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.

🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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

The podcast bros who helped put Trump back in the White House

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

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