High earners: Konstantin Wilk and his brother Maximilian (right) sell expensive metal pipes for Aqon-Pure limescale protection
Who wouldn’t want to be rich? In Germany you need around 5,000 euros net per month to be considered rich. This corresponds to around a six-figure gross annual salary – just like the two founders of Aqon Pure pay themselves. They broke the 10,000 euro salary mark per month for the first time in January 2022. However, the two of them started with just 450 euros a month.
When the two started at Aqon Pure in 2018, “there was no money to finance higher salaries,” says founder Maximilian Wilk in an interview with Gründerszene. “So we had to bring in more money in order to be able to pay for it ourselves.” And that’s what they did: While sales of their product five years ago were still 50,000 euros according to their own information, last year it was already over ten million Euros, with a profit of over a million euros.
“High salary is justified and corresponds to the work performance”
And that justifies their own high salary in the six-figure range, as the founders say. “That corresponds to our work performance and our effort,” says Maximilian Wilk. “As long as the profits continue to grow, our high salary is justified and can be a little more generous than at a classic startup. When worse times come, we resign or pay ourselves less salary.”