Entrepreneurial Realities

Prof. Maria Roche  from  Harvard Business School  talks with  Antoine Leboyer  about her research showing how limited resources can push startups to be more creative and experimental. Maria also shares her own story to becoming a professor at Harvard — and what she’s learned about what truly drives innovation.

This week, Dariia Rekun , Pipeline manager at the SW/AI Venture Lab interviews Jonathan Luther-Bergquist , partner at Inflection XYZ , for a deep dive into venture capital with a focus on deep tech and defense – two areas gaining significant importance in Europe. Explore Inflection's thesis-driven approach centered on sovereignty and compute, understanding how controlling these resources is vital...

We are diving into a remarkable story of innovation born at the Technical University of Munich — OneTutor — an AI-powered tutoring platform that’s reshaping how students learn, without replacing the human role of educators. I sat down with the founders — Philipp Cisistian , Jann Winter and Professor Alexander Pretschner , who built OneTutor from the ground up, combining cutting-edge AI with real p...

In September 2023, Israel's Sefaria , Munich's AppliedAI Institute and the Venture Lab joined forces to explore how AI could enhance Torah study. After months of embedding, prototyping, gathering feedback, and fine-tuning, Sefaria is preparing to roll out new AI-powered features in the second half of the year—making them available to the million-plus users who rely on their platform. This marks a...

Please meet Paul Graham , Vice President of Customer Centric Innovation at Mastercard Europe. In today’s episode, Paul will share his insights on Mastercard’s collaborations with startups, highlighting the innovative strides in the payment sector. With a wealth of experience, he’ll discuss Mastercard’s strategies for nurturing startup relationships and delve into the evolving landscape of financia...

Three TUM Venture Labs. One shared mission. In this episode, we dive into the Life Science Cluster at TUM Venture Labs – and explore how they are redefining their role within the biotech ecosystem with Maria Sievert , MD of the Healthcare Venture Lab, Sabine Oldemeyer , OD of the ChemSPACE Venture Lab and Roman Werner , MD of the AgriFood & Biotech Venture lab. Discover how close collaboration...

We are joined today by three AI luminaries from the Technical University of Munich: Professors Daniel Cremers, Stephan Günnemann, and Reinhard Heckel. These distinguished scholars aren't just leading prestigious academic chairs at TUM—they're actively shaping the business landscape through their entrepreneurial ventures. Join us for a fascinating conversation as they share their unique perspective...

Please meet Simon Sagmeister . Simon is the lead in the TUM Autonomous Motorsport project. Simon and his exceptional team have consistently dominated the Autonomous Challenge, outperforming 20 elite universities from across the globe. Discover the unique constraints and cutting-edge solutions behind developing high-performance autonomous racing software. Simon reveals how his team pushes the bound...

Eugene Huang is founder of https://www.prorata.ai/ . I heard of Prorata after listening to legendary investor and entrepreneur Bill Gross at the Munich DLD conference. Prorata completely changes the concept of intellectual property for Generative AI. It is a radical game changer which I strongly believe will have a systemic impact on stabilising business models for AI applications. Do listen to wh...

Please meet Jonathan Lowenhar . Jonathan lives in California based. He has been an executive in large organisations, a Private Equity investor and a repeat founder. He has since started Enjoy the work where, not unlike what we do at the Venture Lab, he supports founders in all aspects of their entrepreneurial journey.

Please meet Kevin Berghoff . Kevin is the CEO of Quantum Diamonds and an Alumni of the team of the Venture Labs. Discover Quantum Diamonds's technology and projects. But more importantly, do hear how they are transforming DeepTech research from Munich's Technical University into a leading player in the global semiconductor industry.

Please meet Vladimir Keil , CEO and co-Founder of AskLio . Vladimir is a serial entrepreneur whose latest startup, Asklio, is an AI powered procurement assistant. Asklio is a proud Y-Combinator Alumni and has strong momentum. Join us to understand Vladimir's business philosophy and particularly why increasing the number satisfied customers is addicitive.

Please meet Raffaela Rein , Entrepreneur, Board member and amongst the most influential women in startups and VC by Startups EU. We discuss together on her journey, entrepreneurship, B2C versus and B2B and how to foster entrepreneurship in Germany.

Do join me as I discuss with Sebastian Mallaby on the history of Venture Capital. Sebastian is the writer of the Power Law . This book which is on recommended list for the lecture I teach at TUM on VCs. It an outstanding analysis of the unique and still misunderstood dynamics of Venture Funding. It is an absolute must-hear (and the book is a must-read) for all interested in better understanding en...

Please meet David Oldeen . David is the CEO of Co-founder of Sizekick . His startup uses AI to enable e-commerce customers to validate that the clothes they are buying are of the right size so as to reduce costly and environment-unfriendly returns. Discover his journey, why he had an unusual but very apt source of financing for his startup, where they are and how they are expanding.

This is our first episode straight from the Valley with Rocky Yu entrepreneur, VC and now founder of Hillsborough AGI House . Do not miss our discussion to understand why AGI House is such a powerhouse, how the AI opportunity is evolving, why the Valley is so special for Entrepreneurship and what we have to do in Munich.

Please meet Pablo Palafox . He is the CEO and Co-founder of HappyRobot , one of the most successful TUM Software and AI Venture Lab Alumni. Discover his experience of going to the US, doing a major Pivot and reaping the benefits of focusing with intensity on a very specific problem for the freight industry in the US.

Join me In this episode where we discuss with Matthias Röder , CEO of the Karajan Institute . In this fascinating interview, we discuss his work, how artists can embrace technology and particularly AI to enhance their creativity, classical music and entrepreneurship.

We are joined this week by Julien Weissenberg . Julien is Zurich based and the founder of Deep Tech Experts. He is also playing an active role with leading organisations such as the World Economic Forum and Inno-Suisse. More importantly, he is working with many Swiss leading VCs and Innovation Agencies as the expert they call to assess the quality of the technology of AI startups they want to inve...

Do join me in my fascinating conversation with Niclas Molinder . I met Niclas at the 2024 DLD Munich Conference where he gave a remarquable presentation of creation of music using AI tools. In addition to his activities as a musician (he has worked with Abba, Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga ..), Niclas is also a founder of SessionStudio and has launched CLIP to help creators manage their Intellectual Pr...

Please join us in our discussion with Bernhard Neumann. Bernhard is a dear friend and a brand strategist whose recent work focuses on the concept of personal branding. We discuss why this really matters and particularly for younger entrepreneurs and is part of their journey.

For this end of year 2023, Antoine Leboyer receives Leon Merkel , Founder and CEO of Bumpee . Leon is one of the rare entrepreneurs who have already sold their startups. This is a rare experience. Do hear our discussion on the lessons of this great adventure.

Please join us for our end of year podcast, a conversation with Valentin Schelhaas , CEO of Zentor on ... Happiness. Valentin and I were guests at the first conference on Mental Health and Entrepreneurship where he gave a revealing presentation. I reached out to him so that we could discuss it in the context of Entrepreneurship to understand if and how entrepreneurs can also be as good on their ve...

Do join my colleague Nic Knapp in our interview with Bernhard Horst , head of the BMW Startup Garage , as we discuss on multiple topics, where innovation in the automotive industry will come from, Startups around the world and how to engage with his organisation. Please note that we had a few seconds where we were disconnected (around 8:30 ...) but all the rest of the conversation is perfectly aud...

Welcome to a very Special Episode: Harvard Business School Professor Andy Wu⁠ and Antoine Leboyer step back from the events of the last days with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman being fired and joining, along with a likely high number of OpenAI employees and discuss on a big variety of topics: Non profit and for profit board, what this means for the industry, what this means for Microsoft, ...