SANDBOX FOR WEBSITE BUILDERS

BY Hans van Eerden PHOTOGRAPHY Rikkert Harink

Interactive sites such as web shops or social media are complex to build. Facebook created its own tool, React, for programming all interfaces. In turn, this open source tool is complicated too. This is what UT student Ives van Hoorne noticed when, after completing his secondary education in 2015, he started working at online auction website Catawiki in Assen. He programmed there for a year and then went backpacking in Southeast Asia for three months. He continued to work part-time for Catawiki and started his Technical Computer Science course at the UT. “I thought the theoretical part was cool, but the programming assignments were very basic.”

Van Hoorne had time to spare for the development of CodeSandbox for React-users. The tool offers a simple online editor and an environment for working together and experimenting, the sandbox, on code development.

Together with fellow student Bas Buursma, Van Hoorne founded the company by the same name. The website pulls half a million visitors per months, 700 of them are paying customers. Large high-tech companies showed an interest and there were early whispers of an acquisition. But we think it’s more interesting to gain a lot of experience with a start-up. We want to make CodeSandbox into a standard tool for website builders.

In October, Van Hoorne won the More than a Degree Award for ‘most enterprising student’, presented by the Student Union. He doesn’t wear his student hat a lot anymore, his entrepreneurial hat takes almost fulltime precedence. Recently with support from UT’s well-known TOP scheme. “It helps us to continue  looking for funding without stress.”

(For more information: ivesh.com , codesandbox.io)

This article appeared in the UT Alumni Magazine Winter 2018/2019 Edition.