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- Love letters that transform your team dynamics
Love letters that transform your team dynamics
Plus: How to make your startup uninvestable
Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
For those of you who owned Nvidia stock, we can relate if Dry January came to an abrupt end. Yesterday’s $600bn wipe-out after DeepSeek’s news on less-compute intensive foundational models brought a first reality-check back to the bubbly AI waters. For us Normies, things will stay the same: either way, there is more AI agents coming. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
PS: Has this e-mail been forwarded to you? Sign up here.
Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
ElevenLabs raises $250m
Artificial voice startup Elevenlabs has reportedly completed a Series C funding round at a $3bn valuation, raising $250m. While the funding underscores the AI bubble is still right on, it shines light on another European detractor: the company was once founded by a Polish engineer and is now fully based in the US.
Mistral for IPO
CEO and founder of French LLM developer Mistral has confirmed an IPO is on the strategic roadmap for the company. While this does not come as a surprise, it also underscores the need for the company to consistently level up with market leader OpenAI in the international arena.
What do you meme?
Food for thought
Founders - overworked and underpaid?
Uninvestable cap tables
Is the importance of cap table structures underrated? If your cap table looks like a chemistry chart from high school, you may need to revisit.
The big exit gap
European founders are neither less capable nor less ambitious than their US peers. Yet data points on exit values illustrate the huge difference between the continents. Explanations range from a better US ecosystem to deeper capital markets. Whatever it is, we should urgently catch up…
Events happening this week
Estland
Startup Day in Tartu, 29-31 January [Program]
Sweden
GoWest Gothenburg, 29-30 January [Register]
Switzerland
DeepTech Investor Summit, 27-28 January [Program]
Online
SiftedTalks: Beyond sales: How to plan your go-to-market strategy for 2025, 29 January 1-2pm CEST [Register here]
Did we miss an important event? Let us know by replying to this email.

Do you like what we do at Follow the Gradient? Help us grow this community and share a like and add a comment to our LinkedIn post that just went live:

Smart hack
Have you been wondering how to increase the bonds in your team? Julie Lepique shared this beautiful exercise which is easy to organize for anyone:
1️⃣ Take a regular company/team-wide meeting (eg the all-hands) & add 15 minutes.
2️⃣ Set up a shared workspace (like a FigJam board) with little Love Letter icons & each team member's name.
3️⃣ During the meeting, invite everyone to write a short note (a 'love letter') to their colleagues, focusing on what they admire or appreciate about them.
4️⃣ Ask volunteers to read out some of their notes by the end of the meeting, and let everyone read the rest afterwards.
5️⃣ Observe how the magic unfolds. 🙂 Our team couldn’t stop writing and reading notes to each other! The result? A more connected team that knows their work—and their relationships with each other—truly matter.
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 employee 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
Internship [📍Zurich], FinTech, ellexx [Apply, Hiring manager]
Marketing & Growth Intern [📍Berlin] ESG, Atlas Metric [Apply]
Working Student Photo Production [📍Berlin], Food, KoRo [Apply]
Working Student Data Science [📍Munich], Climate Tech, Ocell [Apply]
Internship Applied AI Engineer [📍Paris], AI, Mistral [Apply]
Procurement Engineer Intern [📍Turin], Space Tech, The Exploration Company[Apply]
Customer Success
Customer Success Manager DACH [📍Munich], SaaS, Notion [Apply]
Strategic Account Manager [📍London], SaaS, Gigs [Apply]
HR & Finance
(Senior) Finance & Operations Manager [📍Berlin], Climattech, Nala [Apply]
HR Generalist [📍Paris], Gaming, Sorare [Apply]
Talent Acquisition Associate DACH [📍Berlin], Transportation, voi [Apply]
Marketing & Comms
Marketing Manager [📍Zurich], InsurTech, grape [Apply, Hiring manager]
Senior Marketing Manager[📍Paris], SaaS, Aircall [Apply]
Sales
B2B Senior Business Development manager [📍Berlin], Transportation, omio [Apply]
Sales Manager (m/w/d) Photovoltaik Vertrieb & Beratung im Außendienst [📍Munich], Industry, 1KOMMA5° [Apply]
Strategy & Ops
Team Lead Project Manager [📍Paris], Fintech, pennylane [Apply]
GTM Enablement Manager [📍Dublin], Security, Vanta [Apply]
Europe Strategy & Operations Senior Associate [📍London], Retail, Faire [Apply]
Product & Tech
Engineering Manager / Team Lead Software Engineering [📍Zurich], Drones, wingtra [Apply]
Senior Product Manager [📍Zurich], SaaS, Scandit [Apply]
Final words — take what you need

Follow the Gradient is a weekly newsletter and podcast by the serial founders Melanie Gabriel & Christian Woese about how to build a business in Europe while staying sane.
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