🤖 Do you read the mission statement of a company?
Issue #45 (27 Mar) – handpicked not on a strike, startup employment report, Pay transparency directive, real-estate prices falling, dangers of ESOPs and an reorganised snippets.
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Programming note: 🥳 handpicked was featured at Substack! I welcome all new readers to my niche; I hope you find something for yourself, even if only inspiration. I also started to work on additional content and “Write it down Now! Or why you should journal at work?” will be published this week.
👀 Handpicked twenty
🗂️ database with five more jobs this way
🧞♂️ Outliers.
🎬 Projects & Product.
💾 Data & Operations.
🥇Interested in sponsoring handpicked?
📢 Shoutout
When you build you always look up to other successful communities. Product People is one of those with many useful resources; they even had Marty Cagan as a quest. Besides the knowledge exchange for everything related to products, they also offer interim/fractional Product Managers/Owners, Ops, or Product Leaders. They onboard fast and most important: deliver great results. If you need a PM, check their website.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
A new design of snippets; I hope you like it. I feel the split is cleaner and more informative. Let me know how you like it in the comments or per email.
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
⛷️ Guess where in Germany the consumption of cocaine is the highest? Yes, exactly.
TechEU has a great overview of the neo-banks and their (mostly) losses across Europe. Banking is a hard business; move fast and break things until someone loses an eye.
🏙️ The city of Berlin's Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises published a report on Startup Employment 2023. Many interesting slides and facts: for example, in 2022, Berlin startups raised €4.9B, a 55% decrease compared to 2021. I am not sure about the employment database, but if 73K people work in startups in Berlin, this handpicked still has a long way to go. 🚀
27% of respondents in Schufa survey (🇩🇪) used Buy-Now-Pay-Later services, and as expected the amount of people missing their payments is rising. Tiny + tiny + small + small = big debt. Be careful.
↘️ Prices of real estate in Germany are falling for the first time after 16 years. But the mortgage will cost you much more today than last year. On top, “falling” at this point means 1.6-2.9%. This is not really a sale, is it? Related, Germans love to rent.
🥳 By latest 2026 all EU member states will need to implement Pay transparency measures which will require employers to provide salary information to job seekers, give employees the right to request pay information broken down by sex and job category, and, among other things, mandate reporting on the gender pay gap for companies with at least 100 employees.
💔 If you are counting on a big exit with ESOPs or similar programs, you could be in for a surprise and printed out with a big fat zero. This happened to Bonify employees (🇩🇪, sold to Schufa), but at least they will get a barbecue. 😅 More on liquidation preference from Investopedia.
An interesting story of a lead-generation landing page from Enpal (🇩🇪). Not a good development for the marketing department and good learning for other overly creative growth marketers.
Here is an interesting Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment take by Marc Andreessen (government vs tech capitalism) and a bit different opinion (goods vs services). You decide.
layoffs.fyi & other sources: Xing (68), interesting: Glassdoor (140) and Indeed (2200) too! Accenture (19k, cca 2%); Amazon (9k, also AWS); Totoli insolvent.
r/berlin choice of the week is the art of getting the Bürgeramt appointment with insider’s tips.
In short: Shein, a cheap fast-fashion brand opened a pop-up in Berlin; half of KaDeWe was sold to a Thai company; Scout24 announced up to €100M of stock buybacks; Sono Motors from Munich is close to insolvency; Bayern’s stadium will remain Allianz Arena at least until 2033; Zenloop found a buyer; HelloFresh will expand its product line to finished dishes to generate growth;
🇨🇳 Dan Wang’s 2022 letter is a long read, but I enjoyed the lockdowns section which gives an insight into how it was to be in China. “Friends spoke about three types of shock. First, the raw novelty of extended physical confinement. Second, the wonder of feeling food insecure in this age and in this city.” I left out the third one.
❤️ I published a new collection of links for supporters.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
Raisin | Berlin | Investments in fixed-term deposits. | €60M Series E | Careers.
ampere.cloud | Berlin | Providing sustainable and efficient cloud services for businesses. | €5M | Careers.
Monite | Berlin | Helping B2B software companies manage finances, invoices, and expenses on one platform. | $5M Additional Seed | Careers.
Mainteny | Berlin | Helping maintenance businesses digitize their operations to increase efficiency. | €2.7M Seed | Careers.
NEX Aero | Berlin | Developing hybrid-electric aircraft for regional air travel. | €3.5M Seed | Careers.
IntegrityNext | Munich | A platform for companies to manage their ESG risks. | €100M | Careers.
Tidely | Munich | Providing financial management software for small and medium-sized businesses. | €3.5M Seed | Careers.
Mbiomics | Munich | Developing microbiome-based therapeutics for a range of diseases. | €13M Series A | Careers on LinkedIn.
AERA Health | Munich | Developing smart health and fitness devices to help people lead healthier lives. | €4M Pre-Seed | Careers.
DeepDrive | Munich | Developing electric motor technologies. | €15M | Careers.
comstruct | Munich | An online marketplace for construction materials. | €1.2M Pre-Seed | Careers.
Hubtic | Düsseldorf | A freight management platform for businesses. | $1.3M Seed | Careers not there yet.
Metycle | Cologne | Developing technologies for the recycling industry. | €1.5M | Careers not there yet.
🤓 Timeless and useful
Never learning touch typing is one of my regrets. When I was on my sabbatical, I trained with keybr and improved but there is a lot of Luft nach oben.
😅 Meanwhile
when you finally get the appointment …
This is a footer 📧 fact for you. Did you ever wonder what CC stands for? Carbon copy. And BCC? Blind carbon copy.
If you have made it this far, like it or let me know how you like the amended structure.
Just read this issue so wasn't able to vote, but here's my take. I was once involved in the project of defining the "Purpose statement" for my ex company. That exercise gave me an appreciation for how much thought goes into something like that. Since then I have relied upon such statements as a one line introduction to what a company would feel like to work for.