Follow the Gradient

Judith Dada, General Partner at Visionaries Club and founder of Open Source Nanny, is an investor and ecosystem builder focused on European tech sovereignty and AI. She discusses Europe's misplaced game-playing, the risk of conceding models and infrastructure, the frontier gap between cutting-edge AI and everyday adoption, and the personal costs of ambition for founders and parents.

Laura Modiano, Head of Startups EMEA at OpenAI and former AWS leader, brings valuable insights on the landscape for European founders. She challenges the notion that speed is Europe's main constraint, saying founders often underestimate their potential with AI tools. Topics include the execution gap post-traction, the importance of technical literacy, and how Europe’s diverse markets foster a global mindset. Laura emphasizes the need for unlearning outdated processes and advocates for cross-functional collaboration to maximize innovation and adaptability.

Roland Siegwart is a Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich and a key figure in Europe's robotics landscape. He discusses the critical challenge of moving from prototype to market-ready systems, emphasizing the often-overlooked last ten percent of development. Roland highlights the importance of early revenue from practical applications and the necessity for deep tech founders to remain patient while navigating long timelines. He also explores the balance of ambition with survival, the need for business-minded collaboration, and the urgent sectors where robotics can make a significant impact.

In this conversation, Lina Chong, a Partner at HV Capital and former founder, shares her unique insights into the tumultuous journey of startups. She discusses the crucial nature of fast, sometimes irreversible decision-making and the emotional challenges founders face post-exit. Lina emphasizes the importance of prioritizing company growth over personal loyalties and highlights the boldness required for product experimentation. She also offers practical go-to-market strategies and shares advice on navigating the changing landscape of venture capital.

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 companyThinking internationally from day one without losing focus on a home market that still needs to workSaying no as a growth skill and why focus becomes harder as opportunities increaseIntrospection as an underrated founder capability that quietly compounds over timeWhy venture capital is often treated as default advice despite fitting only narrow business modelsHow founders actually protect sanity through routines, relationships, and deliberate reflectionThis 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 Introduction01:10 Reflecting on a year of conversations and learning02:25 Why we started Follow the Gradient05:34 Our personal paths into entrepreneurship10:41 Thinking international from day one in Europe13:38 Why saying no is a growth skill14:55 Introspection as an underrated founder skill18:34 When venture capital is the wrong default20:15 Trusting intuition over generic startup advice21:55 How founders can work with academia24:02 Defining success beyond titles and outcomes28:38 How we convince busy guests to join31:53 Books and thinkers that shaped our thinking36:44 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 milestoneThe difference between bravery and speed in decision making, and why waiting is usually just losing quietlyHow to tell a true must have product from a nice to have, using budget and pain as the only honest signalsWhy enforcing structure too early can kill the very thinking startups depend onHow rapid course correction costs far less than founders imagine, even after public decisionsWhat brutal downscaling taught Béa about leadership, dignity, and keeping a company aliveThis 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 shiftMeasuring traction through adoption and community pull instead of revenue milestonesThe risks of listening too closely to paying customers too earlyHow open source shaped trust, distribution, and long-term product directionThe moment internal language stopped meaning the same thing across the companyWhy pushing incomplete features exposed the wrong problem to solveThis 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 unchangedHow crowdfunding 10,000 early users permanently reshaped Proton’s obligations and governanceThe logic behind placing a fast-growing tech company under control of a nonprofit foundationWhy building a platform matters more than features when competing with Big Tech ecosystemsHow Proton decides when to absorb financial losses rather than compromise on censorship or surveillanceWhy Europe’s tech problem is demand, not talent, and how public procurement quietly shapes sovereigntyThis 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 burnoutHow the need to stand out often masks a deeper belief of not being enoughThe subtle difference between purpose-driven ambition and fear-driven momentumWhy overthinking is an attempt to control uncertainty rather than face itHow meditation reveals the volume of inner noise instead of silencing itWhat vulnerability-based leadership looks like in real, uncomfortable decisionsRather 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 outA 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.