which is your most German habit?
Issue #153 (16 Jun) – data and finance jobs; House of Games; growth is coming back; does VC make sense; how to attract good luck.
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Programming note #153: Excited to meet you! Come join us this Thursday for drinks and pizza at Betahaus Moritzplatz. We have now partnered up with Notion, so if you want, you’ll be able to learn about the many ways of using Notion. In any case, you will meet fellow subscribers and the team behind Handpicked Berlin & plenty of Notion ambassadors.
You don’t need to register twice. We´ll have a pizza & drinks room and Notion room.
Thanks to the sponsors of the issue, Feather and betahaus.
Email subject is a discussion in snippet #3.
🌟 Handpicked community
is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.
Meet — handpicked events:
EM Kata #12: How AI is changing the Engineering Manager role | Thu, 17/06 18:00 | Biowink
Global Mindset, Local Hustle: Product Management in Emerging Markets | Wed, 18/06 19:00 | Online (Google Meet)
4WARD Sustainability Networking Meetup | Thu, 19/06 18:30 | The Castle Berlin Mitte
see you at Building in Berlin: Zero to One in 2025 | Thu, 26/06 17:30 | The Delta Campus
Build & Lead – Privacy by Design | Thu, 26/06 18:00 | On Cloud Service
this could be your event - you can submit it here
Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
🚀 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 27,000+ audience. Let’s build.
📨 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.
3️⃣ job highlights of the week
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was: Data, Analytics & Finance.
Did you know that YOU can ALSO submit a job? It’s simple.
Feather: Insurance that fits your life
Life as an expat comes with its own set of challenges—but insurance shouldn’t be one of them.
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Adjust your coverage: Whether it’s adding kids to your policy or figuring out how much coverage you need for household contents insurance, Feather ensures your insurance evolves with your lifestyle.
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Insurance isn’t one-size-fits-all, and Feather ensures it doesn’t have to be. Because no matter where life takes you, your safety net should always be the right fit.
☕️ Coffee Talk with Peter Frank
is where my guest contributes three links and I write a short bio. Permanent collection.
Peter is currently managing Fleet, an IT equipment leasing company, for DACH and the Netherlands. After a short chat about the sleep benefits (or drawbacks?) of pitch-dark rooms, here is what he prepared for you:
Chiaia (Italian Restaurant) — Tired of dinner at SOHO or Torbar? Chiaia is the spot you're looking for. Best Italian food in town. Great service. And even better dessert. The owner (Nino) is my neighbor. He built this place up from the ground. His mom is running the kitchen. A true family business.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Found this right when we were struggling with international expansion. No Silicon Valley fantasy here - just the raw truth that most startup days suck, but you're not alone in feeling like you're failing. Hit me exactly when I needed to hear it. Essential read for any founder.
See remains of original Berlin Castle — One of my favorite Berlin secrets: while everyone visits the reconstructed Humboldt Forum, there's an actual gate from the original Prussian castle still standing. Survived WWII, became East Germany's State Council entrance, now a university. Once you know, unmistakable. See another view on this photo.
🗞 Snippets
is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
🎉 Join us this Thursday for the first meetup in 2025, powered by Notion and Betahaus. You will see a great new location, meet cool people, have pizza and drinks, and, if you wish, learn about Notion.
Learning German? Check all the articles we published (general, Netflix - ja/nein?, learning next to work)
Which German habits you didn’t ask for, but can’t live without now? I am adding “or” in English sentences way too often, or. The strongest one: stoßlüften in winter, but I owe it to my CO2 sensor too. What about you?
We’ll be getting a new gaming industry hub: House of Games, close to Wahrschauer Straße. The senate will invest €4.6M. It’ll bring together established companies, startups, technology providers, associations, and research institutions under one roof to try to become Germany's leading gaming location. The opening is planned for 2026. Nintendo probably won’t be joining, but you can.
💎 If you’d like to pick up or further develop your concert-going habit, most, if not all, concerts in Berlin.
Finally. A strong turnaround in Germany? DIW is forecasting 1.7% growth in 2026, and for the first time since March 2023, we had fewer insolvencies than a year before (-0.7% in May 2025).
Is all or most of your tech stack run by American companies? Mine too. Here are some recent unsettling developments: your e-mail account can get shut down; Meta was tracking Android users in weird ways and the dangers of menstrual cycle tracking apps monetising their users’ data (not only US exclusive). Uh.
Career: If you are struggling with tasks, procrastination and maybe even ADHD, here is a great article with a method for managing your tasks. I won’t be buying a printer, but it looks like a great method to try.
Career: What if someone told you that YC or VC is a terrible idea? Daniel Vassallo presents some anti-VC points that also make sense. Here is an old discussion on the topic that might help balance your view.
Career: A short guide on salary negotiation. Useful tips, but the most important one: come prepared and with benchmarks. Luckily, we have Salary Trends results to help you!
Timeless: You’ll need to be lucky to be able to achieve whatever you want to achieve. But the good news is that luck is learnable: the thirteen laws of good luck.
Briefly
Bad news: Engel & Völkers (luxury real-estate broker, Hamburg, but also with a presence in Berlin) again had multiple business premises searched (topic: fake self-employment).
Stats: Germany is a world champion in part-time work. 16.75M people worked part-time (average of 18.54h per week, up 0.4% to 39.8%). Full-time workers averaged 38.14h weekly.
Fintech round: Trade Republic was in the media again — this time because of the rounding problems with tax reports; N26 is reportedly raising a round on a 50% lower valuation; Vivid Money crossed 50k corporate customers after shifting its focus on B2B; they say they’re growing up to 4,5k per month; BaFin fined Solaris 500k.
Raisin (Berlin) is pushing to expand: now already in 10 markets, they will sundown their brand Weltsparen.de and go with Raisin (“Raise your interest”) everywhere.
The solar industry is getting decimated in the US. Is this an ominous sign for Germany as well? “This whole business model is predicated on this ability to raise capital, put stuff on people’s roofs and create a stream of cash flow to satisfy third-party capital providers and leave something left for the company.”
Fitting to the funding raised by Proxima Fusion: Wendelstein 7-X stellarator (Max Planck, Greifswald) set a new benchmark for reactor performance. ELI5: The experiment proves that the stellarator concept has potential.
BioNTech (Mainz) wants to acquire CureVac (Tübingen) for ~€1B.
Weekly social
Reddit: Another reminder for cyclists to be careful when locking up your bikes.
Reddit: AI detectors don’t work. And no, the em dash is not proof of ChatGPT use.
Shorts: The customer is always right.
Private offices at betahaus give founders the professional setup to grow confidently: fully equipped offices, business address, meeting rooms, premium coffee, and access to Berlin’s startup community. Focus on the product — we’ll handle the rest.
👉 Handpicked readers get 15% off private offices.
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.
Payrails | Berlin | Payment orchestration platform | $32M | Careers.
Knowunity | Berlin | AI-powered learning platform | €27M Series B | Careers.
Brandback | Berlin | Embedded resale infrastructure platform | $7.4M Seed | Careers.
Proxima Fusion | Munich | Stellarator fusion power technology | €130M | Careers.
Co-Power | Munich | Solar energy-as-a-service platform | €6.4M | No careers.
Omnisent | Munich | Acoustic data analysis hardware | $3M | Careers.
Voltfang | Aachen | EV battery home storage | €15M | Careers.
RIIICO | Düsseldorf | AI factory modeling software | $5M | No careers.
😅 Meanwhile
I also didn’t imagine so much war, pathetic
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