In a short period of time, young entrepreneurs Jurre Douma and Niels Woldring built a successful landscaping business. Now they’re developing TuinView, a design tool that lets you design your own garden without any prior knowledge. On learning by doing and the value of the NOM Startup Program.
It’s been three years since Niels Woldring walked through their garden in Haren with his father. Shortly before that, he and his friend Jurre Douma had decided to start a landscaping business. The two students didn’t really know much about the business, let alone have any formal training in horticulture. His father pointed out a few plants. Were they weeds or not? Niels had no idea. They didn’t see their lack of knowledge as a problem.
“You just have to learn as you go,” Jurre smiles. “First say you can do it, then make sure you can.” A flyer dropped into mailboxes on Rijksstraatweg in Haren immediately yields five positive responses. They realize there’s plenty of demand in the market. A few days later, riding a scooter loaded with borrowed gardening tools and high spirits, they arrive at their first client’s home. The customer is more than satisfied afterward. And so, in the time that follows, more and more satisfied customers follow.
Significant revenue
Job after job, they’re developing into full-fledged landscapers. “We’re just curious and spend a lot of time on self-study and research,” says Niels. Thanks largely to word of mouth, Wolma Hoveniers has now grown into a serious business with substantial revenue. “We don’t do everything ourselves, though,” Niels continues. “We outsource wisely to paving contractors, woodworkers, and earthwork crews, among others.”
They’re not ones to sit still. In addition to Wolma Hoveniers, they’re now building a second business. It’s called TuinView, an online design tool that lets garden owners design their own gardens. “Create your dream garden from the comfort of your couch, without needing to know anything about gardens or garden design,” explains Niels. “That’s the idea. The tool takes into account light exposure, soil type, drainage, and blooming periods—knowledge that’s normally the gardener’s domain. That knowledge-enhancing aspect is what sets us apart from similar tools.”
The idea for TuinView came from real-world experience. Clients often want their own style, but they always end up with the landscaper’s style instead. “You can almost always tell which landscaping company created a garden,” says Jurre. “It takes a lot of back-and-forth to arrive at a design that the customer is 80 percent satisfied with. We want to solve that problem.”
Above all, we wanted to gain new knowledge and find out whether TuinView actually solves a real problem.
Niels Woldring GardenView
Compagnons
TuinView isn’t a project by two entrepreneurs, but by four. Rick Houwen and Vince Boelens handle the tech side of things. They own Vir Solutions, a company that builds custom web applications and also created the website for Wolma Hoveniers. When Jurre and Niels pitched the idea to them, they were immediately enthusiastic.
Jurre, who is studying Entrepreneurship & Retail Management at Hanze University, had previously pitched the idea during a presentation day for his “Boost Your Business” minor. Niels Palmers, a business developer at NOM, was also in attendance. He immediately recognized the problem and saw its potential. Afterward, he tells Jurre about the NOM Startup Program, which helps startups in the north turn their innovative ideas into scalable business models with paying customers.
Jurre and Niels aren’t familiar with the NOM Startup Program. After looking into it, they decide to apply. “We mainly wanted to gain new knowledge and find out whether TuinView actually solves a real problem,” says Niels. They start with the validation track, the part of the program that helps them identify their first customer segment and validate the market problem through customer interviews.
Seventy interviews
At first, they focused on landscaping companies. But the landscapers didn’t recognize the problem. “The design process and conversations with clients—that’s just their job,” Jurre explains. “And they actually enjoy it, too.” They shift their focus to garden owners. Jurre and Niels knock on more than 600 doors and conduct 70 interviews. Newly developed neighborhoods are their target area: residents there have recently had their gardens landscaped, so their experiences are still fresh in their minds.
Discussions with garden owners yield immediate results. Communication with landscapers, however, often leaves much to be desired,
they say. Moreover, garden owners have little knowledge of their own, and tools like Pinterest, Garden Design, and SketchUp do offer inspiration but fall short when it comes to creating the garden they envision. The first customer segment has been identified: the garden owner with a dream but without the knowledge to make it a reality.
The validation track has been completed. Jurre and Niels have now started the customer solution track, in which TuinView must prove that the tool actually solves the garden owner’s problem.
In the works
The most important lesson? Validate the problem first, before you start building. “We would naturally have jumped right into implementation,” says Niels, who, in addition to being an entrepreneur, is also studying Business Administration at Hanze University. “The program taught us to first thoroughly understand the problem and the target audience. It was precisely because we had such well-validated research that Rick and Vince ultimately decided to become business partners. They often get questions from people with an idea, but those ideas are usually not based on anything. Ours is.”
TuinView is currently under development. The tool is being built, and the first version is nearly ready. “We want to become the largest garden design tool in the Netherlands,” Niels emphasizes. “That’s the goal. It would be absolutely wonderful if, in a few years, customers could walk into our office, put on a VR headset, and then walk through their own dream garden.”