About Canopy
When we moved to Seattle in 2015, one of the first plants we bought together was a tiny peace lily on sale at the grocery store. It now fills an entire corner of our home. There’s a ponytail palm too, bought on a whim at IKEA, which survived three rentals, a touch of neglect, inconsistent light, and plenty of imperfect watering.
Our plants were there as we made a life for ourselves in this wonderful city — from when we brought home our puppy, changed jobs, got married, and bought our first home to fill with more plants. They became a living record of our relationship.
But when we tried to look back on each plant’s story, we realized we were running on memory alone. When did we repot that one? Was the peace lily happier in the old window? Did the ponytail palm grow faster after we moved it?
There was no real record, just a lot of guessing.
Every plant-care app we found treated our plants like a problem to solve instead of a hobby to nurture. They rely on shame (“stop missing waterings”) or false precision (“0.77 cups of water every 3.45 days”). A plant doesn’t read your calendar. It responds to your home environment, the season, the light, the pot, and your own instincts and attention.
So, we built Canopy.
Made by two people
We both spent the last 10+ years in tech, with Dylan in Product and Kara in Marketing. We learned how to build products, shape brands, and bring ideas to life. But after years of doing that for big companies, we wanted to create something entirely ours, for customers we could actually meet, around something we loved.
Dylan built the app. Kara learned to draw the pals. We’re falling in love with our home again by setting up a home studio in our living room for photography, propagating, and potting. Together, we now print, cut, weed, assemble, test, pack, and ship every Pal ourselves.
It has been part software project, part art project, part crash course in how to run a business — and the most fun we’ve had building something in years.
Rooted in Seattle
After attending the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, we left reminded how much of our love for plants comes from living here. Seattle is green in a way that gets under your skin, and after more than a decade in the PNW, we feel like we’ve earned the moss between our toes.
So before trying to grow everywhere, we want to grow here, in the city that means everything to us. We want to meet fellow plant people face-to-face, hear what resonates, and grow Canopy from the ground up.
Where we're headed
We’re starting with the iOS Canopy app and our first small-batch Pals.
From here, we hope to keep growing with new Pal designs, artist series, smarter features, new hardware, and more ways to celebrate the little indoor worlds people are growing.
Thanks for being here at the beginning.
