The Story of Which Plant!?

WaiACCELERATE Founder/Participant: Kim Taylor, co-founder at Which Plant!?

People want plants but have very little time and little knowledge of which ones are suitable for their climate, location, soil or orientation. Cities are grey and ever-growing, so they need more green to improve air quality, mental health and save the bees.

There is an increasing need for more green and nature on a global level, the population is decreasing, and our mental health is suffering from being surrounded by buildings instead of nature, but the reality is that cities continue to grow.

• 92% of the population will be living in cities by 2030 without gardens
• 88% of people say their mental well being suffers due to lack of access to green space
• 800k people die annually in Europe due to air pollution
• 97% of our wildflower meadows which support bees have been lost in last 60 years

The solution is clear: the more green we can bring to city spaces the better.

The idea was born out of finding that our cities, Amsterdam and London, are too grey and missing nature. Most of us know very little about plants and how to keep them alive. Most balconies in the city have always been bleak and plants are expensive so if they keep dying, we eventually give up and stop buying more. On the flipside, plants are becoming much more popular and to have many plants in and outside your home is now a trend. Even if you only have a small balcony space, which is north-facing you should still be able to make a little green haven — if you know which plants!

Which Plant!? is a family business, co-founded by Kim, Pim and Sophie. Together, they make a strong, passionate team with a broad range of skills suitable for scaling their business as well as a strong background and passion for sustainability.

Kim Taylor, a participant of WaiACCELERATE, with 15 years of experience in CleanTech, has worked with electric cars, hydrogen and solar panels, and has a clear understanding of how difficult it is to change consumer behaviour when it comes to green. However, with Which Plant!?, she believes that people want the positive change brought by plants and nature in their lives. Kim has a broad range of start-up experiences in the field of sustainability and positive impact. She previously worked on the introduction and commercialisation of hydrogen fuel cell cars, sustainable advertising, electric cars, renewable energy storage & backup power, and solar panels. At present, she is Marketing Director at Incision, an exciting medical scale-up, offering education and workflow services for the surgical team to improve patient care. Driven by building businesses in a start-up or entrepreneurial environment, Kim is a creative and results-driven manager with 10 years of executive leadership team experience.

Pim Meeuwesen, one of Kim’s two co-founders, is a technical and strategic marketeer and is enthusiastic about the ecommerce and scalability side of their business. Pim also shares Kim’s passion for sustainability, as he is interested in CleanTech solutions, home automation and permaculture. As an entrepreneur and strategic thinker, Pim uses marketing technology to scale companies by creating and improving customer centric and data-driven buyer journeys.

Sophie Ogilvy, Kim’s other co-founder, is literally surrounded by grey in her 15-stored flat tower along the Thames in Central London as all she sees is bare, grey, dull balconies. This extensive urban grayness inspired Sophie in her initial idea of creating balcony concepts for Londoners who want green in their lives and apartments but don’t know how to do it. She has extensive expertise in spanning new idea creation, strategic planning and delivering projects that engage, connect and bridge various stakeholders involved.

Together, the team has created Which Plant!?, powered by AI to allow people to find the correct plants based on their wishes in combination with their soil, climate, location and orientation of their balcony or garden. In addition to this information, the users also get assisted with what they want to do with their plants. This can be balcony privacy, attracting bees, permaculture, food forest, vegetable patch, flowers or plants in their garden/balcony. Based on the input provided, Which Plant!? Gives plant recommendations utilizing AI in scraping plant data and combining them with the data provided above. Plants are categorized into four as easy, medium, hard, and avoid, ultimately making it easier for people to take care of their plants in a more sustainable way that won’t kill the plants, like many of us do every now and then. Based on the recommendations you get on the app, you can purchase the plants individually, as a starter package or as a subscription to keep you going all season long. Moreover, you can also easily have the plants recommended to you delivered to your home, just with a click on the app. With Which Plant!?, e-commerce and AI meet the world of plants and bring more green into our lives!

So far, Kim and her team are in search of funding to build the AI tool and to set up the company, and a partner in the UK and the Netherlands for supplying the plants.

Interested in learning more? Check out the website of Which Plant!? or connect with Kim on Linkedin.

If you are an investor interested in Which Plant!?, join WaiACCELERATE Investor Tour by registering here

Story by Ayşegül Birce Başaran
Content & Communications Lead, Women in AI Netherlands