I have been writing cases about entrepreneurs since 2005 - close to 50 HBS cases published. None is so interesting as the three cases I (some with my HBS colleague, Bill Kerr) I have written on Robert Wessman, 57, Icelandic, founder of SEVERAL multi-billion dollar companies - Actavis (formerly ACT) is now one of the top three generics companies IN THE WORLD. Alvotech (ALVO) is one of the leading biosimilars makers.

Robert has scale-up down-pat as a well-honed, time-tested system:

1. Start with a CLEAR and CONFIRMED CONVICTION, one that is often CONTRARIAN.
2. Surround yourself with a CORE of COMMITTED COLLEAGUES.
3. Build a CULTURE and CAPACITY based on COMPETENCE, COLLABORATION
4. COMPETE to win.
5. COORDINATE behavior through a rigorous management system.

WORTH LISTENING!!!

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In Episode #37 of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sit down with Rupesh Kumar, founder & CEO of ARIQT Global Technologies. Rupesh left a top-1%-earning developer job in India to move to the Netherlands out of what he simply calls “curiosity,” founded ARIQT in June 2020 and has scaled it to 130 colleagues across India, the Netherlands, Australia, and Ireland, breaking $5M in revenue. In Scalerator we used ARIQT for a small but complex project of our own — which is how I came to know Rupesh, and which is why I was curious to get him on the show.

Three threads in our conversation: First, the referral-only growth model, which is not a strategy Rupesh chose so much as one that chose ARIQT — he has an interesting theory about why clients keep calling. Second, the “developer-first” positioning, which is more substantive than it sounds on a careers page. And third, what AI is doing to engineering teams — not the usual will-jobs-disappear debate, but the flattening of the senior/junior hierarchy and the disappearance of the middle.

Favorite Quotes

– “It may sound hard to believe, but in six years we have never sent a single cold email to approach new clients. That says a lot about our services.”

– “People build mobile-first, cloud-first, client-first companies. I said no — I will build a developer-first company, where the developer is our most important asset. Ask ten developers if they want to be a good developer. All ten say yes.”

– “For me it’s very important how much a person knows, but what matters more is: do they have fire in their belly? Do they have hunger for learning?”

– “AI has reduced the gap between senior and junior. The middle is gone.”

– “Four years ago I gave ARIQT a slogan: Sharing is shining. If you want to shine at ARIQT, share your knowledge. Everybody sees it — that’s how you rise here.”

Key Themes

– Referral-only growth as a quality signal.

– “Developer-first” as strategic positioning, not HR copy.

– AI is flattening the engineering organization.

– Services-to-products without sacrificing services. ARIQT’s three AI-native SaaS products emerged from client problems — and Rupesh sees the company becoming predominantly product-based over the next five years, with services as the feeder pipeline.

– “Sharing is shining.” ARIQT’s internal slogan operationalizes the learning culture — knowledge sharing is how you gain visibility and rise inside the company.

Key Takeaways

– A FIFA World Cup 2022 client had struggled for 18 months with a sub-40ms message-processing problem; ARIQT solved it in three months working day and night. They don’t advertise this — clients just tell each other.

– Hiring at ARIQT runs 5–6 interview rounds specifically to screen for hunger and fit, not just skill.

– On-the-job learning is roughly 60% of how the team stays current; structured courses and certifications deliver the initial 40% kickstart.

Rupesh’s five-year vision: ARIQT becomes predominantly known for one of its products, with services continuing

What if the robots are already there — but nobody can get them to actually work, inexpensively and at scale?

In this episode, Ashish Kapoor, founder of General Robotics and former head of the Microsoft Research robotics initiative, discuss how General Robotics is powering the usefulness of robots, immediately and at scale. Ashish has spent his career at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world deployment — and what he found when he surveyed the enterprise robotics landscape was startling: out of 150 large enterprises he spoke with, each having spent north of $100 million on robotic equipment, zero were in production deployment.

The problem isn't the hardware. It's the intelligence layer. General Robotics is building what General Robotics calls the Intelligence Grid — an AI platform that plugs into existing robots across 40+ OEMs, giving them the ability to adapt to unstructured environments, manipulate objects, and navigate dynamic spaces. A power grid, but for robot intelligence.

Ashish walks through his unusual journey, dreaming of being and Indian Air Force pilot, arriving at MIT a quarter century ago where machine learning was everywhere, to flying his own kit airplane, to 18 years at Microsoft Research learning how to take frontier science to commercial scale.

He founded General Robotics in 2023 and now has a 25-person team — 19 of them world-class roboticists — and has already signed approximately 10 large enterprise customers across manufacturing, defense, and logistics, with a target of 100 in the next 12 to 18 months.

"Access to capital is easy. Access to folks (E14) who can really help you is very hard. Optimize for the second, and the capital will come automatically."

"Curiosity, integrity, drive. If I find someone who excels in all three, I would hire them right away. Skills can be taught — but those three things are harder to find."

Key themes in this episode:

- The Intelligence Grid: why robots need an AI power grid, not just better brains

- The deployment gap: $100M+ in idle robots and why zero enterprises are in production

- Research to reality: bridging frontier science and operational deployment

- Hiring for character: curiosity, integrity, and drive over pure technical skill

- Smart capital: VCs as partners — access to customers and talent matters more than money

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