🎉 Is this the last issue of 2023?
Issue #82 (18 Dec) – sales and ops jobs; Google review suck; lists of startups for '24; life is too short for BS; how couples meet?
Programming note: To answer the title, no, not really, this is the last regular issue before the 8th of January. I’ll send another special before that. See you soon and enjoy the read! You can subscribe or support:
🌟 Handpicked Kleinanzeigen & Tech Events
🎪 We are already in January with these two events:
EXIST Women Scholarship - The Application Pitch | Thu, 18.1.24 at 18.00 | Startup Incubator Berlin
Road to START Summit | Fri, 26.1.24 at 18.30 | Edge Workspaces
(I impulsively bought a ticket, so see you there!)
😎 Cool stuff:
Isik created a self-reflection game of 48 cards you can play with your friends or alone. I checked it and the questions are useful. Pay-as-much-as-you-want concept.
🔍 Searching for roles:
we had nobody looking for a role in this December mulled wine lull
🫵🏻 You can get featured after this holiday break!
Submit for free in one or all of the three categories.
👀 Handpicked twenty-something
📨 HR going the extra mile & readers submitted
50Hertz Transmission - several student positions worth to check
submit yours on the link (for January 8th issue); it’s free!
🧞♂️ On rotation this week: Sales, Customer Success & Ops
More positions (also outside rotation) in Handpicked online database.
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
🇩🇪 Berlin & Other good stuff
If you still haven’t made plans for NYE, here is a list of 11 places from Mit Vergnügen. (🇩🇪)
😮 BVG is under water or better understaffed. Cable thiefs don’t help either. They now stole 140m of cable on U3 after recently causing chaos on the U6. This means only 10-min frequency—the reason, afaik, is that less cable = less power = less trains.
📣 Let’s normalize not caring about Google reviews anymore. Now restaurants owners started to receive threats from bot armies (🇩🇪)! I have previously written about restaurants threatening with lawyers, not to mention the fact that you can buy 5 star reviews. Useless. (not related to me being disappointed at a 4.3 ⭐️ restaurant recently). In other words, Goodhart's Law is valid: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
😅 Do you remember e-scooters boom? “The e-scooter company Bird, which became the fastest startup ever to land a $1 billion valuation, was delisted from the NYSE and is now worth $7 million. That’s less than a third of the $22 million its founder paid for a Miami mansion in 2021." (Twitter) Berlin.de still has a page on how you register with them.
🇪🇺 EU plans to protect platform workers like those at Uber, Bolt from false self-employment. New proposed rules assume employee status and require proof for self-employment. 5.5/30M “gig” workers are considered falsely self-employed. If you use delivery services expect them to become more expensive.
🤌 If you believe in lists to decide who to work for, I have some in store for you: Wired’s Hottest Startups in Berlin (Infinite Roots, Bunch, numa, SLAY, Formo, Secfix, Mondu, Pitch, Topi, Karla); Gründerszene' Awards (Wingcopter, Neura Robotics and Zolar) and VCs talking their book at Sifted. 🫣 Hmm, ask yourself: how sure I am that they can become profitable? How much money would you bet on them?
👑 Nico from Allaboutberlin strikes again: How to get an Ausländerbehörde appointment?
👍🏼 Life is short. Timeless (career) advice by Paul Graham: “The amount of time you have to spend on bullshit varies between employers. Most large organizations (and many small ones) are steeped in it. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time” and “Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have.”
🤐 Dating online is the new black even if everyone says they hate it:
😔 Bad news: Instafreight (Berlin, B2B transport) bankrupt; Solarisbank (Berlin) -20 to 30 (finanz-szene).
r/berlin choice of the week is, unbelievable, a new horror story from apartment rental scams. As the first commenter points out: it’s nothing new. An important lesson: double check everything and if you ever face an attempt, let others know!
💬 Briefly:
Threads, Meta’s answer to Elon, is now available in Europe. Did you try it? I lack the energy at the moment.
Liquid (Berlin) decreased the investment limit for Private Equity funds from 200k to 10k. If you have some thousands lying around…
1Komma5 (Hamburg, green tech) raised €52M in debt for acquisitions. Careers. Meanwhile, Austrian Neoom, which was aiming to expand to Germany back in August (issue #65) is laying off 27/308 employees.
ETH Zurich received a major donation to open a teaching and research center in Heilbronn, Germany, and create 20 new professorships.
Flixtrain won against Deutsche Bahn in court over misleading travel filters in DB Navigator that disadvantaged Flixtrain's visibility in 2018.
Robinhood landed in Lithuania and started to probe the situation in Germany with reward marketing. (more, 🇩🇪) Not great for Scalable and Trade Republic.
Mirror, an Aware (blood screening) clone founded by Gorillas founders, is supposedly raising millions to get out of stealth. But no website yet.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
SumUp | Berlin/London | Payment and service solutions | €285M | Careers.
Urban Sports Club | Berlin | Fitness subscription | €95M | Careers.
montamo | Berlin | Training migrants for skilled construction work | €2.1M | Careers.
ecoworks | Berlin | Energy-efficient renovations | €40M | Careers.
NeoCarbon | Berlin | Carbon removal via industrial cooling towers | €3.2M | Careers.
Tacto | Munich | AI-driven supply chain management | €50M | Careers.
German Bionic | Augsburg | Robotic exoskeletons for industry | €15M | Careers.
Metycle | Cologne | Metal recycling | €4.7M | Careers.
nuvo | Hamburg | AI technology for customer data onboarding | €3M | Careers.
Plan-B Net Zero | Mühlheim am Main/Zug 🇨🇭 | Leading the green energy sector through comprehensive solutions | €9.2M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
in some of the companies
This is a footer slice of 📣 🧠 brain tricking you: Whichever phrase you hold in mind, that's what the crowd is chanting. (Twitter)
✌️ Handpicked essentials:
- Don’t make these mistakes with your side business!
- 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
- Write it down now! Or why you should journal at work?
- What do hiring managers look for in CVs?
- Submit your job (it’s free)
- Feedback for Handpicked?
- Do you want to join the next event/meetup?
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Did you make it until the end? That’s amazing! Thanks for reading and drop a comment or a like! ♡