A note from the founder
A note from the founder.
Hey — I'm Geoff Shepard. I built MowNext because I spent six months reading r/lawncare and lurking in lawn care Facebook groups, and I kept seeing the same problem: small operators paying $120/month for software designed for businesses 10x their size. I wanted to fix that. So I'm writing this from Kansas City, where I'm building MowNext mostly alone, and I'd like to tell you why.
The story.
I'm not a lawn care operator. I should say that up front. I'm a software engineer who's been building tools for small businesses for years. The closest I've come to mowing professionally is the summer in college when I cut three neighbors' lawns for $15 each.
But I've been around the lawn care SaaS space for the last couple of years, and last spring I started doing serious customer research. I joined every Facebook group I could find — Lawn Care Business Owners (45K members), Lawn Care Life, Mike Andes' Augusta Lawn Care community, the various regional groups. I read every "what software do you use" thread on r/lawncare. I went through Capterra and G2 reviews of every major lawn care tool, top to bottom. I bought five of them and used them for a month each.
Three things kept showing up:
One: pricing was punishing. "I just can't see paying almost $120 a month for something like Jobber to get fully integrated into a business." That quote is from a Reddit thread I bookmarked early on. It came up in some form, hundreds of times, across every forum.
Two: mobile apps were broken. Every operator complained about the same things — apps that froze, lost work, logged them out, didn't work without signal. The vendors had clearly built desktop-first products and tried to retrofit mobile.
Three: the products kept getting bloated. Operators wanted scheduling, invoicing, payments, and a way to talk to customers. They were getting AI receptionists, marketing automation, custom forms builders, and pricing tier explosions to justify the new modules.
So I started building MowNext. The thesis was simple: take the 14 features lawn care operators actually use every day, build them really well for the truck cab, charge $19/month, and refuse to add anything that doesn't earn its place. I shipped the first version in private beta and we're now opening up the waitlist.
That's the whole story. No VC funding, no "stealth mode," no founder myth. Just a person who saw a problem and is trying to fix it.
Compressed manifesto
What I believe about lawn care software.
Five things, summarized — there's a longer version on the Why MowNext page if you want it.
- The mobile app is the product. Not a feature, not an afterthought. The whole job runs from a phone in a truck.
- Pricing should be honest, flat, and predictable. No sales calls, no per-feature upsells, no "deprecated tier" surprises.
- Saying no is a feature. Every feature we don't build is a feature that doesn't slow the app down or bloat the UI.
- Your data is yours. Always exportable, no fee, no hostage.
- We'll tell you when to leave. If you outgrow us, we'll point you to a competitor by name.
The team
It's mostly me.
Right now, MowNext is one person — me — with a small group of contractors I work with for design and customer support overflow. That's a feature, not a bug.
It means:
- You email me. Right now, every email at hello@mownext.com hits my inbox. If you have a feature request, a bug report, or just a "hey, the schedule feels off" — I read it. Most replies happen within 4 hours during business hours.
- There's no sales team to slow you down. You sign up online, you use the product, you cancel if you don't like it. There's nobody on commission anywhere in this company.
- Decisions ship fast. When a beta operator told me "the route map needs a 'start day' button at the top, not the bottom," it shipped that week. As we grow, I want to keep this energy. Bigger doesn't have to mean slower.
I'll add people when the work demands it. The first hire will probably be customer support (so you don't always wait for me to get out of code). The second will be engineering. I have no plans to hire a sales team, ever.
Talk to me
Three ways to reach me.
Public commitments
What I promise you.
These are the same five from the manifesto. They're on this page too because they're worth repeating.
- The price you see today is the price you pay until I publicly change it. 60 days notice. At least 12 months of grandfathering for existing customers.
- Your data is yours. Export everything as CSV anytime. No fee, no friction.
- No sales calls. Ever. If you want to talk to me, I'll talk. But you'll never get pressured.
- A real person answers your email. Right now, that's me. As MowNext grows, I'll keep this — it's the most important thing about the company.
- I'll tell you when to leave. If you outgrow MowNext, I'll point you to the right competitor by name. I'd rather lose a customer than waste their time.