Happy New Year, but only if it’s still appropriate to write it on the 12th,

I hope you started 2026 in the best possible way. So happy to be back! I took some time off to review my priorities, and loved every single line of your feedback. It did make me think. You can still submit your 2 cents.

This will be a great year, folks! A tradition: the best printable calendar there is. Keep in touch.

🌟 Handpicked community

Meet — 5 handpicked events:

• AD | Germany’s top business school, ESMT Berlin, wants to invite you for networking drinks next Friday. Join their informative session to explore the Master’s and MBA programs. Whether you are considering a pivot, a promotion, or a complete career reset in 2026, this is your chance to ask questions, meet students and alumni. | Fri, 23/01 16:00 | ESMT Berlin

• AD | How to invest in property in Germany? An in-person Berlin seminar for people exploring real estate investing — with space to meet developers, exchange perspectives with other investors, and hear from recent buyers. Register here. | Sun, 18/01 10:00 | CIC

• Work & Me: It’s Complicated | Shared Table Dinner | Tue, 13/01 18:30 | C*Space

• Cafe Cursor Berlin | Sun, 25/01 10.00 | Location after registration

• The 20% Berlin News Quiz | Wed, 14/01 18.30 | Electric Social

Show cool stuff or Ask for something:

• If you are interested in working to define New Aesthetics in visual arts and architecture, you can get a grant between $5k-250k.

• “I’m building an app that helps two people feel a bit more connected when they’re apart. You both tap on your screens, and the taps sync instantly with soft haptics. I’m looking for testers. Wanna try it out?” You can test it here.

• Something interesting to share? Go for it.

👀 Handpicked jobs

2 job highlights of the week

AD | Some interesting things are gonna happen at Deltia, a deep tech startup from Berlin. Here are two positions for you:

• Deltia - Project Manager – Network and Installations

• Deltia - Account Executive

The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was tech & dev.

Submit a job for free.

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If you want to get out of your bubble, decode Berlin's bureaucracy, and turn your Kiez into home, this is for you.

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☕️ Coffee Talk with Jing-Jing Hu

Jing has a very interesting career path that shifted from social sciences to engineering and finally led her to start her own stationery business, Chumi Studio. I admire her courage to follow her passion for design and creativity. Here is what she prepared for you:

• Feast Berlin - I went there as part of a Hungry Tech Asians event (a community of Asian techies & foodies in Berlin), and it was delicious. It's the first Chinese restaurant I've come across in Germany that serves food from the region of China my parents are from (Wenzhou). One soup even reminded me of my grandma's cooking.

• Dr Ellen Langer on the mind-body connection - One of my all-time favourite podcast episodes. Dr Ellen Langer is a psychology professor at Harvard who has studied mindfulness for over 40 years. I listened to this during a stressful period of my life and the insights I've gained from it calmed my mind and changed the way I think.

• How We Feel app - A well-designed, free emotions tracker and journaling app. It helps you improve your emotional vocabulary and spot patterns over time. It includes bite-sized lessons for healthy emotional regulation. You can even add friends and share emotions. Fun fact: the project is led by the co-founder of Pinterest.

🗞 Snippets

Berlin & Germany, career & timeless

1. We are all paying more for health insurance in 2026. You could optimise this by talking to Mirja or Michael (try both and compare what they say!). They are a part of my 2026 expert directory, which also includes a financial advisor, two amazing employment lawyers and several coaches to help you in your career and life.

2. My Berlin coworking space article revamp was long overdue. I simplified it based on my experience in 2025. It also includes my Luma calendar, where all our future coworking sessions will be announced.

3. Our mayor, Mr Wegner, is a tennis fan. But he made a terrible unforced error by playing on the day when thousands were suffering without electricity in southwestern Berlin. Since it’s the year of elections, this could mean game, set, match. 2-0, but not for Wegner. Initially, Vulkangruppe “claimed” the responsibility (but this was later disputed), and many are looking in the direction of the Kremlin.

4. Guthmann released its 2025 Berlin real estate report, and it’s fascinating to see that in 2010 the average total price per new unit was €219k. In 2025, it was €575k. “The average new development apartment costs 485,500 euros at 8,220 EUR/m² (+3% year-on-year).” Read the complete report here.

5. I’ve called the bottom, and I am happy to see we are sooo back (at least in the startup scene). You can see the detailed report by Startup Verband and Startupdetector here. Berlin is still slightly (619) below the peak in 2021 (702), but with all the hybrid work options, should we really care?

   

6. 21 tips on what to do in winter by Mit Vergnügen. And, Markthalle Pffefenberg is finally back after two (?) years, together with Tacqueria el Oso and the rest of the gang. Hibiscus margaritas are just… fantastic. There is also more space after the renovation.

7. Career: New year, new meeting structure: pitch it to your team. John Cleese’s plan to have shorter and better meetings from 197. Valid also in the age of AI.

8. Career: If you are unemployed, unhappy in your career path or simply looking to start the new year with a deeper look into what you do, how it intersects with your dreams, read this long post from the previous decade by Tim Urban: How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You). It’s an excellent framework with two boxes (Want & Reality). You can now use AI to help you work with it. “You are a career coach, read this article and summarise it. Next, help me…”

9. Career: A Redditor ran a survey on Reddit (n=140) and got a very biased, but interesting result that 46% of hires came from referrals (25%) and recruiters (21%). In a way, it makes sense. Companies still (as always?) struggle to hire top talent. Work your network and keep your connections warm. You never know when you might need them.

10. Timeless: Someone recommended The Blindboy Podcast. I saved it but forgot about it. Finally, I listened to a random episode and became an instant fan and a paid supporter. It’s hard to describe what it is, but I’ll try: it's packed with surprises, sometimes (funny) fiction mixed with a lot of wisdom about the state of things or Zeitgeist, often with a focus on mental health. This episode really moved me, also because it dives into transactional analysis. This podcast is almost the only thing I listen to at 1x speed. I’m a big fan, give it a try.

11. Stats: Germany had 17,604 corporate insolvencies in 2025, the highest level in 20 years and exceeding even the 2009 financial crisis. The bankruptcies affected approximately 170,000 jobs, with 62,000 in manufacturing, driven by weak economic conditions, labour shortages, and competitive pressure from China.

Berlin-related headlines

1. Possible referendums on election day: "Car-free Berlin" and "Ad-free Berlin" start signature collection (read)

2. BVG renamed tram stop to "Herzbergstr./Dong-Xuan" (read)

3. Sharp criticism of Berlin's crisis management (read)

4. Cell phone warning of "extreme danger" causes confusion across Berlin (read)

5. Suspect allegedly set fire to all cold-weather buses (read)

Briefly on business, tech and economy

1. Bad news: RTL -600, Zalando -2700 (see below).

2. GUD Berlin retained the BVG social media account worth €7.6M over 5 years.

3. Redcare Pharmacy 2025: revenue of €2.9B (+24% YoY). DACH segment €2.4B (+24.1%).
   Burgermeister 2025: +12 locations (26), 6M burgers sold, top net revenue @Warschauer Str (€4.3M). 30 (!) openings planned in 2026.
   Hypofriend 2025: +30% revenue, 500M+ in loan volume, 2500+ customers.

4. Factory Berlin plans to incubate 800 AI & tech startups in two years. Next to the Delta Campus, the most ambitious project in town?

5. Zalando will close its Erfurt logistics centre, affecting around 2.7k jobs. The closure follows the About You acquisition and supply chain reorganisation.

6. Plan A (Berlin, carbon accounting) was acquired for €55M by Diginex.

7. Two CES (Vegas, tech fair) announcements: Nvidia & Mercedes-Benz (autonomous car, 2027) and Siemens & Nvidia (several technologies).

8. Langdock (Berlin, AI platform for companies)has surpassed $15M ARR and 3000 customers.

9. GetYourGuide (Berlin, travel) is exploring a secondary share sale after turning profitable for the first time. Last valuation: $2B in 2023.

10. Meta delayed the global rollout of its Ray-Ban smart glasses with a display due to strong US demand, leaving insufficient inventory for buyers in Europe and Canada.

11. Barclays retail bank in Germany will be renamed to easybank in February.

12. Anta Sports (China, sportswear) offered to acquire a 29% stake in Puma for $3.7B.

13. Bayer filed patent infringement lawsuits against BioNTech, Pfizer and Moderna related to mRNA vaccine technology.

14. Finanzguru (Frankfurt, personal finance app) is profitable and has over 1M users.

15. Google's December 2025 Core Update (rolled out Dec 11-29) caused significant visibility changes for German websites. Major losers included ab-in-den-urlaub.de (-31%), gutefrage.net (-30%), zalando.de and otto.de (both -15%), and news sites like handelsblatt.com (-24%) and faz.net (-18%). Apotheken-umschau.de gained 61% visibility, while zeit.de grew 3%. (OMR)

16. 100 years ago, on the 6th of January 1926, “Luft Hansa” was founded in Berlin.

17. The shuttle train to the Tesla factory in Grünheide started to operate six times a day. It starts at Ostbahnhof and stops at Ostkreuz and Erkner. It’s free.

18. Deutsche Bahn sold their on-demand van service called ioki to Benteler.

19. Germany plans a law to make fast-fashion manufacturers financially responsible for clothing waste disposal.

Weekly social and outside interests

1. Reddit: In German, but here is a nice discussion about how and why the electricity network in Berlin was built the way it was built. It has to do with DDR as well.

2. Related, if you are really interested in what happened on the 3rd, Dennis Nörmann has you covered. (in German)

3. Reddit: I’ve had such a toilet for almost 8 years in Stuttgart. Truly a fascinating concept. Someone linked to Žižek’s take. Truly a fascinating man.

4. Someone was kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn. A fun read.

💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany

1. Vivanta | Berlin | Digital property management platform | €2.5M Seed | Careers.

2. CertHub | [City needed] | Medtech manufacturing compliance solutions | €6.2M | Careers.

3. United Manufacturing Hub | Cologne | Industrial data layer platform | €5M Seed | Careers.

4. Pluvion | Freiburg | AI sewer network monitoring | 1M+ Seed | No careers.

5. Mercura | Munich | AI sales inquiry automation | $2.1M Seed | Careers.

😅 Meanwhile

we had a lot of rebranding going on

Igor Ranc

Founder & Curator of Handpicked Berlin

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