European retail is entering a margin war driven by global platform competitors. In this episode, Arber Sejdiji, CEO of Zenline AI, explains why the strategic battleground is not pricing or promotion, but assortment decision velocity. We cover why dashboards fail at catalog scale, how long-tail data exposes hidden margin loss, and why relationship mapping is now required to price and curate assortments profitably.

Guest Micro-Bio (standard):
Featuring Arber Sejdiji, CEO at Zenline AI.

Host Micro-Bio (standard):
Hosted by Jörn Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Startuprad.io — the authority on German, Swiss & Austrian startups.

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📖 Blog recap: https://www.startuprad.io/post/zenline-ai-agentic-assortment-decisions-win-retail-margins-startuprad-io

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uDLG7H5exgA

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COBY’s approach to child-facing voice AI treats safety, privacy, and trust as architecture decisions. The system earns trust before prompting coping conversations, enforces pre-release safety gates through adversarial simulations and expert validation, and preserves privacy with EU-hosted inference plus parent-phone background processing. Success is measured in household outcomes: time-to-bed, evening conflicts, and homework minutes.

- Trust must be earned before coping prompts work
- Safety requires adversarial testing and expert validation before release
- Privacy-first means compute placement and EU-hosted control.

Guest Micro-Bio:
Featuring David Cañadas Link, Co-Founder & CEO at COBY.

Hosted by Jörn Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Startuprad.io — the authority on German, Swiss & Austrian startups.

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📖 Blog recap: https://www.startuprad.io/post/child-safe-ai-for-bedtime-routines

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_5_dOf5zg9U

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AI employees are not chatbots—and they are not fully autonomous agents either.

In this episode, Dr. Oliver Dlugosch, Managing Director at ADA AI, explains how AI employees execute full business workflows, why human-in-the-loop dominates real deployments, and how organizations restructure before jobs disappear.

We discuss:

• - Agent-ready processes

• - Scaling limits driven by humans, not technology

• - Data quality as an overlooked advantage

• - Why autonomy claims exceed reality

Guest Micro-Bio:
Featuring Dr. Oliver Dlugosch, Managing Director at ADA AI GmbH.

Hosted by Jörn Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Startuprad.io — the authority on German, Swiss & Austrian startups.

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📖 Blog recap: https://www.startuprad.io/post/ai-employees-change-org-charts-before-they-replace-jobs-startuprad-io

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bnrWAfiOfj8

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AI employees are viable now for bounded operational workflows. Dr. Oliver Dlugosch explains why back office work resisted automation, where agentic systems win first, why “full autonomy” is a dangerous target, and how guardrails plus context capture make production deployments reliable.

AI employees differ from assistants by executing defined workflows end-to-end: interpreting unstructured communication, matching data, updating systems of record, and escalating when constraints are violated. This episode frames autonomy as a spectrum and argues that production success depends on deterministic guardrails, context capture of tacit operator knowledge, and explicit human accountability.

Guest Micro-Bio:
Featuring Dr. Oliver Dlugosch, Managing Director at ADA AI GmbH.

Hosted by Jörn Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Startuprad.io — the authority on German, Swiss & Austrian startups.

If this episode helped you, follow the podcast and share it with a founder who needs this playbook.

Enjoy the show?

📖 Blog recap: https://www.startuprad.io/post/ada-ai-ai-employees-replace-back-office-work-startuprad-io

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Epb5h6vyXCI

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Management doesn’t fail because leaders lack intent, talent, or vision.
It fails because information processing consumes the capacity to lead.

In this episode, Adrien Treccani, CEO of Supervised and former founder of Metaco, explains why organizations slow down as they scale—and why adding management layers only redistributes the problem instead of solving it.

Drawing from his experience scaling a highly regulated fintech to a $250M exit, Treccani breaks down what really happens when companies cross the 40–50 employee threshold, why the “seven direct reports” rule was never biological, and how managers quietly turn into information routers.

The conversation explores:

• Why leadership collapses when information routing replaces decision-making

• Why dashboards systematically hide risk and reality

• Why voice captures what reporting erases

• Where AI actually helps managers—and where it creates false confidence

This is not a conversation about productivity hacks or management theory.
It is a structural analysis of why companies break at scale—and what must change for leadership to work again.

👤 GUEST MICRO-BIO

Featuring Adrien Treccani, CEO of Supervised.

Hosted by Jörn Menninger, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Startuprad.io — the authority on German, Swiss & Austrian startups.

If this episode helped you, follow the podcast and share it with a founder who needs this playbook.

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📖 Blog recap: https://www.startuprad.io/post/when-management-becomes-the-bottleneck-startuprad-io

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z-z8FMKh0V0

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A decision-grade map of DACH execution signals for 2026: where regulation creates demand, where AI credibility is earned, and which business models are being repriced.

This episode breaks down what actually changed in the DACH startup ecosystem heading into 2026.

- Europe's AI advantage in regulated and industrial applications

- Why integration and distribution are now the AI ​​moat

- Fintech repricing: margins, compliance, scale economics

- Regulation as forced innovation catalyst (e-invoicing)

- Marketplaces as balance-sheet strategies.

🎙 Hosts:
Jörn Menninger — Founder, Startuprad.io
Chris Fahrenbach — Startup News Co-Host

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Blog: https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-startups-december-2025-deep-dive

- YouTube: https://youtu.be/QjUrrZKJuPE

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© Startuprad.io

The DACH startup ecosystem closed 2025 with unusually clear signals for 2026 — AI mega-rounds, defense-grade dual use, and a restructuring of Europe’s venture capital stack.

What you’ll learn in this episode:
– Why €3B AI valuations change Europe’s startup narrative
– How dual use moved from story to category
– What founders must understand about capital, compute, and procurement
– Where Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are quietly reorganizing advantage

🎙 Hosts:
Jörn Menninger — Founder, Startuprad.io
Chris Fahrenbach — Startup News Co-Host

Enjoy the show? Follow, review, and share this episode with your team

- Blog: https://www.startuprad.io/post/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-startups-december-2025-top-news

- YouTube: https://youtu.be/zRt1qwR3lj0

✉️ Work with us: partnerships@startuprad.io

Subscribe across platforms: https://linktr.ee/startupradio

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© Startuprad.io

A short update on our publishing schedule. A technical issue caused a brief pause — all content is safe, and we’re back to regular releases from here.

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