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The Techne Connect
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl, CEO & Founder of SEAL Robotics
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We speak with Marie-Elisabeth Makohl, Co-Founder and CEO of SEAL Robotics, to explore how automation is starting to reshape one of the most overlooked parts of global logistics.
Marie-Elisabeth shares how a container voyage across the North Atlantic and North Sea led her to build a robotics company focused on container securing, a process still handled manually across ports worldwide. She explains the safety risks, labour pressures, and operational delays tied to this work, and why ports are ready for change.
The conversation also covers her path from computer science and robotics at the Technical University of Munich into entrepreneurship, the realities of building a startup in heavy industry, and why product market fit matters more than hype. They discuss fundraising, leadership, multidisciplinary engineering, and the importance of building robotics that fit the real environment, not just the lab.
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