TechDrive ZürichInsider conversations on the Swiss deep tech, AI and robotics ecosystem. Smart people. One car. 20 minutes.
Unheard, personal stories from inside Europe's quiet deep-tech capital!
Exclusive in-car interviews with the founders, investors and researchers behind Zurich deep tech startups: physical AI commercialization, robotics scaling across the DACH region, Swiss venture capital and hardware innovation. Unscripted, personal, and always in English.
The concept
Why the Swiss tech ecosystem opens up in a passenger seat.
Side-by-side instead of face-to-face. No eye-contact pressure, road noise to fill the silences, and a clock you can't argue with. That setting is the whole idea, and it's pointed at the people building Zurich deep tech startups: ETH Zurich spinoffs, robotics teams, Swiss venture capital investors and researchers, not pop stars.
Unscripted
No slides, no media training, no publicist in the back seat. Just the conversation that happens when the city is rolling past the window.
Personal
The angle is the person, not the pitch deck. We go after the unheard story: the doubt, the pivot, the 3am decision.
20 Minutes
One drive, one guest, a hard time limit set by the destination. Tight enough to watch on a commute, deep enough to remember.
Latest episode
Physical AI Is Ready. Your Building Isn't.
Kateryna Portmann
When Kateryna Portmann was a kid in Ukraine, she asked her parents for a robot. They kept bringing her dolls.
Read the key insightsAll episodes
Interviews with the people building Zurich deep tech startups.
Physical AI commercialization, robotics scaling in the DACH region, Swiss venture capital, ETH Zurich spinoffs and deep tech maker spaces. Open any episode for the executive summary and key insights.
Shorts
Quick cuts from the road.
Host
Justinas Mišeikis
Builder, operator, and relentless interviewer with a PhD in Robotics and an EMBA. Justinas has worked hands on across all three sides of the tech world: inside corporates, deep in research labs, and in the trenches of startups. That mix is rare, and it shapes how he listens. He knows the technical detail well enough to follow anyone, and he cares more about the person than the pitch.
He's also a public speaker who has spent years on stages, which is exactly why he wanted to get off them. After enough polished panels and rehearsed answers, he became convinced the honest conversations happen somewhere else entirely: in a moving car, side by side, with nobody performing.
So that's what TechDrive is. He does the deep research, asks the sharp question, and lets the silences run. It's his attempt to catch the side conversations that usually get lost, the real stories that only surface when two people are just driving somewhere together.
Visit Justinas's websiteAbout
The guest is the hero. The host is the driver.
TechDrive started from a simple frustration: the best stories in tech never make it onto a stage. They surface in the side conversations: the unguarded ten minutes before the panel, the honest answer in the car on the way to the airport.
So we built the whole show around that moment. One well-prepared driver, one guest from the ecosystem, twenty minutes of road. The research is obsessive; the questions are specific; the goal is the person, never the pitch.
Meet the host on YouTubeFAQ
Questions, answered.
TechDrive Zürich is an English-language interview series and podcast filmed inside a moving car. Each roughly 20-minute episode features one guest from the Zürich and Swiss tech and startup scene: founders, investors, researchers and operators sharing unscripted, personal stories from inside Europe's quiet deep-tech capital.
Riding Shotgun
A short note when a new episode drops: the guest, the hook, and the one question you won't want to miss. No spam, ever.