What actually breaks deep tech startups isn’t lack of vision, but running out of patience before reality catches up.
Follow the Gradient sits down with Roland Siegwart, Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich and one of Europe’s most influential robotics mentors. Over two decades, Roland has helped shape ETH’s spin-out culture and advised companies like Anybotics, BlueBotics, and 7Sense from research to real-world deployment .
This conversation explores how deep tech companies are really built when timelines are long, capital is patient but finite, and founders must constantly trade ambition against survival.
We talk about:
Why abundant early-stage capital can quietly reduce urgency in deep tech startups
The hidden cost of the last 10 percent from prototype to market-ready system
How early revenue from “unsexy” applications can enable bigger long-term bets
Why Europe’s strength in hardware systems also makes scaling slower and harder
The role experienced operators play in grounding PhD-driven founding teams
When founders must step aside to prevent becoming the company’s bottleneck
Rather than offering formulas, this episode examines how founders learn to make irreversible decisions with incomplete information, balancing engineering rigor with the pressure to move before the window closes.
Our biggest takeaways, including Roland’s view on where founders most often misjudge deep tech reality:
https://followthegradient.io/p/roland-siegwart-podcast
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Where to find Roland Siegwart:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-siegwart-85466912/
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00:00 Introduction
03:51 How Switzerland built a self sustaining robotics ecosystem
05:02 Turning university research into real world companies
07:39 Why Europe struggles to scale deep tech globally
09:46 Funding strategies for long hardware driven timelines
12:16 The painful gap between lab prototypes and products
14:09 Early signals that founders can survive the transition
15:37 Finding a first market with real customer pain
19:00 When pilots turn into scalable robotics businesses
20:47 Bringing business leadership into technical teams
23:24 When founders must step aside to let companies grow
31:49 Navigating dual use and ethical responsibility in robotics
