What do Arduino, IoT, edge AI, and Nvidia-era data centers have in common? They all depend on ecosystems: people, platforms, and momentum.

In this episode, Sander Arts joins Baya’s Chief Commercial Officer and Tech Threads host Nandan Nayampally for a wide-ranging, candid conversation on how breakthrough technology actually scales.

Sander brings a rare operator’s perspective shaped by 25+ years scaling global technology companies across semiconductors, enterprise software, and AI. As the founder of Orange Tulip Consultancy, he serves as a Fractional CMO and growth advisor, helping leadership teams turn deep technology into real-world adoption.

Together, Nandan and Sander explore how communities, developer access, and platform ecosystems turn deep technology into real-world adoption, and why timing and openness can be just as critical as technical performance.

The discussion moves from the maker-era lessons of Arduino and IoT to today’s AI infrastructure boom, unpacking why scaling “long-tail” customers is both an opportunity and an operational challenge, and how edge AI and data center markets are evolving in parallel. They also debate the art of “opening the kimono,” how standardization and middleware shape adoption, and why capital intensity and speed often determine whether innovation stays local or becomes global.

They close by looking ahead at emerging trends like robotics, neo-cloud architectures, quantum with real customers, and the networking backbone powering AI’s future, and how these shifts intersect with Baya’s view of increasingly complex, software-driven systems.