After a long, cold winter, it seems that suddenly it’s Spring when, as ee cummings wrote, “the world is puddle-wonderful,” although considering all the rain we had here on the East Coast last week, negotiating the puddles at every street corner was not so wonderful, unless you were wearing waders.

And there’s more on the way. Isn’t rain supposed to be an April thing?

But as those of us who’ve been circling the sun for a few years now well know, the sunshine always does return and once again, all is right with the world and as we also know, into every life a little rain must fall and that’s what helps to turn the grass green and what founder or investor doesn’t want to suddenly find an abundance of green in his or her life?

Mother Nature is above all else a great mentor and every startup needs that, and there are lessons here for founders, so pay attention.

During the lockdowns, many people decided to abandon their apartments and move to or at least acquire a second home in the countryside so that they wouldn’t have to live 24/7 in a shoebox and in many cases, in NYC, that shoe box is often children’s shoe-sized. To give you some insight into the mindset of hard-core NYC urbanites, having a place in the country is tantamount to having dual citizenship.

In the Hamptons, the summer-only residents are referred to by the locals as ‘citiots,’ a term we will borrow for convenience and no slight intended. For the most part.

Now that a few years have gone by and the cidiots have spent some time in the countryside, many of them are starting to plant vegetable gardens. Nothing to it, right? As former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “’you put a seed in, you put dirt on top,’ coming under fire for dig at farming suggesting it’s easy, takes less ‘gray matter’ and that anyone could do it,” the Daily Mail reported.

We had a few consecutive days of summer-like temperatures in March, so many a citiot headed to their country homes to put their seeds in the ground, put dirt on top and get their gardens started, or to transplant seedling they had started indoors. Winter returned the following week, and as all founders know, never release your MVP before it’s viable at the risk of losing potential customers or investors before you’ve even had a chance to officially launch. Histoire, like those seedlings in the hands of inexperienced would-be gardeners. Any experienced gardener in the mid-Atlantic states knows that you never even think about planting before Memorial Day weekend, except for cold weather crops like radishes and peas and the like, which need those cold days and nights. Know your product or in this case, produce.

Speaking of planting no seedling before its time, there are those plants that like a bit of cold. Not freezing, mind you, but colder, such as the brassica family of vegetables: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, and kale and the like. Now, if your home is in the woods, you do have to protect your garden from woodland creatures, all of whom, it seems, live to eat, and preferably, it seems, the goodies in your garden: deer, woodchucks, gophers, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks – even those wonderful little birds chirping outside your window in the mornings, heralding in a new day.

But if you believe you can simply turn over some soil, add a bit of nutrients/compost, throw a few seeds or plants in the ground and just wait for a robust harvest, well, that’s like starting a newco without building cybersecurity into it at all. Oh, wait, right, one of those basics things that most founders don’t at all consider, despite the number of breaches we’ve seen regularly over the years, where literally billions of people have had their information stolen. The 23andMe breach ring a bell? Or the any number of Facebook/Meta hacks we’ve witnessed over the years? It’s like planting a garden in the woods and not protecting it with deer fencing, chicken wire to keep out the squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks and such, and leaving the top totally exposed as you plant your seeds, not considering that birds like seeds. And they’ll find them and again, your would-be robust harvest is histoire. Bird netting. Without it, it’s like leaving a back door for hackers and your garden will literally go to the birds.

As with any startup, there are those factors that you hadn’t considered and might not be aware of until they show up, which is why investors put so much emphasis on the team re resilience. Because at some point that unknown will show up and how will the team handle it? So it goes with gardening.

As we mentioned, we had constant rain here in the Northeast for nearly a week. It’s May. Many gardeners had already started planting their brassica. Who doesn’t love brassicas, and that includes slugs, aka snails, who live in garden soil and proliferate ad nauseam after constant rains. Slugs love rain and moisture and morning dew, so while there might suddenly be legions of them after constant rainstorms, they’re there literally all season, like it or not and none of the defense mechanisms you’ve instituted so far will protect against those little buggers.

We had underestimated the amount of rain that would fall and our rows of brassica, which had been thriving before the deluge, were gone in a day, devoured by the slugs. Of course we had surrounded them with crushed eggshells, creating a slug barrier, but the rain quickly washed the eggshells away. We did replant, this time again surrounding them with the eggshells, as well as placing slug traps among the plants. Think nature’s version of two-factor authentication and never hurts to at least make it an option.

One of our readers has an AI company that generates a startup idea once you’ve entered a general idea or vertical that you’re considering. The AI will automatically generate the company construct for you, business plan included. Easy-peasy or in the words of Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises), isn’t it pretty to think so.

Former NYC mayor Bloomberg was wrong about farming/gardening, and that any idiot or cidiot could do it. It’s not as easy as it looks and the same can be said about starting a company: if it were that easy, everyone would do it – or would at least be having successful exits and as we know, most startups fail.

Whether you’re preparing to start a company or a vegetable garden, a few things to keep in mind: It’s not as easy as it looks, there is always a learning curve, it’s not all sunshine and roses and above all else, be prepared to get your hands dirty. Onward and forward.

Special note: it’s tick season, and the tiny black deer tick carry Lyme disease. If you’re spending a lot of time outdoors, remember to take precautions and note to self: we have a friend who got Lyme disease in Central Park in NYC.