Oct 3, 2017

Posted Boxee co-founder Idan Cohen’s most recent stint may have been in the smart TV space — but now he wants to build a box that’ll help you grow some lettuce outside your home. That might seem weird, but after many dinners spent feeding guests with vegetables grown from his roof, he and his team are now launching a smart planter called GROW . Initially starting as a hobby to grow vegetables he couldn’t find in the United States, Cohen’s rooftop garden has now morphed into a startup that’s raised $2.4 million in a financing round led by Resolute Venture. It starts at $249, with a pre-sale of $199 starting first. The company then hopes to have an accompanying recurring model where you get seeds and such over time, giving it a continuous business for everyone that ends up buying a planter. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but being an engineer this made me think there’s a better way to do it,” Cohen said. “There’s no reason I need to do conflations in my head when we can sense when I should plant my tomatoes. It made me think we could develop a vertically integrated solution, a smart planter that has some sensors and auto irrigation — which can make it hard for people to figure out whether you’re watering too much or too little — and give them advice using all these sensors.” GROW, at its heart, is a planter. You buy it, put soil in it, lay down some seeds, and in theory harvest some greens from it eventually. But like many other techy approaches to traditional hobbies led by founders who build techy approaches to traditional hobbies, the GROW planter is designed to help you handle any speedbumps (or inexperience) to ensure that your gardening process still ends up with something that ends up on your plate. GROW sends over seeds, soil, and nutrients, and tracks everything to ensure the environment stays healthy. This then feeds into your phone, which gets a microclimate profile and the best advice for how to manage your plants and ensure they end up with something you can actually eat. Each plant has a kit, and the hope is that the company can figure out which vegetables are most likely to be successful in your climate. Then, you get seeds or seedlings, as well as nutrients, through the life cycle of the plant and instructions as you go along. Here’s the kicker, though: the barrier to entry for something like this is going to be pretty high, and not because of the price. GROW requires a water source for its irrigation, which means if that’s not handy this won’t be something for you just yet. All this means that GROW is, at least initially, going to be a niche product for those with an itch for gardening and the resources to build a more robust garden otherwise. While Cohen may have worked with this idea from a rooftop to begin, the whole concept is to reduce the initial effort required to tap into that latent green thumb — but that means starting with the most accessible audience first. Related Articles