How is to work at ... <insert company>?
Issue #112 (05 Aug) – 20 Business and Strategy jobs; an ultimate guide to football in Berlin; Coffee with Sara; (food) events in August; 100 years of S-Bahn; Why doesn't advice work; Talahon trend?
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Programming note: This break felt good and productive, but it also means we have a big backlog of topics to process. I’d like to involve you again. I am looking for the five most interesting questions related to “How is it to work at a company…” Imagine you can ask someone five questions: Which ones do you choose?
Participate here — 3 minutes of your time for endless gratitude from me.
We wrote an ultimate guide to football in Berlin as a collab article with Nik and Davyd. It’s a great resource on how to get involved, where to watch and similar. If you are also into a topic that could be interesting for Handpicked Berlin, please let me know.
🥇 Congrats to Mihaela and Leo on winning the testimonial raffle. The reel is on Instagram. And a shout to Kai for initiating tiny newsletter structure improvements over Manti. Can you find them?
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
📨 Submit your input here. Inspiration for all the categories on the link.
🎪 Meet — tech & other events:
Laika & Außergewöhnlich Berlin Summer Bash 2024 | Thu, 8.8 at 17.00 | Kunsthof Berlin
AI in Production: AICamp Edition | Mon, 12.8 at 18.00 | Ampere Garden
The Founder's Story incl. Book Release Party | Tue, 20.8 at 17.30 | Google
😎 Show — Cool stuff / Shoutouts / Projects & similar:
Moritz is renting out a creative space at Schlesische Straße! 50 sqm ground-floor studio/office in the third courtyard features a kitchen hookup, bathroom with shower, tiled floor, and large door windows that fully open. Negotiable rent at €1200/month. E-mail (m.matakas@posteo.de) for pics/visit.
🔍 Ask — for a Service / Co-founder / Project help & similar:
Founders: Participate in German Startup Monitor 2024 powered by Startup Verband.
Looking for the submission link? It’s below the title ⤴️
👀 Handpicked jobs
is a rotating selection of around 20 jobs from companies I’d check out.
5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Business & Strategy
The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.
✨ Handpicked Deals
is where you find good stuff. Your purchase will help sustain this project.
Learn German at SmarterGerman—HANDPICKED11 for 11% discount.
Practice German with other students at Deutschgym.
The article that goes with it: How to learn German and get over “Genau” and “mit Karte, bitte”?
🗞 Top inspiration snippets
☕️ Coffee with Sara Chahrrour
is where my guest contributes three links and an explanation while I write a short bio.
Sara moved to Berlin over 15 years ago and has since worked in several startups and even runs her own creator marketing agency. I’ve only met her via her excellent Media Diet newsletter about movies, documentaries and TV shows. Here is what she has for you:
Search Engine (podcast) - My favourite podcast by PJ Vogt, former co-host of “Reply All.” It’s a spiritual successor, tackling questions you’d normally ask a search engine (if they still gave valuable answers). A recent episode about getting into Berghain was fascinating, even for those familiar with its notorious dark room.
Spelling Bee (game) - After removing Instagram and Reddit from my phone (and yes, life got significantly better), I needed a new addiction. With Spelling Bee, I can at least pretend my procrastination is cognitively valuable. Every morning I wake up and play my games, and throughout the day, the words that I missed earlier will suddenly appear. One time I woke up at night to solve the last word. Very satisfying!
Cooking class at Dr & Dr - A few weeks ago, I took a cooking class at Dr & Dr, a Persian cooking studio near my house. I have an unhealthy obsession with Iranian culture, especially the food. It was a fun experience, although decidedly a beginner’s class. The host twin sisters also recently released a cookbook.
🇩🇪 Berlin & other good stuff
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
Imagine you can ask someone five questions about the company you are interested in. Which five do you choose? Three minute & six clicks.
Where can you play, watch, and get involved in football in Berlin? A list of pubs, clubs, tours, possible day trips, and more!
It’s August! Here are a few food events this month (careful with food ‘festivals’) and the best events according to TipBerlin. Both articles in German.
Berlin S-Bahn is celebrating 100 years (also with a festival, see previous link). I really enjoyed this photo gallery by RBB with fascinating historical facts (🇩🇪)—trains were very political when the wall was still up. Übrigens, in 2023, an estimated 473M passengers used the 340km of S-Bahn tracks (out of which 257km are in Berlin). Fitting—a Berlin Calling reminder from 14 years ago.
Related: E-scooter accidents in Germany increased in 2023, with injuries up 14% to 9,425 and deaths doubling to 22 (!), primarily due to improper road use and alcohol. The overall share of accidents remains low but is slowly rising, but the stats don’t include accidents caused by carelessly parked e-scooters. Federal Ministry of Transport drafted new rules, for example making indicators mandatory.
July in Berlin was the warmest in Germany, with an average of 19,9°C, which is +1,6 above the 1961-1990 average. We had 256 hours of sun. (DWD) Earlier this month, Copernicus, EU climate service, reported that “The global temperature in June was record warm for the 13th straight month and it marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial times.” Well.
Career: r/berlin had a good debate on the current squeeze in tech. My two cents: It’ll never be the same again—we’ve covered the topic several times in past issues. Now is the time for old, boring, green/health tech, utilities, and recently funded companies.
Career: Have you ever given advice, but it didn’t work? Here is why by Dynomight. It’s either misunderstandings, lack of context, willpower limitations or recipients’ refusal to change.
Career: The number of unemployed in Germany increased by 7.3% year over year. Berlin's unemployment rate is 9.6% (second largest after Bremen), above the national average of 6.0%. More charts at FAZ. (🇩🇪)
Timeless: We need to rethink exercise by Kurzgesagt. And I realised it’s true: My body is really trying to optimise—after I started to do more sports, I noticed I started taking more escalators/elevators and riding Nextbike more than before.
📱 Weekly Social.
Reddit: “I used to hate Berlin but I fall in love with it finally”. I fell in love with it again on the 30th of July 2022, opening a beer at Tempelhof.
Twitter: An oldie but goldie, Obama vs Trump. “They did a lot of shooting, and they did a lot of blasting”. “Knock, knock, may I come in?”
Instagram: Talahon trend explained (🇩🇪). Wild!
Elsewhere: Club Mate, the lost history of Germany’s Trendiest Soda is a great explainer of the most hipster drink ever.
💬 Briefly.
😔 Bad news: 17 of 37 Postbank branches will be closed in Berlin.
Stats: Ifo-Institute expects that the number of newly built apartments in Germany could fall to just 175k in 2026, which would be over 40% less than the almost 300k apartments in 2022. The trend is similar in almost the whole EU. (Details, 🇩🇪)
Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office has processed most of the 4,844 cases against the climate group Letzte Generation in the last two years. There have been 427 convictions, mainly fines (412).
The automotive industry is struggling. Last week, VW, BMW and Mercedes reported a drop in combined operating profit by 18% YoY (€31.6B to €25.9B) which means they will need to run more efficiently in the future. You guessed it, layoffs. (MM & HB)
Sennder (Berlin, logistics) acquired the EU business of the US-based C.H. Robinson.
EU is investigating Delivery Hero for suspected price fixing anti-trust violations with Glovo, focusing on times before the 2022 acquisition (potential fine is €400M+). Meanwhile, they merged teams of Foodora, Yemeksepeti, and Foodpanda to boost European and Asian markets. (onlinemarktplatz)
ProSiebenSat.1 is still selling its online businesses Verivox and Flaconi.
Ex-Bundesbank board member Joachim Wuermling joined the Trade Republic supervisory board. Good for the regulatory compliance positions in TR.
💸 Recently funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
MYNE | Berlin | Co-ownership for premium vacation homes | €40M Series A | Careers.
Checkly | Berlin | Developer monitoring platform | $20M | Careers.
Bunch | Berlin | FinTech platform for private funds | €14.2M Series A | Careers.
TRAIT | Berlin | AI-based running training platform | €1M Seed | Careers.
Meisterwerk | Berlin | Digital solutions for craftsmen | €6M Series A | Careers.
Amperecloud | Berlin | Operating system for renewable energy | €3.3M | Careers.
topi | Berlin | Hardware-as-a-Service payment platform | €50M Credit Financing | Careers.
deepc | Munich | AI operating system for radiologists | $13M Series A | Careers.
DYNO | Offenburg | Pension process optimization software | €2.5M Pre-Seed | Careers.
mogenius | Cologne | Cloud-native software operations platform | €2.5M Seed | Careers.
Protembis | Aachen | Medical device for stroke prevention | €20M Venture Debt | No careers.
Marcley | Hannover | Solar solutions for multi-family houses | €5M | Careers.
osapiens | Mannheim | Supply chain transparency solutions | $120M Growth Equity | Careers.
Lignopure | Hamburg | Plastic alternative from lignin | €2.4M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
at the Olympics, one of the hundreds of memes this week
✌️ Handpicked essentials and a treat:
- ❓Surprise treat for the curious?
- Sponsor Handpicked?
✨ Berlin Events Weekly: the best resource for events in Berlin ✨
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How did you like it? Regular readers, did you notice the changes? Comment or like ⤵️