Tony Van Oort

Tony Van Oort co-founded Qualitree Propagators Inc. in 1994 and spent the next thirty years building a horticulture business from the ground up - which, if you've ever done it yourself, you know is trial by fire. No classroom teaches what thirty years of payroll, weather, and failures will teach you. Tony claims he holds a thirty-year degree from the "University of Hard Knocks," and he wouldn't trade a minute of it.

In 2015, the team at Qualitree spent almost two years researching every horticulture-specific software system available to them. They concluded that nothing on the market was future-proof. So in the summer of 2017, they brought together a team of veteran ERP experts - systems architects, senior developers, and testers with deep ERP experience - and started building iQ Grower ERP, focused purely on the build for those first years, with no eye yet toward bringing it to market. The industry didn't know iQ Grower existed, since it ran as a division inside Qualitree for years, built by people living the same operational pain as the customers it would eventually serve. Qualitree itself went live on iQ Grower in January 2021, and the first outside customer joined in November 2023. Aster Software Inc. became its own company that same August, with three customers already signed before the formal launch. They introduced themselves to the wider industry at MANTS in January 2024.

Tony wants people to understand that what he does now is not selling software.  Rather, the team at Aster is building a community of growers passionate about innovating together, staying at the forefront of technology, and harnessing the power of their data to unlock value for customers. Manufacturing ERP systems did real damage to the trust between growers and the vendors meant to serve them. Tony's mission, and Aster's mission, is to rebuild that trust - one customer, one answer, one promise at a time - knowing that everything built on a foundation of trust stands strong, and lasts.

Tony is fiercely proud of the team at Aster, and that comes through in every conversation he has. There will be no commissioned salespeople at Aster, because Tony believes that a new customer joining is only possible because of a team working together to build a reputation that is much more impactful than any one person.

None of this work would mean much without family. Tony and his wife Marilyn have been married for thirty years, and he still doesn't fully understand how he got so lucky - she has put up with a husband who spent three decades obsessing over a horticulture business and then started a software company on top of it, and she has done it with more grace than he feels he deserves. They have six children Tony is very proud of, and seven beautiful grandchildren who bring a lot of joy. The family lives amongst the mountains of beautiful British Columbia, and Tony and Marilyn love camping and road-tripping together across Canada and the US, where there's enough beauty that you'd never run out of it in a lifetime.

Tony loves this industry deeply, and he's looking forward to meeting you in person to hear your experiences and share in your passion for it.