Munich Startup: What motivated you to found your company?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: The motivation behind Seal Robotics is concrete and tangible: solving real problems that I’ve experienced firsthand. I spent several weeks on a container ship – in the European North Sea and the North Atlantic – and witnessed up close the conditions people work under: extreme time pressure, harsh weather, and physically demanding tasks. This experience shaped me profoundly. Afterward, it was clear to me: there’s urgent need for action here, and technology can make a real difference. Seal emerged from this drive – not from theoretical market analysis, but from lived experience.
Funding, learnings, and requirements in the VC environment
Munich Startup: What would you have liked to know before your first founding?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Above all: when certain effort is truly justified and when it’s simply premature. Do I need a perfectly drafted articles of association before my first VC round? How long can administrative processes actually take in Germany and how do I plan realistically? And what specifically needs to be prepared before going into a funding round – what does a truly compelling data room look like? These seemingly pragmatic questions can determine success or failure.
Munich Startup: How has your company been financed so far?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Seal is venture capital-financed. Our lead investor is a British deeptech VC, complemented by two German and one American investor, plus a German business angel. Overall, we’ve raised approximately 1.8 million euros to date.
Munich Startup: When and where do you get your best ideas?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Whenever I can truly disconnect and let new impressions sink in – and especially when I talk to people who aren’t normally part of my daily life. Leaving my own echo chamber is crucial for me. Sailing, hiking, diving – for me, these aren’t leisure activities in the classical sense, but mental spaces where the best thoughts emerge. It’s no accident that our company has maritime roots.
Munich Startup: What are your three favorite work tools?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: My most important tool is focus, and it’s alarmingly rare. Beyond that: Notion for structure, Claude as a thinking partner, and consistent email batching, because constant availability is the biggest productivity killer nobody talks about.
Munich Startup: Your top tip on “pitching”?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Learn to be both CEO and investor simultaneously – at least in your head. What I mean: a good pitch isn’t a monologue, it’s a dialogue you’ve already had in your mind before the meeting. Understand why an investor asks a specific question and what really lies behind it. Recognize what matters to them, what’s secondary, and which question they should ask to truly penetrate your product and business case but don’t. Whoever masters that doesn’t pitch anymore. They conduct a conversation as equals.
Deeptech, maritime innovation, and location factors in Munich
Munich Startup: Does it seem like a good time to found a company right now? Why?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Better than during Corona – that’s already something. Seriously: the question is complex. On one hand, there are enormous opportunities today, especially in deeptech. On the other hand, the framework conditions have changed noticeably. Geopolitical uncertainties – the numerous conflicts worldwide – lead some investors to increased caution.
At the same time, understanding of pre-seed rounds has fundamentally shifted: a compelling idea and a strong team are no longer enough for many VCs – they already expect initial traction, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. And whoever, like us, doesn’t just build software but combines hardware and software, operates in an even more demanding environment.
Munich Startup: What technology or industry would you bet on in your next founding?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: Clearly: maritime again. This industry is huge, systemically critical, and in many areas still technologically far behind its potential. What we’ve begun to understand at Seal really only scratches the surface of what’s possible. Enormous opportunities remain here for courageous founders.
Munich Startup: What could be improved about Munich as a founding location in your view?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: We’re very happy at Gate Garching – it’s a truly supportive environment. But what Munich and Bavaria overall need more of: more spaces like this. Especially for startups that don’t just develop software but build physical products, sufficient space for hardware development is often a real challenge. Infrastructure should be deliberately expanded here, because deeptech doesn’t happen in the home office.
Munich Startup: Which founder would you like to meet in person? And what would you ask them?
Marie-Elisabeth Makohl: I would choose Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. What fascinates me about him isn’t just what DeepMind has built – AlphaFold, AlphaGo, Gemini – but how he thinks. He’s simultaneously a neuroscientist, chess master, and game developer, and it’s precisely this interdisciplinary way of thinking that has led to truly fundamental breakthroughs. I’d ask him a very specific question: “At what point did you recognize that games aren’t just a research playground, but the actual key to general intelligence?”
