{"id":40961,"date":"2026-05-28T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/?p=40961"},"modified":"2026-06-02T16:38:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:38:06","slug":"eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation\/","title":{"rendered":"EU\u00a0alumnus\u00a0Daniel Quiroga on building the future of business automation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Daniel Quiroga completed his BSc (Hons) in International Business with a Certificate of Specialization in Business Finance at our Munich campus<\/a><\/strong> in 2019. Bolivian-born and Munich-based, he is the founder and CEO of PUNKU.AI, a conversational automation platform helping European SMEs turn natural language into working software. His path after EU Business School took him through the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich, a research year at Harvard Business School, and the German startup ecosystem, before founding PUNKU.AI in late 2023. Today the company is backed by EWOR, D11Z, and L-Bank, and serves anchor clients including Swarovski, TimeRide, and PS.SPEICHER. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Did you work alongside your studies at EU Business School?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I worked across several roles during my studies, including positions at Hollister, Honestly and MEDLeaders. Balancing work and studies forced me to take ownership of my time and gave me an early appreciation for business ethics and operational discipline. Those are lessons I still rely on as a founder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did you first know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the age of twelve. I was always building things, taking them apart and starting small projects. The instinct to create something from nothing has been with me for as long as I can remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could you tell us about your company and what it does?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PUNKU.AI<\/strong><\/a> is a conversational automation platform for small and medium enterprises. The idea is simple: turn English into automations. You describe what you need in plain language, in any language, and PUNKU.AI builds the AI agent or workflow that executes it. We started with a vertical focus on tourism, museums and attractions in the DACH region, and we are now expanding horizontally across SME use cases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name PUNKU is Quechua for portal or gate. It comes from the Puma Punku ruins in Bolivia, where I was born. According to legend, the great stone gate was a doorway into a new dimension and a symbol of prosperity. That is the role I want PUNKU.AI to play for small and medium businesses: a doorway into the kind of productivity gains that have so far been reserved for the largest enterprises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did you first become interested in AI?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of my life, AI felt like one of those technologies that was perpetually five years away. Every few years there would be a wave of excitement, and then it would fade back into research labs. That changed in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Suddenly the capability was real, in your hands, and obviously going to reshape entire industries. I knew immediately that I wanted to build on top of it rather than watch from the sidelines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What types of business processes benefit most from AI automation?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The processes that benefit most are non-deterministic ones, meaning tasks that have a range of correct answers rather than a single fixed outcome. Anywhere there is room for judgment, interpretation or natural language, AI adds real value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For binary, clear-cut tasks, the better approach is still traditional deterministic code. Part of what PUNKU.AI does is help our customers identify which path makes sense for each task. The smartest automation strategy is rarely one or the other. It is knowing where to apply each. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you share examples of how PUNKU.AI has improved a client’s operations?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of our anchor clients, TimeRide, built a ticket sales and rebooking agent on PUNKU.AI<\/strong><\/a>. It handles customer requests across channels, processes bookings, and has measurably improved over time as it learns from real interactions. The agent now pays for itself several times over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also work with Swarovski, where our agent handles visitor enquiries at scale, and with PS.SPEICHER, one of Europe’s largest private vehicle museums, where our agent Laura runs their customer service inbox. Each deployment is a real test of how conversational automation performs in a production environment with real customers and real revenue on the line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you differentiate PUNKU.AI in an increasingly crowded AI market?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three things. First, PUNKU.AI<\/strong><\/a> is built around the principle that the interface should be natural language, not configuration screens. Anyone in the business can describe an automation and have it built. Second, we go deep on integrations within our target verticals, so our agents are not just chatbots: they are operators that can actually book, invoice and execute. Third, our agents improve over time based on the KPIs each customer sets, rather than being locked into static behavior. The combination of language-native input, deep vertical integration, and continuous learning is what makes us hard to emulate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What impact do you think emerging technologies will have on jobs and society?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demand for automation is rising fast, and naturally there is concern about employment. My view is that the economy will reset around people who can leverage intelligence \u2013 both human and machine \u2013 to create real value. It will be a significant restructuring of scarce resources, and parts of it will be painful. But we have absorbed every major technological transition in history, and I am optimistic we will absorb this one too. The opportunity for individuals who learn to work alongside AI is enormous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What have been your biggest challenges as an entrepreneur, and how have you overcome them?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hardest part of building a company is finding something people actually want to pay for, and then knowing how to put it in front of them. Everything else is downstream of that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew I wanted to work in AI, but I still had to do the hard work of figuring out what to build, for whom, and why. Once that is clear, the rest of the operational machinery falls into place. Founders often overthink fundraising and underthink customer discovery. Reversing that order is what unlocks real progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have any advice for pitching to investors or securing funding?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do your homework and be prepared. Know exactly which metrics you need to hit before you start fundraising, and find a mentor who has been through the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, every problem is a sales problem. You do not need to chase a hundred investors to get one or two cheques. You are far better off talking to a hundred potential customers. You will learn more than any VC conversation could teach you, and you will be making progress on revenue at the same time. With real sales already in place, raising capital becomes far easier, and in some cases unnecessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you do anything during your studies to support your entrepreneurial journey?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined START Munich, an inter-university student initiative that connects students with founders and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem. The mentoring sessions and exposure to other ambitious students shaped how I think about company building. Surrounding yourself with people who hold themselves to a high standard is one of the most underrated decisions you can make as a student. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did you decide to stay in Munich after your studies?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Munich is one of the best cities in the world to start a career. It is safe, the quality of life is exceptional, and the density of high-quality companies and talent makes the professional opportunities outstanding. I recommend the Munich campus to anyone considering EU Business School<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What advice do you have for current students looking to work in tech startups or start their own ventures?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop thinking about your next move and start thinking about where you want to be in five or ten years. Then work backwards. Research how people reached that position, the credentials they acquired, the companies they worked for, and follow that path deliberately. A lot of people optimize locally for the next role and then wonder why they never reached the destination they actually cared about. Direction matters more than speed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What major technology trends should students be paying attention to?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI, of course, and we are still very early. The application of AI to biology in particular is going to be extraordinary in the coming decade. The students who will benefit most are the ones who combine genuine domain expertise with fluency in AI. That combination is going to define the strongest career paths of this generation. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Daniel Quiroga completed his BSc (Hons) in International Business with a Certificate of Specialization in Business Finance at our Munich campus in 2019. Bolivian-born and Munich-based, he is the founder and CEO of PUNKU.AI, a conversational automation platform helping European SMEs turn natural language into working software. His path after EU Business School took him through the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich, a research year at Harvard Business School, and the German startup ecosystem, before founding PUNKU.AI in late 2023. Today the company is backed by EWOR, D11Z, and L-Bank, and serves anchor clients including Swarovski, TimeRide, and PS.SPEICHER.  Did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1764,1773],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eu-business-school","category-eu-business-school-community","post--single"],"yoast_head":"\r\nEU\u00a0alumnus\u00a0Daniel Quiroga on building the future of business automation | EU Business School<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation\/\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"EU Business School\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"EU Blog\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"EU Business School\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/category\\\/eu-business-school\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"EU\u00a0alumnus\u00a0Daniel Quiroga on building the future of business automation\"}]}]}<\/script>\r\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"EU\u00a0alumnus\u00a0Daniel Quiroga on building the future of business automation | EU Business School","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation\/","author":"EU Business School","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumni-daniel-quiroga-on-building-the-future-of-business-automation\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"EU Blog","item":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EU Business School","item":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/category\/eu-business-school\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"EU\u00a0alumnus\u00a0Daniel Quiroga on building the future of business automation"}]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40961"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40996,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40961\/revisions\/40996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}