🇩🇪 how to learn German and get over "mit Karte, bitte"?
Issue #105 (10 Jun) – 20+ jobs with strategy and business focus; wanna join Urban Challenger?; Euro2024 public viewings in Berlin; Coffee with Nick; 10 prioritization techniques; Queuemania.
Programming note: Our first mixer last Tuesday was a great success, but we unfortunately needed to ban 8 people. Cancelling is just a press of a button, people; it can’t be that hard.
We’re doing another event with Berlin Events Weekly, a city-game Urban Challenger, this time with no bans because we are adding a €5 friction. It’ll be a fun way to explore Kreuzberg. We will be divided into smaller teams and compete against each other. Limited, be fast. Link in the community section below ⤵️
❤️ Check out this reel by Loci from filmdough.berlin for our Summer Kickoff, rocked by Sultan and Josi & Alex, along with delicious snacks provided by Kun.
🌟 Handpicked community
📨 Submit your input here. Inspiration for all the categories on the link.
🎪 Meet — tech & other events:
🚨 Urban challenger game — Kreuzberg edition together with Berlin Events Weekly | Wed, 19.6 at 18.00 | Mariannenplatz
Handpicked Event: ⚽️ Beyond the Game: Exploring Berlin Through Football Culture | tomorrow, 11.6 at 18.00 | waitlist open
FutureTalk: Redefining Work Culture | Wed, 19.6 at 16.30 | Bettertrust
French Tech Community Frühstück #20 with Leapsome | Tue, 18.6 at 9.00 | Brunnenstraße, 10115
😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:
Here is the list of all the official Euro2024 public viewing places around Berlin.
EU-Förderung für die Designbranche, online information seminar in Deutsch, 18.6 at 10.00.
Marketers (also outside Berlin), you can showcase your standout marketing success and compete with top companies and agencies in Berlin for Berliner Marketing Preis 2024.
🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:
Did you work from home during COVID and then returned to the office? Help Beth (mail) with her master’s thesis on worker satisfaction post-COVID. Interviews are 45 mins, anonymous if preferred, online or in Berlin.
Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️
👀 Handpicked jobs
5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Business & Strategy
Today’s issue was so full of links that I needed to leave all the jobs in the Handpicked online database.
📢 When was the last time you checked your energy cost?
Maybe it’s time you do because you could be saving up to 500€ per year. Ostrom offers variable tariffs at cost price with a flat 6€ admin fee. You can even expect lower payments when there’s more wind and sunshine.
It's all digital, in English or German, and you can easily switch from your old provider. Sign up in five minutes and use HANDPICKED for 35€ off your energy bill or 50€ discount in the Ostrom Store.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
☕️ Coffee with Nick Stübe
Nick founded Berlin Design, a non-profit association with the vision to connect the design sector and establish the discipline as a driver for better futures. He is especially interested in the intersection of interaction design and future research. Here is what he prepared for you:
Jorinde Voigt; Niklas Luhmann - Love as passion (art): I see myself as a systemic designer & thinker. Jorinde perfectly combines the methodology of ‘causal loop diagrams’ with a strong and dynamic visual aesthetic.
Library of Babel (website): In theory, this website contains every possible combination of 1,312,000 characters. This means it would contain every written work that ever has been created and will be created. It's an internet gem and close to the infinity theory of Pi - this is exactly what the internet was made for!
Futures of Design (learn): You should learn two things as a modern Designer. Firstly, computational design to create generative output. Secondly, speculative design (PDF) as the synergy between crafting & critical thinking.
🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff
😞 I’d like to apologise if anyone bought tickets for TOA based on my promotion. I didn’t do enough research, so I was very surprised to learn that if you waited long enough, you could get the tickets for free. On top of that, I noticed some strange things myself and heard a couple of stories from volunteers. An important lesson for the future—if you ever have a bad experience with things I write or do here, let me know. (Some speakers were excellent, but…)
🇩🇪 You should learn German if you intend to stay here; your future self will be grateful. I wrote a collaborative article with Michael from SmarterGerman on how to get over “mit Karte, bitte!” He offers Handpicked readers a limited 20% discount (HANDPICKED20 at SmarterGerman). The article is objectively worth a read, so give it a go. Michael is very anti-apps, and it somehow makes sense.
🍨 The ice cream poll was extremely popular: almost 50% of you are waffle & walk types, while less than 30% sit down. Consistent with the chart in the last issue!
😳 Probably you are paying too much rent. You can check this nicely designed online calculator in addition to a short FAQ in English and German. And it’s not from THAT agency.
🎶 One of the audio responses to the SYLT track was a bit cringe. But just below the top comment (lol) is this by Marti Fischer. Much better, but still kinda less catchy?
⚽️ Euro2024 starts on Friday, and I can recommend this really well-made documentary, Wir Weltmeister. Abenteuer Fußball-WM 2014 by ARD. Four episodes (á 30 minutes) show behind-the-scenes footage and reflections by some of the main characters (Höwedes, Löw, Schweinsteiger, Mertesacker, Götze & Co.). In German only, aber das ist doch kein Problem, oder?
Career: If you are constantly getting drowned by things to do at work, you can try some of the 10 prioritization techniques in this lovely blog post by Zapier. I like the Most Important Task (MIT) method, but I do it on a weekly basis.
Career: Here’s an interesting article with a thesis that employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less by Forbes. But don’t underestimate that commitment is often the only way to really advance your career. Now, imagine you are reviewing CVs and seeing someone change jobs every two years…
Timeless: I enjoyed this piece from
on How to upset a German. You will learn about the dynamics of Du-zen and Sie-zen in Germany and Berlin. After moving here from Stuttgart, I noticed that Du-zen is much more common and probably one reason Berliners are considered rude.Reddit choice of the week is the thread on another food festival with unbearable queues, this time Burgermania. As a bonus, a discussion of whether Goldies are overhyped or not. Definitely overhyped in my book.
💬 Briefly:
😔 Bad news: Miele -1300; over 5000 SAP employees raised their hands for a severance package! (WiWo)
Stats: ECB cut interest rates for the first time in five years from an all-time high of 4% to 3.75%. As always, don’t forget that nobody knows what happens next; it’s all just guessing.
Thaipark re-opened this weekend but on Württembergische Straße. Open Saturdays & Sundays, 11:00-21:00.
TikTok paused e-commerce expansion in Europe to focus on the US (BBG)
I feel bad for the woman but look at these two buskers (and comedians) on one of the U-Bahn lines (NSFW, and some of you might find it offensive!). I’d give them 2€.
Galeria in Spandau won’t be closed after all. And Volocopter finally got some badly needed funds from the existing investors. (HB)
After Robinhood, now also UK-based neobank Monzo is planning an expansion to the EU via Dublin. Details are unclear, but they announced the first full-year pre-tax profit. (Techcrunch)
Moss, a Berlin-based spend-management platform, announced 100% ARR growth in the last 12 months and “additional fresh capital from existing and new equity investors bringing total available equity capital to €70M.”
According to WEF’s list of 100, the most promising tech pioneers from Germany are ConstellR from Freiburg, HelloBetter from Hamburg, Made of Air from Berlin and Marvel Fusion, Proxima Fusion, UNIO Enterprise and Plan QC from Munich/Garching.
Knuspr, a competitor to Rewe and Picnic, plans to grow to €10B in revenues by 2030. (Manager Magazin)
Check24, the leads & broker behemoth, is now also entering the tax returns business. Bad news for Taxifx/Wundertax/SteuerGo & Co. Elster doesn’t care. (Business Insider, €)
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
M^0 | Berlin | Fully fungible cryptodollar issuance | $35M Series A | No careers.
re:cap | Berlin | Financing and data insights platform | $14.6M Series A | Careers.
Quantica | Berlin | Additive manufacturing | €19.7M Series A | Careers.
ecoLocked | Berlin | Carbon-negative building materials | €4M Seed | Careers.
plancraft | Hamburg | Workflow optimization software for crafts | €12M Series A | Careers.
SmartLoC | Hamburg | B2B payments for international trade | €1.8M Seed | Careers.
coboworx | Munich | Robotic automation platform for SMEs | €11.4M | Careers.
Crafthunt | Munich | AI job matching for construction industry | €3M Seed | Careers.
ITM | Garching/Munich | Radioactive cancer therapies and radioisotopes | €188M Series A | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
this made me chuckle
✌️ Handpicked essentials and a treat:
- Berlin Salary Trends Reports: How do you compare?
- ❓Surprise treat for the curious
✨ Berlin Events Weekly: the best resource for events in Berlin ✨
How did you like the issue?
Nice of you to include links to “Learning German is hard, but you can do it if you put in the work” and “Speaking German is impossible, even if you’re a native speaker” articles in the same issue :-P
Banning people from events? Not sure if I'm down with that 💩