22Astronauts

In this episode, I talk with Victor Splittgerber, CEO of WAKU Care; a Berlin-based company redefining maintenance for robots, machines, and automation systems.

Victor shares how his early curiosity (and an eBay side hustle selling Star Wars kits at 15) laid the groundwork for becoming a founder. From rowing for Berlin’s national team to studying mechanical engineering in Dresden, to building his first startup out of moss, he’s always followed ideas that made sense to him, both technically and personally.

Today, Victor leads one of the fastest-growing CMMS platforms in robotics, scaling from 1,000 to 10,000+ assets in less than a year. We talk about how he turned hard-won lessons from hardware into a lean software company, why many factories still use pen and paper for maintenance, and how robots can now walk the floor doing condition checks.

I talked to ⁠Haixuan Xavier Tao⁠, founder of 1ms.ai⁠ and maintainer of ⁠Dora-rs⁠, a Rust framework linking AI and robotics for modular, cloud-first systems.

Haixuan shares his personal journey growing up in a Chinese immigrant family in France, the sense of duty that shaped his career path, and how he went from BCG and BNP Paribas to writing Rust for fun.

We talk about his father's entrepreneurial story, why he walked away from corporate prestige, and how open-source became his outlet to give back.

Also, we get into the limits of current LLMs in robotics, why cloud infrastructure is key for future robot-AI systems, and how Dora is building bridges between hardware-heavy China and software-driven Europe... without VC funding and without ego.

Inspiring and refreshingly honest. Give it a listen!

In Episode #63, I talk with Dmitrii Rudnitckii, VP and former CTO at Humanoid, with 25+ years in automation, encryption, computer vision, and robotics:

We cover his journey from automating ships in the late 90s to building autonomous factories and now leading one of the most ambitious humanoid robot projects in the UK.

Dmitrii shares insights about studying computer science in Russia, the importance of deep fundamentals over quick wins, the challenges of moving into leadership, and why soft skills are harder to learn than coding.

We also talk about Humanoid’s mission, their wheel-based and legged robot models, and the pragmatic road to commercialisation.

We went deep into deep tech, from early system design to what founders often miss when scaling robotics companies. I learned a lot. You might too.

Episode #62 of Building Deep Tech!

With Pedro Milcent, Co-Founder of Deplace AI; data collection & curation for robotics and physical AI:

In this episode, I chat with Pedro Milcent, a French-Brazilian founder building something new in the world of robotics and AI. Pedro’s story starts unconventionally, as he finished high school at 14, went straight to law school, then pivoted to business, earning a full-ride scholarship to USC before diving into the startup world.

Pedro’s first startup, Payby, tackled payments in Brazilian restaurants. Now, he’s co-founded Deplace AI, a company solving one of the hardest problems in robotics: large-scale, low-cost data collection for physical AI. Think human demonstrations, imitation grippers, motion capture, and making it all accessible.

We talk about building a team with deep expertise, landing their first client just months in, and what Pedro sees coming next for physical AI in Europe and beyond. He’s got bold views and clear insights, hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did recording it.

In this episode, I talk with Nicolas Rabault, former CTO and Co-Founder of Pollen Robotics, recently acquired by Hugging Face:

Nicolas had a rocky start. He struggled in school and took an unconventional path into engineering, driven by a deep obsession with hacking, building, and making things move.

He shares the story behind Pollen: how a small research team in Bordeaux built one of the most beloved open-source robotics platforms, and why openness and modularity were at the core of their vision.

After Pollen, Nicolas founded Luos, an open-source framework that makes hardware as agile as software. Though technically powerful, Luos struggled to find a business model, and we explore what he learned from that experience, and why he's now working on a stealth-mode startup building an AI-driven industrial robot ecosystem.

This conversation is packed with insight for founders, engineers, and anyone who cares about open systems, deep tech, and what it takes to build (and rebuild) in robotics.

In this episode, I talk with ⁠Eris Dhionis Sako⁠, Co-Founder & CEO of Duatic AG⁠, a robotics startup based in Zurich:

Eris shares his journey from growing up in Albania and studying in Greece, to becoming a leading robotics engineer at ETH Zurich.

Over the past 8+ years, he’s designed actuators, robotic arms, and more at the Robotic Systems Lab. Now, he’s taking that experience into entrepreneurship with Duatic, helping teams worldwide build better robots.

We talked about his early days, what shaped him, who inspired him, and the mindset behind hardware startups. (And what’s next as he gears up for Automatica25 in Munich 🤫)

It’s a founder story full of grit, sharp insights, and a real love for building things that move!

🎙️ Episode #59: Willpower, Product Thinking & Building Vention... with Etienne Lacroix:

In today’s episode, I talk with Etienne Lacroix, Founder and CEO of Vention, a company making industrial automation faster, more accessible, and more affordable for manufacturers around the world.

Etienne shares the roots of his drive and discipline, shaped by a father who was full of energy and a mother who placed strict value on education. We talk about how those influences helped him develop the mindset needed to build and lead a company.

He walks us through his early days; from mountain bike design, to engineering competitions, to working at GE and later McKinsey. Etienne also opens up about his decision to leave consulting, guided by three mental tests he uses to evaluate big moves.

One of my favorite parts: we dive into his personal framework: Memory, CPU, and Will to Kill, as a way to think about founder effectiveness.

It's a simple but powerful mental model.

Toward the end, we explore how Vention works, and how their “Lego-like” approach to automation is changing the way manufacturers build and deploy systems on the factory floor.

Lots of gems in this one. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

In this episode, I talk with Sandor Felber, a Robot Learning Researcher at MIT's CSAIL, where he’s building intelligent control systems for humanoid robots:

We talk about how he got into robotics, from electric race cars at Edinburgh University Formula Student to control frameworks for teleoperation and deep reinforcement learning locomotion.

Sandor has also worked at Tesla, building actuator systems, and now focuses on legged and whole-body control for humanoids.

He and his co-founder, Nathan, were recently accepted into the South Park Commons founder fellowship, where they’re working on deploying humanoid robots for real-world use cases. They are building their own company now!

While the specific application is still open, their goal is to build something useful that makes life a bit easier or better.

Episode #57: Advancing Bionic and Robotic Hands with Ryan Saavedra, CEO & Founder of Alt-Bionics, Inc.

In this episode, I talk with Ryan Saavedra, founder and CEO of Alt-Bionics, a company making advanced yet affordable bionic hands for both prosthetics and robotics.

Ryan started Alt-Bionics in 2020 while studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Since then, he’s been on a mission to bridge the gap between human and robotic dexterity.

We talk about the challenges of building accessible prosthetics, his work with humanoid robots, and how modular design can change the game for repairability and longevity.

It was a great conversation and I truly hope you enjoy today’s episode (despite my raspy voice 😝 ).

In this episode, I talk with Antoine Van Malleghem, a robotics engineer and Co-Founder of Botronics:

They are building the next-generation autonomous golf trolley using machine learning, and advanced computer vision.

Antoine shares his journey from IT consultancy to robotics entrepreneurship, why he took a pay cut to follow his passion and the technical challenges of developing AI-driven autonomous systems.

Building a company is tough.

Antoine and his co-founder, Eric Piraux, had to return to consulting temporarily to fund their journey. But that didn’t shake them; they knew exactly why they were doing it.

Had a great time recording this one, especially showing other forms of robots! Hope you enjoy the episode!