Salt-Free Water Softener: AQON PURE’s Founder Playbook
- Jörn Menninger
- Sep 25
- 33 min read
🚀 Management Summary
Hard water is more than an inconvenience. Limescale builds up in appliances, drives up energy costs, and shortens the life of heating systems. The traditional fix—salt-based water softeners—comes with its own hidden cost: chloride discharge into rivers and lakes, raising environmental alarms across Europe.
Enter AQON PURE, a German cleantech startup that redefined the category with a salt-free water softener. Instead of adding salt, their solution prevents limescale buildup, helping homes save energy and protect waterways.
In this deep dive, we explore how founders Maximilian and his brother scaled AQON PURE from a family business into a recognized FT1000 growth company. By rejecting the wholesaler-led model and building a D2C + installer partner network, they bootstrapped a hard-to-scale hardware company into European expansion—without VC funding.
This blog answers the question: “How can you scale a cleantech hardware startup in Europe without venture capital?”
📚 Table of Contents
Why Salt-Free Water Softeners Matter
The Problem with Salt Softeners
How AQON PURE Prevents Limescale and Saves Energy
From Family Business to Greentech Startup
D2C + Installer Model: A Hardware Growth Hack
Bootstrapped Scaling vs. VC Money
Expansion into Spain and Poland
Media Flywheel: FT1000 and Schwarzenegger Summit
Key Takeaways
Closing: Where to Go Next
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💡 Why Salt-Free Water Softeners Matter
Salt-free water softeners prevent limescale without releasing chlorides, saving energy and protecting rivers. They’re a climate-positive alternative to salt-based softeners.
Across Europe, millions of households rely on salt softeners to deal with hard water. But chloride-laden wastewater has been flagged as a contributor to rising salinity levels in rivers like the Oder. AQON PURE’s salt-free solution addresses limescale buildup while eliminating chloride discharge, making it both a consumer and climate win.
The Problem with Salt Softeners
Salt softeners discharge chloride brine into wastewater, which can damage ecosystems and increase municipal treatment costs.
Cities like Los Angeles and German municipalities have debated or even banned traditional ion-exchange softeners due to chloride discharge. The brine not only threatens biodiversity but also raises costs for water treatment plants. AQON PURE’s founders saw a growing regulatory trend against salt-based systems—a perfect opening for salt-free alternatives.
How AQON PURE Prevents Limescale and Saves Energy
Salt-free systems alter water chemistry to prevent limescale deposits, improving heating efficiency and lowering energy bills.
Research shows that just 1 mm of limescale can increase energy use in water heaters by 10–15%. By preventing scale buildup, AQON PURE systems reduce appliance strain and extend lifespans. For consumers, this means smaller energy bills; for the climate, it means less wasted electricity and gas.
From Family Business to Greentech Startup
AQON PURE transformed from an industrial water-treatment supplier into a consumer-facing startup brand.
Founded as part of a family-run water treatment business, AQON PURE repositioned itself as a consumer startup. Instead of selling through industry wholesalers, they focused on branding, storytelling, and direct customer engagement—hallmarks of modern D2C startups. This hybrid identity—family stability meets startup speed—gave them credibility with both plumbers and consumers.
D2C + Installer Model: A Hardware Growth Hack
AQON PURE built a certified installer network, bypassing wholesalers, and scaling from 100 to 400 partners.
Traditional hardware relies on wholesalers and trade shops to reach customers. AQON PURE’s pivot was radical: sell directly online while building a nationwide installer partner network. Plumbers who once resisted salt-free solutions now had certification, training, and customer leads. This two-sided network unlocked rapid growth and defensibility against copycats.
Bootstrapped Scaling vs. VC Money
AQON PURE scaled through disciplined bootstrapping, avoiding VC pressure and prioritizing quality.
Unlike many hardware startups that burn through venture capital, AQON PURE remained bootstrapped. This forced the team to grow carefully—ensuring stock availability, installer capacity, and complaint rates below 3%. Their story counters the “growth at all costs” narrative: in hardware, sustainability and quality often beat hypergrowth.
Expansion into Spain and Poland
AQON PURE is methodically expanding into Spain and Poland, prioritizing installer readiness and cultural adaptation.
After winning recognition in Germany and Austria, AQON PURE’s next step was EU growth. Spain and Poland offered ideal testbeds: large hard-water regions, rising demand for sustainable home tech, and a manageable installer base. Rather than “blitzscaling,” they emphasized localized installer recruitment and market education—ensuring longevity over speed.the full management team to align cultural expectations. Don’t repeat it.
Media Flywheel: FT1000 and Schwarzenegger Summit
FT1000 recognition and the Schwarzenegger Climate Summit boosted AQON PURE’s legitimacy and awareness.
Credibility fuels cleantech adoption. When AQON PURE appeared in the Financial Times FT1000 ranking and on stage at the Austrian World Summit with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it signaled legitimacy. This media flywheel—awards, PR, customer trust—created a growth loop that money alone couldn’t buy.
Key Takeaways
Salt-free water softeners prevent limescale and chloride discharge.
Bootstrapped growth can scale hardware—if paired with discipline.
Bypassing wholesalers via D2C + installers is a repeatable model.
Energy efficiency gains create dual savings: consumer + climate.
Expansion into Spain and Poland reflects quality-first scaling.
Founder Quote Box
“We wasted 18 months chasing wholesalers—until D2C changed everything.” — Maximilian Wilk, AQON PURE
This quote illustrates why hardware founders must rethink legacy distribution. AQON PURE’s pivot is a case study in building new routes to market when incumbents resist.
Market Lens
Hardware is back—but with a climate twist. Rising EU regulations on chloride discharge, the heating law in Germany, and consumer demand for energy savings create a perfect storm. AQON PURE’s model could be replicated across other home-efficiency verticals: HVAC, solar, or heat pumps.
Pro Tip
If you’re scaling hardware in Europe, treat installer networks as your “channel.” Just as SaaS founders build partner ecosystems, hardware founders should recruit, certify, and incentivize installers as their distribution engine.
Stat Spotlight
1 mm of limescale = +10–15% energy use in hot water systems.
400 certified installers in AQON PURE’s network.
<3% complaint rate despite scaling hardware across Germany.
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📝 About the Author
Jörn “Joe” Menninger is the founder and host of Startuprad.io — one of Europe’s top startup podcasts. Joe's work is featured in Forbes, Tech.eu, and more. He brings 15+ years of expertise in consulting, strategy, and startup scouting.
✅ FAQs
1. What is a salt-free water softener?
A system that prevents limescale without adding salt or discharging chlorides.
2. How do salt-free water softeners work?
They crystallize minerals so they don’t stick to pipes or appliances.
3. Why are salt softeners bad for the environment?
They discharge chloride brine that pollutes rivers and ecosystems.
4. Does limescale increase energy bills?
Yes—just 1 mm of scale can raise heating costs by 10–15%.
5. Is salt-free water safe to drink?
Yes, it keeps natural minerals and doesn’t add sodium.
6. Who makes salt-free systems in Germany?
AQON PURE is a leading German cleantech startup in this space.
7. How does AQON PURE sell its systems?
Through D2C sales combined with a certified installer network.
8. How large is AQON PURE’s installer base?
Over 400 certified partners across Germany and Europe.
9. Is AQON PURE venture-backed?
No, it scaled bootstrapped without VC funding.
10. Where is AQON PURE expanding?
First into Spain and Poland, with local installers.
11. Do salt-free systems replace salt softeners fully?
Yes for limescale prevention, but water won’t feel as “soft.”
12. How long does installation take?
Typically under 2 hours by a certified plumber.
13. What maintenance is required?
Minimal—no salt refills, only occasional filter checks.
14. Are salt-free softeners compliant with regulations?
Yes, and they avoid chloride-discharge bans.
15. How much does an AQON PURE system cost?
Premium pricing, but lower lifetime cost vs. salt softeners.
16. Where can I buy AQON PURE systems?
Directly online at AQON PURE, with certified installation.
Give us Feedback!
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The Host & Guest
The host in this interview is Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. And guest is Maximilian Wilk, Co Founder & CEO of AQON PURE
Maximilian Wilk on LinkedIn
📅 Automated Transcript
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:00]:
What if I told you there's a German greentech startup that's disrupting a hundred year old water treatment industry, growing triple digits every year and has even caught the attention of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Today we're diving into the story of Akwan Poor, the salt free water softener that's saving energy, protecting the environment and scaling fast across Europe. If you care about sustainability, cleantech hardware and and startup growth strategies, this episode will change the way you think about water and how startups can dominate overlooked markets. Welcome to startup Rad IO, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews and live events. Hello and welcome everybody. Welcome back to Startup Rate IO, your deep dive podcast into the world of startups and technology. Today we're talking about a startup that is shaking up an overlooked yet vital sector. Water treatment and clean technology. My guest is Maximilian Wilk.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:18]:
Hey, welcome.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:01:19]:
Thank you very much for your invitation, Jan. My pleasure.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:01:23]:
You are the co founder and COO of Akwanpur, one of Europe's fastest growing green tech startups. Akwanpur's salt free water treatment systems are helping thousands of households and businesses to reduce lime scale, cut energy costs and protect the environment. All while scaling triple digit revenue growth in a legacy industry. We'll unpack how Maximilian and his brother turned their family business roots into a sustainable hardware startup, how they caught the the mention of Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, and why water might be the next big clean tech frontier after energy. This is going to be an inspiring one for founders, investors and anyone passionate about sustainability and disruption. Maximilian, let us dive in with some core questions. You guys. Aquapor are actually family business that turned into green tech startup.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:21]:
You co founded Akron Poor with the Fadas water solutions company. Can you walk us through that transition from like a family owned industrial supplier to a hardware startup tackling household water treatment?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:02:35]:
Sure. So we actually have gone through a very different story compared to many other startups. As you said, we are not a freshly founded startup from scratch. We took our father's business and transformed it in some kind of a startup or we call it the family startup. The reason behind our history is that our father already started many, many years ago, before aconpure to work in the water treatment industry. So he had a very, very deep and broad knowledge about different branches, about different technologies and what's the need in different sectors. So the thing was back then in 2016 or 2017, he was, as you said, focusing on industrial solutions. He was cleaning water in the metal industry, for example, cleaning washing processes, cleaning the Water of washing processes and trying to regain the washing detergents, for example, or save oil and fats from waters and put it back into the different processes and try to clean the wastewater as much as possible.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:03:56]:
That you have a very, very low level of substances in your wastewater. And limescale always has been, let's say, a very, very tiny part of these different technologies, of these industrial water treatment technologies. But it was an important part. And I think we saw the chance in 2017 when we said together with our father that we can actually use his knowledge instead of just founding a company from scratch. So we tried to convince him that our solution to focus on private households is a more suitable solution for my brother and me because we have to lead the company in the future. Our father was already, I think he was 65 years old during that time. So he was looking into retirement and he was, yeah, he already knew that he couldn't do this forever. So my brother and me were convincing him, okay, we actually, we would do it, we would like to do it a bit different.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:05:13]:
And the problem was to shift a small family business which is focusing on just a hand of customers, industrial customers, to thousands of private households of private customers that you have to change the whole structure of the company. So one example, our father didn't even have a modern CRM system, an IT based CRM system where you have an overlook about all the customers. Our father didn't use many sources for marketing like online marketing, Google Ads, affiliate marketing, whatever. He didn't use none of them. He didn't even do a lot of offline marketing. He was one of these like vitamin C businesses that he knew a lot of people in the market because of his experience. So he knew how to contact people, who to contact them, who to contact and what are the problems in the current situations today we would say it's network sales. Exactly, exactly.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:06:25]:
It's network sales. And at the beginning it was quite difficult to tell him what kind of marketing strategies we were focusing on, what it we need. And yeah, for example, I remember the first discussion in 2018 where I was asking him for can I have a thousand euros to invest in Google Ads? And he said to me, well, I never invested a single euro in Google Ads or somewhere else. But okay, after a couple of days I had the goal. So I tried to spend them as wisely as possible. And I made from a thousand euros, seven to eight thousand euros with two months.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:07:14]:
So meaning return on your ad spending.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:07:17]:
Exactly, exactly. The return on the ads was from the multiple was seven to eight times, which was very good for us in this situation. So it was not only that you have to convince your father during that time, it's also very beneficial to show him the results very, very fast, that you are possibly on the right track.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:07:43]:
I see. And so basically you set up this company next to the existing company.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:07:49]:
Exactly.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:07:50]:
One of the interesting pieces, because I do get a lot of pitches, we accept less than 1% of the incoming pitches. What caught my eye was you talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger. You first encountered him in 2009 water softener band while writing your master thesis in Silicon Valley. How did that moment spark the idea for Arkwan Poor and shaped your mission driven approach to sustainability?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:08:21]:
I think that was a great help. So I was writing my master thesis in the Silicon Valley from 2016 to the beginning of 2017 and I was living together with, with some local students of the Stanford University. And they were also very interested in entrepreneurship, founding their own companies, doing their own businesses. And during a dinner they were asking, hey Max, what are you doing beside your studies, beside writing your master thesis? And I told them, well, my father has a small company which is focusing on water treatment, on industrial water treatment during that times. And so we were talking about filtration and all that stuff. One guy suddenly said, actually, do you know, we some kind have of weak, some kind have of a saying here which says, Arnold has terminated the salt based water softener and that's based on a law which bans iron exchangers. So in the first moment I thought it was, or it might be a joke because it sounded very different to what people used in Germany to the iron exchanger. The salt based water softener is very common technology you are using when you have hot water.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:09:40]:
So at the first moment my reaction was, okay, oh, it sounds interesting. But I try, I try to be a bit, let's say serious because I didn't know in that moment that how truth, how, how true it was what that guy was saying. So after the conversation, after the dinner, I went online, I googled it and I could find this law signed in 2009 by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which enabled local authorities to ban the salt based water softeners when the level of chloride in lakes and rivers is too high. Because the wastewater of these systems of the salt based water softeners, they are increasing the chloride levels because as you know, salt consists of sodium chloride and the chloride cannot be, cannot get filtered out by sewage water treatment plants. So they get into rivers and lakes. So it was some kind of an Eye opening moment when someone was telling me about this law. And the more interesting fact was Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this law. So I thought, okay, if, if there is a law in California, whether it's signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger or whoever else, there must be a serious topic about this kind of salty wastewater, about this threat of high chloride levels.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:11:10]:
So I just called my father the next day and said, hey, have you heard about this kind of environmental issues with salt based water softeners? And he said, yes, it's true. For example, a one family household uses about 100 kg of salt every year, which gets then into rivers and lakes. So we are talking about probably hundreds of thousand tons alone in Germany who get into rivers and lakes every year.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:11:41]:
And the salt in there makes it, makes it damaging, makes it difficult for the local environment. Plus, my understanding is the water softener is mostly to reduce lime scale, which then makes difficulties with all the pipes and all the machines the water go through because it leaves those white residues.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:12:04]:
Yes, it's exactly, it's two sides of the same metal. So on the one hand, water softeners with salt are used to solve the problems caused by hard water. Hard water means you have a lot of limescale in the water, which consists of mainly calcium and magnesia. And hard water, as you said, causes limescale deposits in pipes, in machines like washing machines, dishwashing machines, on your shower head, on faucets, on any surfaces. And on the one hand you can clean your surface, you can descale like the kettle in the kitchen. But after a while, for example pipes, they start to clog and you have to descale them or you have to renew them, which means a lot of cost. And furthermore, every millimeter of limescale increases or decreases the energy efficiency because it's like an isolating surface. The lim scale deposits, every millimeter increases this energy inefficiency.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:13:08]:
So you need more energy to get to the same level of hot water. So on the one hand, yes, salt based water softeners is reducing these kind of problems because the, the limescale is pulled out of the water and exchanged against the sodium of the, of the salt. However, the chloride is flushed into the wastewater which then gets into rivers and lakes. And one very famous example is the, the crisis of the high amount of salty wastewater which got into the river Oder in 2022 or 2023. I just don't remember the exact year. But it's some, some years ago and there was high, high levels and amounts of salty wastewater flushed into the into the Oder river. And as you could see, some, let's say plants, they start to grow like a certain algae was growing. But due to this growth of the algae, many fishes died.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:14:17]:
So high levels of chloride, they heavily affect ecosystems mostly at a certain level. Plants have problems to grow, animals have problems to live and certain levels of chloride. But what research has found out that high levels of chloride. Yeah. Damage ecosystems and that the current, let's say law, which regulates the limit of chloride, which is allowed to be in rivers and lakes, are not low enough to actually protect, for example. Yeah. Fishes or plants. So we have a serious problem, problem with salt.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:15:00]:
Salt is globally an increasing threat to freshwater systems. So it's not only the salt based weights, waste salt based salt, salt based water softeners who are creating this problem. We, we have a serious problem overall with the increasing salt levels in freshwater systems.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:26]:
That already takes care of my next question because I was wondering how you discovered this gap and that's basically already the story from our audience. I would be curious, what would you do differently if you could go back to 2017? What's the one decision you change in your startup scaling journey? Let's talk a little bit about disruption and scaling as a hardware startup, because you're basically a hardware startup. Hardware is notoriously hard. Right. Especially in scaling. What were the biggest go to market challenges you faced during a physical product to market and how did you overcome them?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:16:08]:
I think it connects very well to the question before, what would you do different? And the plumbing industry is a very conservative industry. And a normal sales strategy as a manufacturer of water treatment systems would be that you sell to a wholesaler, the wholesaler sells to a local plumber and the local plumber then sells to the customer. So you have a multi level or multi tier sales process. And the first one and a half years from 2017 on, we tried to go to the same sales funnel. We were cold calling, for example, wholesalers, we were visiting them, we trained, really tried to get into their catalogs, into their stocks, which was very hard because our, our product is cheaper and it doesn't need any, doesn't create any reoccurring revenue for let's say salt or maintenance. And we then tried to go one step ahead. We tried to reach out to local plumbers and it was the same. Our product, depending on which manufacturer look at, is depending on the size of the product, nearly half as cheap as a normal salt based water softener or even cheaper.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:17:29]:
And as I said, no reoccurring revenue for maintenance or Salt. And so plumbers also didn't show a lot of interest. Interest. And we lost one and a half years focusing of this established sales channel. So after one and a half years, we did some kind of a recap where we were talking about, okay, what can we do better? What did work well? And we saw we had a very small website during that time, but every time a customer went to that page and did an inquiry via the website, they could contact us. We had not a professional sales hotline, but many people called us and asked for some consultancy and we talked to them how it works, how it would be installed, and people started buying it from us directly. So we thought, okay, if no wholesaler wants to buy it, if not a plumber wants to buy it, we can sell it directly to the customer, which has even the advantage that we are not giving away any margin. And one of these customers also was asking us, can you also do the installation of the product? And as a startup you say, very brave, yes, of course we can.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:18:55]:
But we didn't have any install and any plumber at hand to install the product before, but we had many contacts from our sales activities the month before. So we called some of them and we said, hey, we already have a customer who just bought the product. Would you do the installation? Ten of them said, no, not interested. It's my customer, by the way. And one said, yeah, I can do the installation. Just send me a photo of the pipes and the material. And we asked the customer then, can you send us a picture? Can you send us the material? And he sends us the pictures and we forwarded it to the plumber and he said, yeah, I can do the installation next week. It's all done, just give me the number, I make the call and I make the appointment.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:19:42]:
And it worked very well. So after one and a half years of disappointments and many hurdles, we tried to learn much faster, which was, okay, what's the customer? The customer is not the plumber, it's not the wholesaler, it's the end customer. And how can we also offer or streamline the whole process? We just offer the installation as well by asking for a simple picture which you can take from your smartphone and the material and integrated it on the website to explain the whole process very clearly to the, to the customer. And that was then the biggest, the biggest step we had to take as a hardware startup. So it's not like a software startup where you press a button and the customer can use it. You need to send the product to, to the, to the customer. So we had to establish some kind of a logistics process which was still okay, manageable. But the much more difficult process was to find hundreds of plumbers in Germany which would follow or which would be interested in our fully integrated sales funnel from selling the product, from offering the installation, to actually install the product.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:21:01]:
And that took another one and a half years to find these plumbers which are interested in it and which are now very well aware of the advantages because it saves them a lot of time and also a lot of, let's say, stuff, because stuff in the plumbing industry is very rare. So with us they save, let's say 80% of time for one installation work. And it was, let's say one and a half years of doing many calls and reaching out to many plumbers to set up this network of installation partners.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:21:39]:
That would be my next question. Because you grew your partner network of certified partners from 100 to 400 plumbers in five years. What's the playbook for building such a strong disruption and install the network in a fragmented market?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:21:54]:
The playbook consists of a lot of hard work. So at the first moment, it's all about reaching out to them, calling them, dealing with, let's say 80% of well, I'm not interested, thank you very much. But also finding the right way of communication when you contact them. And it was not about, hey, we have the latest technology of limescale treatment here. We have, which turned out to a fully new sales pitch. It was like we have a fully, say turnkey contract. Not a contract, a turnkey customer for you. You just have to call them.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:22:40]:
You just have to make the appointment. You can calculate your work to us, what you actually do. It's not like a fixed sales price we are offering you. You can calculate your work as you actually do. And you have then also afterwards a customer who can call you if the customer needs, for example, the maintenance of a heating system, a new bathroom, a new heating system at all. So they saw, okay, from a paid work can create. Can there can be created many, many more opportunities for my business. And the plumber has a very, very easy work and a very, very profitable way to customers.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:23:31]:
So basically they getting paid for generating a lead, a new business contract.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:23:37]:
Okay, exactly, exactly, exactly. That was our reach out after half a year to our plumbers who are working with us. But yeah, it was just like I said, a lot of hard work in little, little small steps, reaching out as many plumbers as possible with the right words.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:24:01]:
I see. I was wondering, how did you educate your customers on why limescale prevention matters. I mean everybody who had to redo the pipes in the bathroom or the washing machine or dishwasher broke down due to limescale nodas. But how did you educate your customers there? Especially when competitors are pushing like the traditional salt based system.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:24:31]:
What we found out that our customers in our industry, they are really looking for a lot of information. Of course it has to be understandable, very easily understandable. But they are really willing to learn more about what you are publishing, for example on your website. So when they are on your website and you know, okay, are they there is this disadvantage of energy efficiency. You have to show them how this kind of energy efficiency problem is solved by our product. And of course to make it very, very clear, also for very critical customers, you have to explain it with a lot of serious sources. And you're not talking about, I'm referring to decented web pages. You are probably willing to publish or refer to a lot of journal articles, scientific journal articles that customers can even dig deeper.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:25:32]:
And then you reach at least the customers who are already searching for these kind of products. But we also then saw, okay, there is the even bigger part of, let's say, potential customers in Germany, which are millions, millions of house owners. We have 19 million buildings, residential buildings in Germany. They are not aware of the possibilities that there are salt based water softeners or even our technology. So we had to create some kind of awareness. And what we saw that during that time the topic of limescale treatment was very rare in the press, in public media, like big newspapers, magazines, hardly no one has ever written about limescale treatment, about water treatment, except very, very focused branch magazines for plumbers. So we tried to sum up the whole knowledge about these problems about energy efficiency. What does limescale do with your pipes? And what actually is the current solution? The lime, the salt based water softener.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:26:47]:
And what is the problem? We added the story of Arnold Schwarzenegger that he has signed in 2009, the law in Californ. And then we reached out to the newspapers. And then in 2021, I remember there was the first big newspaper article and the Sutdeutsche Zeitung. And from that beginning the topic was much clearer to a broader audience. It was not only the interested people or the people who are working in the plumbing industry, but you could really see that the topic is now getting more and more understandable for a broader audience. And if you can explain it very, very clearly, then you could see that they are also, let's say Getting doing an inquiry on our website and yeah, finally buying the product.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:27:45]:
I see. Last, last question before our our little ad break. With triple digit growth rates and seven figure revenues, how do you balance this operational scaling with maintaining a product quality and a very low 2 to 3% complaint rate?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:28:05]:
I think the most important sentence you always have to remember as a hardware startup is grow slower than you actually want to because as you say, the product has to be built. You have to have the product in stock. You have to have the product in the right quality in stock. And in our case you need to have the installation network that once the product is sent to the customer, the plumber calls the customer and makes the appointment for the installation and then fulfills the installation. So there are many, many more steps to be aware of compared to a software startup. And the easiest way is to solve the danger of, let's say demanding more from your company than it actually can do. Is being a bit on the brake and always looking, checking every month, what's the stock level? Is the quality good? How is the appointment rate of the plumbers, Is the installation work good? And you have to be very, very close to your final customer and checking internally to your, to your staff, to our salespeople, to our technical engineers who are planning the installations. What do customers say? Is there other appointments still on time? And if you are getting the, not the feeling, but if you can see that it's taking too long for the installation or something happens to the return rate, you really have to stop.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:29:49]:
You have to turn down, let's say the, the marketing budget. You have to reduce the amounts of leads you're getting every month. And if you see that it's all stable, the return rate is stable, then you can start to grow again. But it's always a constant process of checking what can your organization do? And how happy are customers? And we implemented for example, a call one week after the installation. How happy I was the product. How happy are you with the, with the plumber, for example? And these inputs are used for our monitoring still. They are still used for our monitoring. And then we can see, okay, is there still room for, for more growth?
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:39]:
I see. Guys, we will be back after short ad break. Guys, welcome back after our short ad break with a little bit more talking about sustain market awareness, celebrity and media impact and future growth and European expansion plans. Max Melvin Water scarcity and pollution are becoming bigger issues globally. Yet customer awareness is still low compared to for example, mobility or energy transitions. How do you shift public perception and make water the Next big sustainability topic.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:31:23]:
That's a very good point. Germany is in the European Union, one of the countries with the, with the worst surface water qualities. We, I think we are on 16th place of 20. And furthermore, Germany is one of the countries with the highest rate, with the highest loss of water, of fresh water. So the problem has already become very, very real, as you say. However, I would admit that it's not yet such a big topic compared to mobility or energy. I think many, many cases have shown that many topics become just an important or big topic in media if it's nearly already too late. Too late.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:32:28]:
Let's say for example, during after Ukraine, the beginning of the Ukraine war, the energy prices increased dramatically and then all the people started to invest in, let's say solar panels and getting their own solar system to reduce energy costs. And of course solar technology has been around many, many years before, which could have been a great solution against making us more independent from for example gas. However, not many people were interested in it and as you can see now with the water we can already see the lakes and rivers are getting in a worse and worse shape and we have a reduction of fresh water, a loss of fresh water in Germany. So as a founder I would avoid to shout out all these worst case scenario messages. Okay, we are focused or we are steering ahead into a water crisis. We have within 30 years we won't have any drinking water left or something like this. It's on the one hand, of course, in Germany it's not credible at the moment and I think it's not the right way to work with these kind worst case scenarios. You have to find a moderate way, a clear way and a serious way to make it understandable for customers what is going on, what is happening with our water supply? And it's not something which will happen from this year to next year.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:34:11]:
It's something which probably takes five to ten years to reach. A shift from water is here, we have no problem with water to okay, we have to take care. We have to seriously take care with our water. And so we are seeing this as a long term project. And this mostly goes not through, let's say online marketing or website or something. It's getting, getting started a discussion, a conversation about our waters. This could mean getting started a conversation in newspapers, in media, in tv, within the conversation of people itself. That's the main goal that you're showing and making it understandable that you have to take care of this.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:35:01]:
But it's definitely a term transition before it takes serious action. And I'm also not a fan of going to into politics and saying we need a law which now, yeah, focuses on also forbidding the salt based water softeners, for example, like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California. We also have seen with the heating law in Germany, which was mainly forcing or trying to force people investing in heating pumps, that it exactly led to the opposite. People were running into cheap gas powered heating systems before the law came into place and then the heating pump market broke together. So creating a sustainable demand goes hand in hand with a sustainable and serious understanding why these technologies are important.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:36:00]:
I see we already covered quite a lot of the questions that I would have here for you, how they reduce energy consumption. And we already talked about the German heating law. That is something we already covered. So let's go to the next questions and talk a little bit. The celebrity and media impact because Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governator, became one of your supporters. How did the relationship develop from the FT1000 recognition to being invited to his climate conference?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:36:35]:
It's also a long way until we, we got in contact with him. So we even start, we even tried once to reach out to him directly before we got this award. I don't know the exact year, but we reached out to him, to his organizations with some very personal letters, also with some of the newspaper articles which were published and which were writing about his law in 2009. And yeah, there was no reaction, but maybe his organizations, they were like saving this information. When we reached out and when we got nominated for this FT1000 award, one of the persons which we reached out to the time before made contact to us and said, hey, I saw you got this award. Okay. It's a very important topic. We also see the connection to the law of Mr.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:37:45]:
Schwarzenegger. Would you be willing to tell us more about what you're doing? And then we first had a video call with one of his employees from the Schwarzenegger Institute from California. And after the call we had to send some documentation to him. And a couple of weeks later we got invited to Arnold Schwarzenegger's office in California, in Los Angeles or Santa Monica. But then we also didn't meet him. We met, let's say, the director of the Schwarzenegger Institute in Santa Monica. And then we had another, I wouldn't say it, it was a check. But of course they, they took, they really took a closer look before we could meet him.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:38:36]:
And we were having, let's say, a deep conversation of what we are doing. How's the technology working? Let's, they really wanted to see, okay, that's some serious thing here. And the good thing was we have already been, I think it was 2024 when we, when we went to the office. So we have, we had already a track record of six years on the market, seven years on the market. And then we were invited the first time to the Austrian World Summit in Vienna the next year. And so we met Mr. Schwarzenegger himself. And so also again, it's not something which happened overnight.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:39:21]:
It was like you really had to show that you're a serious player, that you're on, not like a company which is here the one day and the next day it's gone. And they wanted to see that you are really are standing behind your technology, behind the solution you're offering. And they want to see how clearly can you communicate and prove what you are, you are saying. And I think after one year later, we then were allowed to speak at the Austrian World Summit as one of the startups who are allowed to present their solution. And of course that was a very, very great honor because we are, we are also presenting a work which Arnold started to trigger in California more than 15 years ago and now swapped over to, to the European market. And I would say, of course it's not some, not something that they're looking for any startup to be on the stage. It has to show, okay, the relevance over, if possible, a certain period of time.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:40:34]:
You talked about being on this, Schwarzenegger's climate summit. How was it to stand on the stage as a speaker?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:40:43]:
I think it's the time before the standing on the stage is more demanding than actually being on the stage. The good thing about these conferences is that you're really, really thinking about what would you like to say, what is your message? What, what, what do you want to communicate? And that takes several days or weeks until you're very clear about what do I want to say. And these, let's say 15, 20 minutes you're on stage, then it's like you try to deliver this message on point. And of course in this case it was a great honor because I could see Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting in the first row so he could again listen to our story while telling the story to thousands of other people. Which makes it also like achieving a very, very big goal, starting the company 2017, eight years later, standing on the stage, telling about the history, telling about the story, and telling what you are doing to one of the greatest heroes of also my personal career, but also to a person who means who is like a very the climate action hero, as Arnold always says to many other people in the world. And that's also something which definitely shaped our brand recognition, our credibility that we could have this slot on on stage and telling about what we are doing.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:42:23]:
Before we go into future and growth and your European expansion, I was wondering for our audience, what's your boldest prediction? What's your boldest prediction for the future of water tech and sustainability by 2030? Comment down here in the show notes or simply tag us on social media. Now let's talk about future and growth and your European expansion. Here you set a goal to become Europe's market leader in landscape prevention by 2030. What's your roadmap for expanding beyond the dach region?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:42:57]:
As I said, we are born as a company who walks small steps and I think it's the same here. So we are not starting to enter many other European countries once at a time. We have focused on a soft relaunch last year on all the or many other EU countries and we found out okay, it might be Spain and Poland who might be very interesting for us to enter into the market. So at the moment we start to prepare the website, we start to hire sales teams for these countries and then we will start in a very, very small, let's say scale with a little bit of advertising in these countries. And parallel to that we are starting to build up also our installation network, our network of plumbers. And this also happens in regular or in small steps, regular checks, sitting closely together. How did it go? What are the results? And when we see okay, the sales pitch works, the plumbers are interested in it, we start to get this engine running and do bigger and bigger steps. But it's not the case that we have like a big, big partner who do the installation, big wholesalers or something.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:44:23]:
We really try to stick to our roots to build up this network from scratch, which has shown as a very stable network because these plumbers are very loyal, they stick to your business and they're very thankful for this kind of cooperation.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:44:40]:
I see greentech and clean tech investors are increasingly active in hardware because everybody knows hardware is hard. What kind of investor relationships or funding strategies is key for your growth phase, knowing that you are currently bootstrapped. But I would also be curious if you are open to talk to new investors and what do you think about that?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:45:07]:
We have the in our company we really try to grow with our own money as long as possible. As long we can finance the growth by ourselves. We will always try to go this very specific way because what we have seen, having the control about the company being able to make quick decisions, having as few people sitting on a table for these kind of decision making processes is very important to us. And if we see, for example could be the case in our internationalization process that we need more money than we are earning at the moment, then we would say okay, now we are ready for or we now really see the need, the urge for external investors. But we actually really try to avoid this kind of investment. Although we know, as you say, hardware cases are also very interesting for cleantech investors.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:46:23]:
Now let's put on your glasses looking into the future. I know forecasts are always difficult, especially concerning the future. That said, if you look five years ahead, how do you see water treatment technology evolving and what role will Akron poor play in building sustainable homes and infrastructure?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:46:43]:
That's a very interesting question. I have been looking on the water treatment market, especially for residential purposes for the last, let's say 10 years or even longer before I started to work at my father's company. And there are some startups, there are some companies who are offering new technology, new solutions, but compared to other branches like the energy sector, mobility sector, even IT sector, it's very, very small. And I'm a bit skeptical in that case. I'm a bit scared that they might not happening. More movement, more growth. I think there won't be many different or new technologies compared to the debt to compared to today as far as I can see. And of course bringing more movement into this market would maybe also bring the whole water treatment market on the next level for let's say for the public discussion on such technologies and the urge of such technologies.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:47:59]:
But at the moment I don't see it. So we really try to work in this field as good as we can, as much as we can, as fast as we can. And our hope is because we also don't see a lot of competition in specifically limescale treatment technologies that we are the major supplier of the salt free limescale treatment technology all over the European Union.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:48:34]:
I see. And the last question for this interview, as it traditional at Startup Radio, we already talked about your openness to new investors. Are you looking for new employees?
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:48:45]:
Yeah, sure. We are regularly looking for new employees, for example, like a sales agent for the Spanish market. But I would be happy to share our website to give you a further look on who we are looking for.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:49:01]:
We will totally share this career website and only thing I can say Spanish.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:49:11]:
Maximilian.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:49:12]:
It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much. Hope to have you back on an update down the road.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:49:17]:
Thank you very much. Joran. Thank you very much for the invitation. It was very nice talking to you. You.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:49:23]:
My pleasure. That's all folks. Find more news streams, events and interviews at www.startupradio. remember, sharing is caring.
Maximilian Wilk | Co Founder & CEO | AQON PURE [00:49:48]:
Same.
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