simple words to upgrade your e-mail game

Issue #110 (15 Jul) – 20+ Design & UX/UI jobs; testimonials demo; Coffee with Emily; club wear boutiques; Feuerwehr deployments; sleeping in heat; 10 simple habits to live by & podcast appearance.

Jul 15, 2024

Programming note: I was a guest at a podcast again and am extending the testimonial collection for the whole month. We’ll have lunch/dinner together after a raffle in August. Here are randomly selected snippets from three different testimonials so far:

“Handpicked is fast becoming as regular as checking the weather for the week ahead…. It's good stuff for good people.”
“… It’s a must-read for anyone looking to make the most of life in Berlin!”
“This newsletter is a breath of fresh air! It's packed with relevant, up-to-date info I can actually use, all delivered with a touch of humor that makes it feel like catching up with an old friend.”

Submit yours here. 🙏

If you still don’t follow me on Instagram, you are welcome anytime. Also:

🌟 Handpicked community

📨 Submit your input here. Inspiration for all the categories on the link.

🎪 Meet — tech & other events:

Deep Tech Night - July | Thu, 25.7 at 18.30 | Lanolin Fabrik
UX-Testing | Thu, 25.7 at 17.00 | Startup Incubator Berlin

😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:

A guide by Adi on buying medical cannabis online in Germany
Companies that want to hire international IT specialists can get support from Arbeitsagentur. Attractive, especially for small startups!

🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:

“My grandma often forgets her blood pressure meds, which is a big deal. My dad has to call her three times a day to ensure she takes them. Living in another country makes it tough for me to help out.

Do you relate to this problem? I'm a medical doctor developing a solution for this and would love your input. Mail at: micaelapiscione (a) gmail. com”

Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️

👀 Handpicked jobs

5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Design & UX/UI

The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.

☺️ July is a month for feedback & testimonials

It can be a sentence, two, or more. I will raffle two or three submissions and invite you to lunch/dinner or send you a bottle if you prefer/aren’t in Berlin.

Drop a testimonial for Handpicked!

Thank you so much! ❤️

🗞 Top inspiration snippets

☕️ Coffee with Emily McDonnell

Emily is one of the LinkedIn connections that turned into an invite-to-a-cocktail-party invitation. She’s a passionate runner and the founder of the Staycation collection, a curated directory of unique locations around Germany. Here are her choices:

‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running’, is Haruki Murakami’s memoir. He’s one of my favourite authors due to his intricate writing style, abstract stories, and delicate, engaging writing style. In this relatable book, Murakami connects running dedication to creativity and productivity: “I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People’s minds can’t be a complete blank.”
Wondering where in the EU you can go for a weekend or longer while travelling more responsibly? Try this map by Benjamin Tran Dinh and Sarah Mamy. Select the city you’re based in, and you’ll see a heat map of all the places you can get to in under 8 hours. It’s interesting to see the complexity and quality of the EU rail system.
The podcast ‘On Being with Krista Tippett’ tagline is ‘Spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry. Conversations to live by.’, and it certainly delivers. Each episode contains a reflective, moving conversation between a diligent interviewer and her carefully selected guest. Stand-out episodes for me are with Katherine May and Ocean Vuong, which left me with goosebumps and a desire to re-listen immediately.

🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff

My third podcast appearance went live. I was impressed by Sergiej’s speed: we recorded on Tuesday, and it was live on Wednesday. I hope you’ll enjoy the chat.
We are looking to rent a bar/club with a capacity of around 100. If you know of any places, please let me know.
I am a total clubbing newbie, but even just going a few times, I learned the importance of a nice outfit (also with the help of my Iranian/Canadian mentors, hah). It matters because it shows you give a shit. Just in time for my next shopping spree, TipBerlin presents a few local boutiques (🇩🇪), so you don’t need to count on sketchy Instagram ship-droppers.
We had first really hot days in the city. In addition, some of us started to suffer from pollen allergies again (also global warming-related!). I saved these tips two months ago because I knew we’d need them. I haven’t tested any yet, but the frozen water bottle idea sounds great!
In the last issue we discovered that 75% of you cook at home at least 4x per week. To continue with lighter topics…
Loading...
Here is a digital database of all Berlin Feuerwehr deployments with big-data analysis. Can someone please tell me why their sirens are so loud?
Career: Goldman Sachs has correctly identified (PDF report) that the investment returns in AI might be disappointing. It’s extremely expensive tech with a very limited ability to solve complex problems with the current large language model technology. The question is, what is the NEXT bubble? A good summary article of the report.
Career: I found this e-mail template again after years, and I remember making notes to use some points more when I was still part of a big corpo machine:
Timeless: Reasonable 10 Habits That Will Help You To Live And Be Better by Ryan Holiday. Be good. Do good. Find the good.
Timeless: Look at this cool project: a map showing the birthplaces of the most "notable people" around the world. You can zoom in on communal levels. I found Conrad Glass from Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world.
Reddit choice of the week is a video on East Berlin - 1959 vs 2024. I find the narration style fascinating—but, unlinke other fashion cycles, it seems it’s never coming back.
💬 Briefly:
1. 😔 Bad news: Tupu (gourmet mushrooms), Spoke.ai (Gen AI comm), and HomeMeal (food marketplace), all from Berlin, are bankrupt. VW will plans to close their Design Center in Potsdam (100 employees are affected).
2. Stats: Berlin recorded 187,971 people moving in and 155,206 people moving out in 2023. This means a net of +32,765. The only question is how many didn’t do the Abmeldung. 😅
3. The Caspar Friedrich exhibition opening times will be extended for an hour in the last week between July 30th and August 4th. The exhibition is so popular it’s almost impossible to get tickets online. But you can go and stand in line to get the daily ticket. It’s worth it.
4. Berlin Marathon has been moved to 21.9 to avoid the Bundestag elections on the 28th.
5. Aleph Alpha responded to the funding critics (🇩🇪) and has, according to MM, recently lost some C-level managers. There must be a lot of pressure to deliver.
6. AVM was acquired by Imker Capital Partners. Numa (Berlin, aparthotels) acquired British Native Places (+7,300 units in EU); Cycle (Berlin, e-bikes leases) acquired Dutch Ebike4Delivery. Everfield acquired ParkHere (Munich).
7. Tesla got the permit for Grünheide expansion to double the production to 1M cars annually.
8. Raisin is planning an IPO in 2025 in the range of €3-5B. (HB)
9. Due to antitrust violations, the European Commission might fine Delivery Hero for more than €400M. (RT)
10. Enpal founded its own captive financial services arm.

💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany

alcemy | Berlin | Low carbon concrete software | $10M | Careers.
Kolum | Berlin | CO2 pricing management platform | €2.1M Pre-Seed | Careers.
lemon.markets | Berlin | Brokerage-as-a-Service platform | €12M | Careers.
Northbound | Berlin | Container logistics optimization | €1.3M Pre-Seed | No careers.
epilot | Cologne | Energy transition cloud software | €10M | Careers.
Hero Software | Hannover | All-in-one system for tradespeople | €40M Series B | Careers.
Enzo | Heidelberg | Water damage prevention sensors | €2.3M | Careers.
allO | Munich | All-in-one restaurant system | $5M | Careers.
Helsing | Munich | AI defense technology | €450M Series C | Careers.
planqc | Munich | Neutral atom quantum computers | €50M Series A | Careers.
SciRhom | Munich | Autoimmune disease therapeutics | €63M Series A | No careers.