would tolls make sense in Berlin?
Issue #164 (08 Sep) – dinner club registrations open; Coffee with Simon; saint sass breakdown; 222 litres of rain; hiring the best engineers and working with ADHD.
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Programming note #164: I am sorry, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we’ve had to postpone the LAP Coffee session at Apple and will reschedule soon. More details will follow.
In event realm news, we sold out our first Insider’s Dinner club event in 3 min. We decided to open the list up for new members for a couple of days. You can sign up here.
For the startups raising, the dry powder overview from Capvisory is back.
Thanks to today’s sponsors, A11 (say hi at the event!) and Vanta.
The email subject is a dream from Snippet #5.
🌟 Handpicked community
Meet — 5 handpicked events:
Accelerating AI: Navigating the Pace of Innovation | Tue, 09/09 17:30 | Earlybird VC Berlin
xG-Afterwork — Your Gateway to Berlin’s Telecommunications Community | Thu, 18/09 17:00 | Lanolinfabrik
Winning in the US - A fireside chat & BBQ with Index Ventures and Taktile | Thu, 18/09 18:00 | Merantix AI Campus Berlin
Product Meets Compliance: Building HealthTech Products that Thrive | Thu, 25/09 18:00 | Doctolib
Join Co-Founder Matching! Experience one of Europe’s most thoughtfully designed, data-driven co-founder matching experiences, organized by SIBB and TribeSquare | Wed, 01/10 16.00 | Le Wagon
This could be your event! Advertise it.
Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
Andreea from Talent Crunch, one of the best HR communities in town, is inviting you to join her career masterclass. It's for everyone feeling stuck, considering a pivot or unsure how to position themselves. Handpicked readers get 15% off. You can join the waitlist or read more.
If you are active in energy & climate tech, you can apply for SET Award.
Did you know you can challenge your sub-let rental agreement? You can join this webinar to find out more.
Swapfest is back! “Join us in Kreuzberg for a special third Berlin Swapfest—a dedicated flea market for electronics, music/computer equipment, and tools.” Sat, 28/09 12.00 | c-base
📨 Submit your input for the community here.
👀 Handpicked jobs
3️⃣ job highlights of the week
The remaining jobs are on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was on Sales, Customer Success and Ops.
One Evening. One Room. All the Right People.
Four sharp sessions on AI, Commercial, Tech, and People & Leadership.
1,000+ founders, builders, and operators in one room.
One legendary afterparty with Sachsentrance.
☕️ Coffee Talk with Simon Bowen
Simon is a good friend and an entrepreneur with a successful exit. He's returning to his coaching practice now, and I tested it - he helped make progress in every area of my thinking and business. A warm recommendation if you are looking for someone to push you to the next level! Here is what he prepared for you:
Alter Luisenstädtischer Friedhof — Berlin has many great cemeteries and this is probably my favourite of all, just off Bergmannstraße. Walk through to the south side, which is an oasis of peace and quiet. You can sit undisturbed for hours - hopefully without any podcasters asking to interview you.
Strangers on a Bench (podcast) — It's such a simple idea, but brilliant - host Tom Rosenthal seeks out someone sitting alone on a bench and asks them if they're open for a chat. It’s often deeply touching how quickly most people open up about their lives. We humans aren't so bad after all.
Barcomi's Kreuzberg — A short walk from my favourite Berlin cemetery (see above), they bake IMHO the world's most delicious cakes. Expect to not need another meal for the rest of the day, which kind of makes them healthy, I suppose.
🗞 Snippets
Berlin & Germany, career & timeless
I did the first company breakdown, saint sass. Do you have any feedback on the format? Send it to me here, on LinkedIn or on Reddit.
🚨 This Thursday at 11.00, warning sirens will be tested all around Berlin for the first time in 30 years.
We are almost 3.9M in Berlin. Out of this, 24.9% are foreigners and 16.9% are German with a migration background. Their share grew because of faster naturalisation (from 16.2% at the end of 2024). For the first time in years, the number of foreigners dropped (-836).
You can check the details in the dashboard. Let me equip you for your next conversation about how shitty summer we had this year: Berlin got 222 litres of rain per square meter (20% more than average), with July being particularly soggy after five exceptionally dry months. But! There were also more sunshine hours than usual (715 vs. 664 average) and temperatures 1.4 degrees above the long-term average.
We're gonna be talking about A100 Autobahn for at least a couple of years, so I am just throwing in the bone of congestion pricing (again). Maybe some politician will run with it next year? So, dear politician, here is a collection of arguments in favor. It works beautifully. (You can skip all the other sections, and yes, I know there are a thousand BUTs, but one can dream.)
How good is the new government for startups? Verena Pausder, chairwoman of Startup Verband, harshly criticised the lack of progress. Three ministries are still fighting over who is in charge of startups, which has stalled the progress on key initiatives like the expansion of the WIN investment programme from €12B to €25B. Founders don’t mind: the number of new startups is +9% YoY.
I am a big fan of public drinking fountains, so I was happy to see this brilliant video explainer by RBB.
Career: A lot of readers suffer from different forms of ADHD. Here are notes on managing ADHD. I found the tactics section particularly useful, also for everyone else.
Career: A lot of startups in Berlin talk about hiring the best engineers. But the thing is, the best engineers probably don’t care about your grinding mindset but about compensation (and they probably don’t want to come to the office). Here is an interesting perspective from a recruiter worth keeping in mind.
Career: There’s a serious lack of teachers. Have you ever considered Quereinstieg to become one? For this school year, there were 580 applications, resulting in 184 new teachers. More information on the process is available here.
Timeless: Yes, yes and yes. Put your phone down and embrace boredom. I am trying it and it does work wonders. A 5-minute clip you need to see.
ISO 27001, simplified for startups
ISO 27001 is powerful—but it’s not exactly startup-friendly. This checklist breaks it into clear, doable steps your small team can tackle without burning weeks. No filler—just the essentials to help you move fast and build with confidence.
Briefly
Bad news: A100 extension seems like the worst news of the summer.
Stats: Berlin leads all German states in public employment density with nearly 5,600 full-time equivalent employees per 100,000 residents in 2023. Bremen and Hamburg, the other city-states, rank second and third. (just below 5k)
Tesla will establish a European development center at the former Kabelwerk Köpenick, starting with 130 employees.
Recoupling (Berlin, mental health care) acquired Toghether (ibid.).
Short AI roundup: Anthropic raises $13B Series F at $183B valuation. Compare to the cheap French Mistral, reportedly raising $2.4B at $14B valuation. Anthropic also agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle author class action. Btw, if you use Claude, you need to opt out of your data being used for training. Also, don’t believe what Google AI search results show.
Great week for early Revolut employees. They were able to sell their shares in a secondary share sale at a $75B valuation.
Delivery Hero Q2: revenue +27% (€3.7B), first-ever positive EBIT €5M in H1. Also raised guidance for FY 2025.
GetYourGuide had a great, record-breaking summer. The hottest day was the 3rd of August, when they crossed 100 bookings per minute for the first time.
Everphone (Berlin, phone as a service) was profitable in 2024 (€0.6M EBIT with €96M of revenue).
felmo and Rex (veterinary services) are getting competition from Munich. Filu is expanding to Berlin.
Libra (Berlin, legal tech) reached €2M ARR in less than 12 months with 11 employees (based on the photo).
Porsche will drop out of DAX after dismal stock price performance (from €120 to €45). They recently shelved plans to produce their own batteries. On the other side, Deutsche Bank & Siemens Energy will be included in the Euro Stoxx 50 index.
Weekly social
Reddit: Never trust strangers shuffling cards. I love his deadpan delivery.
Reddit: If you are new in town/Germany… How do you find good restaurants in Berlin? Definitely not with Google.
Twitter: Videos like this is why the internet was invented. I admire the discipline of the two dogs.
How do LLMS work is the best visual representation I have seen so far, but you need to check it on your desktop.
💰 Raising in Q4? Fresh capital for founders
August highlights powered by Capvisory – a Berlin-based fundraising and M&A advisory boutique.
Each month, we spotlight new VC funds now actively deploying capital, especially in Berlin, Europe, or founder-favourite sectors (SaaS, AI, climate, B2B, etc.):
SIVentures | Germany | re-seed and seed B2B SaaS, AI applications, software infrastructure, and energy in DACH | $30M
Lakestar | Switzerland| Continuation vehicle backing select Lakestar portfolio companies | $265M
Cambridge Innovation Capital | UK | Invests in University of Cambridge spinouts in deep tech and life sciences | $115M
Delphinus Venture Capital | Denmark | Evergreen fund backing Danish research-driven/deep tech startups from pre-seed to scale-up | $93M
Norrsken Evolve | Sweden | Resilience tech across energy, industry, logistics, construction, food, healthcare, security, and climate | $66.61M (1st close)
Full fund tracker (38x VC, 21x PE) and dry powder analysis: capvisory.de
💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany
Aiomics | Berlin | AI platform for medical documentation | €2M Pre-Seed | Careers.
SQUAKE | Berlin | Hospitality and logistics solutions | €3.5M | Careers.
Onsai | Berlin | Hotel guest communication AI | €1M Seed | Careers.
IQM Quantum Computers | Munich | Quantum computing hardware manufacturer | $320M Series B | Careers.
Fernride | Munich | Autonomous logistics platform | €75M Series A | Careers.
Tangany | Munich | Digital asset custody provider | €10M | Careers.
Hyperdrives | Munich | Efficient electric drive systems | €3M | Careers.
TrustNXT | Hamburg | Photo/video manipulation protection | €1.6M | No careers.
😅 Meanwhile
Germany isn’t that bad, is it?
Igor Ranc
Founder & Curator of Handpicked Berlin
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How to learn German? Be better than “Genau” and “Mit Karte, Bitte!”
Football in Berlin: where to play, watch and how to get involved?
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