PlantSnap: Mobile app instantly identifies plants, flowers and trees

Eric Ralls

CEO

Eric is a serial entrepreneur. A psychology and international business graduate, he has honed his skills in the tech world since 1998, merging the latest innovations with his love for the planet.

At some point weve all asked the question what is that plant? The thought of having access to that knowledge on my mobile device is what piqued my interest in PlantSnap, but when I realized its enormous potential due to its global reach, the choice to invest became obvious. PlantSnap is filling a need in the marketplace not only for the casually curious, but also for educators, landscape designers, gardeners, and botanists around the world. The time is right, the technology is available, and in capable hands like Erics, this app is going to be a game-changer.

Dan Johnson

Angel Investor

The idea of being able to identify plants by just taking a picture of it is amazing! We will be able to spend more time assessing the ecological health and status of an area and less time trying to key out (identify) plants using field guides. This will be especially helpful with the identification of emergent non-native species. This app will certainly help us be much more effective in our efforts and our mission.

John Black

President, Native Plant Society of New Jersey

Investor Q&A

Expand all

What does your company do?

Just take a photo of the plant, and PlantSnap immediately tells you what it is, if you can eat it and more. We're the first mobile app to harness machine learning technology to recognize specific plant species—and the more you use it, the smarter the app becomes. As a result, we're also building the largest, most comprehensive plant database in the world. Already, we have over 103,000 plants in our library. That's enough to cover every plant species in the United States.

Where will your company be in 5 years?

We aim to be the go-to app for gardeners, landscape designers, teachers, students, foragers, and anyone who enjoys nature. With 103,000 plants already catalogued, we're well on our way to cover all of North America. From there, we'll expand our database and market reach to Europe and Asia. When we have all 250,000 plant species worldwide in our database, powered by our machine learning tech, we believe PlantSnap will become indispensable to scientists and hobbyists alike.

What is PlantSnap?

PlantSnap is a smartphone app that allows users to identify plants. You take a picture of a plant, a flower or a leaf, and the app uses an image recognition algorithm to tell you the name of the plant within a couple of seconds. It’s a simple concept, but one that is difficult to execute. That’s why is has never been done before.

Where did the idea for PlantSnap come from?

The idea came to me five years ago. I was at a friend’s backyard barbecue. I noticed a cool plant with amazing flowers, and so I asked the girl who owned the house what it was. She didn't know. I wanted the answer so I went to the Internet. I started thinking about how can you identify a plant? What do you do? What's the process? I got online and typed some words to describe the plant I’d seen, and that got me nowhere. That was my Eureka! moment. I thought there should be an app for this.At the time I owned the science technology website redOrbit. I went to my developers and asked them if it would be possible to build an image recognition app that identifies plants. We dug into it and spent about $35,000 on research and development. We figured out that the accuracy just wasn't good enough to pursue the idea full-time and spend more money on it. So I gave up after a few months and decided to revisit it later.That was back in 2012. Every year after that, I was revisiting the idea, seeing where the technology had gone, and talking to new developers. I think I went through three different companies trying to do it and didn't get anywhere. The success rate for identifications was about 65% at best. That's wasn't good enough to turn it into a company.Then at the start of 2016, I was reading an article about the artificial intelligence behind self-driving cars and a new technology called machine learning. It seemed like a perfect fit for PlantSnap. I hired a couple of new developers and they dug into it a little more. It turns out we got really good results on a small dataset. That's when decided like the technology was at a point where we could move forward.

When did you start PlantSnap?

I formed PlantSnap Inc. in June 2016 and had a beta version of PlantSnap finished in August. From there we started building the algorithms. Building the app interface is easy. That's the front end that everyone sees. The hard part is the machine learning algorithm. That is our secret sauce. What you have to do is train the algorithm to recognize every plant on the planet, which is not an easy job. Believe it or not, there is no global plant image database...at least not a published one. That became my job. I had to piece together a global plant species database, then find images for every species.

How does PlantSnap's image identification algorithm work?

The algorithm analyzes a picture of a plant and uses images in our library of 250,000 species to match the new photo submitted with every image in the database. It all happens instantaneously. You use the app to take a picture of the plant, and the algorithm compares the picture to tens of millions of images. The app also gives you a percentage of how confident it feels it is correct, and lists three or four other species that it thinks might be the answer if it’s not 100% certain. From there, we hyperlink the results to a page on Earth.com that gives you more information about that particular species.

How big is your image library?

We currently have data for about 60,000 species. There are about 92,000 species in North America., so the goal right now is to get all of those and European species by the time we launch the app, which right we hope will be at the end of March. All the U.S. species will be done and the most popular plants in Europe will be done by then. We will probably launch in the U.S. first and then roll out to different countries as we move along.

Does the app need internet connectivity to work?

Yes, or cellular service. It would be impossible to store such a vast database of images and information on a smartphone. So if someone is hiking out in the wilderness without cell service or an Internet connection, that person can take a picture, store it on the app, and have the app identify the plant later when the phone can go online and access the image database.

What are your plans for growing your image database?

We are amassing the largest plant image database in the world. Halfway through this process, it dawned on me that I was building something that’s never been done before. Every image taken by a PlantSnap user will be added to our database and be used to train the algorithm. With every new image submitted, the algorithm gets smarter...it learns!The images will be fed to another site I own called Earth.com. It’s the perfect repository for all of this information. At Earth.com we are building a page for every plant and animal species on the planet that includes information and images. Nothing has ever been done like this, and nothing online compares, so it’s a big undertaking. If an alien species came down and wanted to learn about earth, they would only have to go to one place. They’d go to Earth.com and get everything they ever wanted to know.

Who will be your users?

One of my early investors is a buddy who’s into birdwatching and out in the wilderness a lot. He's got a bunch of books, including plant identification books. He said it’s stupid for him to carry a lot of books around with him all the time. He said the app would be a great tool. That's one type of person I see using the app.The other type of user are people like me, people who are out in nature all of the time and are curious about what’s around them. One part of our pitch is the concept of bringing people back to nature. Life is so fast paced. If we can get people to stop and smell the roses, look around them, and stop to think about all of these amazing trees, plants, and flowers, maybe people will start to realize how precious nature is and take small steps to protecting it. Maybe, in some small way, PlantSnap can help raise awareness about the climate change problem we've got right now. Right now it’s more important than ever that people start noticing and appreciating nature.

When did the app's beta version launch?

I finished the beta in August 2016, and for six months I tested it with the developers. We released it to our Kickstarter beta testers, family and friends in late February this year. So far, we're getting great results and feedback.

What are your plans for an official launch?

First and foremost, we will push it toward the audience at Earth.com. The site has about 6 million unique users at this point and a significant social media following. We can count on those people to download it as soon as it’s available. Then I have a team that does social media marketing for Earth.com who will transition over to doing social media marketing for PlantSnap. We have a mailing list of about 12,000 people and roughly 15,000 social media followers across all platforms. We are developing the app for both iOS and Android.

How does PlantSnap make money?

We plan to make money by charging $1.99 for each download and then by selling ad revenue. Monetizing the app will not be a problem. That's my area of expertise because I've been doing it for the past 20 years with the sites redOrbit, GreenAtom, and now Earth.com.In phase two, I plan to add a gaming component. It’s going to be like Pokemon Go but for plants. Users can see how many different plants they can identify. Every time someone takes a picture of a plant, the picture is added to our database. As our database grows, the algorithm gets smarter and more accurate. We don’t have the details of the game worked out, but for months I saw zombies walking around in nature looking for things that are fake, a Pokemon. My idea is to get people walking around in nature and looking at real things, taking pictures of real things, and learning about those real things as they go. Maybe we can incentivize people to use the app by turning it into a game, possibly with prizes or some other incentives.

Why are you driven to build PlantSnap?

It’s been stuck in my mind since I had the original idea. It just seems like such an easy thing that people should be able to do. People should be able to know what kind of flower or plant is growing in their backyard without having to go buy a bunch of books. It seems like such a basic idea that hasn't been done yet. I made it my mission to get this thing built. I believe there is no better way to get people interested in nature than to help explain what exactly it is they are looking at, how it got there, etc. I see this as a global game changer, and I had to get it done.

What are your biggest obstacles?

One thing that could go wrong is people may not care about what plants are around them as much as I do. I don't believe that to be the case. I think there are enough people in the world that do care, but there's a chance that they don't. I know PlantSnap works because I play with it every day, so that's not keeping me up at night. I guess what keeps me up is thinking that maybe people don't care as much about nature as I hope they do.

What experience do you have? Why are you the one to build this?

I studied Japanese and psychology at Vanderbilt. I then went to graduate school at Thunderbird and studied more Japanese. That's when the Japanese were ruling the world and had the biggest tech economy. I thought I’d be working in the business world dealing with Japanese companies. Then the Internet came along as soon as I got out of grad school. I was hooked and immediately figured the Internet was going to take over the world. I needed to be a part of it. I always had a passion for science and space, so the first thing I built was a space website called Cosmiverse. I did it because Yahoo was the only thing around, and I had just gotten out of grad school and wanted to learn more about space. I tried to find information about space on the Internet, and there wasn't any.I built the site and then a year later space.com came along with Lou Dobbs and a tons of venture capital backing. I competed against them for a while. They were about to buy the company and had given me an offer, and just then the tech bubble burst. They couldn't get any more funding. Lou Dobbs quit. That whole thing went to hell. My company went under in 2002, and then I thought, OK maybe the thing to do is broaden the spectrum. I started another site called redOrbit that dealt with space, science, and technology. I had learned from my mistakes from the first site what to do and what not to do. redOrbit was successful from day one, and I ran that from 2002 to about 2014 when I sold it.After that I moved to Telluride and started another website. The best thing about these science sites is that every day I learn about something cool. It might be about our planet or the universe or anything. I didn't want to get out of that field, so I started another site called GreenAtom. It is focused on science and the environment. Then one day I started wondering what was happening with the domain Earth.com. It was around the time that all of the attention on the Paris climate agreement came along, and I started getting into the environment. I go to Earth.com and see it's parked doing nothing. To me that seemed like the biggest waste. How can someone be parking on Earth.com and not using it for anything? I got hold of the people that own Earth.com and worked out a deal. Then I launched Earth.com in October 2016. Last year was a really big year. Everything came together. PlantSnap happened, Earth.com fell into my lap, and the environment became a hot topic. It all meshed together at the same time.

What is the relationship between PlantSnap and your site Earth.com?

We will hyperlink every result from PlantSnap to the corresponding page on Earth.com. If people want to learn more about the plant, they can go to Earth.com to read about it. Earth.com is full of news and information about the environment. We publish between 10 and 15 articles a day about science and the environment. We have a section on endangered species that lists every endangered species of plants and animal on the planet. Right now we are building a page for every plant and animal species on the planet that will give information about the species along with an image. The site is meant to be everything you ever wanted to know about planet Earth.

Why are you raising with Regulation Crowdfunding?

I consider PlantSnap to be for the people. What better way to get people involved than to let them be a part of something that could make a global impact? PlantSnap is a simple concept but there's a reason it's never been done before. It's because it’s hard. I am building a database that doesn't exist on the planet, and I think that it would be cool for people to be a part of that.

How will you use the funds?

I plan to spend the money to complete the database of 250,000 plant species and for operating capital needed before we launch. I expect the company to generate revenue immediately once we launch, but in case it doesn't we will have money to cover those low initial operating costs. The operating costs for PlantSnap are low after we launch. There's obviously the server cost and the bandwidth cost, but if it's functioning properly there's really not a lot involved other than people answering questions from customer service emails. Getting to profitability should be immediate and easy.

What's stopping a competitor from taking over? Why will you win?

Nothing is going to stop them from trying to copy me, but can they make it better? And consider how long it took me to build this database. Another company is going to have to do the same thing. I'll have a yearlong head start on whoever decides to try to do the same thing, and as long as we have a good product I feel like that will be enough to come out as the winner. A year is going to be plenty of time to own the niche. We will have a year of data that people pump into the algorithm, which only gets smarter and more accurate as we go along. If our app is accurately identifying plants, someone else spending time and money over a year and making another app that does the same thing doesn’t make a lot of sense. I'm sure someone will try, but will it work as well as PlantSnap? I doubt it.

What's your cash flow?

Cash in hand as of March 2017 is roughly $100,000.00, and our burn rate is $25,000/month.

1	Launched Plantsnap App June 8, 2017
2	Over 40,000 downloads as of August 24, 2017
3	Raised $28.7k on Kickstarter with 1,947 backers
4	Built a database of over 316,000 plant species and adding 1k+ species daily.
5	Implemented the deep learning API

1	PlantSnap, Inc. is a startup, and has not yet launched a product.
2	There is a chance that the public won't care about identifying plants. If that is the case, no one will purchase PlantSnap, and the company will generate zero revenue.
3	There is a chance that only a small amount of people will download the app. If that happens, we won't generate enough revenue to be a viable company
4	If we are unable to generate revenue with the PlantSnap app, we won't be able to pay off our convertible notes. If we default on our notes, the company will have to declare bankruptcy.
5	PlantSnap is dependent upon the retention and addition of high quality employees.
6	Investors won't see a return until the company is acquired or IPOs, or becomes profitable and starts paying dividends to shareholders.
7	A competitor may launch a similar product. There is always the possibility that someone "builds a better mousetrap"
8	PlantSnap is dependent upon the continued support and involvement of key management, engineering staff, and employees of all types. PlantSnap’s success and ability to compete is dependent on its continuing ability to identify, attract, hire, train, retain and motivate highly qualified employees with knowledge of the businesses in which PlantSnap operates. If any of PlantSnap's key personnel were to quit the company or die, PlantSnap’s business may be adversely affected.
9	Although we will be charging for the app, our ability to continue operations is dependent upon ad revenue. If people don't use the PlantSnap on a regular basis, we will be unable to earn ad revenue. With no revenue, the company will be adversely affected.
10	Until now, PlantSnap has obtained sufficient capital for operations primarily from investors and cash infusions from the founder. Future operations depend on PlantSnap's ability to generate revenue. While PlantSnap may consider funding its business in the future through a combination of debt and equity financing, there can be no assurance that such additional financing will be obtained.
11	There are millions of mobile apps on the market vying for attention. PlantSnap operates in a sector where other participants create competition. The company operates in a market that is growing and will attract competition. Competition is driven by proprietary technologies and knowhow, capabilities, consistency of operational performance, quality, price, value, alternative therapies, and speed. Some competitors may have greater financial, research and development, operational and marketing resources than PlantSnap and be able to bring competing products to market. Greater financial, research and development, operational and marketing resources and experience may allow PlantSnap's competitors to respond more quickly with new, alternative or emerging technologies.
12	Eric Ralls is full-time at Plantsnap but is also operating the websites GreenAtom and Earth.com. He is also the CEO of Earth.com.

Director	Occupation	Joined
Eric Ralls	PlantSnap CEO @ PlantSnap	2016
Dan Johnson	Executive @ Self employed	2017

Date	Amount	Security
04/2018	$114,183	Priced Round
09/2017	$118,150	SAFE
02/2018	$252,204	Priced Round
08/2016	$25,000	Convertible Note
03/2017	$100,000	Convertible Note
01/2016	$20,000	Convertible Note
12/2016	$25,000	Convertible Note
10/2016	$5,000	Convertible Note
07/2014	$25,000	Convertible Note

Issued	Amount	Interest	Discount	Valuation Cap	Maturity
07/25/2014	$25,000			$1,000,000
01/10/2016	$20,000			$2,500,000
08/19/2016	$25,000	12.0%	0.0%	$2,500,000	12/31/2018
10/17/2016	$5,000	12.0%		$1,000,000
12/28/2016	$25,000	12.0%		$2,500,000
03/25/2017	$100,000			$2,500,000

Name	Dan Johnson
Amount Invested	$250,000
Transaction type	Other
Issued	08/07/2017
Outstanding principal plus interest	$300,000 as of 04/2018
Interest	16.0 per annum
Maturity	08/01/2018
Outstanding	Yes
Current with payments	Yes
Relationship	Director
PlantSnap is party to a royalty agreement, entered into in August 2017, between an entity affiliated with Dan Johnson whereby PlantSnap received $250,000. Under the royalty agreement, the lender receives $0.50 per download of the PlantSnap app until $375,000 (plus interest accruing thereon) is repaid. As of March 31, 2019, PlantSnap owed roughly $1,002,669 this agreement. The obligations under this agreement are security by shares of capital stock held by the company's founder, Eric Ralls, and assets of the company.

Name	Dan Johnson
Amount Invested	$575,000
Transaction type	Other
Issued	08/30/2017
Outstanding principal plus interest	$575,000 as of 04/2018
Interest	16.0 per annum
Maturity	08/30/2018
Outstanding	Yes
Current with payments	Yes
Relationship	Director
An entity affiliated with Dan Johnson is party to a Credit and Reimbursement Agreement with the company. Under the agreement, the company can use the entity's credit card for company related expenses, which are repaid by the company in addition to interest and other fees accruing thereon. There is no limit to this line of credit. As of March 31, 2019, the amount owed under this agreement was approximately $416,700.15. The obligations under this agreement are security by shares of capital stock held by the company's founder, Eric Ralls, and assets of the company.

Name	Dan Johnson
Amount Invested	$1,000,000
Transaction type	Other
Issued	05/24/2018
Relationship	Director
PlantSnap is party to a royalty agreement, entered into on May 24, 2018 and subsequently amended on September 30, 2018, between an entity affiliated with Dan Johnson whereby PlantSnap received $1,000,000. Under the royalty agreement, the lender receives $0.50 per download of the PlantSnap app until $1,500,000 (plus interest accruing thereon) is repaid. In addition, certain amounts owed under the AR loan agreement (discussed herein) totaling $3,425,739 where rolled-up into the amounts owed under the royalty agreement in exchange for an extended maturity date. As of March 31, 2019, PlantSnap owed roughly $5,425,126.32 under this agreement. The obligations under this agreement are security by shares of capital stock held by the company's founder, Eric Ralls, and assets of the company.

Name	Dan Johnson
Amount Invested	$2,483,079
Transaction type	Other
Issued	08/15/2017
Outstanding principal plus interest	$250,000 as of 04/2018
Interest	2.5 per annum
Relationship	Director
PlantSnap is party to an accounts receivable and loan agreement, similar to an invoice factoring agreement, entered into in August 2017 and subsequently amended, between an entity affiliated with Dan Johnson. Under the agreement, the company requested loans from the entity, which are repaid by the accounts receivable collected by the company in connection with the sale of its products, in addition to interest and other fees accruing thereon. The outstanding amount (including accrued interest) as of March 31, 2019 was $2,346,857.56. The obligations under this agreement are security by shares of capital stock held by the company's founder, Eric Ralls, and all of the assets of the company.

$50,000	Funds raised through Wefunder will be used to complete the plant database. There are over 250,000 species of plants. Currently, PlantSnap can only identify 45,000 of those species, mostly in the US, Canada and Europe. In order for PlantSnap to be a global application and work anywhere in the world, we need to gather information and train the software to identify 205,000 more species. This requires hiring many more people in several different countries.If we raise $50,000 we will be able to complete another 50,000 species of plants, which will increase PlantSnap's reach around the globe. As we spread across the globe, more people will be able to download PlantSnap, which will increase revenue.
$100,000	Funds raised through Wefunder will be used to complete the plant database. There are over 250,000 species of plants. Currently, PlantSnap can only identify 45,000 of those species, mostly in the US, Canada and Europe. In order for PlantSnap to be a global application and work anywhere in the world, we need to gather information and train the software to identify 205,000 more species. This requires hiring many more people in several different countries.If we raise $100,000 we will be able to complete another 100,000 species of plants, which will increase PlantSnap's reach around the globe. As we spread across the globe, more people will be able to download PlantSnap, which will increase revenue.
$150,000	Funds raised through Wefunder will be used to complete the plant database. There are over 250,000 species of plants. Currently, PlantSnap can only identify 45,000 of those species, mostly in the US, Canada and Europe. In order for PlantSnap to be a global application and work anywhere in the world, we need to gather information and train the software to identify 205,000 more species. This requires hiring many more people in several different countries.If we raise $150,000 we will be able to complete another 150,000 species of plants, which will increase PlantSnap's reach around the globe. As we spread across the globe, more people will be able to download PlantSnap, which will increase revenue.
$200,000	Funds raised through Wefunder will be used to complete the plant database. There are over 250,000 species of plants. Currently, PlantSnap can only identify 45,000 of those species, mostly in the US, Canada and Europe. In order for PlantSnap to be a global application and work anywhere in the world, we need to gather information and train the software to identify 205,000 more species. This requires hiring many more people in several different countries.If we raise $200,000 we will be able to complete another 200,000 species of plants, which will increase PlantSnap's reach around the globe. As we spread across the globe, more people will be able to download PlantSnap, which will increase revenue.
$250,000	Raising $250,000 and above will allow us to translate PlantSnap into other languages.
$1,000,000	$250,000 of this will be used to complete the database and launch the app worldwide. $500,000 will be used for marketing and public relations.$150,000 will be used for staff and operating costs. $100,000 will be earmarked for contingencies.

Class of Security	Securities (or Amount) Authorized	Securities (or Amount) Outstanding	Voting Rights
Saf Es	$118,150	$118,150	No
Series A Common Stock	8,000,000	908,293	Yes
Series B Common Stock	2,000,000	22,894	No

Why you may want to support us...

The founder

Major Accomplishments

Why people love us

Some of our investors

we've raised $684,537 from 361+ investors since our founding

In the news

Downloads

The Problem: No Centralized Database for Plants

There is currently no easy way to identify plants on-the-go (often when the knowledge is most necessary). Databases are also fragmented country by country.

Problem One: What is that?

Problem Two: Fragmented Knowledge

Instantly Identify Any Plant, Anywhere

PlantSnap is a mobile app that helps you identify plants, flowers and trees.

"We will be able to spend more time assessing the ecological health and status of an area and less time trying to identify plants using field guides. This app will certainly help us be much more effective."

" I'm a plant ecologist currently finishing up my Master's at Texas Tech University, and I'm super excited to start using your app! I think it will be a great tool to botanists, and amateur plant lovers! "

App Launched!

How it Works

Whether you're in the city or off the beaten trail, learn about thousands of plants.

Take a Photo

Learn and Discover

Keep Track of it All

We are Building the Biggest Plant Database in the World

As the largest electronic library of plantlife ever, we'll become the go-to database for experts and enthusiasts.

Our Plans to Expand

The PlantSnap beta was just recently released and we're already seeing promise. Check out selected slides from our pitch deck below to learn a little more about our target market, competition, and plans for growth.

Our Timeline

Our next steps are to drum up noise and momentum to hit our goal of one million downloads by the end of the year.

Invest, and Join Our Journey

Test Our Beta App

Investor Q&A

Financials

At a Glance

Risks

Details

The Board of Directors

Officers

Voting Power

Past Equity Fundraises

Convertible Notes Outstanding

Outstanding Debts

Related Party Transactions

Use of Funds

Capital Structure

Form C Filing on EDGAR

The Final Countdown...

50,000 Downloads...and 3 days left!

We're in the App Stores!

Gratitude and a game plan!

Are you sure you want to delete this?

Are you sure you want to delete this?

Are you sure you want to delete this?

Are you sure you want to delete this?

What people are saying

Notes from investors

In the news

Eric applied to Wefunder

Ask a Question

Your commitment was sent

Join 276,520 investors who funded 300 startups with over $103.5 million1

View Reg D, A+ and Reg CF Breakdown

Signup

Forgot password?

Join 276,520 investors who funded 300 startups with over $103.5 million¹