Key to solving the biggest challenges of our era
“Finding, creating, and offering the best possible ways to encourage, empower, and accelerate entrepreneurship is key to solving the biggest challenges of our era, as we need the brightest minds today to build the organizations of the future,” said Adrian Zettl. For him, innovation was about doing, trying, failing, and trying again – with others by your side. At 38, the former Co-Managing Director of AustrianStartups had already moved through many roles: consultant, co-founder, lecturer, coach. What connected them was his belief that entrepreneurship could open doors for anyone willing to step through. His motto was simple: “Let’s do this!”
So go out, do stuff, learn, improve – and be kind
Adrian Zettl
Zettl’s path began in traditional media, but he quickly found himself drawn to startups. Some ventures grew, others collapsed. One of them, the B2C startup Simplewish, didn’t make it – but the experience remained valuable. “Analysis paralysis is the only guaranteed way to fail,” he said. “So go out, do stuff, learn, improve – and be kind.”
TheVentury and AustrianStartups
With TheVentury, which he co-founded, he built accelerators, launched products, and advised organizations from both sides of the innovation spectrum – corporates and founders. Teaching at universities and coaching young entrepreneurs showed him another key ingredient: listening. “Aim to become a master of active listening,” said Zettl.
At AustrianStartups, he represented a community that had once represented him. His focus was on building an environment where people felt safe to take risks. Clear goals provided direction, but everything else remained open to experimentation. Failure wasn’t punished – it was treated as raw material for the next idea. A “Yes, and …” culture, he believed, was what kept innovation alive.
Today, Adrian Zettl is, among other roles, an investor and partner in the second yoga studio of his partner Christina Bruns. Bruns, who has been running the Vienna-based studio TRBY since 2021, expanded the concept with a second location, with Zettl joining the venture as a partner and becoming the first official Jivamukti Yoga school in Austria.
What did it take to innovate? For Adrian Zettl, it was a mix of Stoic calm, bold action, and a willingness to be kind - to yourself, to others, and to the process. Resilience, perseverance, critical thinking, empathy – he saw these qualities as vital for the future of work, alongside creativity and, half-jokingly, prompt engineering. Looking back, his boldest decision was choosing self-employment early instead of a comfortable job. That step set him on a path of learning and growth.
Conversations with People
What drove Zettl most were the people around him: “I am immensely grateful I get to spend a lot of my time with exceptionally smart and purpose-driven people, which fuels my own inspiration, purpose, and motivation.” The BOLD Community added another layer. Zettl said: “Conversations with people from very different backgrounds spark new ways of thinking. They remind me to stay curious and to keep aiming bigger. I am BOLD because I believe, promote, and empower entrepreneurship to be the best tool for anyone to build a bright future for us all.”
Conversations with people from very different backgrounds spark new ways of thinking
Adrian Zettl
Away from the big picture, Adrian Zettl was pragmatic. Routines kept him balanced – without, as he put it, becoming “an inflexible jerk.” He read Robert Wright’s Nonzero, listened to Lenny’s Podcast, and joked that the one gadget he would invent was a time machine. His dream mentor? Leonardo da Vinci, for his way of connecting ideas across fields.
At the time, the innovations that excited him most were in AI, especially tools that helped founders validate and prototype ideas quickly. Yet his guiding principle remained disarmingly simple: Just do & be kind.