A conversation with Mathia Palaia, co-founder and CEO of Troom, a platform that lets you book a (college) student-chauffeur to drive you in your own car.

Mathia Palaia went to the US as an exchange student for one reason: he wanted to see if the American movies were real.

He signed up for the Rotary program. Did his senior year in high school. Wanted to play American football. Arrived too late for player tryouts, so he ended as a  kicker on special teams.

He'd played soccer his whole life. Kicking a ball far was just normal.

He started at 30 yards. Worked up to 50. At some point the whole team stopped practice to watch. The coach, an Italian short man, walked up to Mathia knowing he had Italian roots, and called him "Paesan", as if they were from the same Italian village and said: ‘give this man a locker’.

A week later he had a jersey. Number 35. Full Under Armour kit.

"I remembered watching the movie the Titans and I was like, man, imagine if it's like that. And it was like that!"

He's been going back three times a year ever since. Not on vacation. Just to live.

"US and I for some reason vibrate on the same level. Going there keeps my soul happy."

Everything he's built since has had one question behind it: how do I keep going back to the US?

Getting back meant money. And that search led him somewhere unexpected.

A friend introduced him to Vemma, an energy drink with a multi-level marketing model. He had no idea what MLM was. He just knew the drink was good and that he could sell it and teach others to sell it.

"I didn't know what was happening, for real."

In three months, he built a team of 300 people. The biggest in Belgium. He was filling houses, standing in front of 90 people at a time, pitching with full conviction.

MLM gets a lot of hate. Mathia doesn't care.

"There's a lot of leadership and learnings in MLM. If you have a good mentor, they're gonna teach you how to sell, market and lead. By accident I learned that I was good at promoting. If I start talking about a product that I love, I can sell a dream."

That discovery was worth more than any paycheck.

He also built a framework from it. A lot of people want to become wealthy but have no vehicle to practice. His steps were simple: practice sales first, find a mentor who believes in you, become self-employed, build the structure. So that when the real opportunity comes, you're ready to receive it.

Before Troom, Mathia got his first real lesson in copy-creating at Columbus Group.

They took an existing financial service. Did it better. Did it harder. And won.

"Look at the market. If the market is saturated, you can still make it with better skills. But if things align, you've got to go hard and all in."

That lesson stuck. When his co-founder, Bart Boorthaerts, pitched Troom, Mathia recognized the same pattern immediately.

Troom didn't start with a grand vision. Bart pitched the idea at a café on a Tuesday. The app launched shortly after.

But Mathia was ready. And that's the point.

He knew he wanted to be an owner. He'd practiced sales. He understood the structure. So when Bart came with the idea, there was no long deliberation.

"That's why I tell people: if you have a dream and you know where you want to go, you need to be ready. The opportunity will come. But if you're not ready, it passes."

With Troom, you book through the app or call directly. The driver comes to you. You arrive in the comfort of your own vehicle.

The positioning is simple: if you're travelling somewhere half an hour or longer and you have a car, don't take an Uber. Take Troom. Your driver comes to you, drives your car, and if you want, fills the tank, takes it to the car wash, runs errands along the way.

It was copy-created from a concept that has existed in the Netherlands for over 30 years.

"If you copy-create. Take it fully, make it better, and promote the heck out of it."

He uses music as the analogy. You start by learning how to read notes, how to play the instrument, then you can cover songs like Bach or Chopin, and the last phase is hearing something in your head and being able to play it. That's creation. But you don't start there.

They looked at the Dutch market, saw it was fragmented with no dominant player, and saw Belgium had room for a premium operator. Now they're in the Netherlands too, competing in the market they originally copied from.

Troom has over 750 drivers. All college students with more than 2 years of driving experience.

The reference point Mathia uses for the standard he's after: Harvey Specter. Sharp suit. Discreet. Professional in every situation.

That's the bar. And the workforce is students.

Mathia does every recruitment call himself. One on one. Ten minutes. Then candidates come to a driver day, read all the documentation in between, and go through a driving skills test. The whole process takes about a week.

The product isn't the platform. The product is the driver.

"We're not only looking for drivers that drive you from A to B safely. We look for discretion, professionalism, and trustworthiness. Our drivers drive our clients' cars. If they can't communicate, are not discreet, are late, they will not make the cut."

They train constantly through storytelling. Good service examples. Bad service examples. The goal is to build a north star that drivers internalize.

An early piece of client feedback made that north star very concrete.

"Mathia, I understand that I booked late. But the smell of cigarettes in my car is not gone. The fact that he wasn't wearing a suit..I'd rather you not deliver a driver than this fiasco."

That complaint lives on at every driver day.

The dream: that one day "worked at Troom" on a LinkedIn profile means something. When a driver applies somewhere else, the hiring manager says “oh, you worked at Troom. Tell me what you learned there.”

Mathia and Bart didn't start as friends. They met through a common friend.

Mathia thinks that's part of why it works.

"Sometimes you start businesses with friends and you're not fully honest because the friendship gets in between."

Bart is the technical founder. Mathia is the commercial engine. Two people who know exactly what the other brings, and who both agree on one thing: the company comes first.

"Bart and I might have an argument right now, things are heated. But if a minute later a client calls me, what happened between us is behind. Troom comes first."

That clarity is what holds the dynamic together when things get difficult. And Mathia made a point of learning the technical side too to know enough to make decisions and to sense when an outsourced feature is being quoted fairly.

Troom's first investor was Herbert Houben. Once he was in, the pitch to everyone else became simple.

"Herbert believes in us. Maybe you should too."

Then came VKW Limburg and Voka Limburg. Last year in May, came Entrevest where Troom raised €900K, used mainly for sales, marketing, and operational upgrades.

They're on track for €1.6 million in revenue this year. Next year they want to double it.

The business is both B2C and B2B. Individual clients book through the app. Corporate clients book blocks of drivers. Like The Botanic Hotel, which uses Troom for its valet service. 

On marketing, Mathia is clear: attention first. Their April Fools campaigns featuring King Philippe and Joe Rogan both went viral.

"Media first. You want eyeballs. You want attention. April 1st is a chance to take it."

They're also building AI into operations. A chatbot for drivers instead of back-and-forth calls. Real-time sales data on demand. Frictionless internal systems so the team can focus entirely on the driver.

The team today is seven people. Mathia as CEO. Bart as CTO, Wouter Jeunen as Community Manager, Cedric Buscemi as COO, and Jurgen Van Uffelen as CCO.

Networking brought most of the early partnerships. It still does.

"It's who you know. It's who you know that will guide you in."

He runs. A lot. Marathons. HYROX competitions. Signs up, trains hard, races, rests, then finds the next challenge. Right now he's rebuilding for a HYROX in Maastricht in September.

He wakes up and does the hard things first.

"If you get up in the morning and you do the hard things first, the whole day you have extra gear. Whatever happens, you feel invincible."

He has a framework for performance that he shares with anyone who asks.

Spirit. Energy. Discipline. Motivation. In that order.

Motivation is last. Most people put it first.

"Motivation comes and goes. You can still be disciplined and do the things you have to do even without it. Energy is what allows you to do things. But if something happens and you don't have energy, that's where spirit comes in."

When things get really hard, he turns to Gary Vaynerchuk, who he met once. 

"If you're down, just listen to Gary. You need to feed yourself with positivity. Every time, over and over again, brainwash yourself."

He keeps four things in balance: health, wealth, love, and happiness. Right now, happiness is a little low and he’s fixing it by planning his next trip to the US in advance. Something concrete to look forward to.

And on Troom itself, he's clear-eyed in a way that's rare.

"If Troom goes bankrupt, I'll be fine. Troom is not my life. There's a CEO who mismanaged Volkswagen and killed himself. And then you see other people who ruin everything and they're happy. Try to be detached. Your job or position doesn't define you."

Mathia Palaia didn't start with a business plan. He started with a dream, a locker in an American high school, a jersey with his name on it, a feeling he's been chasing ever since.

Troom is the vehicle. Not the destination.

He copy-created a concept, built a culture of student drivers held to a Harvey Specter standard, raised nearly a million euros, and is now competing in the very market he learned from.

Every morning, before any of it starts, he does the hard thing first.

So the rest of the day feels easy by comparison.

Question: If you have a chance to sit with your 16-year-old self, what would you tell him?

Mathia’s answer: “Don't be as fearful as you are, just chill, it's gonna be okay. Repeat that again to yourself.“

You can find him on LinkedIn!

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