Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Remember Wiz? The 4-year-old Isreali cybersecurity startup turned down a $23bn acquisition offer from Alphabet, opting for an IPO instead. Concerns over antitrust issues (Google failed to acquire Hubspot for similar concerns recently) and the recent Crowdstrike incident influenced their decision. This move echoes Yahoo’s rejected $44bn offer from Microsoft in 2008 and Facebook rejecting Yahoo’s $1bn offer in 2006. Time will tell if this was a brilliant move like Facebook's or a missed opportunity like Yahoo's. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.

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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party

Revolut gets banking licence in the UK

Fintech star Revolut has received approval for UK banking operations. The received “Authorisation with Restrictions” will allow the company to build out its UK banking operations before an official launch. The approval is a major step forward in the firm’s 3-year old fight with regulators. Its application had been delayed by concerns of regulatory breaches and reputational damages due to its reportedly overly aggressive working culture (average employee tenure is 0.8 years). The company currently has 9 million customers in the UK alone and some 45 million globally and the approval will allow it to hold £50’000 in deposits per customer.

Legal Tech: Bubble or promise?

It was one of the last bastions to be disrupted by digitisation: the legal industry. Enter Gen-AI: now you may indeed enable one lawyer with AI to do the work of five lawyers without it. Startups and VCs have taken note. Harvey, a US company providing AI assistants for legal teams, now closed its $100m Series C at a $1.5bn valuation. This is being 2.5 years old and an estimated ARR of $10m - $20m. This is in stark contrast to Clio, a case management software provider which has been around for 16 years and doubled its ARR to $200m in the last two years alone. Just last year it announced an AI assistant product, though. Investors clearly love the AI-native players. Eventually, investor valuations are about the future. Will Legal tech deliver on its promise?

A world of memes

Food for thought

Is Europe out?

Number of European startups raising pre-seed funding:

2019: 12’300
2023: 2'500

Does Gen-AI have a product market fit?

Just recently we reported on a potential $600bn gap on the investments into Generative AI. Tech analyst Benedict Evans wrote this excellent piece on why LLM-based products have a long way to go to find Product-Market fit after all.

The five factors of longevity for startup founders

Mark your calendar

Virtual

From Scaling to Selling - A virtual event hosted by Sifted Talks, 31 July [Register for free]

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Smart hack

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

Working student CFO/COO assistant [📍Munich], AI, Parloa [Apply, Hiring manager]
Founder Associate [📍Munich] , EdTech, Edurino [Apply]
Founder Associate [📍Berlin] FinTech, lemon.markets [Apply]
Internship Founders Associate [📍Berlin], Food, KoRo [Apply]

Customer Success

Associate Director of Onboarding [📍Remote, EU], Payroll, Deel [Apply]
Senior Customer Success Manager [📍Remote, Munich, Berlin], ClimateTech, Resourcify [Apply]

HR & Ops

Head of Operations / Mitglied der erw. GL [📍St. Gallen, Zurich, Hybrid-Remote], FinTech, Kaspar& [Apply, Hiring manager]
Chief of Staff [📍Berlin], IT-as-a-service, deploi, Seed stage [Apply, Hiring manager] 

Marketing

(Senior) Performance Marketing Manager [📍Berlin, Hybrid], Industry, femtasy [Apply, Hiring manager]
Lead Motion Designer [📍London], AI Video, Synthesia [Apply]
Senior Field & Event Marketing Manager [📍London], AI, Writer [Apply]
Lead Public Affair [📍Paris], AI, Mistral, [Apply]
Online Marketing Manager [📍Remote], E-commerce, Beauty, Noles [Apply, Hiring manager]

Product & Strategy

Love academia but crave startup vibes? Great news! In partnership with Loughborough University, On is looking for a PhD candidate, interested in studying athlete-equipment interactions, human performance and the engineering design of footwear. This is your chance to blend academic passion with the excitement of the startup world. [Apply]

Sales

Sales Development Representative [📍Paris], AI, Databricks [Apply]
Key Account Manager [📍Bern, Switzerland], MarTech, hypt [Apply]
Market Development Representative [📍Dublin, Munich], LegalTech, DocuSign [Apply]

Talk to you next week! In the meantime, we see you on LinkedIn, X and Insta!

🫶 Melanie & Christian

Each week, a lot of work goes into the Follow the Gradient project to help you navigate this crazy jungle called entrepreneurship. Help us grow this community and we’ll make sure that you or your project gets a shoutout in the weekly newsletter!