Melanie Gabriel

5 📘 "Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building" by @stripepress.bsky.social's former COO @Claire Hughes Johnson

4 📙 "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism" by former Director of Public Policy at Facebook Sarah Wynn-Williams

3 📘 "A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir" by former Prime Minister of New Zealand, @jacindaardern.bsky.social

2 📗 "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by philosophy professor William B. Irvine

1 📕 "Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World" by @opinion.bloomberg.com tech journalist @parmy.bsky.social

Not just founder war stories, but the kind of books that help you scale teams, stay sane, decode AI hype, and rethink what power should look like.

Whether you’re beachside, roadside or office-side, consider this your permission slip to slow down and read up:

Some people pack swimsuits.
We pack startup books.

While half of tech is OOO and LinkedIn’s algorithm is gasping for engagement, it’s finally time to read the stuff that doesn’t fit in a Slack thread or podcast.

So we pulled together our favorite @followthegradient.bsky.social summer reads⤵️

I’m looking forward to further growing this lighthouse for AI together with you all, anchoring Switzerland on the global AI map, and unlocking new opportunities at the intersection of research, industry and entrepreneurship.

The ETH AI Center doesn’t just talk about bridging science and society; it 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘴 that bridge.

Thank you to the amazing team for the very warm (re)welcome.

Over the past year as Entrepreneur in Residence, I’ve had the privilege to work with brilliant team members, fellows, and professors and witnessed first-hand what world-class research excellence looks like.

It’s a match!

I’m incredibly honoured and excited to step into the role of Co-Director & COO of the @eth-ai-center.bsky.social, alongside Alex Ilic and Andreas Krause

From art school to $40M ARR – with no money, no network, and no plan B 🎙️ Sabba Keynejad on building a resilient company when everyone says No

🎧 Listen to the full episode of our conversation: followthegradient.io/p/sabba-keyn...

In our conversation with @sab8a we also covered:

→ How dyslexia shaped how he designs & leads
→ Why simplicity beats the Swiss army knife (I’m Swiss. I get it.)
→ Why it matters that he went to art school—not Stanford
→ And yes, Patagonia vests are out. It’s Carhartt now 💁🏽‍♀️

Because that’s the job.
That’s the reality.
That’s what founders do to succeed.

And Sabba’s story?
It’s not a hype deck. It’s founder reality:
🚴 Cycled to a coworking space at 7 am
🔑 Split the entry card with his co-founder
🥪 Lived on discounted food
💸 Sold crypto to keep the lights on
📩 Rejected by YC twice in one weekend

Still showed up the next day.

Why?

Because users don’t want to help you.
They want help from you.
That copy tweak led to:
✅ 100s of calls
✅ A tighter feedback loop
✅ A roadmap built on what people search for—not what they say they want

So he changed just one sentence in his onboarding email.

From:
❌ “I’d love to learn how you’re using VEED.”
To:
✅ “Get personally onboarded by the founder and CEO.”

His calendar filled up.

Most advice on how to get product-market fit goes like this:

“Talk to your users.”

Today's @followthegradient.bsky.social guest Sabba Keynejad actually did it—10–12 calls a day, while building VEED.io, now used by 10M+ people a month.

But at first?
No one booked.
🧵

Follow the Gradient Get hands-on advice and real stories on how to build a business while staying sane.

Book recs like this are part of our Food for Thought section in our weekly @followthegradient.bsky.social newsletter, published every Tuesday by Christian Woese and me.

Subscribe now: followthegradient.io

What’s the last book or article that challenged how you see things?

The book doesn’t offer easy answers, but it asks the right questions. It’s a valuable read for anyone thinking critically about where AI is headed and who it ultimately serves.

Who holds the power?

As AI capabilities concentrate among a few tech giants, it raises important questions:

Are we headed toward monopolistic control?

Can ethical governance keep up?

And what does this mean for global inequality?

Idealism meets Big Tech

Both founders began with grand, humanity-first goals. But over time, those visions were pulled into the corporate strategies of Microsoft (OpenAI) and Google (DeepMind).

Technology is shaped by people

Olson shows how the personal histories, beliefs, and ambitions of Altman and Hassabis aren’t just backstory; they actively shape the direction of the AI systems we’re building.

Weekend read.

Just started “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the race that will change the world” by @parmy.bsky.social – a sharp narrative tracing the rise of modern AI through the rivalry between OpenAI and DeepMind, and the leadership of Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis.

A few takeaways 🧵

The other side of startup life 🎙️ Tobias Gunzenhauser on failing, failure culture and moving forward with purpose

Tune in now or save for later: followthegradient.io/p/tobias-gun...

This isn’t a story about failure.
It’s a story about what it means to lead when things fall apart – because that’s when leadership matters most.

Thank you, Tobi, for your honesty and for sharing what most wouldn’t.

We need more conversations like this.

But this conversation isn’t just about endings.
It’s about how strange it is to judge a founder by the last kilometer of their marathon – and ignore the 41 before.

About coaching.
About co-founders who show up.
About grief, bad press, shame, and new beginnings.

The board call where it became final.
The long weekend of preparation.
The Monday morning speech to his team.
The personal phone calls to every partner and supplier – one by one.
And the legal choreography required to shut things down properly.

In today’s @followthegradient.bsky.social episode, Tobias Gunzenhauser, co-founder of yamo, shares what it really took to close a startup👇🏼