are you also addicted to social media?
Issue #175 (24 Nov) - sauna marketplace; great cevapcici; State of the European Tech; AI is making us work more and 11 funding rounds.
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Programming note #175: I’ve got a couple of slots open to present great companies next year. It’s similar to my work with Almedia (social + jobs + website). If you work for a great company and think you’d be a good fit, do approach me.
If you would like to be featured in the Expert Directory 2026 and we haven’t yet spoken about it, reach out.
Check out our sponsors: Surfshark and Techarena.
The email subject is related to a short text I wrote on the topic. It’s linked in Snippet #1.
🌟 Handpicked community
Meet — 7 handpicked events:
AD | 🇸🇪 You come to Techarena to get inspired, network, and do business. You meet founders, investors, and executives. Zlatan is part of a lineup of 300+ speakers at Techarena 2026, hosted in Stockholm at the Swedish national football stadium. Get your ticket!
AD | 🚨 100th show of Berlin’s most beloved true-story stage, The bEAR! Join us at the historic Theater im Delphi for a night of real stories, real connection, and an atmosphere you won’t find anywhere else. | Fri, 28/11 19:00 | Theater im Delphi
Digital circular economy | Tue, 25/11 17:00 | Antler
Scaling Without Funding - Almedia x START Berlin | Tue, 25/11 19:00 | EDGE Workspaces
Rite x Loosh: Sauna rave 🤯 | Thu, 27/11 19:00 | Rite
see you at Saturday Morning Walk & Talk | Sat, 29/11 10:30 | Halo Bagels
Women's AI breakfast | Tue, 02/12 09:00 | Merantix AI Campus
Engineering LAN party + League of Legends tournament by Peec AI | Sat, 06/12 12:00 | LVL World of Gaming
This could be your event! Advertise it.
Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
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Interested in connecting the longevity boom with the rise of sauna culture? My friend Philip is building a B2B2C sauna marketplace and looking for a GTM cofounder. Fully remote: email him here.
Friends at ImpactHub are accepting applications for the Climate Action Accelerator: Climate Adaptation Edition, a 3-month hybrid programme. Deadline: January 9th.
Need interns or entry-level hires? Rap is building Hisignal. “It matches you with pre-vetted students from the EU's top unis. Record a 3-min pitch, students pick who excites them, and I make warm intros. Zero spam, all curated.” You can also register as an intern.
👀 Handpicked jobs
2 job highlights of the week
AD | something interesting at Arbio - Agent Engineer
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was Tech & Dev.
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☕️ Coffee Talk with Roland Grenke
I met Roland randomly at an event, and we started to chat. He has a successful exit under his belt, and what I respect the most is that he has now decided to try to change something by going into politics. This is what he prepared:
Kaffee 50QM - A really nice coffee place in Prenzlauer Berg. They opened last year. Eda and Burak, the founders, are siblings, and they’re combining Turkish with classical breakfast, a cool combo. I really like their place and like to support them. Bonus for families: there’s a playground around the corner.
Monolink - I’m a big fan of Monolink. He recently released his new album, The Beauty of it All, but can recommend all of his music, including his live sets. Check him out on YouTube. He combines vocals with electronic music in a way that feels very Berlin-ish.
Feuerle Collection - I’m a fan of Berlin’s bunkers turned art spaces. Most people know the Boros Foundation, but I recently visited the Feuerle Collection, another former bunker, where they show mostly Chinese art. I have no idea about the art part; I’m usually amazed by the architecture of museums. Here, you enter in a small guided group, it’s dark, and the whole thing turns into a very cool experience.
🗞 Snippets
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
I realised I am addicted to social media and wrote a short piece on it. I’m scaling back strongly. If you see yourself in it… you are not alone. We are millions, but at least the screen time is in steady decline.
If you want proper Balkan (Bosnian) „čevapčiči“, there is Sarajevo Berlin. „Lepinja“ is exactly like it should be, meat is great and „ajvar“ too. I wish „kajmak“ was creamier. „Šopska“ salad was also great! All in all, a great meal. Don’t forget to try Cockta, the Yugoslavian answer to Coca-Cola. For vegetarians, they have “Burek” with cheese.
Maybachufer was just ranked the 2nd coolest street in Europe and 7th in the world by TimeOut magazine. Luckily, Berlin has harsh winters - if it didn’t, it would be overrun like Barcelona. 😅
Berlin recently increased fines for littering. A reader asked where to find information on how to properly dispose of bulky waste. BSR has a good explainer in English. In short, you can bring it to one of the collection centres or order a collection. The prices start at €50, which is way cheaper than the fines.
Atomico released 2025 report on the State of European Tech. It’s extremely detailed and with several chapters and interesting charts. It’s possible to summarise it this way: EU is slowly coming back — challenges remain, but the trend has started to turn positive. For example, 2025 is the strongest year in terms of the number of new unicorns since 2022.
The rent cap was extended for 4 years also because Berlin's asking rents nearly doubled from €8.45 to €16.64 per m2 between 2015 and 2024. That’s a 97% vs. Germany's 50% average. The city's population grew by 342k, requiring around 180k new households, but only 157k housing units were built.
Merz is not doing himself any favours with his comments. After Stadtbild, he now mocked Belém in Brazil. But his main headache must be the pension reform, which is destabilising the government. It affects everyone intending to retire in Germany, because the pension system is not sustainable. Speaking of politics, here are the latest polling numbers (national vs Berlin with elections in 2026):
I didn’t add the rocket; it was RBB’s team. Career: Instead of another CV tip… a reader shared a poem by Wisława Szymborska, Nobel prize recipient in literature, called Preparing a Curriculum Vitae.
Career: In 1930, a famous economist, JM Keynes, predicted that by around 2030, technological progress and capital accumulation would make us so productive that we would only need to work about 15 hours per week. I am really looking forward to 2030! Until then, AI is actually making us work more, because now you can, for example, run a complete company by yourself.
Career: How do you lead in a room full of experts? I love this: You are not going to convince anyone with facts. In a room full of experts, your technical credibility gets you a seat at the table, but your social skills determine whether anything productive happens once you're there.
Timeless: A long list of nice learnings: 102 lessons from 102 books.
Stats: Women are the victims in 87% of partner homicides in Germany. Men make up about 80% of homicide victims globally.
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🇸🇪 You come to Techarena to get inspired, network, and do business. You meet founders, investors, and executives. Zlatan is part of a lineup of 300+ speakers at Techarena 2026, hosted in Stockholm at the Swedish national football stadium. Get your ticket!
Berlin-related headlines
Friedrichstraße in Berlin to get wider sidewalks and more greenery (read)
BER needs less fresh money: Airport owners can save 160 million euros (read)
Rising food prices: Analysis: Edeka, Lidl & Co. too powerful - bad for customers (read)
Flix's rail division remains unprofitable and will stay that way for years, says the CEO (read)
Protest against 240 apartments in Berlin courtyards: neighbours want to stop densification in East Berlin (read)
Briefly on business, tech and economy
Bad news: In Berlin, 1.75M m2 of commercial office space is empty (8%). In 2026, the capacity is supposed to increase by 840k m2.
The EU Commission is proposing scaling back GDPR and AI regulation.
Interesting, but a US-based (!) Diffraqtion won Slush 100, taking home €1M in equity. Slush is one of the most important EU-based tech events.
Cyber Innovation Hub of the German Armed Forces (CIHBw) in Berlin got a separate budget of €40M for 2026.
Picnic (NL, grocery delivery) is getting €430M of fresh capital to expand more in Germany. Rewe is its main competitor.
Schwarz-Gruppe (Lidl & Co.) will invest €11B in a new data centre in Lübbenau (1.5h south of Berlin).
Clark (Frankfurt, insurtech) is getting sued by its investor over a convertible loan.
Integral (Berlin, AI accounting) has acquired payroll provider cleverlohn. See the raise below as well.
Trade Republic reached a €12.5B valuation after a €1B secondary. Secondary deals enable a full or partial exit of early investors.
24/7 fitness concept franchise Anytime Fitness (US) has big plans in Germany. They want to open 15 new gyms per year.
Pennylane (France, accounting) plans to hire 100 new employees for its expansion in Germany (HQ in Munich, but also with an office in Berlin).
Rumors. Neura Robotics (Berlin, robotics) reportedly raising €1B from Tether at €8-10B valuation. Quantum Systems (Munich, drones) €200M at €3B valuation. Time will tell.
Flatpay (Denmark, payments) raised €145M at a €1.5B valuation. They grow and hire in Germany a lot, surely impacting SumUp.
Langdock (Berlin, AI for enterprises) reached $12M ARR with less than 30 employees.
Klarna Q3: revenue $903M (+26%), adjusted operating loss of $14M (vs +$63M YoY). Shares lowest since IPO.
Weekly social and outside interests
Reddit: Poor quality yet expensive restaurants in Berlin to recommend to your enemies. Plenty on the list aren’t really expensive. An older thread someone posted was much better.
Reddit: Someone had a bad experience with Conny. Careful.
Some wholesome Instagram content in German if you are looking for a hobby. Miniaturist Katharina Raab.
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
Voize | Berlin | AI voice assistant for nursing | $50M Series A | Careers.
Peec AI | Berlin | Brand monitoring in AI responses | €18M Series A | Careers.
Integral | Berlin | AI-first consulting for SMEs | €12M | Careers.
Mirantus Health | Berlin | Telehealth for eye care | €5.5M | Careers.
EnerKite | Berlin | Airborne wind energy systems | €1.6M | Careers.
NexDash | Berlin | Electric truck logistics fleet | €5M Seed | No careers.
Donnerstag.ai | Frankfurt | AI-powered receivables management platform | €4.3M Seed | Careers.
H2 Power n Heat | Potsdam | Mobile green hydrogen hybrid systems | €1M | No careers.
Pionix | Bad Schönborn | Open-source EV charging platform | €8M Late-seed | Careers.
Precision | Munich | Dairy alternative products | €4M | No careers.
Cellbyte | Munich | AI drug market access platform | $2.75M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
which is your favourite applicant tracking system?
Igor Ranc
Founder & Curator of Handpicked Berlin