilience as motivators — interest in local sourcing, food security, and reduced food miles keeps driving backyard and balcony food production, supporting tools that model sunlight, harvest timing, and yield. (5, 1)
Your Answer:
AR-first mobile tool that lets urban gardeners lay out and visualize raised beds, planters and plant placements in-place — measure, place bed templates, and preview exactly how a finished garden will look.
Solves space and confidence problems: optimizes small yards/balconies, enforces proper plant spacing and companion planting, and prevents wasted time/crops by simulating sun exposure and microclimates for your exact location and date.
MVP feature set: AR measurement + bed templates, drag-and-drop plant tiles with spacing rules, sun-path simulation (geo + date), automatic harvest timelines and watering reminders, soil volume & materials estimator, exportable shopping/build guide.
Customer value: visualize before you build, maximize yield per sqft, reduce rookie mistakes, get a tailored planting schedule, and receive an instant shopping list so projects move from idea to harvest quickly.
Monetization: freemium core with paid pro plants/varieties and micro-climate analytics, affiliate sales for soil/seed/bed kits, premium PDF plans or on-demand builder hookups, and recurring subscription for ongoing seasonal planning.
Go-to-market: target urban gardening creators and micro-influencers on TikTok/Instagram, partner with community gardens and indie nurseries, offer free AR templates for viral before/after reels, and bundle with local hardware/seed store promos.
Lean tech stack / rollout: ARKit + ARCore cross-platform app (React Native), sun-position engine (NOAA/astronomical libs) + geolocation, a compact plant DB by zone, offline mode and simple cloud sync — launch first with 20 common urban crops and 3 raised-bed templates.
Your Roadmap:
MVP concept: mobile AR app that lets users draw/position raised beds, place plant icons, and run a quick sunlight simulation for a day with basic harvest-time estimates.
No-code stack: build a wrapper app with Glide or Adalo + WebAR (8th Wall trial or Zappar WebAR) to overlay a 3D bed model; use simple touch UI to draw rectangle beds and snap plant icons.
Sunlight & timeline engine: implement a lightweight JS module that uses device location + date to calculate sun angle (existing sun-position libraries) and returns simple 'full sun/partial/shade' labels and estimated days-to-harvest per crop from a small JSON DB.
Launch & validate: target local urban gardening FB groups and Nextdoor — offer free session walkthroughs and collect 50 user tests to validate core features.
Iterate: add photo export of AR layout + shopping list for lumber/soil and affiliate links for local nurseries.