Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Today’s guest is Lukas Ziegler, robotics investor and founder of the media platform We All Are Robots, which reaches more than 100 million readers and viewers per year. He previously worked on robotics deployments and helped build the collaborative robot and AMR market in Poland before moving into venture and media.
🎧 Tune in now on Spotify and YouTube and share your thoughts! In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!
PS: Has this e-mail been forwarded to you? Sign up here.
Why you should listen
You should listen to this if you want a grounded view on where robotics is actually creating value today versus where hype around humanoids is outrunning reality.
As the conversation unfolded it became clear that most near term wins will come from narrow, boring automation problems rather than general purpose robots.
What we talk about
00:00 Introduction
02:28 From programming robots to becoming the world's top robotics voice
05:10 The 80/20 rule: wheeled robots vs. humanoids
08:10 Safety gaps and the missing ISO standard for legged robots
12:03 How to Derive Real ROI From Robots
20:19 Reliability as a product: the path from 95% to 99.9%
26:35 Boring problems win: Zipline, Exotec, and narrow task mastery
29:17 Customer discovery: how to find the right robotic use case
33:32 Tesla's 8.4 billion miles of data and why it doesn't help robots
38:23 Europe in the global robotics race: talent, manufacturing, and EU Inc
47:08 Rapid fire: the questions that reveal if a robot is production-ready
Our main take away’s
Humanoid robots win funding because they promise universality, not because they are the most efficient machines. Venture investors are betting on a single platform that could theoretically handle warehouse work, household chores, and manufacturing tasks, which explains multi billion valuations despite limited real world productivity today. Specialized machines already outperform humans and humanoids in many industrial tasks.
Most robotics value comes from narrow systems that solve one painful task extremely well. Companies like AutoStore and Exotec built large businesses by focusing on a single logistics problem before expanding into adjacent capabilities. This approach lowers technical complexity and allows robots to deliver measurable ROI much earlier.
The biggest bottleneck in robotics today is data collection, not just model training. Simulation tools can help reach the first 80 percent of performance but real world manipulation requires large volumes of human demonstrations through teleoperation or egocentric recording. Scaling that process requires real humans repeating tasks thousands of times, which makes robotics training fundamentally slower than pure software.
Tesla’s autonomous driving data does not translate into a robotics advantage. Self driving systems are trained to avoid interacting with the environment while robots are designed to manipulate it. Navigation data can help with mobility but it does not solve the dexterity and manipulation challenges that define physical robotics.
Automation demand is being driven by demographics rather than pure technology hype. Europe’s declining birth rates and growing e commerce expectations are creating a structural labor shortage in logistics and manufacturing. Companies are turning to robotics because demand for faster production and delivery is rising while the available workforce is shrinking.
How to reach out to Lukas
Exclusive from Lukas
It’s been a long night for us. We’ll update this as soon as we can!
Follow the Gradient is a weekly newsletter and podcast by the serial founders Melanie Gabriel & Christian Woese about how to scale a business from Europe while staying sane.
You have full control over what we send to you. We sent a weekly rundown on Tuesdays, and our podcast brief on Thursdays. If you do not want to receive this Thursday one, you can change this in the email preferences below.
