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Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Forbes fired its chief content officer over a $6m gift he never disclosed, from the founder of a research firm whose rankings Forbes publishes. The same man invented the 30 Under 30 list, which itself has been starring some troublesome characters. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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PPS: We will be back with the podcast in September.
Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
Lovable doubled its valuation in eight months
Lovable raised $400m at a $13.3bn valuation, double the $6.6bn it was worth in December. Menlo Ventures led again, co-led by the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, the EU's €5bn vehicle, in one of its first bets after ICEYE. The Stockholm company hit $500m annualised revenue in June and says it is heading for $600m by the end of August.
Neura is buying a robot line from Bosch
Neura Robotics is acquiring the ACTIVE Shuttle from Bosch Rexroth. The German company gets the autonomous transport platform plus its fleet manager and ROKIT navigation stack, folded into its Hamburg mobile-robots subsidiary. Last month Bosch was the contract manufacturer behind Europe's newest humanoid unicorn. This time a startup is buying the product line.
What do you meme?
Food for thought
Is it the stress, or is it the powerlessness?
Daniel Dippold, founder of EWOR, argues that stress itself is not the enemy. What breaks people is chronic distress, which he traces to two ingredients: social-evaluative threat, and the sense that you cannot control the outcome. His protocol is to name the response, breathe to reset the nervous system, then sort each stressor into controllable or not, and either act or accept.
We talked to Adrian Locher about burnout and what recovery actually took (Youtube / Spotify / Apple)
What if a markdown file is your next hire?
Is Europe becoming a technology colony?
Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser calls AI real and a rollercoaster at the same time, with some valuations clearly ahead of themselves. His European worry is narrower than the bubble: companies here start well, then cannot make the jump to global scale. Stay dependent on foreign models, chips and design software, and Europe ends up a technology colony?
Smart hack
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From us
Sending cold emails nobody answers? Patrick Trümpi ran the test: a fully AI-written campaign to 800 contacts booked zero meetings. Rewritten from his own templates, 500 contacts booked three. His conclusion was not about the copy.
Stop trying to book the meeting in the email. For senior buyers that stopped working years ago.
Score the behaviour instead. Ten points for an open, ten for a click, ten for a website visit, more for every repeat.
Call the moment someone crosses the score of 50. Every prospect above that line has turned into a booked meeting for him.
One good read
Join the entrepreneurial journey
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.
Internships
Entrepreneur in Residence Intern [📍Munich, Germany], Construction Tech, comstruct [Apply]
Intern - Biochar Sourcing & Science (100%) [📍Zurich, Switzerland], Tangible, Climeworks [Apply]
Intern in Testing Capabilities (100%) [📍Zurich, Switzerland], Tangible, Climeworks [Apply]
Working Student, Partner Operations [📍Portugal], cargo.one [Apply]
Intern Content Editor - Italian Speaker (m/f/x) [📍Madrid, Spain], Global Savings Group [Apply]
Intern Real Estate Agent [📍Barcelona, Spain], PropTech, Ukio [Apply]
Customer Success
Account Manager - Outbound [📍London, United Kingdom], Funding Circle [Apply]
Team Lead Account Management (f/m/d) [📍Berlin, Germany], Retail, Zenjob [Apply]
Founding Customer Support Engineer [📍Munich, Germany], Construction Tech, comstruct [Apply]
Customer Success Engineer [📍London, United Kingdom], Entrepreneur First [Apply]
Customer Success Manager Italy (m/f/d) [📍Rome, Italy], Fintech/Payments, bezahl.de [Apply]
Team Lead Customer Support (m/f/d) [📍Cluj-Napoca, Romania], Impower GmbH [Apply]
Collection Specialist [📍Gothenburg, Sweden], Fortnox AB [Apply]
Site Engineer Regio Halfweg [📍Netherlands], Automation; Robotics, BEUMER Group A/S [Apply]
IT Specialist – Infrastructure and Cyber Security [📍Denmark], Automation; Robotics, BEUMER Group A/S [Apply]
Customer Success Manager - DANISH speaking [📍Copenhagen, Denmark], Brandwatch [Apply]
Marketing & Comms
Live Streamer [📍London, United Kingdom], Energy, Tilt [Apply]
Marketing Manager - Medical Clinics (F/M/D) [📍Warsaw, Poland], Sanity Group [Apply]
Senior Marketing Designer [📍Berlin, Germany], Amboss [Apply]
Social Media Specialist [📍Massy, France], Quandela [Apply]
Sales
Lead / Senior Commercial Steering & Planning Manager (B2B) (f/m/d) [📍Berlin, Germany], Retail, Zenjob [Apply]
Account Executive [📍Amsterdam, Netherlands], Gaming Infrastructure, Altura [Apply]
Account Manager [📍Barcelona, Spain], BEST TABLES [Apply]
RevOps Specialist (Customer Support) [📍Barcelona, Spain], Holded [Apply]
Residential Solar Sales Consultant [📍Cranbrook, United Kingdom], Hometree Group [Apply]
Business Development Manager:in [📍Linz, Austria], Zippsafe [Apply]
Account Executive – Clinics (m/f/x) [📍Vienna, Austria], nyra health [Apply]
Account Executive - Rotterdam/The Hague [📍Rotterdam, Netherlands], BEST TABLES [Apply]
Strategy & Ops
Head of Legal - Healthtech Scale up [📍Paris, France], Lifen [Apply]
People Operations Manager (in Berlin) [📍Berlin, Germany], Amboss [Apply]
Legal Counsel [📍London, United Kingdom], Zinc [Apply]
Principal, Talent Acquisition [📍London, United Kingdom], CoMind [Apply]
Finance Manager [📍Eindhoven, Netherlands], Tangible, Axelera AI [Apply]
VP - People [📍Eindhoven, Netherlands], Tangible, Axelera AI [Apply]
In-house Legal Counsel [📍Ghent, Belgium], LegalFly [Apply]
Product & Tech
Head of AI - Healthtech Scale up [📍Paris, France], Lifen [Apply]
Product Builder Delivery - Healthtech Scale up [📍Paris, France], Lifen [Apply]
Founding Product Designer [📍Bielefeld, Germany], paddy [Apply]
Engineering Compliance and CSV Manager [📍Berlin, Germany], Amboss [Apply]
Analytics Engineer [📍London, United Kingdom], Swap Commerce [Apply]
Senior Optical Research Scientist [📍London, United Kingdom], CoMind [Apply]
Engineering Manager [📍Portugal], Healthcare, Junction [Apply]
Stay connected and spread the word! If you found this newsletter insightful, why not share it with your network? Thanks for reading, and we look forward to bringing you even more insights in the next edition!
Follow the Gradient is a weekly newsletter and podcast by the serial founders Melanie Gabriel & Christian Woese about how to scale a business from Europe while staying sane.
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