Topic · Writing
Founder Playbook.
How deep-tech actually gets built — the focus calls, the grant-and-accelerator path, hiring, and the unglamorous decisions behind a decade of company-building. No survivorship-bias hype.
7 posts
018 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026What I'd Tell Myself at 22, Starting a Company Over
Honest founder advice written against my own failures, not my wins — survivorship bias, the real cost of learning in hardware, and why AI changes the math now.
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028 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026Credibility as a Young, Immigrant, First-Time Founder
I started at 21 in a country whose language I barely spoke, with no network. Credibility for a founder like that is accumulated, not claimed — one checkable proof point at a time.
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038 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026Cervi to Dronehub: What a Pivot and Rebrand Really Cost
Renaming Cervi Robotics to Dronehub took an afternoon. Becoming a product company — turning down ~€3M of services work — took years and real money.
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048 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026Why Deep-Tech Takes a Decade: Surviving the Middle
Hardware autonomy is a ten-year arc, not an 18-month sprint. Here is why the timeline is real and how I survived the unglamorous middle years.
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059 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026Hiring Real Engineers as a No-Name Startup in a Small City
How we recruited an engineering team good enough to coordinate an EU Horizon project from Rzeszow, with no brand, no coastal address, and no salary war chest.
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068 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026I Turned Down €3M of Work to Bet on One Product
In 2020 we declined roughly €3M of outsourcing revenue to put everything behind one autonomous drone platform. Here is the anatomy of that focus decision.
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079 MIN·UPDATED · JUN 2026How Grants Funded My Drone Hardware Company
I built an autonomous-drone hardware company on ESA contracts, a Horizon 2020 grant, and an EDA study before any priced round. Here is the actual sequence.
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