🦥 #13 From Car-Sharing to Plant-Based Powder Mix: Niels Peetermans' Qallo Journey

Today

• ✋ Antwerpreneur: Niels Peetermans (Poppy and Qallo)

• 🍦 Scoop: ChatGPT’s Monday Voice

• 🧃 Giggle Juice: By Twonks

• 💎 Quiz Question: Can you guess how much caffeine the average person takes per day?

✋ Antwerpreneur: Niels Peetermans

It started with car-sharing.

Now? He’s helping people stay hydrated and energized with a plant-based powder solution.

But the real story? It’s about the power of finding product-market fit.

A Snapshot of Qallo

• Founded: 2020

• Founders: Niels Peetermans and Alexander Van Laer

• Headquarters: Antwerp, Belgium

• Business: A powder solution that flavors your water, keeping you hydrated and energized

• Revenue: Undisclosed, but profitable since January 2025

• Raised: €1.5M from investors + ~€200K from Crowdlending

• Investors: Spadel, BAN Flanders, and multiple business angels including Lode Fastré

The Early Drive: Why Niels Can’t Stop Building

Most people don't know what drives each founder.

For Niels, it started at a young age, he was always drawn to unconventional career paths.

“I always wanted to start and build things, but I wasn’t sure if I had what it took. That uncertainty turned into a drive to prove, to myself and everyone else, that I was capable.”

He's got this thing for building stuff from scratch, starting with a blank page and turning ideas into reality.

"I love starting with nothing and turning it into something people use, pay for, talk about, and that eventually requires processes and automation."

Balancing Entrepreneurship and Family Life

Things changed when Niels became a dad.

He tried to maintain the same lifestyle as before, but it didn’t work.

"I crashed. It wasn't possible for me and wasn't fair to my partner."

So now? He wakes up between 6:00 and 6:30am, cycles for one or two hours and starts work afterward. His wife does the morning shift with the kids, and he takes over in the evening.

For Niels, cycling isn’t just exercise, it's therapy.

"On the bike, I think through challenges or release frustrations from my system.”

He's also a beast physically. Once cycled 500km without sleeping across 5 countries with 5,000 altitude meters.

"The body tells you to stop in multiple ways and around the 20-hour mark, I started to hallucinate and to question everything I do in life. It was both a physical and mental exercise."

Success with Poppy Car-Sharing: When Everything Clicks

Before launching Qallo, Niels co-founded Poppy, a car-sharing company created in partnership with Lab Box and D’Ieteren as a corporate venture. And it scaled quickly.

• 20,000 customers

• 2 cities

• +20 employees

• More than €1.5 million in sales.

He called it "the perfect storm":

• Perfect timing in the market

• Strong financial partner

• Initial fleet of 350 cars

• Partnership with the city of Antwerp

• Tons of press coverage

“We built an amazing team aligned with our mission, people who gave everything for the company. Everyone was ambitious, positive, and flexible. Poppy is the story of a company where everything clicked from the beginning. It's very difficult to replicate.”

After 21 months, they had their exit for an undisclosed amount.

Pivoting Qallo: From Gamer Fuel to Lifestyle Brand

After Poppy's success, Niels and his Co-founders wanted more control over their next venture.

So what did they do? They went all in and emptied their bank accounts to launch Qallo.

"We put all our savings into Qallo, financing the R&D and first batch of products ourselves."

It was launched during COVID as a nutrition product for gamers, all packed into a capsule.

To create it, they teamed up with a plant-based product expert and flavor specialists and for almost a year, they worked without salary, reinvesting everything back into the business.

But there was one problem..

Gamers didn’t care.

"Professional gamers were not interested in nutrition, making it difficult to gain traction."

Then came the breakthrough.

By talking to customers, they discovered more than half weren’t even gamers. People were taking the product for studying, work, and other activities.

So they asked themselves: "Do we want to build a product around gaming? Is this who we truly are?"

The answer was no. 

They did a visual rebranding and moved from capsules to a powder solution. Their new focus became a lifestyle brand that’ aligned more to who they are.

Qallo flavors your water with:

• Fruit extracts

• Green tea, Guarana, Siberian Ginseng

• B vitamins and minerals.

"One Qallo has the same amount of caffeine as a Red Bull but does so with natural ingredients and fibers that help prevent crashes. It is sugar-free, plant-based, low in calories, and contains no preservatives or artificial colors.”

Overcoming Challenges

Qallo nearly went bankrupt before finding its product-market fit.

"We spent all our money and came very close to bankruptcy. In retrospect, we shouldn't have spent everything we had."

A particularly tough moment came last year, when one of their co-founders, Moos, left the company.

"It was very hard. But it was the most mature thing I've seen in my entire life. It takes a lot of courage to walk away from something you’ve been working on for so long.”

Their biggest problem today? Inventory management.

"Our demand isn’t linear; it comes in exponential ups and downs, making it difficult to predict. With a 3-4 month lead time, balancing cash flow and inventory is tricky."

Qallo’s Current Operations and The Future Plans

In January 2025, after 5 years of hard work, Qallo finally had their first profitable month.

The marketing playbook that worked:

• Influencer marketing backed by targeted ads

• A Facebook group with 2,000+ active members who engage daily

• Available on their website and AS Adventure.

They've got big plans:

• Expanding to the Netherlands, Germany, and France

• Developing new flavors and functions (like electrolytes and immunity boost)

• Becoming the market leader in Europe

• Solving their inventory problem

• Creating an impact project with local tribes in Madagascar to provide clean drinking water. This initiative is in collaboration with Cwater, a project linked to Belgian artist Wim Tellier that is led by his sons.

"We want a tight team, not necessarily a big one. But one that works together, like a football team. They have their specific positions, jokes in the locker room, but on the field, they’re focused and driven.”

Reflecting on Success and Lessons Learned

Last year they won the Becom award for the best e-commerce startup.

"In five years with Qallo, we hadn't won anything, so this recognition of our hard work meant a lot."

What surprised him most about building Qallo?

"When it works, it really works. When you figure it out, you feel it in how people interact with you and your product."

Of course, there were dark moments.

"We thought maybe it wouldn't work, or that maybe we weren't the right people. We underestimated how difficult it was to build a consumer product. But, finally now the snowball is rolling.”

Key Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

1. Don't give up. Be patient, things simply take time.

2. Don't spend all your savings on a project

3. Don't let it consume you completely. The dream may be big, but it's not everything.

Five years of hard work, pivots, and near-bankruptcy, yet they kept going.

Most people quit after a year or two without traction.

They didn’t.

And now, Qallo’s winning.

Niels’s Recommendations

• People to follow: Harro Schwenke from Upfront

• Podcast: All-in

• Books: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, Will by Will Smith & Mark Mason, and Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope & Tom Wright

• Current Song Listening on Repeat: Allein Allein by Polarkreis 18

• Favorite place in Antwerp: Somista

Where can you find Niels?

You can find him on LinkedIn and Instagram!

Antwerpreneur-to-Antwerpreneur Q&A

Sometimes you just push the product without asking questions to the customers and see if they still want your solution or maybe there is a better way to do it. What do you do to validate your problem or the need of your product and are you still validating it in the right way?

Niels’s answer: “Whenever a wild idea strikes, our first move is to research if it already exists and if anyone has successfully executed it.”

That initial validation of seeing both existence and success elsewhere, gives them confidence to proceed. They don't stop there though. They tap directly into their existing community and have a trusted circle of customers they consult regularly. They'll send them test batches and gather their unfiltered feedback before making any significant moves.

Bonus

The Qallo Playbook

1. Keep trying until it works: They changed direction a few times before finding what people really wanted.

2. Pay attention to how people actually use your product: Their big breakthrough came when they noticed non-gamers were using Qallo too.

3. Find your unique angle: They are positioned as the healthy alternative in a sea of sugar-loaded products.

4. Community first: Their Facebook group and email list built a loyal fan base that keeps coming back.

5. Let influencers boost your reputation: Instead of spending their budget on ads alone, they let influencers spread the word.

   

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🍦 Scoop

Mondays…

🧃 Giggle Juice

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💎 Quiz Question

On average, how much caffeine does the average person consume per day worldwide?

A) 100 mg

B) 200 mg

C) 300 mg

D) 400 mg

_{You can find the answer at the end}