Linear Capital’s Dialogue with RIVR Marko: From Refugee Streets to Amazon, There Is No Safe Zone in Life

Between the Lines is an in-depth conversational video podcast produced by Linear Capital. The guest of the third episode is Marko Bjelonic, 36-year-old founder of RIVR.

Born in Yugoslavia in 1990, Marko fled to Germany with his parents after the war broke out. At the age of 10, he took to the streets to demonstrate, fighting for his family's right to stay. Later, he kept pushing himself into a bigger world: getting admitted to the best schools, entering the top laboratories — the ETH Robotic Systems Lab where he works is widely recognized as the world's leading source for legged-wheeled robotics research. But every time he stepped into a new environment, he always felt he was back at the "very bottom", so he would start all over again and chase forward desperately.

Most people fear uncertainty, but Marko, the founder of RIVR, has always been actively moving towards it.

During his PhD studies, breakthroughs were made in reinforcement learning. Within just a few days, he overturned five years of accumulated research results and turned to a brand new direction. In 2023, Marko founded RIVR in Switzerland, targeting the last mile of logistics, pushing robots into the real world that was previously inaccessible, becoming one of the first companies to build "legged-wheeled robots with brains" in a commercialized way.

Three years ago, the Linear Capital team traveled to Zurich to explore the top innovations at ETH, had the honor to meet Marko and his team, and wrote the first check for this Swiss company. Later, we accompanied this team all the way to understand China, connect with the supply chain, and expand the US market. In March 2026, RIVR was acquired by Amazon, and Marko and the team officially joined Amazon. This is the full stop of RIVR's story as a startup, and also the prelude to a new chapter for this team.

From refugee streets to ETH, then to Amazon, how far can a person's obsession take him? From Marko's perspective, how to define risk, and how to define success? What are the characteristics of starting a business across China, Europe and the United States?

01 A Childhood in War

When Uncertainty Becomes Part of Life

▍Wang Huai: Extreme uncertainty was part of your life in your early years.

▍Marko: What is entrepreneurship? It is about soaking in complete uncertainty all the time, betting nonstop. But to be honest, compared with those days, the risks and uncertainties in entrepreneurship are nothing at all. Nothing that happens can really get to you. Of course, there is still responsibility, but at the end of the day, you are moving towards a goal, and uncertainty is inherently part of the game.

▍Wang Huai: This explains an observation we have had about you for a long time: you have an extremely stable inner core. Most people don't, because for most people, stability is arranged for them.

▍Marko: I am just the opposite. A stable environment makes me feel completely uncomfortable. I keep "sabotaging" my own life just to introduce some uncertainty, so that it is not too peaceful and stagnant.

Manifest Your Dreams, Manifest Your Future

▍Wang Huai: I remember you said that you were the only person on that refugee street who went to college. Why did you take this path of all people?

▍Marko: I only truly figured out one of my traits last year, which is that no matter what environment I am thrown into, I always feel I am at the very bottom. So I work harder than everyone around me. In fact, no one on the refugee street went to college, but I still felt I was at the bottom. Then my life went through one turning point after another. Whenever I feel I am starting to stand out and surpass everyone around me, I know it is time to change the environment again.

There are three types of schools in Germany. With my grades in primary school, I was supposed to go to Gymnasium, the top tier of secondary schools. But my teachers told my parents: this kid should go to Hauptschule, the lowest tier of secondary schools, because he is a foreigner. My mother told the teachers: No, my son is going to the top tier.

That turning point was extremely important to me. After changing the environment, I suddenly sat in a classroom with a group of native local children. In my eyes, they were living a perfect life, and I once again became the one at the bottom.

In fact, looking back, I was not at the bottom at all, that was just my feeling. But this drive to "work desperately" followed me through college, my PhD, entrepreneurship, and now to Amazon. When facing those big names, I feel I am at the bottom again, and I have to "escape" out of it desperately.

I am very similar to my mother. No matter what situation we are in, we can always find something positive in it. What happens to you can be seen as bad, or it can be seen as good. It is all your own choice.

▍Wang Huai: That is actually a very important reason why we liked you from the very first meeting. Optimism is not something you just say out loud. You can see it — in a person's eyes, in the way they speak and act.

▍Marko: They call this "manifestation". It took me quite a long time to understand what "manifesting your dreams" is all about. You have to truly believe it, and adjust your feelings to the state as if it has already been achieved.

I originally thought I was already good at manifestation, but after listening to Jensen Huang's interview, I realized that manifestation has different levels. Jensen Huang does not only manifest for himself, he manifests his vision of the future to all his employees; even more than that, he manifests for the entire ecosystem. He hosts GTC, invites all suppliers and partners, and talks about the future he sees, making all suppliers believe in him. Ten years later, when he really reaches that stage, the entire ecosystem has already prepared the dream for him.

▍Wang Huai: I remember someone saying something similar: A good employee gets today's work done well, while a good leader makes you see a future that "is meant to be". Another example is Elon Musk, who is exceptionally good at selling tomorrow as if it were today.

02 Become a "Nobody" All Over Again

Travel Halfway Around the World to Get a Professor to Notice Me

▍Wang Huai: From your refugee-style childhood, you stepped into university step by step. I heard you chose engineering because you flipped through a book about "what people who are good at math and physics can do" by chance. Is that true?

▍Marko: It's true. In Germany, you graduate from Gymnasium around the age of 19 or 20. Before graduation, you have to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life. The German government gives every graduate a book listing all available majors. Knowing that I am good at math and physics, I only flipped through those pages, saw "engineering" and thought it was interesting. But I had no idea what engineering was for at that time.

▍Wang Huai: Later you wrote three emails to Professor Siegwart, and he did not reply to any of them. You simply flew to Brisbane, Australia, and stayed there for a year just to get a referral. What were you trying to achieve by going through such great lengths?

▍Marko: When I was doing my bachelor's degree at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, a student said that the best engineering school in Europe and even the whole world is ETH Zurich. I blurted out immediately: Oh, then I should go there for my PhD. Everyone laughed at me at that time. But the seed slowly sprouted in my heart. I thought to myself, if it is the best school, why can't I go?

Later I went to Norway to study for a year, where I met a Russian professor who led me into the world of robotics. I was completely obsessed with "how to control a robot".

I searched for ETH online, searched for "ETH robotics", and found Roland Siegwart. He had all kinds of TED talks. Back around 2013 and 2014, they already had legged robots. At that time, basically only ETH and Boston Dynamics had legged robots in the world.

I wrote to him saying I wanted to do my PhD under him. I sent three emails, and none of them got a reply. But I did not wait idly. I browsed his lab's website and found that they had a collaboration with a lab in Brisbane. I thought: why not go there for a year, prove my ability with real results, and then ask them to refer me to Roland?

▍Wang Huai: So you took a detour to get the referral. But why didn't you just go straight to Zurich to block him? It's only a three-hour drive.

▍Marko: But think about it, going to Australia for a year is way more troublesome than driving for three hours. For me, being rejected is nothing new. And I can understand him. I had nothing to show for myself. Even if I met him, what could I say? "I study engineering in Germany"? There are tens of thousands of engineering students in Germany, anyone can say that. Why should he believe I am qualified to enter his lab? If I can go to Australia and work my ass off for a year, let the people there vouch for me, my chances are way higher than rushing over to confront him directly.

Become a "Nobody" Again

▍Wang Huai: Later Siegwart referred you to Professor Marco Hutter. I have met him several times. He is very young, ambitious, smart and energetic. The first time you meet him, it is hard to see him as a professor — he looks more like a young PhD student, but he has already achieved great things. You became one of his first few PhD students. Were you happy? Were you scared to be a student of a young professor who just started his career?

▍Marko: Actually I wrote to Siegwart first, with the referral letter from Brisbane. I said: "I want to work on legged robots". Siegwart said, the postdoc who is leading this research direction right now is about to become a professor. Then he referred me to Marco Hutter.

I knew almost every researcher in that team: Péter Fankhauser, Christian Gehring, Jemin Hwangbo, and Marco Hutter. I had read all their papers. In my eyes, all of them were absolute gods. I remember the first online call with Marco Hutter, I was extremely nervous. Fortunately, he decided to give me a chance.

▍Wang Huai: He is a very decisive professor, he makes decisions and judgments extremely fast.

▍Marko: He once told me something, I don't know if he was joking, he said he judges a person by how fast they walk, to see if they have a sense of urgency. To young PhD students, he would say: You are young, you should walk a little faster.

When I first joined the lab, I once again felt like a total nobody. But at the same time, I was extremely proud to be there.

▍Wang Huai: But you also knew you would climb up, at least to the top tier, right?

▍Marko: I never had the mindset of "climbing to the top". I was just blown away, and then worked as hard as I possibly could. Precisely because of this overwhelming feeling, I used hard work to make up for it. I always told myself: okay, if someone is smarter than me, I will put in double the effort. I spent every weekend in the lab.

Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Tool

▍Wang Huai: During your PhD years, your team was one of the first teams in the world to install neural networks into real legged robots. You said that it defeated five years of your work overnight. What made you decide to try neural networks back then?

▍Marko: At that time almost everyone was working on traditional optimization problems, only Jemin Hwangbo, another PhD student in our team, was working on reinforcement learning. He had his breakthrough moment at the end of his PhD — the reinforcement learning method finally worked. I remember my first reaction was to deny it verbally, but deep down I was absolutely shocked. It only took me a few days to figure it out, then I threw myself into it completely.

Since then, I have gone all in on this new technology. We often say that it is extremely hard for the public to accept change. AI is changing the world, it is very normal for people to fear it. It has nothing to do with AI itself, it has everything to do with "change". People hate it when change comes. You might think that PhDs in the robotics field should be the group of people most open to change, but even there, people's reaction distribution is the same as the general public. Even today, some people are still stuck in the old ways. Only the new generation will immediately jump on new things.

▍Wang Huai: Because they don't have historical baggage. But you switched over in just a few days, what drove you to embrace new things?

▍Marko: I think the key is: what exactly have you fallen in love with? I ask this kind of question during job interviews. If a candidate says "I love reinforcement learning, I want to build the best reinforcement learning algorithm in the world", that is a red flag for me.

Reinforcement learning is just a tool. You should fall in love with the problem itself. Maybe five years later we are not doing reinforcement learning anymore, we are working on something no one can imagine. At that time, you should pick up a better new tool, a more handy hammer.

The world is changing so fast, there is AI news every day, the world is different every time you wake up. At this point, only anchoring yourself to one constant thing can bring you continuity. If your goals keep changing, you will get drowned out by all the noise.

The same goes for building a company. What you should fall in love with is the customer's problem. For example, we chose delivery. For delivery, customers always want it to be faster, cheaper, more convenient, the method you use does not matter. Fifty years from now, people will still want those things. Grasp the unchanging things, and you have an anchor point that runs through your entire life. No matter how the underlying tools change, you can accept it calmly.

Find a New Obsession, Solve the Hardest Problems

▍Wang Huai: During your PhD years, was there any particularly difficult moment that made you almost drop out to join the industry? That is very common in the US. If you want to be a good boss, you'd better drop out of your PhD first.

▍Marko: Actually, I have persuaded every single intern who has ever come to RIVR to drop out of school. As long as they are truly excellent, I would say: drop out, come join us. We don't care about that master's diploma. If you are good enough, no future employer will care about your degree. Now that we have been acquired, all these interns have work experience at a company that had a successful exit. That looks way better on a resume than a master's degree.

▍Wang Huai: That's true. But the European mindset does not encourage that.

▍Marko: It is extremely discouraged. The biggest challenge I encountered starting a business in Europe was changing this mindset. It is doable, but you have to put in enormous amounts of energy into it.

▍Wang Huai: Do you think a person's obsession is innate, or can it be cultivated along the way during your studies and entrepreneurship?

▍Marko: The older you get, the more you know yourself, the clearer you get about what you are obsessed with. Before my PhD, the whole reason I worked so hard was to give my parents a better life. But during my PhD, my mother passed away, and my father could no longer work. My brother and I went back to Germany, sold