Barcelona, summer of 2015. Harro Boven (on the left in the picture) is on his way to a friend in Morocco, but is staying with a friend in Catalonia for a few days. He suddenly has the urge to play a round of tennis. He just has a few problems: he has no partner, no racket, and no place to play. ‘Nowadays, you can do anything anywhere in the world. But working out in another location is nigh impossible. How can I, a Dutch person, reserve a tennis court in Barcelona? I realised I needed an app for that.’
Calling gyms
Now, in 2017, he has launched the app himself. ‘Movitsport’ was launched in mid-December. Since then, anyone who wants to play squash is welcome at the Stadjershal. From this week onward, people can also use the site to reserve tennis and squash courts at Kardinge, fitness at Body Support, or play beach volleyball at Binnenpret at the Ulgersmaweg.
And if it is up to Boven, that list will soon be expanded. ‘Today, I’ll be calling gyms in the Randstad’, he says, grinning. Together with colleague and friend Luuk Wester (on the right in the picture) he is enjoying breakfast in their office in Cube050, an office building for start-ups at Zernike. It looks not unlike a fancy student room. The beer crates from the launch celebrations have yet to be returned and on the wall is a poster of a meme. The only thing missing is a bed.
Back to the drawing board
After his return to the Netherlands, Boven is unable to get the idea for the app out of his head. Late that summer, he sketches the screens the app should have in the Noorderplantsoen. ‘But I had no idea if it was doable.’
After participating in the RUG’s VentueLab and a visit to the Economic affairs office at the municipality, he ends up with Marco de Jong at IT agency theFactor.e. De Jong provides him with advice free of charge, and Boven decides to request a price quote. The 150,000 euros he is quoted scare him, but he decides to go for it. However, two days before he is about to pitch to a potential investor, KNLT, the Dutch tennis league, launches a similar app.
I’m kind of a hippie
‘Now what?’, Boven thought to himself. He decided to finish his IBIO studies and return to the drawing board in the meantime. The KNLTB app is only accessible for tennis league members and therefore differs from his idea. He meets Robert, the first freelance programmer, through the ICT study association at the Hanze university for applied sciences. Eventually, three more people are added to the IT team. Wester, taking a break from his studies in mathematics, and Tjeerd Havinga join full-time. Boven himself has set aside his economics studies, at least for the time being.
Finally online
Having cost much less than the initially quoted 150,000 euros, Movitsport finally came online in mid-December. ‘We wanted to go live sooner, but we simply didn’t make it. In the meantime, the number of bookings is steadily increasing. We found out that a lot of gyms charge the same price during the off-peak hours, leading to empty courts. We offer these hours for a really low rate. I’m kind of a hippie because of my idealism to give people who aren’t as rich the opportunity to work out as well. Besides, this way, the courts are used more efficiently.’
‘It’s a shame that booking a location to work out is so needlessly difficult when it makes people happy. It should be doable with just a few taps on your smartphone’, Boven says. ‘We’re now looking for further funding. We need it before April. After that, we want to expand as quickly as possible. We’re making real work of it. We need to do a lot and we don’t have much time. There’s a reason we haven’t had time to return the beer crates to the store.’