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The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast Podcast
An AI-First Platform Built on Trust - Philipp Witzmann, nebenan.de (EP 37)

An AI-First Platform Built on Trust - Philipp Witzmann, nebenan.de (EP 37)

The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast vor 1 Monat

0:00

32:00

️ with Philipp Witzmann, CEO of nebenan.de

Most platforms removed friction to grow. Philipp Witzmann
and his team navigate it together, and are now building an
AI-first company on a foundation of digital trust.

Episode overview

nebenan.de is the German neighbourhood platform where you cannot
sign up without your real name and your real address. Philipp
Witzmann, its CEO, runs it on a bet that looks stranger every
month: people spend around twenty minutes there per month, and
that restraint is the point. This episode is for any leader who
senses that speed and efficiency are quietly costing their
organisation something human, and hasn't found the

Key themes

Why a company would put friction back in when the rest of the
internet spent twenty years stripping it out

What a leader owes their team when AI changes every role and
the first fear is whether anyone still has a job

Whether a real, verifiable human becomes more valuable as
fakes get cheaper, or simply harder to find

How a self-described pro-AI CEO holds enthusiasm and worry in
the same hand, especially where children are concerned

What gets lost when a platform optimises for time spent, and
what changes when it optimises for people leaving it words for it
yet.

About the guest

Philipp Witzmann is the CEO of nebenan.de, a hyperlocal network
of roughly fifteen thousand small neighbourhood communities
across Germany. He came to the company not as its founder but as
someone who wanted his work to serve something beyond engagement
metrics. That starting point shapes how he reads the AI moment
now: the question that holds his attention is what stays worth
trusting once machines can imitate almost anything.

️ Chapter markers

[00:30] The assumption that scale equals value, and what it
cost

[11:03] Why the right amount of friction changes how people
think

[15:46] Comfortable, uncomfortable, difficult, impossible:
raising kids and running a company

[32:18] Going first: why a leader who won't learn the tools
won't last

[36:54] What AI changes, and the human proof he now demands

Links

Philipp Witzmann on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nachbar/

Eva Simone Lihotzky on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/

nebenan.de - https://nebenan.de

Scott Galloway on AI companions and young people -
https://www.heise.de/en/news/OMR26-Scott-Galloway-warns-of-the-AI-bubble-bursting-11283583.html

Related episode — AI acts like a mirror for your organization
with Simon Berkler
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6y8PMaVUnZVAR1hOAR15DN?si=jHarNbZSQdSfGeChvOntpQ