Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Startup growth is rarely linear - and for Enzo Wälchli of Anybotics, it’s been anything but predictable. From helping scale a commercial team from five to fifty to navigating the emotional rollercoaster of building a deep tech company while raising two small kids, Enzo opens up in this episode about the very real tensions between ambition and burnout, vision and execution, and personal growth and organizational complexity.

What unfolded this week was a candid conversation about the human side of scale: how leaders evolve, how cultures stretch, and how businesses move from raw hustle to sustainable structure. Exclusively for our newsletter subscribers, Enzo has shared additional insights below.

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🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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How you get from early hustle to executive leadership

What you will get out of this episode

In our conversation, Enzo shares:

• How to balance long-term vision with short-term operational decisions during high-growth phases

• Why your early team might not scale with your company - and how to navigate that with empathy and clarity

• How to create headspace for strategic thinking even when you’re buried in daily execution

• Why energy - not time - is the most important currency for sustainable leadership

• and much more!

Our main take away’s

1. Great teams don’t grow by accident - they’re designed: As Anybotics scaled, Enzo learned the hard way that organizational design must be intentional. Preemptively hiring leads before the team grows too large avoids chaos and creates a structure that can scale. Reflecting every few months and iterating the plan is key.

2. You don’t find headspace - you create it: Amid daily chaos, Enzo carves out time for “executive retreats” with just himself, a laptop, and coffee. It’s a powerful reminder that leadership requires space to think - and you must fiercely protect it to build the future instead of just reacting to the present.

3. Letting go is a leadership skill, not a personality trait: As the company evolved, so did Enzo’s role - from managing individuals to leading senior leaders. Trust, clarity of expectations, and cultural alignment make it possible to delegate effectively. Without that foundation, even the most willing leaders struggle to scale.

4. Work-life balance in startups means managing energy, not hours: With two young kids and a scaling company, Enzo redefines balance as an energy equation. He builds rituals, sets non-negotiables, and finds ways to combine work with wellness - like walking meetings - to make the intense pace sustainable.

How to reach out to Enzo

• LinkedIn

• Anybotics

Exclusive from Enzo

What is success for you?

Success is both about the what you do and the how you do it. The What are the results or outcomes are you achieving → Setting ambitious targets and meeting them. The How is about your way to get there → Being the best version of yourself, and improving the overall system / people in the process

What books, podcasts, articles inspired you?

Books: GAP Selling by Keenan, still one of my all-time favorites. From Startup to Grown-Up is also a great book, by Alisa Cohn. Diary of a CEO (DOAC) is a great podcast. And in general: Talking to other scaleup executives about how they are approaching things is very inspiring.

What’s one advice founders should actually ignore?

That there is the one way how to do it. Very often, you get input from someone further ahead on the journey (can be a scaleup, can be a VC) on what they have done or seen to work. And that is great, but just following this the same way is unlikely going to work for you. Go out and gather a few more (competing) perspectives and then apply the learnings to your own situation.

What are habits, activities or rituals that keep you sane (while scaling your business)?

Clear rules of when to check-out from work and focus on family / other things - e.g. for me, dinner with my wife and kids is something I want to prioritize.

What is one “growth hack” (be it business, health or personal-wise) that has a positive impact on you or the company?

I conduct personal “Executive Offsites”, basically a day that I go work from a co-working space or so - at least not from home or from the office - where I do not take any meetings and just focus on strategic topics. Those days help to streamline priorities and advance critical thinking in times, when a lot of things just happen every day. Those moments “off” I can recommend to everyone.