🙌🏻 The best links and jobs for your inspiration!
Issue #44 (20 Mar) – where does Berlin hate come from; Berlin events weekly; climate neutrality vote; police helicopter tried to be funny; is RTO coming here too?
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Programming note: there is much more interest for the meet-up than expected, and I am, uh, impressed? Expect my email this week and you can still sign-up here. I was also surprised that many of you think I should add EVEN MORE LINKS.
More content is coming soon because I took two days off this week, don’t miss out:
👀 Handpicked twenty
📨 readers submitted
🗂️ database with three more jobs this way
🧞♂️ Outliers.
🎬 Projects & Product.
💾 Data & Operations.
🥇Interested in partnering with handpicked?
📢 Shoutout
Imagine someone would select a couple of events in Berlin each week and deliver them to your inbox on Sundays so that you could plan your week the German way, huehue? Imagine. But not just some random crap, you know, the good stuff. Well, I have good news: Zim is doing exactly this, and you should definitely check him out and give him a follow. I also talked with him to make sure he does not stop JUST after you subscribed. Warmly recommended. 🥳
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & Germany
Medwing, a Berlin-based healthcare recruitment marketplace, raised €44M in a Series C. Careers.
Deeploi, a Berlin-based IT-as-a-service startup, raised a €3M seed. Careers.
The Climate Choice, a Berlin-based platform for decarbonizing supply chains, raised a $2M pre-seed. Careers.
Intelligent fluids, a Leipzig-based deep-tech startup developing eco-friendly cleaning fluids, raised €10M in Series B. Careers.
Oculai, a Munich-based site management start-up, raised €2.5M. Careers.
Phytonics, a Karlsruhe-based start-up with a PV module anti-reflective coating technology, raised a seed funding round in the low seven figures. Careers.
Cashlink, a Frankfurt-based Fintech start-up, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A. Careers.
🚨 Event alert: as part of #WomenHistoryMonth Grammarly is organising an event at their Berlin hub celebrating women: Stories of Empowerment and Growth this Wednesday! Register here.
Somehow Berlin again ended up last on the list of the friendliest German states. I think this is BS, because after eight months I see no difference compared to Baden-Württemberg. My semi-serious theory that this Berlin hate goes back to the times of the Unification of Germany (1866-1871) when Prussia basically took over, and nobody else liked it. 😅
🚁 A police helicopter has drawn an ugly bicycle in the sky over Berlin which reminded me how damn useless and wasteful these sky drawings are (this one even included a tribute to the Queen). And what do you see in the bottom right corner? What a dirty mind!
🏢 Galeria Karstadt, a struggling department store with the highest amount of nice older ladies selling stuff to rare buyers, will close 52 out of 129 remaining locations. I am relieved that our canteen at Hermannplatz will stay open. In Berlin, two of their locations will close (Müllerstraße and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf).
One of the most prominent LLM impacts will probably be on Reg/LegalTech because lawyers are much more expensive than powerful chatbots. Until then, you can check your life insurance in Germany with helpcheck (similar to conny in Berlin for tenants).
🤡 Of course, decorative books for your home are a thing. This is no affiliate link because why would it be? I suggest going to your local antiquariat instead and getting them by the kilo. You might even open some. Books are cool.
💸 According to smartasset, after adjusting for the tax and cost of living in New York, a $100k salary feels like $36K. This made me wonder how does €100k feel in Berlin compared to other cities in Germany. Is anyone doing this for Germany?
🇩🇪 Germany badly needs workers and more subscribers to handpicked for Berlin, because “/../without more immigration or policy changes, the labour market will lose 7m workers by 2035, down from 46m now.” (via The Economist, €)
🗳️ Next Sunday some of you will be able to go and vote on a referendum to make Berlin climate neutral by 2030. Here is an explainer from exberliner, and well, if you were cynical you would say, “whatever the result, it does not matter; they won’t implement sh*t” and if you would be an optimist, you’d go, “cannot wait for 2030 and the climate neutrality!”
🌓 Samsung took fake-it-until-you-make-it a bit too seriously with their “space zoom.” I admire the ingenuity of the poster. But who knows, they could also be an employee of a competitor?
Amazon is doubling down on Return-to-office by
is another proof of the direction of how RTO policies are in fact silent layoffs and are sooner or later coming to Berlin too.layoffs.fyi & other sources: nothing really showed up on my radar (besides Meta & Amazon layoffs). If you have any info, drop it.
r/berlin choice of the week is this question on Yorck unlimited cinema subscription, which seems tempting because what is not to love about a great movie? Somebody got their bike stolen, and in the comments someone provided a template contract for buying used bikes.
In short: SAP sold Qualtrics for €7.7B; Siemens Energy raised €1.3 with a capital raise; Kanye West losing his mind will cost Adidas €1.2B; Ruuky, an insolvent Hamburg-based fintech found a PE buyer.
📸 I attended European Month of Photography this weekend (link to my Insta, sorry) and I warmly recommend the exhibiton in C/O. Many photos are fascinating and they almost made me buy my second photobook. 😅
🇪🇺 Rest of Europe & UK
Stripe, one of the biggest fintech darlings, raised $6.5B at $50B valuation, down from $95B almost two years ago.
Fire1, a Dublin-based medtech firm, raised $25M to accelerate the development of its monitoring solution for heart failure patients. Careers.
Verity, Zürich-based makers of an inventory tracking system powered by autonomous indoor drones, raised $32M in a Series B. Careers.
🤓 Timeless and useful
You can test your pace of life with these ten short questions.
😅 Meanwhile
cinnamon roll (Zimtschnecke, if you want to impress the Bäckerei lady) is doing its best to make your day, on this note: Zeit für Brot has excellent ones.
This is a footer 🌎 fact for you. America is not called Ameriga after Amerigo Vespucci because they loved to “latinize” their names back in the days, so he was called Americus Vesputius.
Lots of love,
Igorus Rancius
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