Rolf Schrömgens co-founded trivago and helped build it into a multi-billion-dollar company.

We talk about raising capital, keeping control, hiring, company culture, leadership, bureaucracy, and the lessons he learned building trivago.

03:10 Lessons From His First Startup
05:51 Raising Capital: Angels vs. Institutional Investors
08:45 Why Founders Need to Maintain Control
11:48 Profitability and Choosing the Right Ventures
15:00 How Bureaucracy Kills Agility
17:48 The Myth of Hiring “Amazing People”
21:02 Building Company Culture and Values
23:56 How Leadership Changes as a Company Scales
35:35 Learning to Let Go
37:00 Becoming a System Creator

Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith shares the story of trying to get Pixar funded, hearing no and making a Hail Mary call to Steve Jobs.

We talk about seeing color graphics for the first time at Xerox PARC, the early days of computer animation, George Lucas and what it took to turn the technology into a company. Alvy also explains the relationship with Disney and why protecting Pixar’s culture mattered as much as the technology itself.

Chapters:
00:00 Seeing Color Graphics for the First Time
03:02 Xerox PARC and the Future of Computing
05:57 What Made Xerox PARC Different
09:02 The Journey to New York Tech
11:59 The Early Days of Computer Animation
14:52 How Pixar Began
18:06 The Challenges of Starting Pixar
20:58 Finding a Way Forward
34:04 The Struggle to Get Pixar Funded
38:54 The Hail Mary Call to Steve Jobs
42:56 Building Pixar and Keeping It Alive
52:11 The Disney Partnership
58:02 Protecting Pixar’s Creative Culture

Who Will Control Humanoid Robots?

Randall Briggs explains why most people won’t actually own the robots they buy and why that could become a huge problem.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Who Will Control Your Robot?
03:06 Why Open Robotics Matters
05:47 Safety vs Full User Control
08:55 Who Is Responsible When a Robot Fails?
11:53 How Robots Could Transform Small Businesses
14:54 Why Robot Quality and Longevity Matter
17:51 Humanoids Entering Everyday Life
20:46 Robots for Entertainment and Real Work
23:47 Building Robots That Are Actually Useful
31:22 What Actually Breaks in Humanoid Robots?
34:54 Why Actuators Are So Important
38:20 The Global Humanoid Robot Race
43:35 Why General-Purpose Robots Could Win
47:34 The Reality of Mechanical Engineering
52:05 Why Robotics May Take Longer Than Expected
57:04 Why Open Robotics Could Change Everything
1:01:00 The Future of Robotic Hands

#Robotics #humanoidrobot

Figure, 1X and Tesla are racing to build the first truly useful humanoid robot. But who is actually ahead?

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction: The Humanoid Race
02:57 What Makes a Humanoid Robot Actually Useful?
06:05 Robots Are Entering the Real World
08:45 Tesla Optimus vs the Competition
11:59 How Humanoid Robots Are Actually Built
14:50 Scaling Production
17:57 When Will Humanoids Enter Everyday Life?
21:10 Why Autonomous Robotics Is Still Hard
24:00 The Upcoming 1X NEO Release
25:00 The Humanoid Hand Race
25:56 1X vs Tesla Hand Design
29:56 Tendons vs Direct-Drive Actuators
39:04 Which Hand Design Actually Works Best?
43:07 Ranking Figure, 1X and Tesla
49:28 The Race to Mass Production
56:35 Tesla, Figure and the Robotics Hype Cycle
1:01:55 The Next Wave of Robotics Companies
1:09:35 What Happens Next in Humanoid Robotics

#Robotics #HumanoidRobots #TeslaOptimus

Ronald Wayne was the third co-founder of Apple, alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Chapters:
00:00 Founding Apple with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
02:11 Ronald Created Apple’s First Logo
04:16 Becoming a Self Taught Polymath
12:58 The Risk of Apple’s Early Days
14:24 Why Ronald Was Only at Apple for a Few Weeks
15:07 What Really Happened to His 10% Apple Stake
15:37 Why Every Part of a Business Has to Work Together
25:58 Lessons From a Lifetime of Entrepreneurship
26:09 The Remarkable Submarine Model
28:13 Teaching Yourself Almost Any Skill
29:39 The Simple Requirement for a Profitable Business
30:45 Finding Work You Actually Enjoy
32:44 Why Founders Need Good Legal Representation
35:41 Ronald Wayne on Money, Inflation and Fiat Currency
42:30 Why Ronald Buys Silver and Gold
44:28 His Warning About the Future of Fiat Money
48:26 Preserving Knowledge and Legacy

How do you build a city on Mars that can survive without Earth?

Casey Handmer broke it down from the ground up.

The Starship fleet. The power supply. The factories you need before the first settlers arrive.

We also got into radiation, finding water, and why he thinks the Moon has surprisingly little worth mining.

Timestamps:
00:00 What a Self-Sustaining Mars Civilization Needs
09:06 Moving People and Industry to Mars
14:06 The Starship Production Bottleneck
22:29 How to Power a Civilization on Mars
25:04 Space-Based Solar Power for Mars
27:50 Designing Habitats for Life on Mars
31:39 Protecting Settlers from Radiation
36:41 Finding and Extracting Water on Mars
38:14 Where the Moon Fits In
40:25 Is There Anything Worth Mining on the Moon?
47:04 Manufacturing on Earth vs. in Space
48:10 Opportunities for New Space Startups

Robert Scoble has spent decades watching technology shifts before they become mainstream.

We talk about why he thinks Tesla has no real competitor in autonomous driving, humanoid robots, job displacement, GPT-6 Astra and the accelerating AI race, why Europe is falling behind the US, SpaceX and space-based data centers, Apple, brain-computer interfaces, and what the next decade of technology could look like.

Timestamps:

00:00 San Francisco's AI Gold Rush
02:50 Why Tesla Is Winning Autonomous Driving
06:09 The Future of Self-Driving
09:01 Automation, Job Displacement and Retraining
12:10 New Jobs in the AI Economy
14:58 Humanoid Robots Are Coming
17:57 Regulation and Autonomous Vehicles
21:05 Why Europe Is Falling Behind
23:56 SpaceX and Space-Based Data Centers
27:00 SpaceX's Changing Business Model
29:46 The Future of Data Centers
32:58 How Robert Finds New Technology Early
40:53 Identifying Quality in AI and Robotics
47:37 Building Media Around Emerging Technology
51:36 When Technological Shock Becomes Normal
59:39 The Exponential Growth of AI and Robotics
1:00:34 The Next Decade of Technology
1:06:35 Is Apple Falling Behind?
1:16:17 Why You're Not Getting the Best News

Gordon Bruce helped shape the design thinking behind Samsung’s transformation into one of the world’s most important technology companies.

We talk about what actually changed inside Samsung, why corporate culture can make or destroy great design, how travel and education affect creativity, what companies get wrong about management, and why the best designers deeply understand how people actually live.

We also get into product interaction, the iPod, hiring, storytelling, understanding customers, and what startups should think about when defining who they are.

In this episode, Scott Walter and I break down how we would design the best humanoid robot possible in 2026.

We go component by component: hips, knees, actuators, hands, degrees of freedom, weight distribution, AI, off-the-shelf vs custom parts, and where the biggest opportunities in humanoid robotics still exist.

Scott has spent decades working in robotics, and this conversation is less about hype and more about the actual engineering decisions behind building a capable humanoid today.

We also discuss why hands are so important, where current humanoids are still weak, what China is doing well in robotics, open-source models, NVIDIA’s role, and which areas might still be open for new startups.

Hans Koenigsmann joined SpaceX at the very beginning and helped turn an experimental rocket startup into one of the most important aerospace companies in the world.

In this conversation, we go deep on what still has to happen before Starship can safely carry humans to the Moon and Mars.

Hans explains why he would want to see roughly 25–30 successful flights before putting people onboard, why the heat shield remains critical, how difficult orbital refueling really is, and what SpaceX needs to prove over the next few years.

We also talk about what German engineering contributed to SpaceX, the differences between building companies in Germany and the US, whether Europe can catch up, China’s position in the new space race, lunar infrastructure, the fragility of the commercial space industry, AI in aerospace engineering, and how Hans evaluates whether a hardware company actually has a chance of succeeding.

Hans also gives advice to young engineers on choosing what to work on and why following what genuinely fascinates you matters more than trying to predict the market.

Chapters:

00:00 Starship and the road to Mars
03:05 How many flights before humans?
05:11 Starship’s heat shield and remaining challenges
07:12 What Starship could achieve by 2030
10:54 What German engineering gave SpaceX
12:02 Germany vs. US engineering culture
14:15 Why Hans moved to the United States
16:19 Can Europe catch up in space?
19:22 US vs. China vs. Europe
21:06 When will humans return to the Moon?
23:03 The next bottleneck after cheap launch
24:39 What we need to build on the Moon first
26:40 Moon vs. Mars
28:17 Investing in the future of space
29:48 Why landing on the Moon is so difficult
36:17 Why the space industry is still fragile
41:00 AI and the future of aerospace engineering
50:10 How Hans evaluates aerospace companies
55:55 The biggest challenges beyond aerospace