do immigrants pay more rent?
Issue #150 (26 May) – job board highlights; Coffee with Matthaus; Munich getting ahead; Döner Papers and The Awful German Language.
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Programming note #150: This is the 150th time that this email has hit some of your inboxes. Here is to 150 more. 🍾 Have you been to Gitex? It was a pleasure to meet some of you. I found it interesting and a bit overwhelming. How about you?
I am highlighting a couple of great jobs in this issue - check them out. Also, do visit Betahaus and Techspace, our sponsors.
Email subject answer in snippet #4. We do.
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
Meet — handpicked events:
Founders & friends Berlin meetup - Market expansion | Wed, 28/05 18:30 | Avomind (HANDPICKED15 for discount)
Multipli-Cities: Artistic Research Symposium | Tue, 27/05 12:00 | Catalyst @ Funkhaus
Berlin Product Engineering Meetup @ Langfuse | Tue, 27/05 18:30 | Langfuse
Seed to Harvest #2 Early-Growth: Right path for growth in 2025 – bootstrapped vs. venture-backed | Wed, 11/06 18:30 | Patio
Mitte Daily's Pétanque Picnic | Sat, 31/05 16:00 | Gipsdreieck
this could be your event - publish or advertise it
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🚨 Join Techspace's Open Day on June 3rd - your chance to break out of the home office and work from one of Berlin’s most vibrant tech hubs! Enjoy a jam-packed day of breakfast, midday yoga, and a chance to connect with other inspiring founders and operators.*
Build a science company tackling a global challenge. SPRIND x Deep Science Ventures run a 3-year venture PhD for deep tech founders - Venture Science Doctorate. Invention AI [Elman.ai], VC mentors, >30 universities! Apply!
Check out this cool project by Mayuri: The Seasoned Path is a cultural and culinary immersion. Our mission is to create mutual understanding, cultivate connection, and celebrate cultural differences through the medium of food. In our debut dinner, we will take a Journey to Iran through a lovingly prepared three-course Persian meal.
📨 Submit your input for the community here. This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.
👀 Handpicked jobs
is a rotating selection of jobs from companies I’d check out.
5️⃣ job highlights from the job board:
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was business and strategy.
Submit a job for free. The best ones are chosen to be featured in the newsletter.
✨ Handpicked deals
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Looking to pimp up your CV? Check my GEN AI guide.
💻 Startups, freelancers, solopreneurs! Looking for a fixed or flex coworking space or an office for your team? Here is the direct link to the discounts.
🚀 Handpicked Launchpad: Germany needs builders! Recently or soon-to-be funded and looking for talent, beta testers, audience growth, event boost or more? I'm offering selected startups access to our 25,000+ audience.
If you need an expert, check the Handpicked ones: (employee) relocation, employment lawyers, insurance and career coaches. Great people for great results.
☕️ Coffee Talk with Matthaus Krzykowski
is where my guest contributes three links and I write a short bio. Permanent collection.
Matthaus is a founder of dltHub and one of the great connectors in the Berlin scene. We did the interview live, and he insisted on including Wilmina Bread, the first place featured twice in this section. It must be great! Here is what he prepared for you:
Wilmina Bread — I highly recommend this bakery. My wife is Australian and misses a specific type of sourdough bread from home. Their natural sourdough is the closest we've found in Berlin to authentic Australian bread.
Tweet from Andrej Karpathy — At dltHub, we're not just building for humans, but also wonder how to design software for LLMs. I love Andrej's explanation and insight in how he interacts with LLMs.
Area of Schwielowsee — One of my favourite summer weekend getaways near Berlin. Located on the other side of Sanssouci Park, just opposite Werder Island. You can chill, bike around and enjoy the amazing nature or visit the Havel Therme on a chilly day. It's easily accessible by public transport and has affordable accommodation options.
🗞 Snippets
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
Oh no, Berlin isn’t the Spitzenreiter in Germany! According to Dealroom Munich is a better tech ecosystem. Bavarians are number 17 worldwide, while we are at 31. The ranking includes factors like venture capital raised, number of patents, company revenue growth, and university spin-offs.
The time of the festivals is approaching, so this festival guide from Tip Berlin will come in handy. Also for improving your German vocabulary.
The mystery has been solved! The author of the famous Döner paper graphic design was found. Spoiler alert, he didn’t get rich. 6-episode podcast on the most famous fast food graphic design of Germany, Döner Papers.
It’s sad, but immigrants are paying more rent than Germans and live in smaller apartments (2022 census data). The average rent difference is 67 cents (7.75€/sqm vs 7.08€/sqm). Partly it’s related to the apartment size, because 25% of foreign nationals lived in apartments under 60 square meters compared to only 12% of Germans. Unfortunately, the differences are there across all community sizes and for all tenancy durations:
Average net rent, tenancy duration and nationality. China is winning the EV race, and this doesn’t mean anything good for Germany. Here is a great article I previously published by Adam Tooze. “Right now, non-Western firms are at risk of losing touch with the technological frontier being defined by China’s EV ecosystem.” Related, in April, Chinese BYD for the first time sold more electric cars in Europe than Tesla.
Career: 10 Management Principles to Copy from Top 10% Teams by Lars Lofgren. Very useful tips, especially for people taking over teams.
Career: The Awful German Language by Mark Twain for everyone needing something to feel slightly better about not yet speaking it fluently. “For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six--and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that.”
Career: In 2022 an average American worked over 1,800 hours per year. The average German 1,340! Seems wild at first glance, but one of the reasons is also a lot of part-time female work. This split across Europe is also interesting. Part-time seems possible only in wealthier countries.
Timeless: The new version of Have I been Pwned is live and it allows you to chronologically see where and when your data was stolen. Use a password wallet, folks.
Briefly
Bad news: The number of unemployed in Germany could cross 3M in the summer, first time since 2010. (IW)
Stats: In 2024 15,362 flats were finished in Berlin, 3.8% less than in 2023. The most new apartments were finished in Treptow-Köpenick and Spandau.
Startup Verband held their German Startup Awards 2025. The awards went to the founders of CanChip (cancer research), Proxima Fusion (energy transition), Edurino (digital education for children), Choco (food systems optimisation) and other individuals.
Klarna’s net loss more than doubled in the first quarter ($99M vs $47M). Subprime loans with no collateral might be tricky in an economic downturn. The results were presented via an AI-generated avatar of the CEO.
Trade Republic got an EU-wide crypto license MiCA, which means it can now offer crypto in the whole EU market.
The two most valuable German tech companies, SAP and Celonis, are having a really bad breakup. Once business partners are now locked in legal battles across multiple courts over alleged trade secret theft and anti-competitive practices in the process mining software market. The conflict escalated after SAP acquired Celonis competitor Signavio for €950 million in 2021. (MM)
Poland's largest healthcare company Pelion has acquired a 33.27% stake in DocMorris, becoming a strategic investor in the pharmacy business.
OnlyFans is reportedly selling itself for $8B. In 2023, they had revenues of $6B.
Weekly social
Reddit: Opinions on the Yoko Ono exhibition at Neue Nationalgalerie are divided.
Reddit: A great thread of simple and underrated rituals to try.
*When you need a break from the home office, come find your people at betahaus, Berlin’s community-first coworking space:
✨ Make friends over coffee
✨ Join curated events
✨ Work with creatives & techies
✨ English-speaking crowd
✨ 3 vibrant locations
Exclusive 20% off for Handpicked Berlin readers 💌
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
Trawa | Berlin | AI-controlled energy consumption optimisation | €24M Series A | Careers.
Tomorrow Biostasis | Berlin | Human cryopreservation technology services | €5M | Careers.
Voya Games | Berlin | Blockchain-based gaming platform development | $5M | Careers.
Freshflow | Berlin | AI-powered fresh food supply optimisation | €6.5M | Careers.
Regpit | Berlin | Anti-money laundering compliance automation | €1.7M Pre-Seed | Careers.
Jupus | Cologne | AI-powered legal process automation | €6.5M Seed | Careers.
Aufinity Group | Cologne | Automotive payment management digitisation | €23M Series C | Careers.
CedarDB | Munich | High-performance relational database system | €5.3M | No careers.
Remberg | Munich | AI-powered industrial asset management | €15M Series A | Careers.
Koppla | Potsdam | Digital scheduling for the construction industry | €6M | Careers.
Flip | Stuttgart | Employee communication app platform | €25M Series A Extension | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
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