Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Follow the Gradient

What happens when the company that invented modern search cannot enter the fastest growing segment of its own market?

On Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese sit down with Max Buckley, who spent 12.5 years and 10 teams at Google before leaving to open the Zurich research office for Exa, a $700 million AI search company with 70 people that is building search infrastructure for agents, not humans.

This is not a conversation about whether AI will disrupt search. Max built Google's search systems from the inside. He walks through the exact commercial and technical reasons why Google charges $35 per thousand queries while smaller players charge $7, why the search API market is growing 10X year on year, and why Google's $400 billion consumer search revenue makes it structurally unable to compete.

We talk about:

• Why Google charges 5X more for search API access than competitors, and how protecting $400 billion in consumer search revenue creates an innovator's dilemma that opens the door for 70-person startups

• How search built for agents differs fundamentally from search built for humans: complex queries with metadata filters, variable latency budgets, documentation versioning, and parallel execution

• The moment in November 2024 when coding agents crossed a threshold, turning 12-week junior engineer projects into 30-minute background tasks

• Why Max convinced Exa's founder to open in Zurich instead of keeping the team in San Francisco, and what 300 applications in weeks reveals about European AI talent density

• How Exa runs internal operations through a central AI system where sales teams describe bugs in plain English and get code fixes back without filing tickets

• Why Michael Porter's cluster theory explains how Google's 2003 decision to open a Zurich office seeded the talent ecosystem that now feeds its competitors

This is a conversation about what happens when someone who spent a decade inside the machine steps out and looks at it from the other side. Not what Google gets wrong, but what it structurally cannot do.

Our biggest takeaways, including Max's perspective on why the search market is splitting into two fundamentally different products:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/max-buckley-podcast 

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Where to find Max Buckley:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxbuckley/ 

Exa: https://exa.ai 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

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X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

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00:00 Introduction

01:26 From business intern to senior ML engineer at Google

08:36 What Exa actually builds and how it differs from Google

23:40 Can a 70-person company take on Google?

25:09 The Zurich AI talent cluster: 300 applications and counting

30:52 How Exa runs operations through a central AI brain

43:53 Making a startup in Europe: the exception vs the rule

48:14 Burnout, boundaries, and non-negotiable gym sessions

What do you do when organic growth cannot get you to 100 million ARR?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese sit down with Francine Gervazio, CEO of Shiftmove, and Wouter Hendriks, the company's CFO. Francine appeared on Follow the Gradient in Episode 2, when she was preparing to sell Avrios. Since then, Avrios merged with Vimcar to form Shiftmove, and the company has executed multiple acquisitions as part of a PE-backed buy-and-build strategy to reach 100M ARR.

This is not a theoretical conversation about M&A. It is a CEO and CFO sitting next to each other, explaining the real mechanics of how they evaluate, finance, execute, and integrate acquisitions. Including the parts nobody talks about.

We talk about:

• Why organic growth hit a wall in a fragmented market with 80% white space but slow adoption, and why buying became the logical path
• The three types of acquisitions: buying customers, opening geographies, and acquiring skills. Which ones work and which are a stretch
• How to finance acquisitions with debt vs equity, why debt is often better for founders, and what covenant headroom actually means
• The Rule of 40 is now the Rule of 50: how acquisition targets are evaluated against the combined financial profile
• Why every acquisition Wouter has done, he regretted not integrating faster. The case for day-one changes: blending communication tools, rebranding offices, aligning reporting immediately
• The biggest due diligence surprise: undocumented liabilities, customer promises nobody told you about, and the 15 people waiting for a promotion on day one
• Francine's integration philosophy: "If you're not aligned with the culture, I'd rather replace as soon as possible. Nobody is irreplaceable."
• How 5 executives from 5 nationalities use cultural awareness as a strategic tool: the Canadian builds trust, the Dutchman pushes execution, and the CEO reads the room
• Why middle management is the most powerful tool for spreading culture after an acquisition

Our biggest takeaways, including Francine's view on why most founders underestimate the 18 months after an acquisition closes:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/francine-gervazio-wouter-hendriks-podcast 

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Where to find the guests:

Francine Gervazio LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francinegervazio/ 

Wouter Hendriks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wouter-hendriks-4432306a/ 

Shiftmove: https://www.shiftmove.com 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

01:32 From Avrios to Shiftmove: why organic growth was not enough

11:07 Financial architecture: debt vs equity and when to use which

20:53 How to know if your company can afford an acquisition

25:53 Due diligence surprises and the problems you inherit

32:58 Day one after acquisition: everything you hated is now yours

38:30 Integration speed: why faster is always better

40:46 Culture integration: values, middle management, and no politics

51:09 Rapid fire: the biggest mistakes in M&A

What happens when biology runs on a completely different clock than your company?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese sit down with Julia Bösch, co-founder and CEO of Outfittery. Julia built the company from zero to 300 employees across 10 markets, doubling revenue every year. In her early 30s, while the business was at full scale, she made a decision that had nothing to do with fundraising or product: she froze her eggs.

This is not a conversation about whether founders can have it all. It is one of the most honest exchanges we have recorded about what it actually costs and what it actually takes to combine building a family with building a company.

We talk about:

• Why Julia treated egg freezing as a strategic investment, not an insurance policy, and why she calls it the best investment of her life

• The advice from another female founder that reframed the "you'll just feel it" narrative: for some women, the clock never ticks and the decision must be planned

• Why partner choice is a career decision, not just a romantic one, and what it means to have a partner "confident enough" to be the primary caregiver

• How motherhood biologically rewired Julia's leadership: radical prioritization of energy over time, not just calendar management

• The practical infrastructure that makes baby and business possible: invest aggressively in support, renegotiate with your partner regularly, and accept that perfection is gone

• Why founding a company is actually easier than corporate for combining family, because founders can design their own setup

This is not a playbook. It is two founders and a host sharing the decisions, trade-offs, and systems they built around one of the most personal tensions in entrepreneurship.

Julia's take on what ambitious women often misjudge about timing, control, and the cost of waiting:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/julia-boesch-podcast 

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Where to find Julia Bösch:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-b%C3%B6sch/ 

Company: https://www.outfittery.com 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:20 Egg freezing: Julia's decision in her early 30s

07:00 The process: hormone treatments, two cycles, and building Outfittery at the same time

10:24 Sharing the story publicly: why vulnerability was worth it

16:35 Baby and business: not an or, but an and

18:03 What male co-founders underestimate about the female founder experience

25:57 Partner choice as a career decision

28:09 The practical setup: nannies, shared calendars, and regular renegotiation

34:16 How motherhood made Julia a stronger CEO

36:10 Staying sane: coaches, psychologists, EO peer groups, and dancing

44:01 The 80th birthday exercise and WOOP framework for goal setting

What happens when a $39 billion humanoid bet can't do useful work, but a wheeled robot in a warehouse already turns a profit?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie and Christian sit down with Lukas Ziegler, robotics evangelist, triple venture partner, and the person whose content reaches over 100 million people a year. From programming cobots in Poland to advising robotics startups across three VC funds, Lukas has seen both the factory floor and the fundraising pitch.

This conversation cuts through the humanoid hype to examine what actually generates industrial ROI, why simulation alone won't close the gap, and what European founders get wrong about choosing their investors.

We talk about:

• Why 80% of humanoid functionality can be delivered by wheeled robots at a fraction of the cost, and why VCs still fund the other form

• The reliability cliff: how 95% success in the lab translates to destroyed ROI in 24/7 industrial operations

• Why narrowing your task scope until failure modes are countable is the real path from demo to production

• The sim-to-real gap: NVIDIA Cosmos helps you pre-train at scale, but real-world teleoperation data remains irreplaceable

• Why robotics founders should run due diligence on their investors, not just the reverse, especially with SaaS-focused VCs

• Poland's emergence as an underestimated AI and robotics hub, and where the European ecosystem actually holds structural advantages

This is not a conversation about when robots will change the world. It is about the compounding decisions that separate robotics companies shipping revenue from those shipping demos.

Our biggest takeaways, including Lukas's view on where robotics founders consistently misjudge their path to production:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/lukas-ziegler-podcast 

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Where to find Lukas M. Ziegler:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zieglerr/ 

X: https://x.com/lukas_m_ziegler 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@zieglerrr 

Newsletter: https://ziegler.substack.com/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:28 From programming robots to becoming the world's top robotics voice

05:10 The 80/20 rule: wheeled robots vs. humanoids

08:10 Safety gaps and the missing ISO standard for legged robots

12:03 How to Derive Real ROI From Robots

20:19 Reliability as a product: the path from 95% to 99.9%

26:35 Boring problems win: Zipline, Exotec, and narrow task mastery

29:17 Customer discovery: how to find the right robotic use case

33:32 Tesla's 8.4 billion miles of data and why it doesn't help robots

38:23 Europe in the global robotics race: talent, manufacturing, and EU Inc

47:08 Rapid fire: the questions that reveal if a robot is production-ready

Most founders think they can save their SaaS business by sprinkling AI on top. They're wrong. The entire playbook that powered the last two decades of software is being rewritten.

In this conversation on Follow the Gradient, Andreas Goeldi, Partner at b2venture and a serial entrepreneur with 30+ years in technology, breaks down how AI is fundamentally reshaping what software businesses look like, how they price, and who survives.

This is not a conversation about AI features or hype cycles. It is a clear-eyed examination of which business models are emerging, which are dying, and what separates the founders who adapt from those who get left behind.

We talk about:

• Why the traditional SaaS playbook with 80% margins is incompatible with real AI integration

• The shift from selling tools to selling outcomes, and why customers have always wanted this

• Two categories of AI startups that are almost guaranteed to fail

• How general-purpose agents are becoming the "Excel of AI" and eating niche products

• Why half of all developers refuse to use AI coding tools and what that means for their careers

• What happens to organizations when middle management layers start disappearing

This episode is less about what AI can do and more about what it forces you to decide. Andreas brings the rare combination of someone who built companies for two decades before switching to investing in them, and his frameworks cut through the noise with uncomfortable clarity.

Our biggest takeaways, including Andreas's reality check on where most founders are dangerously delusional about AI:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/andreas-goeldi-podcast 

Where to find Andreas Goeldi:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agoeldi/ 

b2venture: https://www.b2venture.vc 

Blog (Innospective): https://innospective.net/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:22 The biggest delusion in AI right now

04:55 Four buckets of AI business models

07:58 AI pricing in times of vibe coding

13:55 The real moats left in AI: data, regulation, and user experience

17:48 Two startup ideas you should never build right now

22:17 What existing SaaS founders must do to survive

25:49 Why middle management is about to disappear

33:01 How AI is transforming venture capital from the inside

37:11 Do startups still need VCs when four people can hit millions?

43:03 Rapid fire: thin wrappers, CTO hiring, and European quality

Most European founders believe the ecosystem is catching up. What if the real constraint isn't capital or talent, but the collective psychology that keeps us from acting like we've already arrived?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Tom Wehmeier, Partner at Atomico and the architect behind the State of European Tech report for over a decade. Tom has a rare vantage point: he tracks ecosystem fundamentals through data and sees how they play out firsthand through Atomico's investment portfolio.

This is a conversation about what the numbers actually say versus what founders feel, where European tech has genuinely compounded, and where fragility still hides in plain sight.

We talk about:

• Why sentiment and belief remain Europe's most fragile infrastructure, even as fundamentals have never been stronger

• How talent is flowing from US megatech into European startups and why that shift took a decade to pay off

• The three things blocking pension funds from venture allocation, including one nobody talks about: in-house talent

• Why 30% of companies at Series C relocate abroad and the gravitational pull that drives it

• How breakout companies like DeepL, Lovable, and Framer share a common thread: narrative clarity

• Why fragmentation across European markets is what built global resilience in companies like Spotify and Booking

This episode is not a cheerleading session. It is a clear-eyed look at where conviction is earned, where it is borrowed, and where the gap between data and narrative still needs closing.

Our biggest takeaways, including Tom's view on what founders consistently misread about Europe's exit data:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/tom-wehmeier-podcast 

Where to find Tom Wehmeier:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwehmeier/ 

Email: tom@atomico.com 

State of European Tech: https://stateofeuropeantech.com 

Atomico: https://atomico.com 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

03:07 Europe's ecosystem fundamentals have never been stronger

10:51 Where the friction shows up: go-to-market and fragmentation

13:21 What will improve soon vs what founders must design around

17:09 Europe's 4.6 million tech workers and where the talent advantage breaks down

19:52 The compounding talent flywheel across generations

24:38 Why 30% of companies relocate abroad at Series C

28:45 The pension fund bottleneck: perception, regulation, and talent

37:20 What breakout European companies do differently

43:59 Rapid fire

Investors don't invest in you to be a very expensive administrator. So why are you still managing your own calendar at Series A?

In this conversation on Follow the Gradient, Kate Connolly, founder of KaaS and former Chief of Staff at DeepMind, breaks down why most founders wait too long to get executive support and what it costs them when they do.

This is not a conversation about hiring an assistant. It is about how operational leverage changes the speed of every decision a founder makes, from fundraising to hiring to product.

We talk about:

• Why you cannot solve the strategy problem before you solve the operational problem

• The concrete difference between an EA and a chief of staff, and which one you actually need first

• What VCs privately tell Kate about founders who refuse to delegate

• How a 60-minute calendar audit can reveal where your week is leaking

• Why the most common chief of staff hires fail within months due to role scoping

• What great EAs do before they are asked, and how to interview for that instinct

This is not a playbook for outsourcing tasks. It is a conversation about what changes in a company when the founder stops being the bottleneck, and what it takes to get out of your own way.

Our biggest takeaways, including Kate's view on where founders misjudge their own leverage:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/kate-connolly-podcast 

—

Where to find Kate Connolly:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateconnollylondon/ 

Website: https://withkaas.com 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:30 When founder mode becomes the bottleneck

07:29 EA vs Chief of Staff: defining the roles clearly

11:24 The 15-person chief of staff trap

14:46 The cost of waiting too long: velocity

17:08 The 60-minute calendar audit

19:09 Building your EA into a second brain

26:37 What to look for when hiring an EA

32:41 When everything compounds: 12-24 months in

34:41 Working with C Levels

46:01 Rapid fire

What actually breaks a startup first: moving too slowly, or hiring the wrong people too fast?

Founders often think speed is the answer, until speed quietly becomes the problem.

Follow the Gradient sits down with Paddy Lamb, Talent Partner at Atomico, who has helped scale teams from the first hire to hundreds of people across multiple continents. Drawing on a decade inside fast growing startups and venture portfolios, Paddy brings a grounded view on what really compounds and what quietly erodes a company early on.

This conversation is less about hiring tactics and more about how founders make irreversible people decisions under pressure. It surfaces the trade offs behind growth, quality, accountability, and the standards that shape a company long after the first few hires.

We talk about:

• Why hiring one month later is often cheaper than fixing a rushed hire for a year

• How to design early teams around capabilities instead of default job titles

• What strong employer branding looks like when you have no budget and no name

• Why hiring pipelines should be built to eliminate risk, not to collect yeses

• How to spot hunger and ownership without mistaking confidence for signal

• When holding on too long damages culture more than letting go early

Rather than offering a checklist, this episode explores how founders think when the answers are unclear. It is about judgment calls, standards, and accepting discomfort as the price of building something that lasts.

Our biggest takeaways, including Paddy’s view on where founders consistently misjudge people decisions:

https://followthegradient.io/p/paddy-lambros-podcast-video 

—

Where to find Paddy Lambros:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklambros/ 

Dex: https://meetdex.ai/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

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00:00 Introduction

02:49 The  journey from startup to VC

05:19 Hiring slower versus scaling at all costs

07:01 Deciding early roles from first principles

08:39 Attracting talent without brand or budget

11:40 Clarifying your employer value proposition

14:04 Structuring the hiring funnel like sales

17:56 Using case studies and workshops effectively

20:51 Evaluating hunger and long term potential

24:04 Onboarding for time to first value

26:44 Holding a high bar during probation

29:56 Executing layoffs with clarity and focus

35:56 Founder evolution and role layering over time

Apply the concept of "Your personal Energy Audit" Adrian mentions here: https://followthegradient.io/p/how-to-protect-mental-health-with-the-energy-audit

What happens when the traits that make you win are the same ones that quietly undo you?

Most founders learn how to push. Few learn when stopping is the harder, necessary move.

Follow the Gradient sits down with Adrian Locher, Managing Partner at Merantix Capital, a multi time founder and early stage investor who has seen the cost of relentless ambition firsthand. After exiting a previous company, Adrian pushed harder than ever, until burnout, depression, and personal loss forced a reset .

This conversation explores how high performance actually works over decades, not months, and what founders miss when they treat endurance as a personal flaw rather than a design problem.

We talk about:

• Burning out at the peak of success, not during failure

• Why founders’ greatest strengths often become their most dangerous liabilities

• The moment productivity collapses when fear quietly replaces curiosity

• Separating family time and work to eliminate the constant guilt loop

• Treating recovery as a non optional phase, not a reward

• Leading teams by modeling boundaries instead of preaching balance

This episode is less about fixing habits and more about examining how founders relate to fear, ambition, and self worth when no playbook applies. It offers a lens for thinking clearly under pressure, before pressure turns personal.

Our biggest takeaways, including Adrian’s view on what founders misread about endurance:

https://followthegradient.io/p/adrian-locher-podcast-burnout 

—

Where to find Adrian Locher:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianlocher/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

03:52 Burnout at the peak of founder success

05:26 Ignoring early symptoms until everything stops

12:56 Therapy and structuring life around three buckets

20:09 Building companies as a marathon, not a grind

23:49 Leading through authenticity instead of toughness

28:06 Fear as a hidden driver of overperformance

32:25 Helping yourself before helping the company

33:58 Mentoring founders to avoid the lowest lows

37:48 Redefining success beyond money and status

What happens when Europe stops cheering itself on and starts taking responsibility for the outcome?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Judith Dada, Partner at Visionaries Club, to unpack one of the most uncomfortable conversations in European tech right now. Drawing on her work as an investor, writer, and ecosystem builder, Judith brings a rare mix of conviction and realism to questions many founders quietly avoid.

This conversation is not about tactics or trend-chasing. It is about agency, moral responsibility, and what it really means to build companies in Europe at a moment when technology, geopolitics, and personal choices are colliding.

We talk about:

• Why performative Euro-optimism can be just as damaging as constant pessimism

• The hidden risk of Europe settling for the application layer while conceding models and infrastructure

• How statistics about Europe obscure the difference between averages and outliers founders could still become

• What founders miss when they treat Europe like a marketplace instead of something they help build

• Why AI’s impact feels invisible to most organizations while accelerating at the frontier

• The personal cost of ambition, from childcare trade-offs to deciding when silence becomes complicity

This episode offers a lens, not a manual. It explores how founders make decisions when the stakes are unclear, the odds are uneven, and opting out feels easier than staying in the fight.

Our biggest takeaways, including Judith’s view on what founders fundamentally misjudge about responsibility and long-term impact:

https://followthegradient.io/p/judith-dada-podcast 

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Where to find Judith Dada:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-dada/ 

Visionaries Club: https://visionaries.vc/ 

Opensource Nanny: https://opensourcenanny.com/ 

Relativity Collective: https://relativitycollective.com/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:30 Why European tech sovereignty suddenly feels urgent

05:39 Why realism and agency must coexist

08:58 Where Europe is too optimistic about AI layers

10:01 Why statistics don’t define Europe’s future

12:22 AI as a civilizational rather than technical shift

15:05 The widening gap between AI frontier and reality

20:12 Choosing hard problems despite low odds

25:29 Realizing no one else is driving the bus

27:56 From leaving Europe to fixing its foundations

30:21 Speaking up when silence feels safer

35:31 Parenting ambitious careers without pretending it’s easy

45:14 Building peer environments that raise ambition

48:37 Rapid fire questions

What happens when Europe stops apologizing for its ambition and starts executing at full speed?

Some founders still believe Europe’s biggest constraint is confidence. This conversation challenges that idea head on.

Follow the Gradient sits down with Laura Modiano, Head of Startups EMEA at OpenAI, who works daily with founders across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She brings a rare vantage point from inside OpenAI and from years of supporting companies from first prototype to real scale.

This episode is less about hype cycles and more about how ambition, technical depth, and feedback driven execution actually compound over time. Laura reflects on what changes when speed collapses, tools feel like coworkers, and founders are forced to rethink how they learn, unlearn, and decide under uncertainty.

We talk about:

• Why European founders systematically underestimate how fast they can go with today’s AI tooling

• How collapsing build cycles shift the real bottleneck from ideas to decision quality

• The execution gap that appears after early traction and why “building small” becomes a hidden ceiling

• Why technical literacy is no longer optional even for application layer founders

• How Europe’s fragmented markets quietly train founders to think global from day one

• What great execution looks like when models evolve faster than product roadmaps

Rather than offering a playbook, this episode zooms out on how founders make choices when the ground keeps moving. It’s about taste, timing, and knowing when to ship, when to pause, and when to discard assumptions that once worked but no longer fit.

Our biggest takeaways, including Laura’s view on what founders consistently misjudge about speed and scale:

https://followthegradient.io/p/laura-modiano-podcast 

—

Where to find Laura Modiano:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-modiano/ 

Reach out at: startups@openai.com 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

02:03 Why Europe Produces Globally Competitive Founders

06:07 What Founders Miss About AI Acceleration

08:52 Building Real Companies Beyond Demo Culture

12:09 Why Technical Depth Wins In AI Startups

15:42 What Switzerland Gets Right About Ecosystems

20:01 Deciding Where To Build In Europe

23:01 What Strong Execution Looks Like Today

26:10 Discovering AI Use Cases Beyond Cost Cutting

28:55 Why Unlearning Becomes A Scaling Advantage

31:26 Maintaining Founder Intensity Without Burnout

41:40 Making High Stakes Decisions With Incomplete Data

44:57 Where Startups Should Focus As Models Advance

46:41 False Beliefs Holding European Founders Back

What actually breaks deep tech startups isn’t lack of vision, but running out of patience before reality catches up.

Follow the Gradient sits down with Roland Siegwart, Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich and one of Europe’s most influential robotics mentors. Over two decades, Roland has helped shape ETH’s spin-out culture and advised companies like Anybotics, BlueBotics, and 7Sense from research to real-world deployment .

This conversation explores how deep tech companies are really built when timelines are long, capital is patient but finite, and founders must constantly trade ambition against survival.

We talk about:

• Why abundant early-stage capital can quietly reduce urgency in deep tech startups

• The hidden cost of the last 10 percent from prototype to market-ready system

• How early revenue from “unsexy” applications can enable bigger long-term bets

• Why Europe’s strength in hardware systems also makes scaling slower and harder

• The role experienced operators play in grounding PhD-driven founding teams

• When founders must step aside to prevent becoming the company’s bottleneck

Rather than offering formulas, this episode examines how founders learn to make irreversible decisions with incomplete information, balancing engineering rigor with the pressure to move before the window closes.

Our biggest takeaways, including Roland’s view on where founders most often misjudge deep tech reality:

https://followthegradient.io/p/roland-siegwart-podcast 

—

Where to find Roland Siegwart:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-siegwart-85466912/

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us: 

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction 

03:51 How Switzerland built a self sustaining robotics ecosystem 

05:02 Turning university research into real world companies 

07:39 Why Europe struggles to scale deep tech globally 

09:46 Funding strategies for long hardware driven timelines 

12:16 The painful gap between lab prototypes and products 

14:09 Early signals that founders can survive the transition 

15:37 Finding a first market with real customer pain 

19:00 When pilots turn into scalable robotics businesses 

20:47 Bringing business leadership into technical teams 

23:24 When founders must step aside to let companies grow 

31:49 Navigating dual use and ethical responsibility in robotics

What actually determines whether a founder scales or silently stalls?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Lina Chong, Partner at HV Capital, to unpack what she’s learned from being on both sides of the table: building and exiting companies, then backing some of Europe’s most successful scale-ups.

It’s a candid conversation about decision-making under uncertainty, founder psychology, and the uncomfortable trade-offs that define real growth.

We talk about:

• Why the best founders make fast, irreversible decisions, even without perfect clarity

• The dark side of founder identity (and what happens after an exit)

• When loyalty to early employees becomes a growth constraint, not a virtue

• How resilient founders respond when capital tightens and markets shift

• Go-to-market lessons from companies like TravelPerk and Fresha

• When European founders should go global and why “home market first” is often arbitrary

Rather than playbooks, this episode focuses on how great founders think, decide, and adapt when the path forward isn’t obvious.

—

Our biggest takeaways, including Lina’s perspective on what most founders get wrong when scaling:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/lina-chong-podcast 

—

Where to find Lina:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linachong/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/

X: https://x.com/followgradient

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

—

00:00 Introduction

01:43 From Founder to VC

03:05 Experimental Cultures vs Rigid Vision

05:05 The Post-Exit Emotional Crash

07:58 Founder Signals That Predict Scale

11:40 Loyalty vs Scale

14:58 When Caution Kills Growth

16:28 How VCs Form Conviction

21:07 Using Investors for GTM and Fundraising

25:16 European SaaS Go-To-Market

27:30 Global First vs Home Market

32:53 Resilience in Downturns

33:43 Personal Resilience

What do you keep when a year of founder advice contradicts itself? What actually sticks once the playbooks cancel each other out and you are left with your own judgment?

Follow the Gradient closes out the year with a reflective episode from hosts Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese, drawing on dozens of conversations with founders, operators, and investors across Europe . Instead of a guest interview, this episode turns the lens inward, unpacking what truly held up across a full year of building, scaling, and questioning received wisdom.

The conversation surfaces how founders actually form convictions when advice is biased, context is messy, and no clean answers exist. It is less about what to do next and more about how to think when certainty is unavailable.

We talk about:

• Why most founder advice is shaped by survival bias and how to tell when it does not apply to your company

• Thinking internationally from day one without losing focus on a home market that still needs to work

• Saying no as a growth skill and why focus becomes harder as opportunities increase

• Introspection as an underrated founder capability that quietly compounds over time

• Why venture capital is often treated as default advice despite fitting only narrow business models

• How founders actually protect sanity through routines, relationships, and deliberate reflection

This episode resists formulas. It treats building a company as a sequence of judgment calls rather than a checklist, shaped by context, timing, and personal limits more than by frameworks.

Our biggest takeaways, including Melanie and Christian’s view on where founders most often mistake confidence for clarity:

https://followthegradient.io/p/what-we-learned-from-interviewing-50-plus-guests

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/ 

—

00:00 Introduction

01:10 Reflecting on a year of conversations and learning

02:25 Why we started Follow the Gradient

05:34 Our personal paths into entrepreneurship

10:41 Thinking international from day one in Europe

13:38 Why saying no is a growth skill

14:55 Introspection as an underrated founder skill

18:34 When venture capital is the wrong default

20:15 Trusting intuition over generic startup advice

21:55 How founders can work with academia

24:02 Defining success beyond titles and outcomes

28:38 How we convince busy guests to join

31:53 Books and thinkers that shaped our thinking

36:44 Habits that help founders stay sane

What actually makes a startup work when almost every decision you make is probably wrong?

Founders often believe success comes from better planning, cleaner structure, or safer timing. Béa Knecht argues the opposite.

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Béa Knecht, co founder of Zattoo and one of Europe’s earliest builders of legal live TV streaming. Having founded the company in Silicon Valley and scaled it across Europe through multiple market shocks, Béa brings a rare, hard earned perspective on what actually holds under pressure.

This conversation is not about frameworks or growth hacks. It is a deep examination of how founders think, unlearn certainty, and act when reality keeps changing faster than their plans.

We talk about:

• Why European founders must treat internationalization as a day one survival skill, not a later milestone

• The difference between bravery and speed in decision making, and why waiting is usually just losing quietly

• How to tell a true must have product from a nice to have, using budget and pain as the only honest signals

• Why enforcing structure too early can kill the very thinking startups depend on

• How rapid course correction costs far less than founders imagine, even after public decisions

• What brutal downscaling taught Béa about leadership, dignity, and keeping a company alive

This episode favors judgment over checklists, adaptability over certainty, and clear seeing over confident storytelling in environments where most signals arrive late and incomplete.

Our biggest takeaways, including Bea’s view on what founders consistently misunderstand about must have products:

https://followthegradient.io/p/bea-knecht-podcast 

—

Where to find Bea Knecht:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beaknecht/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

What happens when you scale without chasing ambition, funding, or customers telling you what to build?

Some of the most durable companies aren’t designed to grow fast. They’re designed to stay honest.

Follow the Gradient sits down with Olivier Gaudin, co-founder and former CEO of SonarSource, the code quality platform used by millions of developers and the majority of the Fortune 100. Built without venture pressure for years and shaped by deep proximity to real developer pain, SonarSource followed a very different scaling path.

This conversation unpacks the thinking behind that path, from resisting premature structure to making uncomfortable product calls, and from building culture without managers to deciding when that philosophy finally breaks.

We talk about:

• Why SonarSource refused managers until 200 employees and what finally forced that shift

• Measuring traction through adoption and community pull instead of revenue milestones

• The risks of listening too closely to paying customers too early

• How open source shaped trust, distribution, and long-term product direction

• The moment internal language stopped meaning the same thing across the company

• Why pushing incomplete features exposed the wrong problem to solve

This episode is less about how to scale and more about when not to. It’s a window into decision-making driven by conviction rather than optimization, and how clarity erodes when organizations grow faster than shared understanding.

Our biggest takeaways, including Olivier’s view on what founders consistently get wrong about listening to customers:

https://followthegradient.io/p/olivier-gaudin-podcast 

—

Where to find Olivier Gaudin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviergaudin/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

What happens when scientific patience collides with startup urgency, and neither side fully survives intact?

Follow the Gradient sits down with Andy Yen, co-founder and CEO of Proton, a 500+ person European tech company built around privacy, democracy, and long-term independence. Andy’s path runs from particle physics at CERN to building one of Europe’s most mission-driven scale-ups, and his credibility comes from having lived through both worlds.

This conversation explores how values, identity, and pressure shape decisions when the stakes are structural, not just commercial. It is a discussion about speed versus permanence, trust versus convenience, and what founders owe to users, employees, and society when technology becomes power.

We talk about:

• Why scientists underestimate urgency, and why startups die if they inherit that mindset unchanged

• How crowdfunding 10,000 early users permanently reshaped Proton’s obligations and governance

• The logic behind placing a fast-growing tech company under control of a nonprofit foundation

• Why building a platform matters more than features when competing with Big Tech ecosystems

• How Proton decides when to absorb financial losses rather than compromise on censorship or surveillance

• Why Europe’s tech problem is demand, not talent, and how public procurement quietly shapes sovereignty

This episode is less about tactics and more about how founders reason when every option carries long-term consequences. It traces how conviction hardens under constraint, and how decision-making changes once trust becomes the primary asset you cannot afford to lose.

Our biggest takeaways, including Andy’s view on what founders misunderstand about speed, trust, and compromise:

https://followthegradient.io/p/andy-yen-podcast 

—

Where to find Andy Yen:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-yen-03a9676/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

What if the ambition powering your startup is quietly working against you?

What if being driven is less about purpose and more about fear you have not named yet?

Follow the Gradient sits down with Jonas Muff, founder of AI healthcare company VARA, for a rare conversation about ambition, identity, and the inner cost of building. Jonas is best known for his essay The Curse of Being Driven, written after a personal collapse during a critical fundraising moment that forced him to question what was really motivating his success.

This episode is not about productivity or resilience as performance traits. It is an examination of how founders construct self-worth, how fear hides inside ambition, and what changes when you stop confusing motion with meaning.

We talk about:

• Why Jonas’ inability to get out of bed during fundraising was an identity crisis, not burnout

• How the need to stand out often masks a deeper belief of not being enough

• The subtle difference between purpose-driven ambition and fear-driven momentum

• Why overthinking is an attempt to control uncertainty rather than face it

• How meditation reveals the volume of inner noise instead of silencing it

• What vulnerability-based leadership looks like in real, uncomfortable decisions

Rather than offering tools to optimize yourself, this conversation lingers in the harder territory founders usually avoid. It treats ambition as something to understand, not suppress, and leadership as a byproduct of self-awareness rather than force of will.

Our biggest takeaways, including Jonas’s view on what founders consistently misunderstand about ambition and fear:

https://followthegradient.io/p/jonas-muff-podcast 

—

Where to find Jonas Muff:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-muff/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

Thomas is a veteran angel investor and board member with 40+ startup deals under his belt—and a front-row seat to what makes early-stage companies thrive or fall apart. He’s also the president of SICTIC, Switzerland’s largest angel network, and someone who’s seen the European startup scene evolve from local coffee chats to global Zoom deals.

In this episode we talk about:
•⁠ ⁠Why most first-time angels invest too soon—and too big
•⁠ ⁠How founders can spot the difference between a project and a real business
•⁠ ⁠What makes a healthy cap table at seed (and what absolutely breaks it)
•⁠ ⁠How to activate angels after the wire hits—without burning yourself out

A conversation about pattern recognition, post-wire dynamics, and the slow art of building trust between founders and funders.
For more on early-stage investing and startup strategy, subscribe to our newsletter at followthegradient.io.

What does it take to give young founders permission to be audacious, before they have credentials to hide behind?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Kitty Mayo, CEO of Project Europe, an under 25 founder fund backed by more than 200 of Europe’s leading entrepreneurs. Kitty previously spent five years at Entrepreneur First, working closely with early stage founders at the very start of their careers.

The conversation explores how ambition actually forms, why culture often matters more than capital, and what it means to build a founder movement without headquarters, playbooks, or institutional safety nets.

We talk about:

• Why Europe’s biggest constraint on young founders is cultural permission, not access to capital

• What Kitty looks for in founders that never shows up in pitch decks or metrics

• How building without an HQ increases surface area and creates stronger founder bonds

• The hidden cost of chasing venture funding when the ambition is not truly venture scale

• Why earnest obsession beats fashionable ideas when backing founders under 25

• What Europe should borrow from Silicon Valley, and what it needs to consciously reject

This episode is less about frameworks and more about how beliefs, environments, and peer groups shape founder behavior long before outcomes are visible.

Our biggest takeaways, including Kitty’s view on what European founders consistently underestimate:

https://followthegradient.io/p/kitty-mayo-podcast 

—

Where to find Kitty:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kittymm/ 

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

Elvis Nava is a researcher-turned-founder building Mimic Robotics, a company developing general-purpose robot hands powered by imitation learning. After completing his PhD at ETH Zurich, Elvis realized the only way to scale his research was by turning it into a company. Today, Mimic is pioneering a new kind of robotics—flexible, AI-native, and already proving itself in real-world industrial use cases.

In this episode we talk about:
•⁠ ⁠Why some research only works outside the lab
•⁠ ⁠How to build hardware that adapts—rather than hard-codes—the task
•⁠ ⁠What it takes to raise a $16M seed round in Europe
•⁠ ⁠How hackathons and ecosystem building accelerate deeptech

A conversation about research taste, the myth of perfection, and what happens when you build both the model and the machine.
For more behind-the-scenes from Elvis - including takeaways on fundraising and team-building - subscribe to our newsletter at followthegradient.io.

Fabienne Doerig is a former CFO and COO turned advisor, with 15+ years of experience helping companies - from pre-seed startups to public enterprises - scale their finance and ops. She’s led through hypergrowth, driven restructuring, and now helps founders automate the operational backbone of their business using AI.

In this episode we talk about:
•⁠ ⁠Why clarity, not code, is the first step in automation
•⁠ ⁠How to build a 13-week cash forecast that updates daily
•⁠ ⁠When to build, buy, or copy automation tools
•⁠ ⁠What founders get wrong about scaling their back office

A conversation about the hidden power of finance operations, the messy reality of AI adoption, and why the biggest wins often come from the most “boring” use cases.

For more insights from Fabienne—including practical examples that didn’t make it into the episode—check out our newsletter at followthegradient.io.

Noa Perry Reifer is the Chief People Officer at Neko Health, where she’s helped scale the team from 100 to over 500 in just five months. Before that, she spent nearly a decade helping build the culture and people systems at On, one of Europe’s most iconic consumer brands.

In this episode we talk about:

•⁠ ⁠Why culture is the most misunderstood scaling tool

•⁠ ⁠How to build orgs that are bold, fast—and still deeply human

•⁠ ⁠Why AI-native hiring needs both automation and judgment

•⁠ ⁠What founders get wrong about org design in hypergrowth

A conversation about leadership in the AI era, building cultural glue across wildly different teams, and how to design companies that don't just move fast—but move with meaning.

For more insights from Noa - including examples that didn’t make it into the episode - check out our newsletter at followthegradient.io

What do robots, risk, and resilience have in common? In this episode, Roman Hölzl, founder and CEO of RobCo, shares how he went from elite freestyle skier to building one of Europe’s most capital-efficient robotics startups.

We get into what it takes to sell robots to people who don't want to buy robots, how to say no to average and build a Champions League culture, and move hardware at software speed – all while staying sane under extreme pressure.

And yes, we unpack that one night in 2012 that still shapes how Roman leads today.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Christian Woese was one of Yokoy’s first employees and the architect behind its entire customer success organization. His philosophy is to transform post-sales from a support function into a strategic growth engine — connecting sales, marketing, and product around one goal: delivering real customer value.

In this episode, we talk about:

• What customer success really is (and isn’t)
• When founders should hand over customer relationships
• How to align sales, marketing, and product around the client journey
• Why AI will redefine customer success — but never replace the human touch

A conversation about building sustainable growth through retention, turning clients into advocates, and staying sane while scaling fast.

For more insights from Christian that didn’t make it into the episode, check out our newsletter at followthegradient.io

What does it really take to build ambitious companies in Europe when the system feels stacked against you? Is the problem a lack of talent, or the quiet friction founders are expected to accept as normal?

Follow the Gradient sits down with Andreas Klinger, technical founder turned investor at Prototype Capital and one of the driving forces behind EU Inc. Andreas has built and backed companies across Europe and the US, and now finds himself working to remove the structural constraints that quietly slow European founders down.

This conversation is less about policy details and more about how systems shape ambition, how founder energy gets wasted, and what changes when a community decides to stop treating friction as inevitable.

We talk about:

• Why European founders lose momentum not from lack of ideas, but from repeated legal and operational drag

• How EU Inc reframes incorporation as an acceleration problem rather than a compliance exercise

• The hidden cost of notaries, fragmented rules, and last minute investor dropouts

• Why ambition is a product of environment, not personality

• How small, intense founder circles outperform large but diluted ecosystems

• What Europe could unlock by thinking in cross regional hubs instead of national borders

This episode is an exercise in zooming out. Instead of chasing tactics, it explores how incentives, defaults, and shared beliefs shape what founders attempt in the first place, and why changing the system may matter more than motivating individuals.

Our biggest takeaways, including Andreas’s view on what founders misunderstand about ambition and structural constraints:

https://followthegradient.io/p/andreas-klinger-podcast 

—

Where to find Andreas Klinger:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasklinger/

—

🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/ 

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ 

Subscribe to our channels:

Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ 

X: https://x.com/followgradient 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

In this episode, Nicole Büttner - investor, entrepreneur, and political leader - shares why Europe has all the ingredients for AI leadership, but still struggles to scale its breakthroughs into global companies.

From navigating corporate partnerships without falling into “POC limbo” to reframing courage as a core leadership trait, Nicole breaks down the mindset shifts and structural changes founders need to succeed. She also shares candid reflections on the weight of responsibility leaders carry and how to sustain energy in the long run.

You’ll learn:

• How to build collaborations that actually move the needle with corporates
• Why speed and courage matter more than perfection in scaling startups
• How to create defensibility in AI by going deep into real-world workflows
• Why European founders must shed local ambition and aim global from day one

Nicole’s insights are a playbook for founders who want to build enduring, globally relevant companies out of Europe.
Get bonus insights from Nicole that didn’t make it into the episode at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠.

In this episode, Jake Bornstein — executive coach to founders and co-founder of Studio Medis — shares how personal growth and leadership frameworks can unlock scale when startups hit the limits of chaos.
From reframing coaching as a billion-dollar investment to building minimum viable structures that keep teams aligned, Jake breaks down what every founder needs to know to stop being the bottleneck.

You’ll learn:

• How to measure the ROI of coaching in real business terms
• Why trust is the non-negotiable ingredient in choosing the right coach
• How to use radical responsibility to shift from blame to transformation
• What minimum viable structure looks like in practice — and why it drives speed

Jake’s insights are a playbook for founders who want to scale not just their companies, but themselves.
Get bonus insights from Jake that didn’t make it into the episode at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠.

In this episode, Simone Rüschenberg - finance leader behind Gorillas, SoundCloud, and TIER - shares how she helped scale some of Europe’s fastest-growing startups by building finance teams that actually enable growth.

From ditching Excel at the right moment to avoiding ERP nightmares, Simone breaks down what every founder and CFO needs to know to stay sane while scaling.

You’ll learn:

• How to scale your finance function across Series A, B, and C

• Why the first three finance hires are absolutely pivotal

• How to avoid painful financial cleanups (and investor panic)

• What it means to lead with strategy - not just spreadsheets

Simone’s story is a playbook for modern finance leaders navigating speed, scale, and change.

Get bonus insights from Simone that didn’t make it into the episode at followthegradient.io.

In this episode, Victoria Ransom, founder of Wildfire (acquired by Google) and Prisma, shares the scrappy, principled, and deeply human approach that shaped her startup journey - from asparagus farming in rural New Zealand to building and selling a high-growth tech company.

Victoria opens up about how she scaled Wildfire from a humble tool to 400 employees, maintained a strong culture during hypergrowth, and navigated an acquisition without losing the soul of the company. She also shares the realities of co-founding with her husband and raising three kids while running startups — without burning out or burning bridges.

You’ll learn

• How to scale without diluting culture or values

• Why scrappiness can be a superpower in startup execution

• How to navigate acquisitions while keeping your team engaged

• What it takes to co-found a company with your life partner

Victoria’s story is proof that you don’t need a Silicon Valley pedigree to build something world-class — just grit, clarity, and a whole lot of heart.

Get bonus insights from Victoria that didn’t make it into the episode at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠.

In this episode, David Oort Alonso, co-founder of Bloom and Y Combinator alum, breaks down what it really takes to get into YC as a European founder. After six applications, multiple pivots, and finally raising $3.4M in just five days, David shares the lessons that helped him and his team stand out to investors and YC partners.

You’ll learn:

• How to know when to pivot versus push through

• Why YC cares more about markets than tech—and how to frame yours

• How to run a lightning-fast fundraising process that builds FOMO

• How to use demos, storytelling, and urgency to win investors without a deck

• Why team chemistry and resilience matter as much as the idea

  
  

  Sign up for exclusive insights from David that didn’t make it into the episode at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠.

In this episode, Rob Snyder, founder of Waffle and Reframe and Harvard Innovation Labs Fellow, shares his no-nonsense approach to finding product-market fit for early-stage B2B startups. After spending two years in what he calls the "pain cave" without traction, Rob developed four key frameworks that have helped founders grow from zero to over one million in annual recurring revenue.

You’ll learn

• How to define and track product-market fit in practical terms
• Four frameworks to escape the pain cave and build real traction
• How to develop a minimum viable sales process
• What it takes to engage the right early customers

Rob's approach is grounded in experience and focused on results. If you're navigating early-stage growth, this episode offers clear, actionable advice.

Sign up for exclusive insights from Rob that didn’t make it into the episode at followthegradient.io.

As part of our most-listened replays this holiday season, we’re bringing back one of the standout episodes of Follow the Gradient.

In this replay, Ruth Barnett—former Comms Lead at Sequoia Capital and ex-journalist—breaks down how startup founders can sharpen their storytelling, build reputation, and handle crisis communication like a pro.

You’ll learn:

• How to craft a narrative that resonates with investors, customers, and your team

• What most founders get wrong about PR (and how to fix it)

• Why reputation is everything—and how to protect it

• Crisis communication 101: be ready before it hits

• How technical founders can learn to lead with the “why”

Christina Stahl, co-founder of AMELI Zurich, shares how she bootstrapped a premium handbag brand to over 50'000 sales across 60 countries. She explains how to test demand fast, grow with limited resources, and avoid early-stage mistakes.

Key takeaways:

From Klarna to Brite Payments, Lena Hackelöer has built fintechs that thrive across 27 markets—without blowing the budget. In this episode, she shares battle-tested strategies for international expansion, hiring senior talent at the right moment, and balancing growth with financial discipline. Whether you're entering a new market or navigating leadership hires, Lena breaks down what actually works—and what doesn't.

You’ll learn:

• How to break into new markets with no local team

• Why vertical-first selling beats regional scaling (until it doesn’t)

• What founders get wrong about hiring senior leaders

• When to prioritize profitability vs. growth

• How to stay lean without limiting ambition

Lena’s approach to building a capital-efficient, scalable business is a must-hear for any founder aiming to do more with less—and stay sane doing it.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

What actually kills startups? It’s rarely the competition. It’s self-inflicted.

Jake Bornstein has coached over 150 founders and execs through hypergrowth, brutal pivots, messy exits, and all the personal chaos behind it. Before that, he worked directly with Ray Dalio at Bridgewater, until a total health collapse forced him to rethink everything.

In this episode, Jake gets brutally honest about why most startups die by suicide, not murder. We dig into how founders sabotage themselves, what a truly great coach actually does (and doesn’t do), and why you can’t outsource the hard clarity work that scaling demands.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Most founders wait until Series A to clean up their cap table. Stef did the opposite - and spent $70K upfront just to get the foundations right.

As co-founder of Cradle, he built a biotech company for global scale from day one: navigating European legal complexity, validating science in skeptical labs, and paying early customers out of pocket to prove it worked.

In this episode, we get into:

• ​Why Cradle paid its first two customers—and how that unlocked top-tier pharma clients
• ​How to structure your company early to avoid massive headaches later
• ​Why European startup culture struggles with ambition—and what needs to change
• ​How to hire ML talent in Europe when OpenAI is knocking on the same doors
• ​

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

As co-founder and CEO of GuestReady, Alex hit a wall during COVID: a crumbling travel industry, a vanished funding round, and 140 salaries he couldn’t pay. What saved him wasn’t a new strategy - but an ancient one: Stoicism.

In this episode, we get into:

•⁠ ⁠How “focus on what you can control” became a survival strategy•⁠ ⁠Why transparency builds trust in the worst of times•⁠ ⁠What it takes to lead when your startup becomes a rollercoaster•⁠ ⁠How detaching self-worth from business outcomes protects founders

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

As co-founder of VEED, Sabba Keynejad spent years building without funding, optimising for what users actually searched for, and scaling through obsessive customer focus—not pitch decks.

In this episode, we get into:

•⁠ ⁠Why getting rejected by YC twice in a weekend became fuel for growth

•⁠ ⁠How to build for what users search for (not what they say they want)

•⁠ ⁠What makes SEO and YouTube a powerful GTM engine—if you’re scrappy

•⁠ ⁠How loving your users more than your investors changes your roadmap

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Founders chase success at all costs. But what happens when the cost is too high?

For Adrian Locher, that cost was everything. As a serial entrepreneur, he built multiple startups, scaled across continents, and took 120+ flights in a year. At the peak of his career, his personal life collapsed. He missed the birth of his son. His marriage ended. He lost himself in the relentless pursuit of success.

This conversation isn’t just about burnout. It’s about what happens next⁠– and how to build a life that works.

Key insights Adrian shares:

• The hidden warning signs of burnout founders ignore ⁠–until it’s too late
• How to spot when your biggest strength is becoming your greatest weakness
• Why every founder should rethink “work-life balance” (and what to do instead)
• The three-bucket rule that helped him rebuild his life and company
• How to be ruthlessly ambitious⁠–without destroying yourself in the process

This episode is for every founder who’s felt the pressure to sacrifice everything for success.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Most AI-powered outreach is trash. Patrick Spychalski is helping fix that.

As co-founder of The Kiln | A Clay Agency, he helps B2B teams build scalable GTM systems using AI, automation, and a strategy-first approach, not generic playbooks.

In this episode, we get into:

• • Why starting with tools is the fastest way to fail
• • What the GTM engineer role really is and why it matters
  • How to use AI to enable real relationships, not replace them
• • What great outbound looks like when done by people who know what they’re doing

Omid Akhavan has guided organizations from scrappy startups to global enterprises through one deceptively simple tool: OKRs. In this episode, he breaks down the messy reality behind goal-setting frameworks - what actually works, what usually fails, and how founders can lead with clarity instead of control. From deciding when to start using OKRs, to aligning cross-functional teams without micromanaging, to avoiding the trap of turning goals into spreadsheets no one reads - this is a grounded, high-impact conversation for any founder scaling fast. It’s a reminder that real alignment isn’t about rigid systems - it’s about intentional leadership.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Enzo Wälchli helped scale Anybotics from an early-stage robotics startup to a 200-person company redefining physical AI. In this episode, he opens up about the real work behind startup growth: evolving from founder hustle to strategic leadership, navigating organizational design, hiring senior leaders, and staying present at home with two small kids. It’s a candid, practical conversation for anyone growing a deep tech company - and a reminder that building fast doesn’t mean losing focus on what matters most.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Tobias Gunzenhauser co-founded Yamo with a mission to bring fresh, healthy baby food to families across Europe. After years of growth and recognition, the startup ultimately had to shut down. In this conversation, Tobias shares the rarely discussed realities of ending a company–from team communication to emotional processing, legal steps, and what he wishes he’d known. It’s a thoughtful, practical episode for any founder navigating uncertainty–and proof that endings can also lead to beginnings.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

Petter Made, co-founder of SumUp and today partner at EWOR, reflects on the chaotic early days of SumUp – assembling an all-WHU founding team, designing custom card readers in-house, and building a global payments company from Berlin with expansion playbooks and local MDs. He shares how SumUp nearly ran out of money three times, what it means to scale with intention, and why founders who neglect sleep are "literally unlearning their own lessons." A raw, tactical episode on what it really takes to build a European fintech giant.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

What do layoffs, leadership, and letting go have in common? In this episode, Tuomas Toivonen, co-founder and CEO of Holvi, shares what it really took to rebuild his company after a major acquisition and painful downsizing.

We get into why charging for your product might be the healthiest move you can make, how growth can mask broken fundamentals, and what true leadership looks like when everything falls apart.

Tuomas opens up about the hard decisions that followed Holvi’s buyout by BBVA, the lessons he learned from cutting his team by more than half, and why startups are never just about solving one problem.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

What do robots, risk, and resilience have in common? In this episode, Roman Hölzl, founder and CEO of RobCo, shares how he went from elite freestyle skier to building one of Europe’s most capital-efficient robotics startups.

We get into what it takes to sell robots to people who don't want to buy robots, how to say no to average and build a Champions League culture, and move hardware at software speed – all while staying sane under extreme pressure.

And yes, we unpack that one night in 2012 that still shapes how Roman leads today.

🟢 And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else. 🟡

In this week's episode we dive deep into hardware entrepreneurship: Vincent Martinez shares what it actually takes to build and scale a physical product company in a software-first world. From his early PhD research to the successful acquisition of Nanoleq, this episode is packed with raw insights founders need to hear.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why building hardware is 10x harder – and how to survive it

• The real cost of scaling: team, machines, funding, and founder sanity

• How to go from technology to product to full-stack business

• Hiring for innovation: balancing scrappy early teams with experienced specialists

• What most founders get wrong when prepping for an acquisition

• Advice for PhDs and deep tech researchers considering a startup path

And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠⁠followthegradient.io⁠⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else.

In this episode, Roger Dudler, Founder and CEO of Frontify shares his learnings from building a Brand platform:What you’ll learn:

• How brand awareness can drastically impact marketing costs
• Why involving employees in VC selection strengthens company culture
• The hidden risks of hiring too fast—and how to avoid them
• A simple mindset shift for making tough decisions with confidence
• Why passion outside of work is a key trait for top hires

And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at ⁠followthegradient.io⁠. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else.

In this episode, Alex Emeshev, co-founder of Vivid Money, reveals the growth strategies, product insights, and key lessons behind their success.

What you’ll learn:

• How Vivid’s cashback model fueled viral growth
• The marketing experiments that actually worked
• When to scale (and when to hold back)
• Why owning your tech stack is a game-changer
• The biggest fintech founder mistakes to avoid

And before you go, subscribe to our free newsletter at followthegradient.io. Twice a week, we break down startup and tech news, share exclusive insights from our podcast guests, highlight top job openings from European startups, and provide food for thought you won’t find anywhere else.