Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Some people pack swimsuits for their holiday. We pack startup books. While half the tech world is OOO and LinkedIn is suspiciously quiet, it’s prime time to catch up on the ideas that don’t fit in a Slack thread. So we’ve pulled together our favorite summer reads – not just founder war stories, but the kind of books that help you scale teams, stay sane, decode AI hype, and rethink what leadership should look like. Whether you’re beachside, roadside or office-side, consider this your permission to slow down and read up. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.

🫶🏼 Melanie & Christian

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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party

Anthropic eyes $150bn valuation in new funding round

AI challenger Anthropic is in talks to raise up to $5bn at a $150bn+ valuation. Revenue has surged to $4bn, thanks largely to enterprise deals, but profitability remains elusive. The round may include MGX, Abu Dhabi’s AI fund, despite internal concerns about taking money from autocratic regimes. Amazon is also considering expanding its $8bn stake.

Europe’s biggest AI acquisition yet

US-based NiCE acquires Germany’s Cognigy for €819M in what is now Europe’s largest AI exit. The deal supercharges NiCE’s CX platform with Cognigy’s enterprise-grade AI agents—but also continues the trend of US firms snapping up European AI winners. Europe builds them. America buys them.

What do you meme?

Food for thought

No future for an armada of AI-created websites?

The advent of AI brought “programmatic SEO” to the table: the creation of hundreds of webpages optimized for particular search patterns. Morally debatable - is it scam? - but potentially effective. Miquel Pilet of Tailride now shared how Google identified and shut down their own strategy on this type of SEO. Anyone still thinking it was a good idea to replace the marketing department with ChatGPT?

Will future leaders emerge from the internet, not media?

Social media brought the rise of internet stars: influencers. A new class of politicians will showcase how leaders of society as a whole will emerge from this track, argues Andreessen Horowitz: “At some point, I think they’ll completely disconnect from legacy media and just run a completely internet play.” Our main question: is this good, bad - or just a new way society operates?

Pricing for usage = pricing for outcomes

Pricing for usage has become an accelerating shift in B2B SaaS. This means: selling outcomes. Metronome Founder Scott Woody explains the severe consequences this has on how your teams operate: Your Sales comp structure will be dependent on product usage; the key metric for your product team is revenue. Is this a shift more SaaS companies will have to face?

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From us

Setting out to found your own venture is one thing, finding your co-founder is another. You rarely can pull off the feat of your life alone, yet the right companion needs to be a full fit. Karina Repko summarized her wisdom on how to find the one in this insightful post:

• Leverage the YC co-founder matching platform

• Monitor announcements in newsletters (one example in our job section👇🏽)

• Join communities and networks

• Attend events and gatherings

• Share and post it openly on social media

One Many good read(s)

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.

Pro tip: 👀 Want to show off your AI skills? Take a page from this candidate’s CV. She went the extra mile and truly impressed her future employer. 👀

Internships

Founder’s Associate[📍Berlin], Real Estate, Buena [Apply]
Internship Communication [📍Zurich or Basel], Gen Z, Zeam [Apply] 
Working student - Marketing & Growth [📍Munich], Real Estate, Predium [Apply]

Customer Success

Customer Success Manager [📍Remote, Europe], Carbon Tech, Chloris Geospatial [Apply]
Customer Success Manager [📍Remote, EMEA], Digital Employee Management, ControlUp [Apply]

Marketing & Comms

Community Lead [📍Remote], AI, Lovable [Apply, Hiring manager]

Sales

Outbound SDR - DACH [📍Remote, Germany], Remote HR platform, Remote [Apply]

Strategy & Ops

Co-Founder (Ops/Finance) [📍Berlin], Lifestyle, Hot Boys cry [Apply, Hiring manager]
Sales Operations [📍Paris], AI-native OS, Dust [Apply]
Chief of Staff [📍Remote & Zurich] new startup by serial entrepreneurs [Apply, Hiring manager]

Product & Tech

AI Engineer [📍Zurich], E-commerce, Josepha [Hiring manager]
Chief Product Officer [📍Remote], B2B Pipeline Generation Platform, Dealfront [Apply]
Product Manager [📍Remote, Europe], Open-source CMS, Strapi [Apply]

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!