Join us in this episode with Salman Azhar as he unpacks how money really moves in the age of AI, from seed bets to the quiet mid-stage crunch. Discover what serious investors look for in AI startups, why problem-space matters more than buzzwords, and what corporate leaders can learn about capital allocation and incentives.

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AI innovation doesn’t happen on code alone; it runs on capital. In this episode, Lukas Egger talks with Salman Azhar about what really happens “where the money meets the models.” They walk through the lifecycle of an AI company, from risky angel and seed checks to the Series A/B bottleneck and eventual exits. Salman explains why he prioritizes high-value problem spaces and defensible IP over flashy founders and AI-heavy pitches. Hear how AI is transforming venture work at the top of the funnel, while still falling short on trustworthy probabilities. The conversation zooms out to a liquidity crunch, IPOs “queued like planes after a storm,” and too much money chasing a few household AI names while real applications go underfunded.

For corporate innovators, Salman’s takeaway is clear: align incentives with upside, kill weak ideas early, and treat internal ventures more like startups where compensation and consequences track real value creation.

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Guest: Salman Azhar, Azimuth Opportunity Fund & Duke University

Dr. Salman Azhar has unique access in the venture world after investing in 250+ startups over 20+ years and generating a positive return with his first 12 exits. He specializes in buying pre-IPO unicorns’ shares from early investors.

Dr. Azhar is a General Partner of Azimuth Opportunity Fund and Executive in Residence at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He is a Charter Life Member of OPEN Global and an advisor to several funds, including Quartus, Moment, and Regiment. His former business partners and clients include Toyota, Sony, SAP, and others.

Dr. Azhar earned his MS and PhD in Computer Science from Duke as a James B. Duke Fellow and a BS in Math and Physics from Wake Forest University as a Carswell Scholar.

If you want to learn more about:

• Our guest Salman Azhar: LinkedIn
• SAP Signavio

Email us your questions or comments: [email protected]

Innovation needs story. In this episode, Lukas Egger and Susan Lindner reveal why storytelling is a survival skill for innovators: turning failure into learning, imagination into possibility, and inertia into action. Explore the tension between “show me the data” and the human emotions that actually drive decisions. Learn to earn buy-in by naming shifts, pointing to winners, and co-creating a promised land your audience cares about. Packed with practical guidance for meetings, presentations, and pilots, this episode shows how to design change journeys that stick, and how AI can accelerate your narrative craft.

Susan Lindner is the Founder and CEO of Innovation Storytellers, a leading innovation storytelling consulting firm. She is a highly sought-after keynote speaker, workshop leader, messaging strategist, storytelling coach, and the world’s leading expert on innovation storytelling.

Susan draws from her initial experiences as an anthropologist and international aid worker in rural Thailand in the 1990s, where she shared stories that helped at-risk populations disproportionately affected by AIDS to slow the virus’ spread. Today, as a 20-year communications expert, she is committed to using those same storytelling skills to inspire innovation leaders everywhere to become incredible storytellers and ensure that their innovations get the resources, runway, and recognition they deserve.

Susan is the host of Innovation Storytellers, a weekly podcast that takes the mystery out of how to communicate breakthrough ideas to the people who matter most. Every week, Susan interviews top global innovation leaders from companies like Amazon, Bloomberg, Cisco, Corning, and Tesla about the stories that moved their innovations past the boardroom, lab, and production line and into our everyday lives.

Susan speaks at global conferences, consulates, and trade organizations. She has worked with C-level leaders and teams from over 60 countries at Fortune 100 companies like GE, Corning, Citi, AT&T, Arm & Hammer on their innovation storytelling strategies. The result? Those innovation leaders become incredible storytellers who go on to change the world. Susan is driven to ensure every breakthrough idea reaches its finish line through powerful stories that connect to every listener and power that brilliant idea forward.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

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Join Lukas Egger and Peter Temes as they reimagine work for the age of AI. Peter shares pilots of the Match platform that expand task diversity, promote self‑management, and use AI to match people to roles through micro‑credentials and human‑in‑the‑loop recommendations. Hear practical stories from warehouses to industrial plants, and learn how listening to workers, modular tasks, and career path planning boost retention, safety, and training outcomes. If you want actionable insight into adapting your workforce, this episode will inspire leaders to start with understanding people and to design flexible, humane systems for the future.

Founder & President of the ILO Institute

Peter began his career as a full-time member of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and went on to found Enterprise Interactive, a consulting and research firm.

Peter has led research initiatives for Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Disney, EY, Pfizer, GM’s autonomous vehicles group and many other companies in the technology, finance and consumer marketing sectors. Peter has also served as Dean and Campus Chief Executive for Northeastern University, President of the Antioch New England Graduate School and President of the Great Books Foundation.

He is the author and editor of several books, including Teaching Leadership, The Just War, and Against School Reform. Peter holds a Ph.D. and three master’s degrees from Columbia University.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

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How do you know you’re truly winning with AI? In this episode, Lukas Egger and Charlene Li share how to build an AI‑fluent workforce, prioritize with the double‑S (size and speed to value), and balance customer impact, internal efficiency, and reinvention. Learn to triage pilots, collect minimally viable data for fast decisions, and set incentives that reward deployment speed over perfection. See how embedding AI in quarterly reviews, cross‑functional learning, and an 18‑month rolling plan create adaptability. With solid examples from the industry, this episode gives you the steps to turn ambition into action.

Keynote Speaker & Strategic Advisor

For the past three decades, Charlene has been helping people see the future and thrive through disruption. She has advised executives and boards to recognize the vital truth that companies can’t simply innovate in order to stay competitive. They must transform.

As a sought-after expert on disruptive transformation, leadership, customer experience, and the future of work, Charlene has worked with hundreds of organizations—ranging from Adobe to Southwest Airlines and 14 of the Dow Jones Industrial 30 companies—to provide her insights to support a winning strategy for disruptive growth and a plan to identify and seize an opportunity no one else has the audacity or confidence to reach for. 

Throughout her career, Charlene has been at the edge of disruption. She worked in newspapers in the early 1990s and helped them navigate the shift from print to online. As a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, she covered interactive advertising, search marketing, and the rise of social media. In 2008, she founded Altimeter Group, a disruptive competitor that challenged analyst firm incumbents such as Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, which was acquired by Prophet. Charlene went on to serve as the Chief Research Officer at PA Consulting, where she led the company’s thought leadership program. She currently leads her own firm, Quantum Networks Group.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

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From cloud kitchens to global shipping, technology has always redrawn the map of business. Now, it’s AI’s turn.

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Join Lukas Egger as he unpacks how AI is creating new boundaries today by collapsing the costs of work at critical handoffs and interfaces. He reveals that the biggest impact isn’t about making things faster, but about fundamentally changing what is possible.

Discover how understanding this core principle can help you see opportunities that your competitors are missing.

Tune in for actionable steps to build a more defensible, future-ready business.

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Host: Lukas N. P. EggerHead of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas Egger leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. He regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

• SAP Signavio: https://www.signavio.com

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

Are you ready to transform your software architecture into a strategic advantage? Tune in as Lukas Egger and Chris Richardson delve into the blueprint for adaptable architecture. Chris unpacks the “success triangle,” highlighting the crucial interplay of development processes, organizational structure, and architecture.

Learn how to foster fast feedback loops, enabling rapid innovation and continuous improvement. Understand the truth behind microservices versus monoliths and gain actionable insights for building resilient, agile software that drives business success. Discover why loose design time coupling and frequent deployments are essential.

Renowned Software Architecture Consultant, Founder, and Author

Chris is a software architect and serial entrepreneur. He is a Java Champion, a JavaOne rock star and the author of “POJOs in Action”, which describes how to build enterprise Java applications with frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate. Chris was also the founder of the original CloudFoundry.com, an early Java PaaS for Amazon EC2.

Today, he is a recognized thought leader in microservices and speaks regularly at international conferences. Chris is the author of the book “Microservice Patterns”. Chris helps organizations improve agility and competitiveness through better software architecture. He delivers consulting and training that helps organizations successfully adopt and use the microservice architecture.

Chris is the founder of Eventuate, which is an open-source platform that simplifies the development of transactional micro services. He maintains a comprehensive set of resources for learning about microservices.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

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Is AI destined to replace us, or can it unlock unprecedented human potential? Helen and Dave Edwards join Lukas Egger to explore the emotional, cognitive, and cultural shifts that AI is ushering in. They challenge the narrow focus on productivity, urging us to consider AI’s broader impact on our lives and organizations.

Discover how AI can be a powerful force for innovation, creativity, and meaning-making, but only if we prioritize human dignity and cultivate symbiotic relationships between humans and machines. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone seeking to navigate the AI revolution with purpose and vision.

Co-Founders of the Artificiality Institute

Helen and Dave Edwards are co-founders of the Artificiality Institute, a nonprofit research organization shaping the human experience in a world of synthetic intelligence. Through story-based research, experimental design, and cultural dialogue, they explore how humans and AI co-evolve—not just for efficiency, but for meaning. 

For over a decade, they have studied how AI transforms human lives, capturing insights through longitudinal ethnography and translating them into new frameworks for human-AI symbiosis. Currently Visiting Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible AI, they bring complementary expertise: Helen from leading complex systems as CIO of New Zealand’s National Grid and in executive roles at PG&E and Fonterra; Dave from shaping Apple’s most iconic creative software products and from earlier work as a Wall Street analyst and venture capitalist. 

Together, they imagine a future where diverse intelligences inspire awe, emergent consciousness evokes wonder, and new minds exist in symbiosis with our own.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

Additional downloads:

Beyond features and benchmarks, what truly drives user engagement in AI? Lukas Egger explains why “engagement in AI is not just about knowledge or utility, it’s about emotional connection.” This episode explores how human-like interactions with generative AI are creating unprecedented emotional bonds, fundamentally changing product perception and customer loyalty. Discover the power of “industrialized empathy” and why users are even downgrading products for preferred “personalities.” Lukas shares thought-provoking insights on why understanding and mastering the emotional dimension of AI is fast becoming a critical competitive advantage.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

Additional downloads:

Are you ready for a new era of business transformation, driven by empathy and ethics? Lukas Egger invites Joel Lehman to spotlight the transformative potential, and risks, of AI as it becomes a trusted partner in our daily lives. This episode unpacks how AI can foster connection, enhance trust, and change the very nature of customer engagement. Joel shares visionary ideas on responsible AI, human flourishing, and the evolving dynamics between people and technology. Listen in for practical inspiration and compelling arguments on building a future where AI genuinely serves humanity.

ML Research Scientist

Joel Lehman is a machine learning researcher and author, and is currently a research fellow with the Cosmos Institute. He has previously researched open-ended AI at OpenAI, Uber AI Labs, and Geometric Intelligence, and was previously a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is co-author of the popular science book, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, and has won several best paper awards, as well as awards for impactful papers (the SIGEVO impact award and the ISAL Outstanding Paper of 2020 award).

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

Additional downloads:

AI is reshaping the business world, but trust remains the ultimate differentiator. Join Lukas Egger and Katharine Jarmul as they reveal how privacy-first thinking, genuine collaboration, and customer-centric design can unlock the true potential of process transformation.

Discover why trust goes beyond compliance and how it fosters authenticity, transparency, and value creation. Katharine shares actionable strategies for overcoming challenges, bridging gaps between teams, and crafting AI solutions that empower customers.

Tune in to be inspired and equipped for leading your organization into a responsible, trust-driven AI era.

Privacy & Security in Machine Learning and Data Science, Author of Practical Data Privacy

Katharine Jarmul is a privacy activist and an internationally recognized data scientist and lecturer who focuses her work and research on privacy and security in data science and machine learning. You can follow her work via her newsletter, Probably Private, or in her recently published book, Practical Data Privacy (O’Reilly 2023) now also available in German as Data Privacy in der Praxis.

Head of the Innovation Office & Strategic Projects team at SAP Signavio

Lukas leads a team of experts, steering innovation projects. His approach blends a strong technical understanding with a keen eye for product discovery and digital transformation. Lukas regularly contributes to discussions and panels, sharing his perspectives on AI, the digital zeitgeist, and philosophy. Lukas funded multiple startups, published a humorous philosophy book, and received silver screen quotation for special effects work for an animated movie.

If you want to learn more about:

If you have questions or comments, email: [email protected]

Additional downloads: