Hacking grants to build an AI team early

What happens when the cost of intelligence drops to zero? The only thing that matters is knowing how to give the right instructions.

In this episode, Andreas Bachmann – co-founder of Adacor, a managed cloud and critical infrastructure provider serving banks, automotive, healthcare, and energy clients across Germany – shares what 22 years of deliberate, founder-led growth actually looks like. We explore the real tension between innovation and zero-tolerance uptime, the co-founder crisis that almost broke the company, and why Andreas believes the primary job of every knowledge worker in five years won’t be doing the work – it’ll be managing the agents doing it for them.

What You’ll Discover:

[00:01:19] Innovating When Failure Is Not an Option → How Adacor runs experiments for critical infrastructure clients who can’t afford a single hiccup – and the mental model that makes it work

[00:05:30] The Sustainable Growth Playbook → Why Andreas chose deliberate, step-by-step growth over hypergrowth – and how that decision made Adacor more competitive, not less

[00:13:49] The Co-Founder Crisis Nobody Talks About → At 40–50 people, Adacor fractured into silos and the founding team needed “marriage counseling” – what they decided, and who stepped back

[00:17:34] Self-Organization Without Chaos → How Adacor implemented OKRs, dailies, and retrospectives in a high-stakes environment – and the one thing that makes retros actually stick

[00:23:37] Building a Human-Centered Tech Company → From family compatibility programs to volunteer firefighter support – why Andreas treats the company as the strong one, not the individual

[00:27:26] The AI Question: Bullshit or Real? → Why Andreas went all-in on AI in 2022, how Adacor hacked EU innovation grants to build an AI team years early, and why he skipped the GPU commodity race entirely

[00:34:16] The Future of Work Is Managing Agents → Andreas’s thesis on what happens when intelligence is automated and essentially free – and what human value actually looks like on the other side

Key Takeaways:

• Sustainable growth is a competitive advantage in high-trust industries – adding people too fast breaks the thing clients pay you for
• “Fast fashion software”: non-developers are already using AI to write and discard code; this is a glimpse of where all knowledge work is headed
• The best retros are useless without a committed “what do we do about it now?” – every retrospective at ATCO must produce 1–3 actionable initiatives
• The co-founder transition from parallel silos to one clear direction is one of the most underreported breaking points in company building
• The new leadership superpower isn’t having all the answers – it’s knowing when to step back and trust the people who do

About Andreas Bachmann:

Andreas is co-founder and CEO of Adacor, a German managed cloud and critical infrastructure company he’s been building for over 22 years with a deliberate focus on stability, human-centered culture, and innovation that doesn’t break things. He’s also a founding force behind Media Monster, an initiative supporting mental health and work-family compatibility in tech.