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

About this episode

Nikolas Keller discusses how Walter, an AI employee, transforms manufacturing operations by integrating with existing software systems.

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 missed Stop 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 ERP Not because the work was valuable. Because the software demanded it. With Walter, your software stays. The manual work disappears. 🎙️ Nikolas…

People in this episode

Host: Fondo

Guest: Nikolas Keller

Topics covered

• AI in manufacturing
• software integration
• entrepreneurship
• automation
• business operations

Keywords

• AI
• manufacturing
• ERP
• automation
• software integration
• business operations
• Walter

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Walter, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle

Places: Beijing, Zurich, Munich, Singapore

More episodes of START

• START pod: Jameson Zaballos, Co-Founder & CEO, Napa: “Your storytelling problems, solved” · June 12, 2026 · 12 min
• START pod: Parth Maheshwari & Chetan Manda, Co-Founders, Mochatrade | "US stock perps for Indian traders" · June 12, 2026 · 14 min
• START pod: Gohar Tamrazyan, CEO & Co-Founder, Pavoot - "AI Event Manager for Customer Events" · June 8, 2026 · 11 min
• START pod: Chris Bakke, Founder with exits to X, Indeed, and Zillow · June 5, 2026 · 15 min
• START pod: Teddy Li, Co-Founder, Prepse: “Train smarter. Sell better.” · June 4, 2026 · 10 min
• START pod: Moody Abdul, CEO & Co-Founder, Klarify "AI Agent for Therapists" · June 3, 2026 · 12 min