For those of you who spent the weekend setting up Clawdbot, we hope it hasn’t bankrupted you yet. Managing agents can surely go both ways. Nvidia Founder Jensen Huang predicted that knowing how to manage an AI will be as important a leadership skill as managing humans. We can’t wait for HR to make us peer-review our own Slack bot. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.

🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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In a sweeping Davos speech, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for a permanent reset in Europe’s economic and geopolitical posture. She pushed for “EU Inc.” to unify business rules, a capital markets union to unlock investment, and new energy and defence strategies. The announcement was received extremely positively by the startup community.

Oviva closed a €200m Series D to expand its fully reimbursed digital therapy programs for obesity, diabetes, and hypertension across Europe. Already embedded in the UK’s NHS, Germany’s DiGA, and Switzerland’s public system, the platform has treated over 1m patients. Backers include Kinnevik and A.P. Moller Holding.
Listen to our conversation with Oviva Co-Founder Kai Eberhardt on his lessons from scaling across multiple countries and to hundreds of employees.

UK-based Synthesia raised a $200m Series E at a $4bn valuation, led by GV with backing from Nvidia’s NVentures, and Kleiner Perkins. The AI video firm is betting on agent-powered learning tools to replace static corporate training, already used by 90% of the Fortune 100. It also enabled a secondary sale to offer early employee liquidity.

Language models might as well be the most powerful tech every created. How will it change humanity? Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari gave this thoughtful view on the future: AI may be more consequential than the industrial revolution, if we know one thing it is that we don’t understand its long-term implications as nearly as good as we think.

What is good Customer Success? More often than not, what gets celebrated is the “big fire at a critical account which gets put out in an overnight emergency”. Jeff Breunsbach offers this refreshing perspective: shouldn’t we celebrate the silent heroes, who proactively spot at-risk accounts and engage them before something happens?

Martin Mignot of Index Ventures raised this point in the currently heated geopolitical environment:
“no matter what you think of the current administration, the US is and will remain the most important software market in the world so you should spend more time here, not less.”

Do you need deeper and more tangible insights than this weekly rundown? Visit us on Youtube or Spotify and listen to our conversations on scaling a business from Europe with people who have “been there, done that”.

Founders spend too much time drafting the same kinds of messages. Wispr Flow turns spoken thinking into final-draft writing so you can record investor updates, product briefs, and run-of-the-mill status notes by voice. Use saved snippets for recurring intros, insert calendar links by voice, and keep comms consistent across the team. It preserves your tone, fixes punctuation, and formats lists so you send confident messages fast. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone. Try Wispr Flow for founders.

Start flowing free

When should you hire an additional team member? Determining the right role and the right time of a new hire often appears equal to a fight you can only lose - too many moving parts. We loved the simple advice Garry Tan of Y Combinator layed out:

Hire out of pain.

Steam, Steel and Infinite Minds

Are you ready to take your first steps into the startup ecosystem or seeking an exciting new opportunity? Below is a curated list of startup job openings across Europe for you to explore.

Founder’s Associate Intern [📍Berlin], Procurement, Alpas AI [Apply]
Business Development Intern [📍Berlin], Transportation, Via [Apply]

Senior Customer Success Contractor [📍Remote, Europe], Cleantech, HowGood [Apply]
Senior Enterprise Engagement Manager [📍Remote, Berlin, Munich], Conversational AI, Parloa [Apply]

Talent Acquisition Partner [📍Zurich], Robotics, Flexion Robotics [Apply]

Visual Designer (Brand & Content) [📍Remote, Germany], Fashion, Alemi [Apply]
Senior Performance Marketing Manager [📍Hybrid], Streaming platform, femtasy [Apply]
Digital Marketing Specialist [📍Vienna], Travel, Tourradar [Apply]

Regional Vice President of CEMEA [📍Remote, Germany], Private Cloud, ClickHouse [Apply]
GTM Automation Lead [📍Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Munich], Fintech, Moss [Apply]

Chief of Staff [📍Munich], Cleantech, Again [Apply]
Operations Manager [📍Berlin], Circular Economy, Grover [Apply]

Principal Product Manager - AI/LLM [📍Remote, Europe], Healthtech, Neko Health [Apply] Get a feeling on how it is to work at Neko Health, listen to our conversation with their Chief People Officer Noa
Senior Product Manager [📍Remote, Berlin, Limassol], Fintech, Vivid [Apply]

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