Please introduce yourself and your startup ScanMovers to our readers!
My name is Boyan Nijpels and I’m the founder of the moving platform ScanMovers and I’m responsible for Business Development.
After my studies in Amsterdam and Barcelona, I moved to Hong Kong to work at foodpanda, a Rocket Internet company, where I built out the customer-facing operations. After having gained the necessary experience for scaling an operations heavy company, I moved back to the Netherlands which led to the founding of ScanMovers.
ScanMovers’ goal is to make moving as easy as possible.
Moving is one of the most stressful events in one’s life, so we built a moving platform on which you can plan your entire move and request a quote for it. You then receive quotes by moving companies which you can then compare and book. Additionally there are some additional services that we provide.
How did you get the idea to ScanMovers?
After a disastrous executed move of our own with and a big surprise in the final billing, we decided that nobody should be going through this painful and intransparent process ever again. After a pilot of about 5 months where we really got to know the market, we realized that almost all business processes in the moving world could be optimized, but the most cited problem of the moving companies was the customer acquisition.
This resulted in quite a few hours spent at moving companies to convince them and build up the trust that we’re here to support them.
After gaining their trust, they are enthusiastic for new features and the additional services we provide. Our goal is not to compete with them, but to empower them by improving their efficiency and quality of service through many different modules. We are here, both for the end-consumer and the mover.
Everyone that is relocating. We do not have a specific target audience in the traditional sense. However, we segment our customer in small local moves, bigger more complex moves, b2b, and project moves amongst others.
We focus on the whole vertical and offer a complete solution for movers. In this industry, we are also unique with our transparency and the focus on the mover.
We are here to help so that everybody wins; the customer has a better experience, the mover gains with a fatter margin.
Luckily, the work in a start-up are very varied, so there aren’t too many typical days. I am responsible for finding new partners and for recruiting, so I have quite a few calls and meetings scheduled. Of course meetings with strategic partners, new hires, and investors are part of the workday.
Where do you see yourself and your startup ScanMovers in five years?
The beauty of the moving market is that the more geographies you cover, the more network effects are possible. We see great potential in expanding beyond our borders with our highly scalable business model. Additionally, we are working on applying concepts of the sharing economy to our business.
Through this, we believe that it’s possible to re-invent the concept of running a moving company, similar to how Uber was able to re-invent the private driver industry.
1. Patience: If you have hypergrowth, good for you, but most of the time this only last a limited while. Sustaining growth and building a startup is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
2. Execute fast, largely based on hypothesis, facts and figures. Make mistakes and learn. Hold short weekly growth meetings to discuss these from all perspectives. A lot of time can be lost if you over-plan and under-execute. Take risks! The ideas you think will have the greatest impact often don’t and the other way around.
3. Don’t just build solutions for now, but make sure they scale if they need to and people want to use them 1-3 years from now, taking into account general and industry specific developments.