Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Having a bad day? Can’t be as bad as Anthropic’s, who accidentally leaked 512,000 lines of proprietary code through a single debug file. Or Oracle’s, who told somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 employees via a 6AM email that their jobs no longer exist. AI and data centers need the budget now. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
Finnish Oura interviews banks for IPO as soon as this year
The health ring maker is exploring a public listing at an $11bn valuation after raising $875m in its Series E last year. Revenue doubled from $500m in 2024 to over $1bn in 2025, with $1.5bn expected this year. They have sold over 5.5m rings sold worldwide.
Revolut fined €11.5m in Italy over misleading fee claims
Italy's antitrust authority hit Revolut with an €11.5m fine for misleading "0% commission" investment ads that obscured the risks and limitations of fractional shares. The regulator also flagged aggressive practices in managing account suspensions, preventing users from accessing their funds. Revolut disputes the findings and plans to appeal.
What do you meme?
Food for thought
AI startups are growing faster than ever. At lower cost?
AI-native applications are hitting record growth with fewer and fewer employees. But this isn't lean efficiency. Operational costs are simply shifting from payroll to compute. If everyone's buying the same tokens, differentiation comes from distribution, data loops, or workflow lock-in, not from having a better team.
We talked to Max Buckley of Exa (Youtube / Spotify / Apple) for an exclusive look inside an AI-first company seeking to beat Google, and to Andreas Goeldi of b2venture (Youtube / Spotify / Apple) about his take on how the service-as-software shift connects directly to this payroll-to-token swap.
Eight principles for building a company?
a16z distilled Elon Musk's operating playbook: question every requirement, delete before you optimize, shorten timelines, keep design close to production, hire for attitude. Critics argue this only works with near-infinite capital, while defenders call it a decision-making framework for the AI age.
Smart hack
From our partners
One brand built 30+ landing pages through Viktor without a single developer.
Each page mapped to a specific ad group. All deployed within hours. Viktor wrote the code and shipped every one from a Slack message.
That same team has Viktor monitoring ad accounts across the portfolio and posting performance briefs before the day starts. One colleague. Always on. Across every account.
5,700+ teams. 3,000+ integrations.
From us
Should companies measure how many AI tokens employees burn? Meta, OpenAI, and Shopify already do, complete with internal leaderboards ranking individual consumption. We appreciated the Inside Look of Victoria from ElevenLabs on her take-away’s when doing this:
It's a crude proxy. One engineer may have burned billions of tokens. That tells you nothing about what they built.
Zero-usage outliers matter more. Check for people who are not using AI at all. They might be stuck or missing tools entirely.
Track at team level, not individual. Leaderboards invite gaming. Think lines-of-code metrics from the 90s.
Ask top users what they built. Make sure you understand outcomes over consumption.
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.
💡💡 Show your future employer that you go the extra mile and let them know directly why you will be the perfect fit! We have added a link to the Hiring Manager’s LinkedIn where we think this helps. Do things differently - message them! 💡💡
Internships
Business Developer (Pôle Childcare) H/F/NB - Stage [📍Paris, France], Wecasa [Apply]
Machine Learning Engineer Intern (100% Remote) [📍London, United Kingdom], Logistics & Supply Chain, Zeew [Apply]
(Stage) Assistant opérationnel H/F [📍Paris, France], Brigad [Apply]
Internship - Talent Acquisition (6 months) [📍Munich, Germany], Malt [Apply]
Customer Success
Senior Client Success Manager DACH (f/m/d) [📍Germany], PropTech, PriceHubble [Apply]
Account Manager / Hotel Sourcing & Contracting - Italian Speaker (m/f/d) [📍France], E-Commerce & Marketplace, Splendia [Apply]
Senior Customer Success Manager [📍London, United Kingdom], Algolia [Apply]
Marketing & Comms
Website Manager / Marketing Analyst [📍Paris, France], Fitness Tech, EGYM [Apply]
Senior Growth Marketing Manager (Berlin, hybrid) [📍Berlin, Germany], Marketplaces & Consumer, Kittl [Apply]
Head of Brand Division - Western Europe [📍London, United Kingdom], Foxintelligence [Apply]
Senior Growth Product Manager, Noa Notes (100% Remote within Spain) [📍Barcelona, Spain], Docplanner [Apply]
Campaign Manager, Partnerships [📍London, United Kingdom], Pleo [Apply]
Director, Performance Marketing & Campaigns [📍London, United Kingdom], AI Translation, DeepL [Apply]
Sales
Account Executive, Strategic Accounts - EMEA [📍United Kingdom], Maze [Apply]
Field Sales Representative [📍United Kingdom], FinTech, SUMUP [Apply]
Strategy & Ops
Privacy & AI Analyst [📍Berlin, Germany], Perk [Apply]
Customer Operations Manager [📍London, United Kingdom], Sona [Apply]
Talent Partner (Bilingual) - London [📍London, United Kingdom], Fresha [Apply]
Product & Tech
Platform Engineer [📍Stockholm, Sweden], LegalTech, Legora [Apply]
Senior Machine Learning Engineer / Data Scientist [📍Slovakia], Loomi [Apply]
Technical Project Manager QVAC (100% remote) [📍Dublin, Ireland], Logistics & Supply Chain, Zeew [Apply]
Final words — take what you need
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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