Building Deep Tech with Ilir Aliu

Ilir Aliu
Building Deep Tech with Ilir Aliu

The show for founders building real deep tech. Each episode features technical builders and early-stage founders in AI, robotics, and hardware — breaking down how they ship, grow, and learn. We talk about systems, mistakes, GTM strategy, funding lessons, and how to move from research to traction. Hosted by Ilir Aliu from 22Astronauts. Whether you’re building now or just curious — tune in.

  1. 5D AGO

    Ep 71 | The Team Ends Up Like Charting the Path Too (w/ Kaan Dogrusoz)

    In this episode, I talk with Kaan Dogrusoz, Co-Founder and CEO of Weave Robotics, a YC-backed team building Isaac, a personal home robot: Kaan grew up in Istanbul, chased curiosity across physics, art, and engineering, and eventually made his way to Carnegie Mellon, then Apple, where he spent nearly a decade working on robotics and shipping features like Double Tap on the Apple Watch. But something kept pulling at him. He didn’t want to be part of a massive machine anymore. He wanted to build something real, something personal, a robot he’d want in his own home. That’s how Isaac was born. A home robot built not for factories or labs, but for laundry piles and living rooms. We talk about leaving comfort behind, learning by doing, what it’s like to live with your own prototype, and why he thinks shipping a robot (not just dreaming one) is the hardest and most honest thing a founder can do.

    55 min

  2. JUN 26

    Ep 70 | Real Confidence Comes From The Work (w/ Benjamin Bolte)

    🎙️ I talked with Benjamin Bolte, founder of K-Scale Labs, who left Meta to build something he actually believes in: an open-source humanoid robot! After working on Autopilot at Tesla, he saw the inside of Optimus and decided the big players were getting it wrong. Benjamin walks me through how he built the first robot with Alibaba parts and 3D-printed parts in his apartment, why raising too much money too early is a trap, and how soldering wires all night helped him remember why he’s doing this in the first place. He’s not chasing prestige or funding rounds. He’s trying to ship a $9K robot that can do your laundry. We talk about his time at Tesla and Meta, how he thinks about mortality, the power of conviction, why open-source matters, and what it really takes to build hardware that people want to own.

    54 min

  3. JUN 19

    Ep 69 | You can really build things with a small team (w/ Nikolaus West)

    In this episode, I talk with ⁠Nikolaus West⁠, Co-Founder & CEO of Rerun; their team is building the data stack for Physical AI: We get into the early days of Rerun: how an open-source visualization tool for multimodal data became widely adopted across robotics, spatial computing, and even inside companies like Apple and Meta. But that was just the start. Now, they’re building a full-stack platform for logging, querying, and managing robotic-scale data, from raw logs to model training. Niko shares his personal journey from business school in London to engineering in Sweden, to startups in retail, Kenya, and AR. Along the way, he learned the hard truth: physical AI teams are still flying blind when it comes to data. That pain turned into obsession, and obsession turned into Rerun.

    1h 13m

  4. JUN 12

    Ep 68: Personal Agency and Shaping One's Own Life (w/Chang Liu)

    🎙️ I spoke with Chang Liu, founder and CEO of Extend Robotics, a startup developing intuitive VR interfaces to control robot arms and train AI models using real-world data. Chang shares his story from growing up in China to moving to the UK for university, studying at Newcastle and Southampton, and completing a PhD in aerial robotics. After postdoc work at Imperial College on autonomous drone systems, he made the leap into entrepreneurship and started Extend Robotics. We talk about the early pivots (from drone teleoperation to building lightweight robotic arms) and how the company eventually focused on software, helping users control off-the-shelf robot arms through an easy-to-use VR interface. Chang explains how they’re now using this interface to collect high-quality data for AI training, with real-world pilots in agriculture, EV manufacturing, and satellite servicing. The goal is to go from teleoperation to automation, and to make robot training as accessible as robot control.

    56 min

  5. JUN 4

    Ep 67: Doing Plan A to Do B Doesn’t Work (w/ Dhanush Radhakrishnan)

    Took me 2 years to land this one... 🎙️ In this episode, I talk with ⁠Dhanush Radhakrishnan⁠, Co-Founder and CEO of ⁠Clone Robotics⁠: The company building lifelike, musculoskeletal androids that move like humans and could become the next personal computing platform. Dhanush shares how watching Iron Man at 13 sparked a lifelong obsession with tech, leading him from plasma thrusters and nuclear fusion research to founding a YC-backed robotics company now making headlines with their human-like androids. We talk about why his first startup didn’t work out (and why Plan A to do B never does), how he met his co-founder on the internet, and why moving to Poland turned out to be one of the best decisions for focus and execution. Clone is going against the grain: from hydraulics to neural net control, from soft-body design to building general-purpose robots from scratch. This convo is packed with vision, hard-earned insights, and a founder who’s not afraid to do things differently. Give it a listen. You’ll see why people are paying attention.

    53 min

  6. MAY 21

    Ep 66 | Ship One New Product Every Week Until Something Sticks (w/ Tibo Louis-Lucas)

    In Episode #66, I talk with Tibo LOUIS-LUCAS, founder of Tweet Hunter and Taplio, two SaaS tools he built, scaled, and sold for over $10 million: Tibo shares how he went from a series of startup failures to shipping one new product every week with his co-founder. That process eventually led to Tweet Hunter. What started as a personal tool to grow on Twitter turned into a fast-growing SaaS company doing over $100k MRR. We talk about why he stepped away from managing teams, what he learned from building the wrong products, and how growing up in a finance-savvy family shaped his view on risk. He opens up about burnout, recovering after a family health crisis, and how building in public helped him find both traction and community. He also explains why he stopped sharing revenue online, how the indie hacking scene has changed in the past two years, and what he's building next with more focus and less noise. An honest conversation about starting over, staying hands-on, and building what people actually want.

    55 min

  7. MAY 15

    Ep 65 | The Failing Part is Not Very Valuable if You Don't Learn (w/ Victor Splittgerber)

    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.

    1h 5m

  8. MAY 8

    Ep 64 | Degrees and Job Doesn't Matter - What Matters Is Being True (w/ Haixuan Xavier Tao)

    I talked to ⁠Haixuan Xavier Tao⁠, founder of 1ms.ai⁠ and maintainer of ⁠Dora-rs⁠, a Rust framework linking AI and robotics for modular, cloud-first systems. Haixuan shares his personal journey growing up in a Chinese immigrant family in France, the sense of duty that shaped his career path, and how he went from BCG and BNP Paribas to writing Rust for fun. We talk about his father's entrepreneurial story, why he walked away from corporate prestige, and how open-source became his outlet to give back. Also, we get into the limits of current LLMs in robotics, why cloud infrastructure is key for future robot-AI systems, and how Dora is building bridges between hardware-heavy China and software-driven Europe... without VC funding and without ego. Inspiring and refreshingly honest. Give it a listen!

    1h 1m
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About

The show for founders building real deep tech. Each episode features technical builders and early-stage founders in AI, robotics, and hardware — breaking down how they ship, grow, and learn. We talk about systems, mistakes, GTM strategy, funding lessons, and how to move from research to traction. Hosted by Ilir Aliu from 22Astronauts. Whether you’re building now or just curious — tune in.

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