TechDrive Zurich

Justinas Mišeikis

Casual short informal interviews with key people in the tech industry in Switzerland and beyond. All in English.

Episodes

  1. Aug 19

    The Five Years Behind a Table Tennis Robot | Mireille El Gheche on TechDrive Zürich

    You have probably seen the videos of a robot rallying against a real table tennis player. This episode is about the five years, and the team, behind it. In this TechDrive Zürich drive, Mireille El Gheche shares a path that starts with electrical engineering in Lebanon, runs through a master's in radio communication in Paris, a PhD in optimisation, a postdoc in machine learning in Bordeaux and a stint at EPFL, and lands at Sony AI. The recruitment was unusual: nobody would tell her what the project was. They sent her two research papers, one on computer vision and one on table tennis from DeepMind, and let her connect the dots. She guessed right, joined as a team lead on reinforcement learning, and ended up leading 10 engineers and researchers on a problem that had not been solved before. The technical heart of the conversation is the gap between a system that works in simulation and a machine that has to survive the real world. Every component worked on its own. Making them work together, in real time, against a fast spinning ball, is where the five years went. Or as Mireille puts it: in the digital world you can reset and restart, but in the real world the physics does not forgive you, and if you are late by a few milliseconds the ball is already gone. In this episode: Getting recruited for a secret project with two research papers and no detailsWhy the 80/20 rule breaks down when nobody knows the solution yetResearch team and engineering team, working in parallel for five yearsThe real bottleneck: making every component work together on a real robotWhy building a robot is fundamentally different from building an AI systemHow the sim-to-real gap narrowed over five years, and why it will never fully closeWhat technical leadership actually demands: clarity, trust across disciplines, and making different voices heardGoing from individual contributor to leading 10 people, and learning to let goWhere robotics is heading, from care and industry to self-driving cars and dronesWould she be the patient for a fully autonomous surgical robot?Women in Robotics, and why whoever builds the future shapes the futureStudying engineering in Lebanon in a class that was almost 50/50 About the guest: Mireille El Gheche is a robotics and machine learning researcher who led the reinforcement learning team on Sony AI's table tennis robot project, and is an active participant in the Women in Robotics community. About the show: TechDrive Zürich is a series of candid, in-car conversations with the people building technology in and around Zürich, hosted by Justinas Mišeikis.

  2. Aug 4

    DARE Campus: Where Robots Get to Run Wild | Stefan Zimmer on TechDrive Zürich

    Most offices are clean, quiet, and a little boring. Stefan Zimmer built the opposite. In this episode of TechDrive Zürich, I drive through Zürich with Stefan, employee number one at FlexOffice and the head of DARE Campus. FlexOffice started in 2018 with nothing but an idea and four laptops. Today it is the biggest serviced-office provider in Switzerland, with 11 locations and around 30,000 square meters of space. DARE Campus is Stefan's boldest bet yet: a home built on purpose for deep-tech and robotics startups, with raw concrete, no fancy double floors, and big rooms where teams can get a little wild with heavy hardware. We also get into how an office company survived a COVID home-office mandate, the day a humanoid robot ran through the campus, the one piece of office tech everyone secretly hates, and why the "far away" neighbourhood of Schlieren is actually nine minutes away by train. ⏱️ Chapters00:00 Welcome01:15 From four laptops to Switzerland's biggest02:05 From 15 years in nightlife to running an office03:02 Where the name came from: Join, Explore, DARE03:52 Why the campus is all raw concrete05:07 Taking the distractions away from founders06:53 Building a community, not just renting desks08:22 How the model changed, and surviving COVID10:30 A humanoid robot running through the campus12:37 The office tech everyone secretly hates13:39 Who DARE Campus is for15:46 Is Schlieren really that far? The 9-minute playlist16:04 Events, hackathons and knowledge sharing17:28 Wrap-up 💡 A few takeaways Start small, think big: four laptops became Switzerland's largest serviced-office provider in under a decade.Build for your user, not for looks: raw concrete and big rooms beat polished floors when customers bring robots.Remove the friction: founders do their best work when someone else handles the boring stuff.A crisis can be an accelerator: when offices were "banned," FlexOffice leaned into flexibility and came back stronger.Community is the real product: people come for the space, but they stay for the people. 🎁 Special offer for buildersDARE Campus has space open right now, from a single desk to hundreds of square meters of maker space. Mention "TechDrivePodcast" when you sign for a desk or a space, and your first month is completely rent-free. If you work in robotics, deep-tech, or AI and want room to get a little wild, this one is for you. 🔗 ConnectGuest: Stefan Zimmer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-zimmer-flexoffice/ DARE Campus: darecampus.ch FlexOffice: flexoffice.ch TechDrive Zürich - hosted by Justinas Mišeikis - https://techdrivezurich.lovable.app/ 🎧 Also available on YouTube #TechDrive #Zürich #Switzerland #robotics #deeptech #startups #FlexOffice #DARECampus #makerspace #innovation

  3. Jul 22

    Building World Class Startups at VentureLab | Raffael Kellner on TechDrive Zürich

    What turns brilliant Swiss research into a company the world actually wants? This episode of TechDrive Zürich is a driving conversation with Raffael Kellner, who has spent six years at VentureLab / Venture Kick - the programs behind roughly 80% of Switzerland's innovation-based startups. Raffael shares his own path (business school → the startup scenes of Slovakia and Vienna → a failed app startup → consulting → VentureLab), then unpacks what he looks for when a scientist wants to commercialize their work. The recurring theme: mission comes first - "the key thing is to know that you want it" - and everything else can be taught. In this episode: Why a PhD is surprisingly good preparation for startup life - "you've already learned how to suffer"The mindset flip from research perfectionism to startup "good enough, and easy to scale"Why you must validate demand before you buildThe data behind the method: an ~84% success rate for completed Venture Kick projectsSwitzerland's "unfair advantage" - world-class IP and an ecosystem that's international from day oneThe blind spot: the world's growth is shifting to Asia, and why founders should learn those marketsA wow-moment from China's "dark factories," where robots - not cheap labour - build (self-driving) carsWhat Raffael would build if he started a startup today, and the values that would guide it About the guest: Raffael Kellner works at VentureLab / Venture Kick, supporting Switzerland's most promising deep-tech and innovation-driven startups from first idea to global markets. About the show: TechDrive Zürich is a series of candid, in-car conversations with the people building technology in and around Zürich - hosted by Justinas Mišeikis. ▶ Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X6pt5X9Z0-M 🔗 VentureLab: venturelab.swiss • Venture Kick: venturekick.ch 🔗 Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raffaelkellner/

    Building World Class Startups at VentureLab | Raffael Kellner on TechDrive Zürich

  4. Jul 8

    Scaling Robots with Purpose | Robert MacKenzie on TechDrive Zurich

    In this episode of TechDrive Zurich, I’m taking a drive with deep tech executive and venture partner, Dr. Robert MacKenzie (Ellipsis Ventures, former C-level at ANYbotics, Hocoma, Labster).We dive into what it actually takes to get robotics out of the lab and into the real world. We discuss the transition from flashy demos to achieving "boring reliability", the 99.999% dependability required for industrial scaling. Robert shares insights from his experience scaling ANYbotics into a global player, and breaks down what investors are truly looking for in the next generation of AI and robotics startups.As always on TechDrive, we explore these complex topics while navigating the streets, blending high-level strategy with real-world execution.Three things stuck with me: 1. In deep tech, "if you build it, they will come" is rarely true. Robert's warning is premature commercialization. Chasing revenue with a product that isn't finished. His fix is to stop treating real-world deployments as expensive guesswork ("osmosis," as he calls it, basically put an expensive robot out there and hope you learn something) and turn them into a tight, conscious learning loop that feeds straight back into the product. Build the value first and the adoption follows. 2. The robotics correction is coming. It's a planning signal, not a reason to panic. He's predicting a corrective dip in early 2027 as the hype meets reality and investment cools. His practical advice to Zürich robotics founders was blunt: if you want to raise, raise in 2026. He's not anti-humanoid, but they "do amazing movements with zero understanding of the movements they're doing." The near future is a mixed fleet of specialized robots, not one humanoid doing everything. 3. Founders, especially researchers, shouldn't lose their superpower. Scientists are masters of the learning loop: form a hypothesis, don't know the answer, find a way. But once a spin-off finds one solution that works in the lab, the loop often stops, and they fall in love with it. Keep that loop running in the real world and it's a game-changer. His related, honest note: don't default to CEO/CTO because the title is romantic, but take the role that's best for the company. Sometimes that means letting someone else drive.Subscribe for more in-car conversations with the leaders shaping the future of tech, AI and robotics!

  5. Jun 24

    TechDrive Zurich: Nikos Kaliorakis, President of J Floor

    He started his career teaching trains to catch their own failures before they happened. Now he does the same for founders. Nikos Kaliorakis, president of J Floor, joins TechDrive for a drive through Zurich. We get into leaving Greece, the jump from fixing machines to backing people, and why he's set on keeping young builders in Zurich instead of losing them to London or San Francisco. Plus what J Floor actually is, and what it refuses to be: no coworking space, no accelerator, no equity, no fees. Just founders helping founders. No stage, no script. Just an honest conversation in a moving car. Follow for more TechDrive Zürich episodes!

  6. Jun 16

    TechDrive Zürich: Nelija Mišeikienė

    Tech chat with Nelija Mišeikienė

  • 6 Episodes

About

Casual short informal interviews with key people in the tech industry in Switzerland and beyond. All in English.

Information

  • Creator
    Justinas Mišeikis
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Justinas Mišeikis
  • Show Website
    TechDrive Zurich