EP4-4 | From Luxembourg to Taiwan: Building in Europe, Developing in Asia, Innovating in Taiwan

In this episode, we sit down with Richard “Rick” Wiltgen, founder of RideFair, whose entrepreneurial journey has taken him across Europe and Asia before bringing him to southern Taiwan. After spending some 20 years in Asia and most recently running a company in Luxembourg, Rick could have chosen many places to build his next venture. Instead, he chose Taiwan, and specifically Kaohsiung. He shares what building in Luxembourg taught him, why Asia remains central to developing his business, and what he found in Taiwan that made it the place to build and innovate.

That decision also led him to an overlooked problem. From couriers and university shuttles to elderly-care vehicles, Rick saw fleets still making routing decisions with limited tools and little evidence of whether a better route could actually save them time or money. That became the foundation for RideFair, which uses a fleet’s own historical data to test what could have happened differently before asking operators to trust a new system.

Rick also explains how his background in history shaped that approach, why he believes trust rather than optimization is the real challenge, and where AI belongs once it can prove that it actually performs better.

From Luxembourg to Kaohsiung, this is a conversation about what it takes to build across markets, why location still matters for founders, and why Rick believes Taiwan can be a place not just to enter Asia, but to build what comes next.

In this episode, you'll learn:

What Rick learned from building businesses across Europe and AsiaWhy he chose Taiwan for his next companyWhy Kaohsiung, rather than Taipei, became the home of RideFairWhat he discovered about how commercial fleets still make routing decisionsHow RideFair uses a fleet’s own historical data to test better routes before asking operators to trust its technologyWhy Rick believes trust, not optimization, is the missing piece in the industryHow his background in history inspired RideFair’s approach to asking, “What would have happened otherwise?”Where AI fits, and why Rick believes it should prove itself before making decisions for a live fleetWhat his experience says about Taiwan’s potential as a place for international founders to build and innovate從盧森堡到台灣：跨足歐亞市場，為何他選擇落腳高雄打造車隊智慧路網？ ft. RideFair 創辦人 Richard “Rick” Wiltgen

在亞洲深耕二十年、並曾於盧森堡經營企業的連續創業者 Rick，在開啟下一段創業冒險時，做出了出人意表的決定——他選擇台灣，並且直接落腳高雄。從快遞配送、大學接駁車到長照車隊，Rick 敏銳觀察到許多營運團隊在路徑規劃上，仍仰賴有限工具與直覺決策，缺乏客觀數據佐證更佳路線能否切實降低成本。這催生了 RideFair 的誕生：透過車隊過往真實歷史數據進行逆