AI Startup CEO Reveals What Really Kills AI Projects
Beyond Coding1 Loka 2025

AI Startup CEO Reveals What Really Kills AI Projects

What if the biggest obstacles to AI innovation aren't what you think? Deeploy CEO Maarten Stolk shares his controversial but effective strategies for building successful AI products and ecosystems, challenging the common wisdom around bottom-up initiatives and regulation.


In this episode, we cover:


Why bottom-up initiatives fail without strong top-down vision.

The surprising benefits of the EU's AI Act for innovation.

How to build a thriving AI ecosystem from the ground up.

The single most important metric for AI observability.

This conversation is for tech leaders, founders, and engineers who want to move beyond AI experiments and build real-world, production-ready systems.


Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:45 - Why Maarten Started a Dutch AI Hub

00:02:15 - The "Flywheel" Effect Crucial for AI Success

00:04:42 - The Hard Truth: Why the Netherlands is Lagging in AI

00:07:52 - A Controversial Take: The EU AI Act is Actually Good for Everyone

00:11:26 - The Real Bottleneck to Innovation Isn't Regulation

00:14:25 - From POC to Production: Why Top-Down Vision is Non-Negotiable

00:17:13 - A Wake-Up Call for Inexperienced Leadership Teams

00:20:30 - How Winning Companies Use AI to Dominate Their Market

00:23:44 - The Right Way to Learn From Your Competitors

00:27:30 - Maarten Outsourced Core Development to an AI Company

00:31:59 - The #1 Metric You Must Track for AI Observability

00:36:03 - Open-Source vs. Closed-Source: Which AI Model Will Win?

00:40:23 - The Inevitable Crisis That Will Force Innovation

00:42:19 - The Power of Having a Long-Term Personal Vision


#AIStrategy #TechLeadership #Innovation


Jaksot(237)

From 6 Engineers to 2: Why Product and Engineering Are Merging

From 6 Engineers to 2: Why Product and Engineering Are Merging

What if the standard 6-person software team is now obsolete? AI tooling isn't just a productivity booster; it's fundamentally blurring the lines between product and engineering, enabling smaller, more...

15 Loka 202549min

How Hackathons Make You a Better Software Engineer

How Hackathons Make You a Better Software Engineer

What if you could turn a weekend project into a core product feature at a major tech company? We sit down with Behrouz Pooladrak, a software engineer and hackathon legend at Booking.com, to uncover ho...

8 Loka 202542min

The Graph Problem Most Developers Don't Know They Have

The Graph Problem Most Developers Don't Know They Have

As a developer, you're trained to think in rows and tables. But what if that's the exact reason you're missing the most powerful connections in your data? There's a fundamental "Graph Problem" hiding ...

25 Syys 202554min

How Deepfakes are Evolving (And What You NEED to Know)

How Deepfakes are Evolving (And What You NEED to Know)

It takes just three seconds for AI to steal your voice and impersonate you in a way no one can detect. How can you protect yourself, your family, and your finances when seeing and hearing is no longer...

17 Syys 20251h 2min

From Pixels to Tokens: UX Is Not Enough Anymore

From Pixels to Tokens: UX Is Not Enough Anymore

What does it take to build AI features at the scale of Microsoft Copilot? Senior Product Manager Stéphanie Visser reveals the massive shifts in product development, from focusing on pixels to tokens a...

10 Syys 202547min

Stop Hiring Junior Engineers Because of AI?

Stop Hiring Junior Engineers Because of AI?

As AI accelerates development, many companies are halting junior hiring, believing AI tools can replace them. Shahin Shahkarami, Director of Data & AI at Ikea Retail, argues this is a massive mistake ...

3 Syys 202549min

How to Master Software Engineering (From Junior to Architect)

How to Master Software Engineering (From Junior to Architect)

Feeling overwhelmed by the constant change in software engineering? After 25 years in the industry, CTO Joris Kuipers shares a pragmatic roadmap to not just survive, but achieve true mastery in your c...

27 Elo 202552min