Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

While the Trump organization has announced releasing its own new golden mobile phone, Apple’s new “Liquid Glass” is being mocked as a different way the buttons look like. Both come with 'we ran out of ideas but made it shiny’ vibes. They may soon dial longevity guru Bryan Johnson for stress coping advice. His mantra to swap your 996 against is 811: Eight hours of sleep, one of exercise, one for mindfulness. In a world running on burnout, maybe rest is the real edge. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.

🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party

Meta takes near-half of Scale AI in $29B deal

Meta is acquiring a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3B, doubling the startup’s valuation to $29B and snapping up its 28 yo CEO Alexandr Wang in the process. Wang will lead Meta’s superintelligence efforts, while Scale stays independent under interim CEO Jason Droege. The deal underscores Meta’s scramble to catch up in AI as top talent leaks and rivals pull ahead.

Mistral unveils AI cloud push with Nvidia muscle

French AI unicorn Mistral is launching its own compute platform backed by 18,000 Nvidia GPUs, aiming to rival U.S. infrastructure dominance. The new service, Mistral Compute, lets users build AI models using both Mistral and open-source offerings, targeting enterprise and government clients. CEO Arthur Mensch says it’s a move from pure software to cloud - and a strategic bid for European AI independence.

What do you meme?

Food for thought

Focus on implementation, not product?

Product-led growth has long been marked superior to implementation heavy work. What if the latter is exactly what is needed during the advent of new tech platforms like Gen AI? AI companies are using one role heavily to serve their clients: the forward deployed engineer. They focus on implementation, not product…

So much noise, so little meaning?

“The amount of buzzwords companies use is insane. Everything is turbocharge, unleash, reimagine, yada yada yada. It’s really hard to understand what most of them actually do.” Clemence Lepers reminds us of an essential guardrail in B2B: be clear on what your business does, for whom and how.

a16z as the ring leader?

Many VCs claim to spot the new Facebook’s, yet only few really do identify the unicorns of tomorrow. SF-based firm a16z seems to have found the secret formula. What is their secret scouting technique?

Events happening this week

We constantly update this quarter’s must-attend events for startups in Europe list.

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

We all think we have a great product. Yet, so many of us struggle to deliver sales targets. Brett Jansen layed out in this post how important it is to be crystal clear on why anyone should have to buy what you are offering. Ask your GTM teams these two questions:

• What specific dollar amount will you save your customer?

• What happens if you don't deliver?

Be surprised how many do not have the answers…

One good read

Move fast and make things: the new career mantra

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

Founders Associate [📍Zurich or Berlin], AI Ecosystem, AI House [Apply]
Summer Intern - Internationalisation & Operations [📍Zurich], InsurTech, grape [Apply]
Robotics Engineering Student [📍Zurich], Robotics, Ascento [Apply]
Software Engineering Working Student [📍Berlin] AI, Taktile [Apply]
People & Office Internship [📍Ghent, Belgium] FinTech, Silverfin [Apply]

Customer Success

Customer Success Manager [📍London], Rating, Trustpilot [Apply]
Customer Success Manager [📍London], AI, Cohere [Apply]

HR & Finance

Team & Office Coordinator [📍Zurich and Amsterdam], BioTech, Cradle [Hiring manager]
Finance & Strategy Manager [📍Brussels], Food, Deliveroo [Apply]

Marketing & Comms

Marketing Data Analyst [📍Berlin], FemTech, femtasy [Apply, Hiring manager]
GTM Manager [📍Berlin], LegalTech, Libra [Apply]

Sales

Business Development [📍Zurich], Robotics, mimic [Apply]
Sales Director [📍Amsterdam], FinTech, Datasnipper [Apply]

Strategy & Ops

Chief of Staff [📍Berlin], Market Research, Civey [Apply, Hiring manager]
Head of Operations[📍Berlin], FemTech, Ovom [Apply]
Psychology Operations Manager [📍Zurich], HealthTech, Kyan Health[Apply]

Product & Tech

LLM engineer [📍Zurich], AI, nunu.ai [Apply]
Full stack engineer [📍Zurich], AI Security, Lakera [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!