Good morning,
I was thinking how wild 2026 has been so far in almost every sense. It feels like a totally crazy fiction novel, but running on 2x speed without the option to slow down. I hope you are coping well.
Our Salary Trends project will easily beat the number of responses (1845) from last year, but I wish we had more women and Germans in the dataset. Please do participate and share with your colleagues. Here is a “live” insight from Sunday:
I prepared some blurbs to make it easier for you. Another shoutout to our sponsors, enabling me to run the ads for the project: Ravio, our benchmarking partner, and Factofly, our independent work partner, for supporting this year's survey.
🗞 Berlin & Germany
I have a recommendation for two things this week: after a Thai massage parlour last year ended me, I finally went to a massage again, and I can totally recommend Renacer studio. I went with Zoë, and she was fantastic. I will be back. I also had a nice dinner at Good Friends, a Chinese restaurant on Kantstraße. It felt more like a Jedermann Chinese, but I liked it. It was also mentioned in this reddit thread on genuine Chinese food.
Speaking of food, our Insider’s Dinner Club now has a website where you can put yourself on the waitlist for when we open new member slots. Our next event is on Monday, the 30th, at Humble Pie.
I was passing a preparation for a demo at Siegessäule and wondered: what’s THIS protest about? It had a long title: “Transparency, rule of law, and protection of minors—accountability in the context of possible German connections to the international Epstein complex.” And yes, there is a central repository from the police listing all the demos in town. For example, you can attend “Without JESUS no peace” each Saturday until 31.12.2027. The list is absolutely massive. I wonder which capital can compete with these numbers.
We somehow still do e-scooters in Berlin, and now the plan is that parking on sidewalks will be banned, but the completion of the station rollout is planned in the typical inefficient Berlin fashion: until 2035. At least they are looking into speeding it up. Related, a new S15 S-Bahn line connecting the district of Wedding and Hauptbahnhof will begin service at the end of March.
Berlin police logged 137,373 traffic accidents in 2025, up 4k from last year. 37 people died, nearly half of them pedestrians, and 22 of the 37 were over 65. E-scooters were involved in 1,378 crashes, almost double the number from five years ago. Stationary speed cameras caught 351,338 drivers, as many as 2023 and 2024 combined. I was expecting a bit lower tolerance, but the cameras don't trigger until you're 9 km/h over the limit, so 58km/h on 50 will still be “free”.
VivaTech released the 2nd edition of the top 100 rising startup list. 23 German companies made the cut: Black Forest Labs, askJio, Langdock, n8n, Parloa, Synthflow AI, HOLY, LAP Coffee, ARX Robotics, Helsing, Quantum Systems, Dash0, Reonic, Midas, Taktile, Voize, simpleclub, CarOnSale, NEURA Robotics, Arbio, Isar Aerospace, The Exploration Company, and Makersite. Links to their career pages in our Thursday edition. The criteria are a minimum of €5M ARR and 40% annual growth over the past 3 years, and, a bit arbitrary, demonstrate “an innovation capable of transforming their respective industry.”
I’ve always wondered what the cap tables look like at an average startup, and this chart from Carta gives a great insight. Raising millions sounds impressive, but it really can be dilutive.
Stats: German corporate insolvencies hit 24,064 in 2025 (+10.3% YoY), the highest since 2014. This follows steep rises in 2023 and 2024 (each 22%+). For reference, the 2009 financial crisis peaked at 32,687. [more]
Berlin-related headlines
Senate wants to allow outdoor dining until midnight [read]
Two years of legal cannabis: Berlin police see surprising results [read] (a bit click-baity, sorry!)
Several demonstrations in Berlin - police accompany assemblies with large deployment [read]
Billionaires from Berlin and Brandenburg on the Forbes list [read]
Senate: Skilled workforce strategy 2035 [read]
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🌿 Worth your time
I always find it interesting to read lists like 52 things Kent Hendricks learned in 2025. For example, “in 2011, because of declining birthrates and demographic shifts, adult diaper sales surpassed baby diaper sales in Japan.” and “Iceland has such a low homicide rate and so many crime writers that part of the job of its only forensic pathologist, Pétur Guðmannsson, includes hosting writing seminars.”
There is usually an underlying issue in most interpersonal drama, because we don’t directly call out what’s actually going on. This is a good text by Cate Hall, “Are you stuck in movie logic?”
📌 Briefly
Meta acqu(h)ired Moltbook, the “social” network of agents.
Deutsche Bahn expects a €2.3B loss for 2025 (vs €1.8B YoY). [more]
N26 (Berlin, fintech): posted €42M loss for 2024 (vs €102.4M in 2023). [more]
Delivery Hero’s CEO Östberg is reportedly under pressure to resign from the largest investor, Aspex Management. They demand strategic changes. [more]
Zalando (Berlin, e-commerce): 2025 revenue up 17% to €12.3B, profit €591M, 62M customers, targeting €25 GMV by 2028 (now €17.6B). [more]
Femtasy (Berlin, streaming platform) is 321. on the FT1000 Europe’s fastest growing companies. Their 2024 revenue was €8M (35 employees).
Cem Özdemir will likely become the first Germany’s state premier (Baden-Württemberg) with migrant roots. Greens (-2.4%) beat CDU (+5.6%), AfD third (+9.1%).
BioNTech (Mainz, pharma) founders Şahin and Türeci are leaving by year-end. There’s acquisition speculation. [more]
The defence industry is booming! Rheinmetall (Düsseldorf): record 2025 revenue up 29% to ~€10B, 2026 outlook up to €14.5B, order backlog expected to double to €135B. [more]
Related, Germany overtook China as the world's 4th-largest arms exporter. [more]
Microsoft is investing €3.2B in data centres in the Rhineland and Hesse. [more]
Edeka is acquiring ~200 Tegut (none in Berlin) stores after Migros exited Germany. [more]
GEMA (collecting society) is suing AI music generator Suno, which creates songs closely mimicking artists like Helene Fischer, demanding 30% of revenues for rights holders. [more]
Revolut (London, fintech) received a full UK banking license and plans to expand into the US. [more]
This week's Coffee Talk: Jesko zu Dohna
Jesko is a journalist and a food newsletterist. The full conversation, jobs, events & what the community is up to, every Thursday. Free.
😅 Meanwhile
we are in the same boat
Weekly social and outside interests
Reddit: What’s the magic word? C-H-I-C-K-E-N
elsewhere: The experiment has limits (the texts are way too short), but it was interesting to do this NYT quiz about “Who is a better writer, AI or humans?”. I preferred AI 3x. 👀
elsewhere: A great video on the history of cocaine use in Germany, where a reporter joins a group of regular users. The mentality of the group is sad to see. (in German)
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