Follow the Gradient

Nobody wants a robot. They want the failure in their plant that never happens. So why do most robotics companies still lead with the robot?In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese sit down with Péter Fankhauser, co-founder and CEO of ANYbotics. Péter did his robotics PhD at ETH Zurich, became CEO in 2020, and has taken the company from research prototypes to hundreds of autonomous inspection robots working in industrial plants.This is a conversation about what it takes to turn deep tech into a business from Europe, told by someone who had to earn every step. Péter is precise about what Europe can and cannot win in robotics, and candid about what changes when the founder stops building the product and starts building the organization.We talk about:- Why ANYbotics says it sells "the failure that never happens", and how that changes the pitch: describe the customer's world, not the machine- Moravec's paradox and the dancing-robot videos: a backflip is easy for a robot, taking a key out of your pocket is not- Why Europe's tighter funding pushes its robotics companies to book revenue today instead of chasing general-purpose humanoids- The three waves of a robotics company: research platforms, certification and serial production, then industrial AI that turns raw data into flagged anomalies- Zero components from China, why assembly hours are only a fraction of a robot's cost, and what a new US rule on foreign robots means for the next generation- Eight co-founders who stayed almost a decade, and why leadership started to break at around 150 peopleThis is perspective over playbook. Péter does not pretend the path from ETH lab to fleet deployments was linear; the episode is about the choices that had to be made in the right order, and the patience it took to make them.Our biggest takeaways, including Péter's view on why most robotics companies pitch the wrong thing:https://www.followthegradient.io/newsletter/peter-fankhauser-podcast—Where to find Péter Fankhauser:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterfankhauser/ANYbotics: https://www.anybotics.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.ioYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/X: https://x.com/followgradientInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

Your managers agree with you in every meeting. Then the real conversation starts on Slack.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese welcome back Stanislaw Grunstein, organizational psychologist and founder of CNTRD, who coaches scale-up founders and runs leadership accelerators for Swiss and German managers. Two years after our conversation on delegation and feedback, he returns to the thing that makes both of them work.This is a conversation about trust as behavior, not as a value on the office wall. Stanislaw takes it apart into what it is, how people decide whether to give it, and why most leaders cannot tell whether they have it.We talk about:- Why a founder's "communication problem" turned out to be his own behavior, after decisions made before every meeting taught his managers that disagreeing was a waste of energy- Trust as "care at scale": believing someone will act with your interests in mind, and being willing to rely on that belief- Why engagement varies most with the relationship to the direct manager, against Gallup's 12% engagement figure for Europe- What a middle manager owes the team when senior leadership behaves unpredictably- The founder who cut fruit for his whole team for 20 minutes every morning, including on investor days, and why trust lives in small promises- Why you should never ask your team "do you trust me?", and what to listen for in your one-on-ones insteadThere is no checklist here, and Stanislaw would distrust one. What he offers is a way of reading your own behavior the way your team already reads it: every day, in the small moments, and in how you treat everyone else.Our biggest takeaways, including Stanislaw's view on why leaders misread their own trust:https://www.followthegradient.io/newsletter/stanislaw-grunstein-podcast—Where to find Stanislaw Grunstein:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanislawgrunsteinCNTRD: https://www.stay-cntrd.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.ioYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/X: https://x.com/followgradientInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

How do you feel about Follow the Gradient? What should we keep, what should we change, and who should we have on next? Tell us by August 15th via the following link or write us an email at [email protected] you so much for listening along! We can't wait to be back in September. In the meantime, enjoy summer, and follow the gradient.

Your clients have started asking why AI hasn't made you cheaper yet. The honest answer is not the one the vendors are selling.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese sits down with Tom Hanan, co-founder and CEO of Webrepublic, the largest independent owner-managed marketing agency in Switzerland. Tom started the company in 2009 with one other person, never raised outside capital, and has grown it to around 250 people running campaigns for clients including FIFA.This is a conversation about what actually changes when a services business meets AI, told by someone who runs the campaigns rather than the keynote. Tom is blunt about the gap between what clients expect from the technology and what it can really do, and about the second-order mess it is creating in the feeds.We talk about:Why a client asking for a 30 to 40% discount "because you have AI" is, in Tom's words, absolute bogus, when Webrepublic spends a seven-figure sum a year just to deploy the technologyWhat AI actually delivers in an agency: not a smaller team, but the efficiency to manage four clients where you used to manage threeWhy most corporate AI spend fails, and the "Ferrari without a driver's license" problem when culture isn't ready to change its processesThe "AI slop" thesis: how platform incentives reward a pink elephant swimming across a lake over anything with depth, and why quality placements become the scarce assetWhat 16 years of bootstrapping cost and bought, and why every VC's five-year plan to exit would have changed the companyThe "oomph factor" hiring rule, why he wants a mix of Captain Kirk, Yoda and Indiana Jones, and why a team has to be ready for chaosThis is perspective over playbook. Tom has spent 16 years making the same set of choices, stay independent, keep the work in one place, refuse the easy discount, and the episode is about what those choices actually protect.Our biggest takeaways, including Tom's view on where founders and clients misjudge what AI will do to their costs:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/tom-hanan-podcast —Where to find Tom Hanan:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhanan/Webrepublic: https://www.webrepublic.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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/

Most companies design their strategy to fit the org chart they already have. Sana built it the other way around, and rebuilt the org around the new strategy every six months for almost five years.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese sits down with Olivia Elf, VP of Operations at Sana, the Stockholm AI company acquired by Workday on November 4 2025 in a $1.1 billion deal. Olivia joined three months before the Series A as Chief of Staff, owned the London expansion as Director of Operations through Series B and Series C, and held the seat through the acquisition close.This is not an episode about what Sana sells. It is a retrospective on the operating decisions that the company made before it had a finished product, before it had a market, and before it had any of the brand recognition it ended up with. The principles that produced the outcome were set when there were 20 people in a room and most of the work was on a whiteboard.We talk about:The 666 rhythm Olivia set inside Sana, where every six years is a dream exercise, every six months is a new company strategy, and every six weeks is executionThe DIBS process (data, insights, beliefs, bets) that every Sana employee contributes to before each new six-month plan, and how the org chart gets thrown up in the air every cycleThe contrarian decision to hire generalists rather than specialists, and the specific failure mode (the local maximum) that specialists createThe UK expansion mistake Olivia wouldn't repeat: hiring senior leaders into the new market instead of shipping a core team from Stockholm to seed the cultureWhat changed inside the company between the Workday announcement on September 16 2025 and the close on November 4 2025The leadership principle she reaches for most often, and why "defy gravity" works as a mental model for fighting mediocrity day by dayThis is perspective over playbook. Olivia has held one seat through a series A, a series B, a series C, an acquired sub-company, and a $1.1 billion exit. The patterns are operator-specific, not advice-shaped.Our biggest takeaways, including Olivia's view on why most companies design the org first and the strategy second:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/olivia-elf-podcast —🎙 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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 Introduction01:41 Joining 3 months before Series A04:29 The vision before the product07:05 Building the UK market11:16 The 666 rhythm and DIBS14:11 Strategy first, org second15:47 The hire she wouldn't make again18:02 Hiring generalists, not specialists21:41 Deploying AI inside the company26:15 When Sana stopped being a startup28:04 Every Sanian rewrites the company30:12 Inside the Workday acquisition31:28 Staying sane while scaling34:41 Rapid fire

Most co-CEO setups end quietly with a Sunday restructuring nobody talks about. IQM ran theirs publicly for 22 months and ended it on January 1st 2026.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese and Melanie Gabriel sit down with Dr. Jan Goetz, the sole CEO of IQM Quantum Computers and the founder taking the first European quantum company to a public listing. Jan co-founded IQM in 2018 as a spin-out from Aalto University and VTT in Finland. Eight years later he is taking it public on NYSE and Nasdaq Helsinki at a $1.8 billion valuation.This is not an episode about quantum technology. It is a retrospective on the deep-tech founder decisions that don't survive press releases: leadership structure under scaling pressure, fundraising mindset in fields with no commercial precedent, and the structural choices that distinguish a company built to last from one built to be acquired.We talk about:Why IQM moved to co-CEO in 2024 and back to sole CEO in 2026, and the failure mode of dual leadership that almost no public reversal post-mortem ever namesThe founder principle Jan applies to every scaling crisis: either transform yourself alongside the company (painful) or accept a specialised role (clarifying), but stop trying to do neitherHow four scientific co-founders raised €11 million in 2018 as Finland's largest seed round, and the product-mindset shift that separates fundable deep tech from another lab projectWhy IQM built its own chip factory, assembly line, and data centre in Europe instead of taking the cleaner path of being acquired by a US hyperscalerThe reasoning behind a simultaneous Nasdaq New York and Nasdaq Helsinki listing, and why almost no other European company is choosing this route despite the obvious advantagesWhat selling 21 quantum systems to supercomputing centres, ministries, and pension-fund-backed enterprises teaches founders about multi-stakeholder sales that the SaaS playbook completely missesThis is perspective over playbook. Jan has been through the parts of the founder journey that founder-tweets compress into a single line: deciding to split a CEO role, deciding to put it back together, choosing a fast-follower strategy in an industry where the leaders are US hyperscalers, and managing a cap table with pension funds, sovereigns, and the parent company of Lidl on it.Our biggest takeaways, including Jan's view on why most founders misjudge when to split or rejoin the CEO role:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/jan-goetz-podcast —Where to find Jan Goetz:LinkedIn: https://fi.linkedin.com/in/jan-goetz/en IQM Quantum Computers: https://meetiqm.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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 IntroductionSole CEO on Jan 1, 2026The 2-year co-CEO experimentTransform yourself or change role€11m seed: science vs product mindsetCap table of pension funds and LidlBuilding a full-stack chip factoryDual NYSE and Helsinki listingSelling quantum to supercomputing centresMarathon, discipline, rapid fire

European pension funds allocate 0.1 percent to venture capital. American pension funds allocate 3 percent. That single number explains a decade of European tech.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese and Melanie Gabriel sit down with Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest, who has been investing in early-stage European companies for more than a decade and now leads investments across the firm's Vienna, Munich, Berlin, London, and Paris offices.This is not a "state of European tech" conversation. Andreas walks through the structural mechanics that decide whether ambitious founders stay or leave: how capital actually flows between continents, why one 1970s American reform still defines the modern venture playbook, what would have realistically kept Peter Steinberger of OpenClaw in Vienna, and which single reform would unlock the rest if European policymakers could only do one.We talk about:The Peter Steinberger / OpenClaw moment and what European institutions failed to do when Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and others reached out and Europe stayed silentWhy European pension funds allocate 0.1 percent to venture capital while US pension funds allocate 3 percent, and why the 1970s ERISA reform is the most under-discussed turning point in startup historyWhy a large share of the capital sitting inside US venture funds is European money that flows to Sandhill Road and back to European companies at a markupThe four reforms Andreas would push (Solvency II, pension fund VC allocation, harmonized startup visas, EU Inc) and the only one that matters if you can pick just oneWhy "compliance software" is genuinely one of the best categories to build a European VC around, and what that tells us about the real regulatory taxWhat European founders consistently do better than American ones, and why being average at everything is the worst possible strategic posture for the continentWhat makes this conversation different is that Andreas refuses to talk about Europe in the abstract. He has been in the room with European Commission officials, in interviews with national TV, and on cap tables for the companies that decide whether the next decade of European tech happens here or somewhere else. He treats policy the way operators treat product: a system of incentives and decisions that either compounds or doesn't.Our biggest takeaways, including Andreas's view on which single reform would change Europe more than any policy debate of the last five years:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/andreas-schwarzenbrunner-podcast —Where to find Andreas Schwarzenbrunner:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreas-schwarzenbrunner/ X: https://x.com/schwabroSpeedinvest: https://www.speedinvest.com/ Email: [email protected] —🎙 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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 Introduction01:32 The Peter Steinberger moment and what Europe missed06:20 The 0.1 percent vs 3 percent pension fund gap, explained10:51 How European money flows to Sandhill Road and back at a markup16:48 EU Inc, public procurement, and the 28th regime26:18 What European founders do differently

What if every metric your product team is optimizing for is already a debt? Daily active users, monthly active users, weekly logins. They were all built for a world where humans were the primary users of software. That world is ending.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Christian Woese and Melanie Gabriel sit down with Tony Beltramelli, co-founder of Uizard and now Head of Product (AI) at Miro. Tony has been building AI products since 2017, when his pix2code paper went viral and convinced him to turn a weekend research project into a company. Six years and 55 employees later, Uizard had over three million users and $3.5M ARR, and was acquired by Miro in June 2024.This is not a conversation about how to "do AI". It is a careful walk through the team-building, hiring, and integration decisions that determine whether an AI-native company actually ships and survives. Tony has lived both sides of the problem: building from a four-nationality founding team in Europe, and now turning a public-company platform into an AI-first product.We talk about:Why founders fall into the Henry Ford trap of assuming they understand the customer better than the customer does, and how Tony forced his team out of itThe hire-only-when-it-hurts decision rule, and why it gets sharper, not weaker, now that AI agents can absorb the first wave of workHow a four-nationality founding team turned Europe's fragmented talent map into an advantage by hiring per-city for what each city is actually good atWhat actually happens inside an M&A process: setting deadlines, leveraging investors for warm intros to executives, and telling employees lastThe counter-intuitive playbook for going AI-first inside a legacy company: separate the AI team, ship something end to end, then re-inject across the orgWhy daily and monthly active users are debt metrics in a world where AI agents are becoming the primary users of softwareThe deeper thread here is not the technology. It is decision-making under uncertainty: when to listen to customers, when to keep building, when to hire, when to sell, and when to stop predicting altogether. Tony's framing is that the cost of turning ideas into reality is collapsing, which means the new differentiator is the curiosity to generate ideas worth executing on in the first place.Our biggest takeaways, including Tony's view on the one trait every product team needs to hire for in the next two years:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/tony-beltramelli-podcast —Where to find Tony Beltramelli:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-beltramelli-513b1219/ Homepage: https://tonybeltramelli.com/ Miro: https://miro.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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 Introduction01:31 The viral white paper that accidentally started a company06:25 The Henry Ford trap and the cost of not listening to customers09:07 Hire only when it hurts: the rule that scales into the AI era11:34 Remote-first by necessity, with founders from four countries16:50 Viral loops, waitlists, and growing to three million users on no marketing budget19:27 The Miro inbound and running a structured M&A process26:46 Why you tell your team about an acquisition last, not first32:47 Going AI-first inside a legacy company: separate, then merge37:43 Your users aren't human anymore: the end of DAU and MAU

What if the real inflation rate is not 2-3%, but 7-10%? And what if most of your investments are not even keeping up?In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese sit down with Pascal Hügli, crypto researcher, lecturer at a Swiss business school, and advisor at private bank Maerki Baumann in Zurich. Pascal has spent 10 years in the crypto space, watching use cases emerge, fail, and sometimes quietly become billion-dollar businesses.This is not a conversation about meme coins or market timing. It is a structured walkthrough of what has actually worked in crypto, why it matters for founders managing personal and company wealth, and where the technology is heading as AI agents reshape the internet.We talk about:Why money supply growth of 7-10% annually is the real hurdle rate every founder must beat, and why most traditional investments fall shortHow Tether became possibly the best business model ever created: $14bn in profit with 150 employees, holding government bonds and serving 400m users worldwideThe Chris Dixon "casino vs. computer" framework: what counts as gambling, what counts as infrastructure, and why acknowledging both is the honest starting pointWhy blockchain transparency killed a Swiss insurance startup's competitive advantage, and how zero-knowledge proofs might solve this for future foundersHow stablecoins are disrupting cross-border payments, from SpaceX collecting Starlink fees in crypto to Revolut processing $10.5bn in stablecoin volumeWhy AI agents will need blockchain-based identity, micropayments, and trust layers to function in the emerging machine-to-machine economyThis conversation is less about whether you should invest in crypto and more about understanding a monetary system that most founders never question. Pascal makes the case that the inflation you see reported is a fraction of the inflation affecting your purchasing power. Whether you agree or not, the numbers force you to reconsider your default assumptions about money.Our biggest takeaways, including Pascal's view on why founders systematically underestimate the hidden tax on their savings:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/pascal-huegli-podcast Where to find Pascal Hügli:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-huegli/ Maerki Baumannhttps://www.archip.ch/dehttps://www.linkedin.com/company/archipbymaerkibaumannhttps://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@archipbymaerkibaumann⁩ https://www.instagram.com/archipbymaerkibaumann/—🎙 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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 Introduction01:52 The impact of inflation for your money06:51 The risks your money as an Entrepreneur faces14:03 Successful business models in Crypto20:52 Casino vs. computer: Chris Dixon's framework for separating signal from noise30:04 Zero-knowledge proofs: proving something without revealing anything33:17 Cross-border payments: how stablecoins are disrupting correspondent banking38:26 Portfolio allocation: why 2-3% crypto improves risk-adjusted returns42:32 The institutional adoption wave: Bank of America and beyond49:47 AI agents, micropayments, and the machine-to-machine economy

What happens when the person allocating capital has never been told they don't belong? The founders who face the most barriers often carry exactly the traits investors say they're looking for.In this episode of Follow the Gradient, Melanie and Christian sit down with Gülsah Wilke, Partner and Head of the German Office at DN Capital, one of Europe's leading venture capital firms managing over a billion euros. Gülsah is also the co-founder of 2hearts, Europe's largest platform for tech professionals with migration backgrounds, with nearly 5,000 members across 120 nationalities.The conversation moves between deeply personal territory and hard-nosed investment analysis. Gülsah traces her path from a Turkish guest worker family in Düren to the partnership table at DN Capital, unpacks why Germany's vertical AI opportunity is its most underpriced asset, and makes a data-backed case for why diversifying the investor base is not charity but a competitive edge.We talk about:How a Hauptschule recommendation from a biased teacher nearly derailed her career, and the family intervention that changed her trajectoryWhy 14% of German founders are immigrants but 23% of unicorn founders are, and what that gap costs the ecosystemThe structural case for vertical AI in Germany: proprietary Mittelstand data that American LLMs will never accessHow Cognigy went from a Düsseldorf startup to a $955 million exit in enterprise AI, earning DN Capital a 22x returnWhy owning and deploying capital means deciding who gets a chance to succeed, and why the current investor base produces a similarity biasHow AI is democratizing entrepreneurship by collapsing the time and capital needed to reach 1 million ARRThis is not a conversation about corporate diversity programs. It is a conversation about what happens to capital allocation, innovation, and national competitiveness when the people making investment decisions all come from the same background. Gülsah brings a rare combination: the personal story of someone who navigated every structural barrier Germany offers, and the investment track record to back up her thesis with numbers.Our biggest takeaways, including Gülsah's argument for why diversifying investors matters more than diversifying founders:https://www.followthegradient.io/p/gulsah-wilke-podcast—Where to find Gülsah Wilke:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guelsahwilke/ 2hearts: https://www.2heartscommunity.com/ DN Capital: https://www.dncapital.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/@followthegradientLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ X: https://x.com/followgradient Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/—00:00 Introduction01:40 Why “everyone can make it” is flawed09:03 The similarity bias in European VC12:06 Diversity as ROI, not charity14:11 Vertical AI: Germany's structural edge18:28 SAP data as the unlock for enterprise AI22:32 The Cognigy story: $955M exit, 22x return26:41 AI democratizing access for underrepresented founders30:41 2hearts: Europe's largest migrant founder community36:35 The bird in the air: finding environments that fit your strengths