We Built a Pizza Drone. Now We Defend Ukraine.

<p>Kenneth Richard Geipel (co-founder of Robotto) started his career not in a lab or a startup — but in the Danish Armed Forces, where he served three combat deployments. When he left the military, he went back to university to study robotics. His thesis project? A drone to deliver pizza from 500 meters away, because he and his classmates were too lazy to walk.</p><p><br></p><p>What nobody expected is what happened next. A summer of record wildfires across Europe pulled that pizza drone into something more serious — autonomous wildfire detection software built with real firefighters in the field. Then COVID hit, nearly killing the company four days before their first major demo abroad. Then in 2022, a phone call from a former fellow veteran whose wife was Ukrainian changed everything. Kenneth had spent years turning down requests to weaponize his technology — but when a fellow soldier asks for help, you say yes.</p><p><br></p><p>In this episode, Kenneth shares how Robotto went from a pizza drone thesis to deploying GPS-free autonomous software on Ukrainian frontlines daily, how they got selected for NATO&#39;s DIANA accelerator out of 3,500 applicants across 24 nations, and why he thinks the entire European defence industry is getting one thing catastrophically wrong.</p><p><br></p><p>Get in touch with Kenneth:</p><p>https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-richard-geipel-081309186/</p><p><br></p><p>-----------------------------------------------</p><p><br></p><p>Chapters:</p><p>(00:00) Introduction</p><p>(00:33) Who Is Kenneth and What Does Robotto Do</p><p>(01:37) Why a Soldier Became a Robotics Founder</p><p>(03:50) What Deployments Taught Him That No Startup Book Will</p><p>(08:27) The Pizza Drone Thesis That Started Everything</p><p>(09:18) Pivoting from Pizza to Wildfire Detection</p><p>(10:48) How Two Students Got a Meeting With a Government Agency</p><p>(11:59) Incorporating Robotto — With Just a POC and Two Papers</p><p>(16:33) COVID Hits Four Days Before Their First Major Demo</p><p>(24:15) Fundraising After Near-Bankruptcy — and Why Radical Honesty Won</p><p>(29:05) The Phone Call From a Veteran That Pulled Them Into Defence</p><p>(31:17) The Ethical Conversations They Had Before Saying Yes</p><p>(33:17) How They Got Their First Ukrainian Partner and Built in Two Weeks</p><p>(35:44) Tracking Elephants in Thailand and Fighting Fires — at the Same Time</p><p>(41:23) How Product Iteration Works When Your Customer Is on the Frontline</p><p>(47:21) How Ci