Start-ups & AI with Carl from Ahron

What does watching World Cup games at 2am have to do with building an AI platform? What does selling your second startup teach you that you can only really use on your third? And why would someone tell you not to buy more AI agents — but to rip out the layer underneath them instead? Welcome to another Employee Experience Labs podcast from the Munich Podcast studio. Employee Experience Labs Podcasts are about HR Tech, Employee Experience, Shared Service and other interesting topics around HR at the workplace. Today's episode is a true addition to our Start-up and AI series — and honestly, back to the classic format. After a few episodes that went in different directions, today I'm talking to a founder again, building AI-native HR technology from day one. I had the pleasure to talk to Carl Hoffman, Co-Founder & CEO of Ahron. Carl studied at TU Munich, founded his first HR tech startup, Job Crowd, roughly 15 years ago, later founded Talentry, which he sold about four years ago, and stayed on at Clever Connect for another three years before starting Ahron about a year ago. So this is very much his third rodeo — and it shows. We went deep on why Ahron isn't building another out-of-the-box AI agent, but a context and control layer that sits on top of the 120-plus HR systems a typical global company already has. We talked about the partnership with Celonis for process intelligence, where AI actually belongs across talent acquisition, employee services and payroll — and Carl's genuinely provocative take on who should really be nervous about agentic AI in HR. Spoiler: it's not Workday, SAP or Oracle. It's the Accentures and Genpacts of the world running shared service centers. Music by Bensound