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.