Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Amazon just killed its internal AI leaderboard after staff started "tokenmaxxing", assigning AI agents pointless tasks to climb the rankings and quietly running up the company's own compute bill. An excerpt from the internal memo: "please don't use AI just for the sake of using AI." Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
Berlin's Stark doubles to a €2.5bn valuation in months
Berlin defence startup Stark is raising €300m at a €2.5bn valuation, more than double its mark from earlier this year. Founded in 2024, it builds loitering munitions, the so-called kamikaze drones, and counts Peter Thiel among its backers. Co-founder Florian Seibel also started drone-maker Quantum Systems.
Ex-DeepMind team raises $50m to pick better science questions
London's Inherent came out of stealth with a $50m seed co-led by Index Ventures and Radical Ventures, with Nvidia's NVentures joining. Its platform, Faraday, pairs researchers with AI agents that decide which scientific questions are worth asking, not just answer them faster.
What do you meme?
Food for thought
Will the next $1tn company sell work, not software?
A widely-shared post points back to Sequoia's "Services as the New Software" thesis: the next trillion-dollar company won't sell a tool, it will sell the work itself, AI-delivered and packaged like a traditional services firm. A fundamentally different approach to product building.
We dug into service-as-software and the move from selling tools to selling outcomes with Andreas Goeldi (Youtube / Spotify / Apple).
The hardest skill in the job is managing your own head
We talked to VARA founder Jonas Muff (Youtube / Spotify / Apple) about fear versus purpose and the founder's inner game.
Smart hack
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From us
Your first hires define the company more than any deck. David Politis, who has hired hundreds of people at early-stage companies, says the top 5%, the ones who actually move the needle, all share three traits.
Work ethic and stamina. They outwork the room and execute without a process to lean on.
Hunger to learn. They go and research the product, market and customer themselves instead of waiting to be trained.
Sharp EQ. They genuinely read the person across the table, teammate or customer.
Hire for these before the CV. People with all three are rare, roughly 1 in 20.
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
AI Product Intern [📍Berlin, Germany], FinTech, SUMUP [Apply]
Working Student Back Office Management (m/f/d) [📍Munich, Germany], Hospitality Tech, Limehome [Apply]
Intern Strategic Program Management [📍Madrid, Spain], Process Mining, Celonis [Apply]
Compliance Lead [📍London, United Kingdom], Valarian [Apply]
Intern Demo Experience & Applied AI [📍Madrid, Spain], Process Mining, Celonis [Apply]
Industry Relations Intern [📍Lisbon, Portugal], Feedzai [Apply]
Customer Success
Senior Customer Success Manager, Influencer Marketing (SaaS) [📍United Kingdom], Gaming & Media, Kyra [Apply]
Senior Customer Success Manager - FR/ENG [📍Paris, France], Brevo [Apply]
Marketing & Comms
Marketing Designer - Performance Marketing (12-month fixed-term contract) [📍Berlin, Germany], FinTech, SUMUP [Apply]
CRM Marketing Manager - US Physicians [📍Berlin, Germany], Amboss [Apply]
Senior Influence Marketing Manager [📍Ukraine], Holywater [Apply]
Senior EMEA Partner Marketing Manager (15 month FTC) [📍London, United Kingdom], Quantexa [Apply]
Head of Communications [📍London, United Kingdom], Lawhive [Apply]
Content Editor - Spain & Italy - CDD (m/f/d) [📍France], E-Commerce & Marketplace, Splendia [Apply]
Sales
Sales Development Representative [📍Dublin, Ireland], FinTech, Payrails [Apply]
Account Development Representative (Swedish Speaking) [📍United Kingdom], API Infrastructure, Kong [Apply]
Senior GTM Systems Engineer [📍London, United Kingdom], Fonoa [Apply]
Account Executive, Enterprise (Card-Linked, intermediate level) [📍Paris, France], Joko [Apply]
Strategy & Ops
General Counsel [📍Berlin, Germany], Amboss [Apply]
Chief of Staff to CTO [📍London, United Kingdom], Fintern [Apply]
Associate Finance Manager [📍Zagreb, Croatia], Fonoa [Apply]
Revenue Operations Manager [📍Paris, France], Joko [Apply]
Talent Operations Internship [📍Zurich, Switzerland], Tangible, ANYbotics [Apply]
Team Lead AML Operations [📍Bulgaria], FinTech, SUMUP [Apply]
Product & Tech
Senior Platform Engineer, AI Enablement (f/m/d) [📍Berlin, Germany], Retail, Zenjob [Apply]
Product Monetisation & Pricing Lead [📍Paris, France], AI Infrastructure, Mistral AI [Apply]
Lead Product Manager, eCommerce (all genders) [📍Berlin, Germany], Distribusion [Apply]
Product Manager [📍London, United Kingdom], Funding Circle [Apply]
Applied AI/ML Engineer (Agents/RL) [📍Amsterdam, Netherlands], AI & Machine Learning, CuspAI [Apply]
Application Security Engineer [📍Lisbon, Portugal], Thought Machine [Apply]
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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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