START pod: Nikolas Keller, CEO & Co-Founder, Walter "AI Employee for Manufacturing Operations"

The best AI companies aren't replacing bad software. They're giving it a login.Every software company for years has made the same pitch to manufacturers: clean APIs, migrate your stack, rip out your ERP.It never works. The ERP is the company brain. Years of data. You can't rip it out any more than you can rip out someone's memory.Nikolas Keller & Co-Founder Lukas Postulka figured out the obvious thing that everyone missedStop trying to replace the software. Give an AI employee a login instead.Walter (YC P26) signs into SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Oracle the way a new hire would. Ready to go from day 1.Works out of Teams and email like the rest of the team. Reads orders. Enters them. Places supplier POs. Catches pricing errors before they ship...Not another dashboard. Not another integration project. Not another rip and replace.A purchase order that used to take 15 minutes now takes a few seconds.The insight came from a $109M manufacturer who had a full-time employee doing nothing but typing purchase orders into an ERPNot because the work was valuable. Because the software demanded it.With Walter, your software stays. The manual work disappears.🎙️ Nikolas Keller, CEO & Co-Founder of Walter (YC P26) on Fondo START02:02 Growing up across Beijing, Zurich, Munich, and Singapore02:53 Walking into French restaurants asking for a job04:10 Why he walked away from the Michelin-star path04:48 Choosing startups because uncertainty was the point05:25 Flying to San Francisco with a duffel bag06:18 Getting rejected, then forcing his way into a startup07:06 Learning software engineering and customer discovery08:00 Meeting future co-founder Lukas Pistoor09:00 Lukas' bias toward action and unconventional journey10:16 Discovering the manufacturing workflow problem10:48 Selling Walter before the product existed11:26 Why AI employees work where ERP replacements failvisit www.walter.one to learn more