DARE Campus: Where Robots Get to Run Wild | Stefan Zimmer on TechDrive Zürich

Most offices are clean, quiet, and a little boring. Stefan Zimmer built the opposite. In this episode of TechDrive Zürich, I drive through Zürich with Stefan, employee number one at FlexOffice and the head of DARE Campus.
FlexOffice started in 2018 with nothing but an idea and four laptops. Today it is the biggest serviced-office provider in Switzerland, with 11 locations and around 30,000 square meters of space. DARE Campus is Stefan's boldest bet yet: a home built on purpose for deep-tech and robotics startups, with raw concrete, no fancy double floors, and big rooms where teams can get a little wild with heavy hardware.
We also get into how an office company survived a COVID home-office mandate, the day a humanoid robot ran through the campus, the one piece of office tech everyone secretly hates, and why the "far away" neighbourhood of Schlieren is actually nine minutes away by train.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Welcome
01:15 From four laptops to Switzerland's biggest
02:05 From 15 years in nightlife to running an office
03:02 Where the name came from: Join, Explore, DARE
03:52 Why the campus is all raw concrete
05:07 Taking the distractions away from founders
06:53 Building a community, not just renting desks
08:22 How the model changed, and surviving COVID
10:30 A humanoid robot running through the campus
12:37 The office tech everyone secretly hates
13:39 Who DARE Campus is for
15:46 Is Schlieren really that far? The 9-minute playlist
16:04 Events, hackathons and knowledge sharing
17:28 Wrap-up
💡 A few takeaways
• Start small, think big: four laptops became Switzerland's largest serviced-office provider in under a decade.
• Build for your user, not for looks: raw concrete and big rooms beat polished floors when customers bring robots.
• Remove the friction: founders do their best work when someone else handles the boring stuff.
• A crisis can be an accelerator: when offices were "banned," FlexOffice leaned into flexibility and came back stronger.
• Community is the real product: people come for the space, but they stay for the people.

🎁 Special offer for builders
DARE Campus has space open right now, from a single desk to hundreds of square meters of maker space. Mention "TechDrivePodcast" when you sign for a desk or a space, and your first month is completely rent-free. If you work in robotics, deep-tech, or AI and want room to get a little wild, this one is for you.

Join exclusive WhatsApp Group: chat.whatsapp.com/JgGidD8SqsuFzohXvZmo5z
You'll get sneak peek into upcoming guests, behind the scenes and more.

🔗 Connect
Guest: Stefan Zimmer - linkedin.com/in/stefan-zimmer-flexoffice
DARE Campus: darecampus.ch
FlexOffice: flexoffice.ch
TechDrive Zürich - hosted by Justinas Mišeikis - techdrivezurich.lovable.app

🎧 Also available on YouTube
#TechDrive #Zürich #Switzerland #robotics #deeptech #startups #FlexOffice #DARECampus #makerspace #innovation