🥳 Backyard Party was great! Want to join the next one?
🥳 Backyard Party was great! Want to join the next one?
Issue #68 (11 Sep) – HR Jobs; changes to content and Görli + why people even sell drugs?; +15,576 foreigners; How good is your German?; use Slack effectively and write good stories.
Programming note: Our first joint party with Berlin Events Weekly was so cool—so many interesting people and great conversations! More is coming soon; make sure to be invited by submitting your e-mail.
In other news, I took some days off work and made great progress in several topics. One is a slight adjustment to the content structure based on your feedback; Kleinanzeigen has moved up and has a new addition, Tech Events. And the best thing is you can submit yours as well. There was this particular feedback that really resonated with me:
“You're doing great. Provide the service and info in the way that feels best to you; no need to chase subscribers at the cost of your joy and authenticity.”
True! And I want to add authentic videos to this. I already created an Instagram page, so please follow it! ❤️
🌟 Handpicked Kleinanzeigen & Tech Events
🎪 Events:
GAMES Summer Reception organised by Medianet together with Gaming Festival. E-mail registration is required. | Thu, 14.9 at 19.00 | White Spreelounge
ESMT Demo Day 2023 with startup pitches, panel discussions and keynotes around entrepreneurship and innovation. | Fri, 15.9 at 17.00 | ESMT Berlin
This slot is reserved for your tech event, but you haven’t submitted it yet because you didn’t know it was possible.
😎 Cool stuff:
John offers 50% off two tickets to the Web Summit in Lisbon (Nov 13-16) for 995 EUR.
Doreen offers operation consulting and event/media production services for organizations positively impacting our world.
Leeway (mail) wants to help ship web applications in freelance roles, with five years of experience in frontend development.
🔍 Searching for roles:
Mich is looking for a role in photo/video production or content marketing. Ten years of experience in production and marketing in e-commerce.
Yessica is looking for a content management role in tech, luxury, or sustainability. She has been writing for N26, Hotjar, and Desmond & Dempsey and is looking to step up in her career and collaborate more with local startups and entrepreneurs.
👀 Handpicked twenty-something
📨 Readers submitted
submit yours on the link; it’s FREE and a better expsoure compared to those crowded LinkedIn spots!
🧞♂️ HR & Recruitment
More positions in Handpicked online database.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
☕️ Coffee with Darshan Gajara from Product Disrupt
Darshan does a great newsletter and resource page, Product Disrupt, which you should definitely follow if you are into product and design! Here are his suggestions for you:
Yo! Podcast by Rob Hope – Rob interviews prolific creators on his show. He does a great job of bringing out authentic stories & practical insights from his guests with excellent sound mixing.
Hard Truths about Life (Twitter) – Sahil Bloom's visual thread about hard truths he has learned through personal experiences. This is like a cheat code for getting better at life without enormous suffering.
Toxic Behaviors & their Remedies (Twitter) – This short thread is about how toxic behaviours can kill a partnership or a team. Matt breaks it down piece by piece and provides suggestions to avoid them.
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
🚨 This Thursday at 11.00, we will have another Warntag across Germany. Expect your phone to ring and sirens to go off. If they work.
🎉 Don’t forget to submit your e-mail to get a priority invite to attend our next event.
🇫🇷 If you can sleep on moving things (I can’t), you might be interested in night trains: Starting in winter 2023, a thrice-weekly night train will connect Berlin and Paris. Daily service to Paris and Brussels begins in autumn 2024. Ticket prices start at €34.90 for seats, €49.90 for sleepers, and €79.90 for private sleepers. Meanwhile, in August, DB only achieved 63.4% punctuality (an improvement from 56,8% last August!). But I guess you won’t care because you will be sleeping!
😅 Put it in your calendars: Thursday, 8th of May in 2025, will be a one-time public holiday, commemorating the 80th anniversary of WWII’s end.
👌 Here are some good news on solar energy. Some countries are well ahead of their 2030 national plans:
👏 I loved this video of thelanguageblondie changing her English accents on the go! (Instagram) Made me think again how cool it is that we have these accents, it would be so boring without them. My favourite is probably Greek! This made me wonder: How well do you speak German? I was C1, but since moving to Berlin it declined a bit.
Career advice: My colleague (I am remote) uses an interesting template for communicating important stuff on Slack, which is actually a disaster for anything serious. It works exceptionally good: you separate it into What, Want, Who, When and context. More here.
☝️ Berlin's population grew by 15,576 or 0.4% in H1 2023, totalling 3.87M residents. Foreigner share rose to 23.9%, up by 2.6% in six months (+23,654). The highest % of foreigners is in Mitte (37,1%), followed by Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (30,2%) and Neukölln (28,0%). (St. BB)
🧐 Görli will, after a special Gipfel on Friday, get lockable entrances, selective video surveillance, improved lighting and occasional nighttime closures. Additionally, dedicated drug consumption spaces and more toilets (partially with personnel) will be added to the park and also Leopoldplatz in Wedding. No timelines were provided. While you wait, you can read this excellent report (🇩🇪) from RBB on why people even sell drugs in Görli. Spoiler alert: because there is often nothing else to do.
🤓 What makes a good story? Here is a good explanation from Kurt Vonnegut (Twitter): “Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it.” Last year in another dimension I also summarised a book on the art of storytelling by George Saunders and in a nutshell Good story = escalation + pattern + causality. Useful for thinking about why some stories work and others don’t.
r/berlin choice of the week was this discussion about slower cyclists overtaking other faster cyclists at the red light. Amazing! I only do Kurzstrecken with my Nextbike, and I can recommend getting an annual subscription for €50.
🏦 Random tip: Plenty of coins lying around? You can exchange them for cash FOR FREE at Deutsche Bundesbank on Leibnizstraße 10.
💬 Briefly:
Getir needs cash and is raising $500M at $2.5B valuation (down from $11.8B in 2022). Yikes.
Likeminded (Berlin) acquired mental health Whylab (Berlin).
SAP wants to buy LeanIX from Bonn.
1Komma5 is planning to do an IPO in 2025. Let’s see how this pans out.
Shell reportedly (Handelsblatt) wants to sell its solar company Sonnen after four years. Is it possible they are exiting at the top, or it’s just a random corporate divestiture?
German Autoindustrie had a 9.4% drop in production (🇩🇪) in July. Bad times for Europe as well. But also plenty of opportunities if you can see them!
Pliant (Berlin) is taking over parts of insolvent Friday Finance.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
Nuventura | Berlin | Provider of sustainable electrical grid technology to replace harmful greenhouse gas-based tech. | €25M Series A | Careers.
Ostrom | Berlin | Accelerating the green energy transition. | $18M Series A extension | Careers.
Blue Farm | Berlin | Plant-based drinks and other products| €1M | Careers.
E-Mobilio | Munich | Aims for a cleaner, more efficient electric vehicle ecosystem. | €9.5M Series A | Careers.
volytica | Dresden | Software provider for battery diagnostics and analytics. | €5.5M Seed | Careers.
DGTAL | Hamburg | SaaS platform processes unstructured insurance data using AI. | €3M Seed | No careers.
inContAlert | Bayreuth | Helps patients with neurogenic bladder dysfunction manage their condition. | €1.5M Seed | Careers.
Meanwhile section was sacrificed today to make space for our group photo (I don’t want the email to be cut). If you are a fan, sorry!
This is a footer slice of 🇫🇷 for you. Why did fertility in France (formerly “China of Europe) fall so much? The answer is in secularization.
✌️ Handpicked essentials:
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Berlin Salary Trends Report 2023: How do you compare?
- Want to get reminded for the next salary survey?
- The best questions to ask at a job interview
- Feedback for Handpicked?
Tigress/Tiger, you made it to the end and I thank you for that! This is worth a like ♡ or a comment!