Mostly Awesome is a podcast about the personal journeys of innovators. We talk to the doers and thinkers of our time to understand what motivates them and why they do what they do. Together we reflect upon their decisions, wins, and setbacks. Meet our inspiring yet relatable guests from the world of entrepreneurship and technology to find out what may help you to become an innovator of tomorrow!
Get ready for bi-weekly episodes on Wednesdays. We are looking forward to our guests and your feedback to podcast@cdtm.de.
Mostly Awesome is brought to you by the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich. For more information, check www.cdtm.de/podcast.
And now lean back, listen in, and learn from the thought leaders of our time!
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In this episode, we talk to Sarah Fleischer, 3x founder and Co-founder & CEO of tozero, a Munich-based startup that recovers lithium and graphite directly from battery waste. Sarah is a mechanical engineer and CDTM alum who has raised over $20 million and recently launched tozero's industrial demo plant in Germany. We get into her path to tozero, which includes two earlier ventures that did not survive. At 22 she dropped out of CDTM to sell German baby milk formula to Chinese mothers, a boot...
In this episode, we talk to Pip Klöckner, tech analyst, angel investor, and host of Doppelgänger, Germany's leading tech podcast. Pip started doing data entry at Idealo, climbed through marketing and product, advised Rocket Internet and KKR, and now invests his own money and breaks down tech for a living. We get into how he actually never wanted to start a podcast and kept saying no until his co-host found a way to get him to do it anyway. He talks about why podcasting works surprisingly well fo...
In this episode, we sit down with Magnus Grünewald, the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Lyceum, who recently raised a massive €10.3M pre-seed round to challenge US hyperscalers. Rather than just a story about a young founder raising capital, this conversation offers a revealing look into what it takes to build "impossible" deep tech from Europe. Magnus shares how his tenure as Chief of Staff at Enpal served as a crucial lesson in losing the fear of "heavy assets." He candidly admits that starting...
In this episode, André Petry, co-founder and CEO of Tacto, joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about ambition, agency, and what it means to build from Europe. We trace André’s journey from a 400-person village to CDTM, Berkeley, and eventually to founding one of Germany’s rising industrial software companies. Along the way, he shares how discovering a community of optimistic, self-directed peers at CDTM reshaped his sense of what’s possible and why that shift in mindset ultimately led him t...
In this episode, Julia Gottfriedsen, Head of Data Science & AI at OroraTech, shares how space and artificial intelligence come together to address one of the most pressing challenges of our time. We follow Julia’s journey and explore how technology, leadership, and vision can shape the future. She reflects on how seeing Earth from orbit, with its atmosphere and absence of borders, influences her perspective on responsibility, innovation, and collaboration. Julia also discusses how OroraTech ...
In this special episode, Judith Dada and Hanno Renner, alumni of CDTM's Spring 2014 class, revisit their formative experiences at the center. They discuss how CDTM cultivated a unique culture of ambition, trust, and interdisciplinary collaboration, which profoundly shaped their entrepreneurial and investment journeys, including Hanno's co-founding of Personio. The conversation also explores the program's evolution, its enduring impact on their lives, and their hopes for CDTM's future role in fostering innovation and leadership in a rapidly changing world.
Erik Muttersbach, co-founder of Forto and now Zauber AI, joins us to talk about what it takes to build globally competitive tech companies from Europe. A CDTM Spring 2013 alumnus, Erik reflects on his journey from being the first employee at DailyDeal, to launching and scaling Forto into one of Europe’s leading digital freight forwarders, and now starting over with Zauber AI. We dive into why most startups scale too early, how product-market fit is often misunderstood, and why AI agents are fina...
Verena Pausder joins us to talk about what Germany needs to truly scale innovation. We dive into how the next generation of founders is redefining work, what’s broken in the startup ecosystem, and how AI can bridge the gap in digital education. She shares lessons from leading the German Startup Association, building companies, and investing in women’s football. This episode is about mindset shifts, modern leadership, and why we need to stop underestimating young builders. 🎧 Topics include: The ...
In this episode, we sit down with Gustaf Alströmer, YC Partner and former Head of Growth at Airbnb, to explore how AI is rewriting the playbook for early-stage startups. From why output matters more than effort, to what truly defines exceptional founders today, Gustaf shares lessons from working with hundreds of companies. We also dive into the European startup ecosystem, building ambition at scale, and why immigrant founders consistently outperform. If you’re building in the AI era - or just wa...
Insights from Marc Klingen CEO and co-founder of Langfuse , the open-source LLM observability platform. In this episode, we dive Marc shares his journey of moving back to Europe post-YC and establishing a high-agency, high-trust team culture. We delve into the complexities of building an open-source community, the hurdles in exciting developers about your product, and strategies for monetization. Marc also shares observations on the current state of AI applications, highlighting common use cases...
In conversation with Clemens Meyer, Technical Director @ Google DeepMind. This time we first dive into Clemens’ journey from startups to joining DeepMind and making an impact in interdisciplinary teams. Then how to balance exploitation and exploration in research, with a focus on measurable progress tracking and finally Google’s early role in the AI race, and reflections on the exponential nature of AI progress. Clemens also shares behind-the-scenes insights into AlphaFold’s success—how it began...
Insights from Viet Le, an Early-Stage VC and Partner @ General Catalyst: Betting on Young, Naive Founders and Navigating the AI Hype In this episode, we dive into a conversation with Viet who shares his unique investment philosophy focused on young, naive first-time founders. The discussion covers controversial opinions on the current AI hype and the importance of building and selling efficiently in the early stages. Viet also provides personal background on transitioning from a founder to a VC ...
In this episode, we are talking to Thomas Kirchner. Thomas is an entrepreneur and founder of ProGlove, a company that sells smart gloves used in countless German and international companies for speeding up the manufacturing process. The idea of ProGlove is simple, yet brilliant: every time you scan a barcode of a part when you assemble, for example, a car, you have to pick up a scanner from your pocket, scan the barcode of the item, and put back the scanner. This is frustrating and time-consumin...
Hamza Tahir is a software developer turned ML engineer. An indie hacker by heart, he loves ideating, implementing, and launching data-driven products. His previous projects include PicHance, Scrilys, BudgetML, and you-tldr. Based on his learnings from deploying ML in production for predictive maintenance use-cases in his previous startup, he co-created ZenML, an open-source MLOps framework for creating production grade ML pipelines on any infrastructure stack. In this podcast, we dive into Hamza...
We just released a brand new episode of our podcast featuring an in-depth conversation with the co-founder and chief product officer of Tanso, Gyri Reiersen, a groundbreaking company revolutionizing carbon accounting and emission reduction processes. Join us as we delve into the world of sustainability and technology, exploring how Tanso automates processes in carbon accounting while building the analytical basis for effective emission reduction. Discover their innovative solutions that are help...
Welcome to the new season of the Mostly Awesome podcast! Our first episode will drop on May 10, but before that we wanted to give you all a sneak preview of what season 5 is all about. Over this season, we will be chatting with different changemakers and innovators – we can’t wait for you to hear! We’re also stoked to have Ruby Zhang, Claudia Dalmau, and Ali Raza as our fearless hosts.
When you think about trees, what comes to mind? In most of our heads, they are probably the prime example of “something good for the environment”. Even though it is by far not the only way to capture carbon, there is an increasing trend to quantify and enhance the environmental benefit of sustainable forestry. We are happy to have Gesa Biermann as our guest today. Gesa is a Co-Founder of Pina, a startup that quantifies and rewards sustainable forestry. Before founding Pina she was a Center Assis...
Today we welcome Johannes Hussak in our podcast, one of the co-founders of Kertos, a platform that automates data privacy operations. Always fascinated by technology, Johannes did his bachelor and master at Technical University of Munich in Energy and Process Technology and went to an abroad semester at Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was during his studies when one of his friends drew Johannes attention to Manage and More - an entrepreneurship scholarship by UnternehmerTUM in Munic...
This week we are excited to welcome Eva Spannagl, head of Strategy & Business Development at Moss, founder of Femstory, business angel, and personal inspiration to both of us. Eva studied at ESCP Business school and the Universidad Carlos tercero de Madrid. She held a variety of internships during her studies and ultimately joined McKinsey full time when she graduated from her masters. During that time, Eva founded Femstory, a nonprofit focused on connecting women to professional mentors. Fo...
How do you found a VC firm, really? Today we will talk to Claudius Jablonka, a former CDTM Centerling and Center assistant who co-founded 10x Founders. Claudius co-founded and led the Munich office of Plug and Play Ventures, one of the most active early-stage investors in the world. In 2020, he and 6 other partners co-founded 10x founders, now a €160m early-stage fund which is backed also by CDTM alumni. Over the course of the episode, we speak to Claudius about his academic and professional bac...
Some people say the entrepreneurial spirit is something you are born with. This is something that could be true for our guest in today’s episode, Vanessa Westphal. As a very young child she already started selling stones in front of her house to top up pocket money. And she kept the entrepreneurial spirit ever since. Having spent more than 10 years building a corporate career at Siemens, last year Vanessa founded Choosy, which offers AI-optimized nutrition plans that suit both your taste and you...
The startup ecosystem has seen many software startups over the last years, but how about a software startup that aims to ease the development of new electronic hardware products? Our guest in todays episode, Sebastian Schaal, is diving into exactly this area. He is the co-founder of Luminovo, a company that speeds up the process of electronic hardware development, leveraging software and machine learning. Over the course of the episode you will learn about the Luminovo's transition into a pure S...
Welcome to the new season of the Mostly Awesome podcast! Our first episode will drop on October 4, but before that we wanted to give you all a sneak preview of what season 4 is all about. Over this season, we will be chatting with 6 different changemakers and innovators – we can’t wait for you to hear! We’re also stoked to have Julia Kozlovskaia and Jaclyn Hovsmith as our fearless hosts.
In this week’s episode, we welcome Vidya Madhavan, Founder and CEO of Schmooze, the dating app where you swipe memes instead of people. Coming from Engineering and Business Background, Vidya will tell us how she did not build “just another dating app” but rather the fastest growing one. During this episode, we will get to hear Vidya's thoughts on how an MBA and Entrepreneurship complement each other, where the idea of a meme-based dating app even came from and how the online dating market might ...
For this week’s episode Passionfroot is on the menu! The co-founders Jennifer Phan and Michelle Tian combine backgrounds in venture capital at Rocket Internet and tech development at AirBnB and Shopify. In 2021 they co-founded Passionfroot with the aim to empower independent businesses of tomorrow. With this passion in mind, they are developing a back-office tool tailored to creator businesses. Tune in to learn more about Passionfroot and the future of the creator economy!
If we hear about living an almost nomadic life, we typically have a picture of a backpacker in mind, traveling the world. Our guest for today's episode, Maya Hari, however, would probably describe this as how she spent her 20s working in India, the U.S., France as well as Singapore. Maya is not your run-of-the-mill backpacker though - she studied engineering and did an MBA at INSEAD before she worked at the likes of Cisco, Google, and Microsoft before becoming the VP of Global Strategy and Opera...
Joshua and Mehmet both studied Business Administration and Math in Munich. Together they founded Freeletics in 2013, which later rose to become a popular consumer internet company that offers personalized fitness plans and community support via a mobile application. After exiting from Freeletics in 2018 they waited no more than three weeks before they founded yet again! Their current venture is called Zavvy, a company that aspires to invent aspects of the “future of work”. During this episode, t...
In today’s episode, our guest is Vlad Lata. Vlad is not only a serial entrepreneur with founding experience at KONUX and Avi Medical but also a CDTM alumnus. His first venture, KONUX, is active in the field of IoT/AI providing smart sensor systems and AI-based analytics. With AVI Medical he is now active in the optimization of the patient experience by leveraging technology. In the course of this episode, we learned why and how he decided to found a venture twice, what institutions impacted his ...
In today’s episode we were delighted to have Hessam Lavi as our guest. Hessam is the CEO and Co-Founder of Climatiq, a company that engineers and develops a Carbon Footprint Intelligence Platform. During the course of this episode we spoke about several topics that make Hessam’s journey unique. We learnt about his voyage from war-torn Iran, to Sweden, and finally to Berlin. We also took deep dives into the learnings he drew from being a serial entrepreneur, how he built successful startups in th...
In this episode, we talk to Thomas Regier and Kivanc Semen - the founders of DataGuard. In 2017 they founded DataGuard together. And since then they help companies to manage their data privacy - an inviolable human right and key to a successful business in an increasingly digital world. We talk to them about their multi-cultural background and how they first met as teenagers in a workshop for basketball trainers. Covid-19 has been a major topic of discussion everywhere in the last months. Howeve...
