who wants free potatoes?
Issue #182 (19 Jan) - new Coffee Talk variation; voting in 2026; AI filter for candidates; no-phone excursions and update from All About Berlin.
Guten Morgen,
Thank you so much for all your great feedback. Changes are coming: unless something goes terribly wrong this week, this is the last newsletter with the old design. We will also be moving the platform, which unfortunately means a new email address because my new provider needs to warm my domain up. Your RSS feed won’t work anymore. See you on the other side!
While you wait... I got you a special deal: 6 months of Accountable for free! A couple of my friends use it and they love it. Especially great if you can’t find a Steuerberater (they somehow all disappeared!).
🌟 Handpicked community
Meet — 5 handpicked events:
Spotlight: Hijack hautnah – Season 2 (Q&A and behind the scenes with German cast of the series) | Tue, 20/01 18:30 | Apple Rosenthaler Straße
Improv Comedy with Naked Flamingos | Sat, 07/02 19:30 | ImprovWorks - near Warschauer Str
Should You Really Become A People Manager? (90MINFREE for first 10) | Wed, 28/01 18:30 | Mindspace Skalitzerstr.
FutureTalk: Female Leadership | Wed, 28/01 18:30 | BETTERTRUST Showroom
{Tech: Europe} Berlin AI hackathon | Sat, 24/01 10:00 - Sun, 25/01 18:00 | The Delta Campus
This could be your event! Advertise it.
Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
Uvaise is building move90.com, an AI platform for physiotherapists to create personalised rehab and training plans. He’s looking for a co-founder (regulatory/insurance/tech) and practitioners to beta test.
Irina is researching employee satisfaction in tech companies. What makes people stay? What makes them leave? Help her by sharing your experience in this short survey. Results will be published in Q2. Also in this newsletter.
Something interesting to share? Go for it.
👀 Handpicked jobs
🚨 In 10 years, healthcare will be unrecognizably transformed, and you can help shape the change at mama health. They are building state-of-the-art AI products: a B2C patient app plus a B2B platform. They are currently raising Series A and hiring exceptional people who want ownership, steep learning curves, and real-world impact. My good friend works there and loves it! Check their open roles.
Here we are highlighting two (AD):
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was on Data, Finance and Analytics.
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☕️ Coffee Talk will be back next week
In the meantime, have a look at my new format on Instagram: I call it One Question. I really liked Isabelle talking about how much sense learning German makes, Maurice suggesting 5 spots, and Marton talking about why we don’t have so many great tech companies. You can find the rest on my profile.
🗞 Snippets
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
This is rare, but I want to warmly recommend two of my good friends looking for new roles: Isabelle for something in creative/social strategy roles at brands or agencies, and Anna for a growth or paid media lead in tech/e-commerce companies. Do approach them if you are hiring, you won’t regret it.
Finally, someone is doing it! You will be able to work on projects, small gigs, hobbies, and legally get paid, without having your own company or freelance status. Which is great for everyone, also for me, since I will be able to expand the number of people I work with. I wish I had that when I started this project. It will be limited access, so sign up for a waitlist at Factofly. They have been running this concept in Denmark since 2018.
The 146-meter office tower "The Berlinian" at Alexanderplatz celebrated its topping-out ceremony last week. It was first developed by insolvent Signa (called “Mynd”). It will have no apartments on the 40.000m2 of retail and office space. Planned opening is in May 2027.
Photo from Kleihues + Kleihues architects. We will be having elections this year in September, and everyone with an EU passport can vote as well, but only on municipal level. You need to be registered in Berlin before 20th of June and be older than 16. This is good because it means you will be able to influence the politics in your neighbourhood. Latest polling results have CDU 22%, Linke 18%, AfD 17%, Greens 16% and SPD at 14%.
Housing will be a big topic, because Berlin is short around 56,000 apartments and needs to build 16,300 new units annually until 2030 to close the gap. The city has one of Germany's highest rents (€8/sqm average in 2022), and researchers warn this is becoming a problem for attracting new workers—similar to what Munich experienced 20 years ago.
The crop of potatoes was so good last year that 4000 tons of potatoes are being given away for free (see also headlines below). You can also get some at the distribution points. Their next shipment will come between 20. and 23.1. Details here (check the pins on the map).
I went to Jolesch this week, and the Schnitzel was great. The restaurant is also very cosy. Recommended.
Wikipedia turned 25 years old, and is seeing a significant drop in traffic (-9%) since LLMs came on the scene. It is actually an unbelievable project worth supporting with donations each year. Imagine I pitch this to you: “Let’s do an online encyclopedia where volunteers will write the articles for free.” Would you say “sure, sounds very doable” or “never ever”?
Career: Wanna filter out candidates mindlessly using AI? Use this, or develop similar ideas. I think it could be a good business case for anti-AI captcha. I know another great one: pen and paper.
Career: A good idea on how to land a job in VC, if you really want it (pitching company ideas every other day). I heard of similar cases (eg, football analysts or coaches), so it definitely works. When I was looking for a co-founder for one of my projects, there was this student who pitched me his strategy, and I would definitely work with him if I could pay him.
Related, a concrete pitch could be a good strategy for a cover letter / cold pitch as well: for example, include your vision of the first 100 days. Or, if you are a product manager, prepare a clear roadmap for their product. This level of effort, of course, applies to dream jobs only? I am not sure. To brainstorm and get ideas, use AI.
Career: Speaking of AI, here is a great essay about how friction was a feature of reviews, applications, and cold outreach. It seems like we are faster with AI, but it actually costs more time: “We are writing and reading more than ever, but we aren’t necessarily moving faster. Every choice is instead wrapped in a thicker layer of prose: longer emails, longer proposals, more “option-exploring” documents.”
Timeless: The Unbearable Joy of Sitting Alone in A Café is also hitting hard on the “offline” trend. It’s been a while since I sports without my smartphone. But now I started to leave it at home for my daily walks, and it’s great.
Stats: Germany narrowly avoided a third consecutive recession with 0.2% GDP growth in 2025, following contractions of -0.9% (2023) and -0.5% (2024).
An update from our friends at All About Berlin
Nico updated all guides and tools on his excellent website. Here are some of the changes in 2026:
💺 More expensive public transit: €63 Deutschland Ticket, €4 AB ticket, €5 ABC ticket
🍽️ VAT in cafés and restaurants reduced to 7%
💶 Higher minimum wage raised to €13.90 per hour
🩹 More expensive health insurance. Use the health insurance calculator to see the new prices, and ask an expert if switching to another insurance makes sense. If your health insurance got more expensive, you have until the end of January to switch to another insurer.
👷♀️ Higher minimum salary for Blue Cards raised to €50,700
👨💻 Higher income requirement for freelance visas and student visas.
He has just finished a map of Berlin median rents, and is working on a guide about lowering your rent. He posts monthly updates in his newsletter.
Berlin-related headlines
22 tons of potatoes donated to Berlin Tafel (read)
Price jumps and partly empty shelves: Why eggs are becoming scarce in many supermarkets (read, €)
Citizens' initiative submits 28,000 signatures in favour of Olympics to the state parliament (read)
Berlin school to be named after Margot Friedländer (read)
"Sondervermögen" is the non-word of the year 2025 (read)
Briefly on business, tech and economy
Bad news: Aleph Alpha -50 (17%), Andrulis leaving.
35% of German self-employed expect their business situation to worsen in 2026, compared to 26% in the overall economy. 14% think it will be better. (ifo)
Germany's gas storage levels are at a record low (less than 45%) for this time of year despite stable prices.
LangFuse (Berlin, an AI observability platform) joined (was acquired by) ClickHouse.
Flix (Berlin) acquired a majority stake in Flibco, an airport shuttle service provider.
GetYourGuide (Berlin) is preparing (€) for a potential 2026 IPO, with a billion-dollar deal coming first.
Almedia (Berlin, adtech) opened an office in Beijing.
A very bleak speculation that Tesla’s Grünheide factory days might be numbered.
Elevenlabs (voice agents) announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom to bring ElevenLabs' AI voice agents to the customer service operation.
EGYM (Munich, fitness tech) merged with US wellness holding Playlist (which includes Mindbody, Booker and ClassPass) at a $7.5B valuation.
Zalando was fined ~€7.3M by the Polish consumer protection agency for misleading strikethrough pricing. Not yet final.
Lufthansa will equip its fleet of around 850 aircraft with Starlink internet starting in the second half of 2026.
Helsing (Munich, defence AI) faced significant criticism from Ukrainian frontline soldiers over early drone models.
Blackstone (US-investor) plans a billion-dollar investment in a data centre in Lippetal, Westphalia.
Germany's games industry has nearly doubled from 524 companies in 2018 to 948 in 2024, with annual revenue up 22% to €3.73B. It’s mostly driven by smaller studios.
Bosch's profit margin dropped to below 2% in 2025 (from 3.5% in 2024), partly due to restructuring costs. Revenue was €91B (vs €90B in 2024), but excluding the Johnson Controls-Hitachi acquisition (+€4B), sales actually declined.
AWS officially launched the "AWS European Sovereign Cloud" in Potsdam last week. It has some critics.
Weekly social and outside interests
Reddit: people discussed club bouncers and 1-star reviews, and how quickly the train can stop, and what to do if there is a person on the tracks.
Reddit: the best croissants in Berlin?
A great tool. Draw on the map and share. I drew something for you, but then the link was 500 characters.
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
A new unicorn! Congrats to Osapiens.
Parloa | Berlin | AI agents for customer service | $350M Series D | Careers.
Theion | Berlin | Crystal-sulfur battery technology | $16.4M Series A | Careers.
NetBird | Berlin | Open-source secure remote network access | €8.5M Series A | Careers.
PangeAI | Berlin | AI satellite data analysis platform | $1M Pre-seed | Careers.
smatch | Hamburg | B2B fashion overstock marketplace | €7.3M Seed | Careers.
osapiens | Mannheim | Sustainability software platform | $100M Series C | Careers.
Holidu | Munich | Holiday property rental platform | €35M debt | Careers.
Focused Energy | San Francisco/Darmstadt | Laser fusion power plant | €20M | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
these are the times we live in
Igor Ranc
Founder & Curator of Handpicked Berlin
