Should you get nervous about competition?
Plus: The data room template for your next funding round
· 588 words
Melanie Gabriel & Christian Woese
January 21, 2025 • Read time: 3 minutes
Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
A crypto memecoin issued by Donald Trump topped $13bn in market cap within two days after launch. Industry party videos didn’t go viral on TikTok, though, which went dark in the US for around 12 hours after its ban came into effect and was targeted by the incoming President to be lifted again on his first day. If you ever wondered if your Netflix subscription is too expensive, just go watch the news - real life seems like an episode of the Simpsons. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
Synthesia raises at a $2.1bn valuation
AI communications platform Synthesia completed a Series D funding round at a $2.1bn valuation, raising $180m from investors. The round underscores how the London-based firm has established itself as one of the most promising AI-native startups in Europe, driving forward its edge in creating digital avatars.
TikTok and Elon Musk
Under increasing pressure from the US government, Chinese TikTok owner Bytedance is reported to consider a partial sell to Elon Musk. With China being a significant market for carmaker Tesla, Musk has a strong incentive to be friendly with the Chinese government - a characteristic making him attractive to the Chinese.
What do you meme?
Food for thought
More regulations incoming
A number of important EU regulations will come into force this year - not all necessarily a burden. While the EU AI Act has been heavily criticised, incoming regulation on data sharing possibilities and a harmonization of the Single Market give reason for hope. Will things be better than expected?
Will SaaS vanish?
Software used to eat the world. With AI, users and companies will be able to build their own software more easily and at lower cost. Is the entire $273bn SaaS market about to vanish, being replaced by hyper-custom AI apps and agents?
Will AI enable us to build personalized software?
Do not believe your competition
We’ve all been there - the competitor Demo you sneaked into and told a story so much better than your own vision could ever be. April Dunford wrote this transparent piece about how to focus on your own values and not get distracted by an apparent edge of your competition which may all just be a sales' lie…
What’s up this week?
Switzerland
AI House Davos during World Economic Forum, 20-24 January [Program]
→ We will be there today and tomorrow - Let us know if you’re around!
Online
Swiss Startup Association: Scalability: what happens when you grow from 5 to 50 employees?, 21 January 12pm CET [Register here]
SiftedTalks: Pivot or persevere: How to find (and maintain) product-market fit, 22 January 1pm CET [Register here]
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Smart hack
Any Financing round needs a Data Room - they can kill you when approached the wrong way. Sam Merchant from Forward Pursuit put together this straight forward and ready-to-use template to kickstart building your own.
