Follow the Gradient

About Follow the Gradient

Insider knowledge and real stories about how to build a business from Europe while staying sane. Each week founders Melanie Gabriel and Christian Woese dive deep into one specific topic on a founder's or startup operator's mind and share how to solve the challenge together with an expert. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned. https://followthegradient.io/

Publisher

Follow the Gradient

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Sept 2024

Latest episode

16 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

84 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Jul 2026

   Two Years Into Follow the Gradient: Tell Us What You Really Think

   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  (https://forms.gle/SYvL4L3Sw4n9P5138)or write us an email at team@followthegradient.io Thank you so much for listening along! We can't wait to be back in September. In the meantime, enjoy summer, and follow the gradient.

2. 

   2 Jul 2026

   Why we never raised in 16 years | Tom Hanan, Webrepublic

   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 technology What AI actually delivers in an agency: not a smaller team, but the efficiency to manage four clients where you used to manage three Why most corporate AI spend fails, and the "Ferrari without a driver's license" problem when culture isn't ready to change its processes The "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 asset What 16 years of bootstrapping cost and bought, and why every VC's five-year plan to exit would have changed the company The "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 chaos This 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 (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/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/) Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/) Subscribe to our channels: Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io (https://www.followthegradient.io) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient (https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/) X: https://x.com/followgradient (https://x.com/followgradient) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/ (https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/)

3. 

   4 Jun 2026

   We rebuild the whole company every six months | Olivia Elf, VP Ops at Sana

   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 execution The 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 cycle The contrarian decision to hire generalists rather than specialists, and the specific failure mode (the local maximum) that specialists create The 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 culture What changed inside the company between the Workday announcement on September 16 2025 and the close on November 4 2025 The leadership principle she reaches for most often, and why "defy gravity" works as a mental model for fighting mediocrity day by day This 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 (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/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/) Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/) Subscribe to our channels: Newsletter: https://www.followthegradient.io (https://www.followthegradient.io) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient (https://www.youtube.com/@followthegradient) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/followthegradient/) X: https://x.com/followgradient (https://x.com/followgradient) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/ (https://www.instagram.com/followthegradient/) — 00:00 Introduction 01:41 Joining 3 months before Series A 04:29 The vision before the product 07:05 Building the UK market 11:16 The 666 rhythm and DIBS 14:11 Strategy first, org second 15:47 The hire she wouldn't make again 18:02 Hiring generalists, not specialists 21:41 Deploying AI inside the company 26:15 When Sana stopped being a startup 28:04 Every Sanian rewrites the company 30:12 Inside the Workday acquisition 31:28 Staying sane while scaling 34:41 Rapid fire

Who has been a guest on Follow the Gradient

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Alex Limpert
• Sabba Keynejad
• Adrian Locher
• Patrick Spychalski
• Omid Akhavan

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,336

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

43 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

84

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

51

Contact Follow the Gradient

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.