Hey everyone! Welcome to the first edition of AFT Pulse. My name is Tobias and together with the rest of the AFT team, we’ll be sharing a fresh story on technology & entrepreneurship every month. We want to introduce you to some inspiring (student-)entrepreneurs and keep you up to date with the latest technology news from Leuven and beyond. AFT Pulse articles are first sent to our newsletter subscribers, so sign up here if you’re interested!
As we’re all getting ready for the next academic year, chances are you’ll be among the 50.000 students using Quivr to keep track of your classes. That’s why I talked with Boris Gordts for the first edition of Pulse. He started Quivr together with Maxime Bossens and Joris Gevaert. Boris shares the story of how they developed Quivr as first-year students and how it led him to become a full-time entrepreneur and Maxime to found Sitemark. Let’s get into it!
The entrepreneurs behind Quivr
It’s 2013 and Boris is in his first year of engineering studies at KU Leuven. Maxime, a childhood friend who recently reconnected with Boris, asks him to take part in a hackathon. Maxime has been frustrated by how slow and annoying it is to check his class schedule on Toledo, and thus wants to create a better solution.
Boris, Maxime, and Joris take part in Apps4Students, the first student hackathon in Belgium. (Fun fact: from 2014 on, AFT organized Apps4Students). At the hackathon, they create the user interface for their app, then called KULApp, and win one of the prizes. They decide to finish the app during the Easter holiday. “We came together for two weeks to work on the app from my living room. It was a lot of fun, so it didn’t feel like work at all. When classes were about to resume, we launched KULApp and shared it in some student Facebook groups.”
It seemed like a lot of students shared Maxime’s frustrations because hundreds of students immediately started using the app. Suddenly, an email from the ICTS department of KU Leuven came in, asking to call them straight away. On the call, ICTS wasn’t pleased. “The thousands of students using KULApp were overloading the servers of KU Leuven. The ICTS staff was also worried we were phishing students because we were asking students’ login information. We had to take down the app immediately.”
The evolution of Quivr
The app had barely been online for 24h and yet already saw 2000 students using it. This initial success drove the three friends to continue the project. “During the summer, we expanded our team and worked on a new version of the app which complied with the ICTS guidelines. When we launched the app at the beginning of the year, 14.000 students signed up in the first weeks. That really motivated us to keep going.”
That year, the team also won Start Academy, a business plan competition. They renamed the app Quivr as they planned on launching it at different universities. The future looked bright. Still, some big decisions had to be taken. “Building and maintaining the app was taking almost all of our spare time, so we felt like we either had to drop out of school and build the business, or turn it into a non-profit student organization.” The students, who were in their second year of university, chose the latter. Boris became the first president of the newly created student organization. “The goal of the organization was to be a sort of playground for students, where we could experiment with building a real software product and getting it to be used by thousands of users. We spent a lot of time building the organization, attracting new students, and creating a solid plan to make sure that the organization would stand the test of time.”
Their efforts paid off. Six years later, Quivr is still actively maintained by a team of over 20 students. Boris and the other founders also benefited from the organization. “Engaging in competitions and running Quivr helped me to get in touch with a lot of motivated students and build my network. I’d advise every student to participate in competitions or student organizations. In the last years, the ecosystem in Leuven has expanded tremendously, so there are lots of opportunities. Take a chance; you never know how things will turn out!”
Professional entrepreneurs
During the last year of their studies, as other students took over Quivr, the founders had time to focus on other projects again. It’s at this time that Maxime co-founded Dronegrid (now Sitemark), a startup that offers aerial data inspections and analysis to customers in 20 countries. (Let us know if you’re interested in hearing Maxime’s story in more detail). Boris got an offer to start building DataCamp’s mobile app with a friend from university, who he met through Quivr. DataCamp is a company founded in Leuven that offers online data science courses to over 6.6 million users. “It was a great offer because we kind of got to run a startup within DataCamp.”
However, Boris never lost the urge to launch his own business, and this summer he took the leap. He quit his job at DataCamp and became a full-time entrepreneur. “It’s scary to toy around while everyone’s building their career, but I’ve always wanted to try if I can build a startup from scratch, so I’m giving myself six months to create something.” Inspired by the indie hacker community, he’s tackling this new effort in a very structured way (see this talk by indie hacker Pieter Levels for an overview). First, he notes down problems he notices on a Trello board, then he talks with people who have the problem to see if his assumptions are right, and finally, he tries to validate the idea quickly and cheaply. “The idea doesn’t have to be anything crazy. For now, I’m focusing on niche markets and trying to see if I can at least make 1$ with my solution.”
Boris has a couple of tips for other aspiring entrepreneurs to wrap up. “It’s easy to get demotivated in the first weeks because you don’t see a lot of progress. I’ve switched to a fixed work schedule and have started tracking my time with Toggl. Seeing the amount of productive time grow every day, motivates me. Talking to other entrepreneurs who’ve been through the same, also really helps. They can also help hold you accountable and give you feedback on your ideas.”
A big thanks to Boris for the great insights, and we wish him all the best with his new career!
Thanks for making it to the end of the first edition of AFT Pulse. If you feel inspired by this article and want to take the first steps to become an entrepreneur yourself, AFT is here to support you. We have some great events lined up, including a hackathon where you can build the next Quivr, workshops to enhance your technical skills, and a student startup trip where you can discover other founders’ stories yourself. If you want to learn more, join the info-event we’re organizing with AFC and AFD on the 29th of September.
