😇 The good stuff and no election related news? You got it!

Issue #39 (13 Feb) – introducing supporter tier, plenty of funding rounds, 100 tips for better life and where to drink beer in Berlin.

Feb 13, 2023

Programming note: The biggest news is that handpicked now has a supporter tier, and I wrote a short explanation of the changes. In a nutshell: handpicked remains free, but supporters will get more content.

Thank you for your support. 🙏 The poll is back:

👀 Handpicked twenty

📨 readers submitted

🧞‍♂️ Outliers.

🎬 Projects & Product.

💾 Data & Operations.

🗂️ Database with one more position this way.

🥇Interested in sponsoring handpicked?

📢 Shoutout

If you are interested in Berlin in one way or another, you have probably seen Bastien’s blog Settle in Berlin. Well, he also has a Berlin Flat Quest game and a Youtube channel with educational videos about Berlin. Warmly recommend a follow, and don’t forget to try the game.

🗞 Top inspiration snippets

🇩🇪 Berlin & Germany

Planet A Ventures, a Berlin-based fund, raised €160M fund to support green tech investments. Careers.
Degura, a Berlin-based pension schemes operator, raised €2.2M pre-seed. Careers.
Bayes Esports, a Berlin-based live esports data ticker, raised a total of €9M in 2022. Careers.
Brighter AI, a Berlin-based AI-supported anonymization tool, raised undisclosed funds from Deutsche Bahn. Careers.
EatFirst, a Berlin-based corporate catering provider, acquired UK based Feedr. Careers.
Build38, a Barcelona/Munich-based mobile security company, raised €13M Series A. Careers.
Nui Care, a Munich-based home care support startup, raised seven figures from ADAC. Careers.
Enmacc, a Munich-based energy trading platform, raised an undisclosed Series B. Careers.
IONOS, a Karlsruhe/Berlin-based web-hosting company, IPOed with a mixed reception.
📫 I used a mobile stamp for the first time. You simply buy it with an app and write the code on your letter. And we complain that Germany is not digitized?!
🤖 On ChatGPT: here is a thread on interesting use cases. We also got tools to detect if a text is written by LLMs: one from OpenAI, another independent. I checked my own going-paid text, and it is “likely entirely written by a human.”
On the topic of the apartment crisis: from 2018, only 454 flats were successfully “exchanged”. But the demand was much higher: 15.000 people wanted to do it (🇩🇪); 51% of people wanted a bigger flat, and only 11% a smaller one. You can try your luck here.
💕 If you are able, you can register to be a bone marrow or blood stem cell donor at DKMS; they will send you the test kit, and you can save lives. Inspired by this post.
layoffs.fyi & other sources: another delivery service bites the dust: Yababa is insolvent (111 employees according to LinkedIn).
A relevant resource related to layoffs: what to do if you lose your job or get fired at arbeitnow. In short, double-check and do not sign anything too fast.
Delivery Hero reported Q4 numbers. People are ordering less. Interesting to compare the narratives; the company really tried to put a positive spin on the numbers, but analysts were not impressed. (🇩🇪)
r/berlin choice of the week is a typical state of the subreddit. Someone asks a question (WTF is my delivery scrambled egg so expensive!), gets the famous r/berlin treatment (WTF, you are ordering scrambled eggs??), which then gets called out (WTF, why are you so rude), and finally, someone provides a good explanation (because of venture capital subsidies). You gotta love this place! ❤️
In the same place, people were also discussing a difference in the pricing of Turkish vs Arabic food. After a decade of being away, I cannot believe there is still a line at Mustafa’s; besides, how a normal sandwich can only cost 3.5-4€ at Jakoub, considering the cost of rent, ingredients and work?
🍺 If you need ideas for good places to drink some beers in Berlin, check out this fine article and a convenient map by Jonny Whitlam.
📢📢📢 If you have any great content to share, do let me know! 📢📢📢

🇪🇺 Rest of Europe & UK

Carbonplace, a London-based carbon credit transaction network, raised almost €42M seed. Careers.

Tell others what they missed by pressing this button:

🤓 Timeless and useful

I often return to this list of 100 tips for a better life from Ideopunk. Every time I read it, something else resonates more. For example:

17. Done is better than perfect.
27. Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.
30. If you listen to successful people talk about their methods, remember that all the people who used the same methods and failed did not make videos about it.
85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.