Hello everyone,
I have big plans with this newsletter and the business around it, and I am constantly bumping into the same problem: not having enough time. But.
Two important things happened last week: Ronald started to work with me (he is a lifeguard, saving people from drowning, which somehow made me think…), and I had a good chat with a dear friend which helped me to think about focus a bit more.
Come to the Everyday AI Club for Product Designers on Tuesday, the 7th of July.
📌 Pinned
At the moment, only 25.4% of Berliners own a car (these numbers exclude commercial vehicles). Car ownership is particularly low in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (16.8%) and Mitte (17.9%). The number of newly registered cars in Berlin is also declining, even as the population is growing. Greens are already talking that the “times of the cars are over”. Standing in a stau yesterday didn’t really confirm it.
RBB’s article on the same topic without the paywall.
Mobility-related, CDU is bringing back ideas about introducing a closed system to U-Bahn, first testing it on U5, U7 and U8, and then expanding it to all the lines. They claim this would improve cleanliness, safety and efficiency. It would also enable a new method of paying per distance travelled (tap-in and tap-out). It’s probably not going to happen due to severe opposition.
What's the biggest problem with the U-Bahn?
🗞 Berlin & Germany
We are doing our second Everyday AI Club. You are most welcome if you are a Product/UX Designer. It will be fun, because we improved the concept and will have great guests, snacks and lots of inspiration. Full speaker lineup will be announced this week.
If you are looking for an authentic Indian street food place, try Agni. I tested it this week with my Indian friend, and yes, it’s excellent (the bread was something special and the curry was fantastic!). According to him, Patakha (previously already featured in Rajiv's Coffee talk) is what a fancier restaurant in India would do. Looking forward to trying that!
For football fans, a selection of 11 public viewings by Mit Vergnügen and the official list on the Berlin website.
Our friends at Impact Hub and Workish have special offers. Impact Hub has introduced a Part-Time membership built for social impact innovators who want to plug into a community but only need a desk a few days a month — four, to be exact, for €95 + VAT. Code PICKIMPACT20 takes 20% off.
Workish is running a first-month-free offer on its private offices. The setup pairs a quiet room for when you need to focus with a creative community, maker space, and backyard for when you don't. The offer ends Aug 31.A governance win? Berlin is supposedly getting a housing register where landlords would need to submit details on every rental unit they hold. This would, in turn, enable easier discovery of predatory rents. They'd have one year to file, with fines up to €100k for non-compliance or false entries. But again, these are only plans — and the registry was first planned in 2021. The landlords' association is already promising a court fight on the grounds that it's unlawful. The coalition is planning to pass it on the 2nd of July, which would make Berlin the first German state with plans for such a registry.
A governance win with a delay? A Tagesspiegel investigation alleges politicians bent their own rules to get €1.38M in public money to the Nova exhibition, a memorial to the Hamas festival attack, opened by Wegner last October. When officials moved to cut the grant days before the premiere, then-culture senator Wedl-Wilson stepped in to save it by reclassifying the ticket revenue. Berlin's audit office has since called the grant "evidently unlawful," and Wedl-Wilson, already dismissed, could face personal liability.
For the chess players amongst you who enjoy a game live: Lucas made a website and an app which lets you find places where you can play in real life.
Stats: For the first time, more than half of all payment transactions in Germany are cashless. [more]
Berlin-related headlines
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🌿 Worth your time
We live in the times of dopamine fracking. And we need to fight against it. "Tasty? Maybe. But it's not a strawberry anymore. It's just a chemical that kind of tastes like a strawberry. Soon enough, you forget what one actually tastes like. Or worse, you prefer the chemicals. Or even worse, you can't even find real strawberries anymore because the market is flooded with synthetic replacements."
Three ways to get paid. Worth a bookmark. And it’s very simple:
⏱️ Briefly
Outside interests #2: Google Chrome's next update will mark the end of popular ad blockers. [more] Since I am at Firefox I never looked back!
Outside interests #3: Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin (formerly known as Intercom, also present in Berlin). [more]
Outside interests #4: The EU Commission is expected to classify AWS and Microsoft Azure as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act, subjecting them to stricter regulation. Final decision expected by year-end. [more]
Outside interests #5: The "Stop Killing Games" campaign failed to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures. [more]
Outside interests #6: Pleo (Copenhagen, fintech) cut around 50 jobs across product, engineering, design and data; the company eliminated 100 positions last year.
Auto1 (Berlin, used car marketplace) signalled strong growth ambitions. [more]
n8n (Berlin, workflow automation) targets a 200-person UK team by 2029 as part of its international expansion. [more]
DeepL (Cologne, translation software) acquired US audio startup Mixhalo to expand into real-time audio translation. [more]
Moderna (US, pharma) is considering acquiring German production facilities that BioNTech plans to close, contingent on a federal partnership and more reliable regulation. [more]
The federal government rejected UniCredit's takeover bid for Commerzbank (Frankfurt, banking), calling it financially unattractive. Berlin holds almost 13% as the second-largest shareholder. [more]
Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt, banking) reported AI is compressing former 2-year IT projects into 3–6 months and clearing month-long backlogs in weeks. [more]
Douglas (Düsseldorf, beauty retail) cut its annual guidance for the second time to €4.58–4.63B (from €4.65–4.80B). The stock dropped to a record low. [more]
Siemens Energy (Munich, energy tech) secured a €2.5B order for offshore wind converters; the new Rostock facility will create 500 jobs. [more]
Volkswagen (Wolfsburg, automotive) board and supervisory board consider the group to be existentially threatened. [more]
Sono Motors (Munich, ex-solar EV) is becoming a Bitcoin company under a Trump-linked manager. [more]
Hellweg (Dortmund, DIY hardware chain) filed for insolvency under self-administration. [more] They have 5 stores in Berlin and 7 in Brandenburg.
Most popular in the last Careers newsletter
Coffee talk, jobs, events & what the community is up to, every Thursday. Free.
😅 Meanwhile
would love something similar for corporate jargon
Weekly social and outside interests
Instagram: There is a chance this Japanese football fan is faking it, but, man, I do love accents.
Instagram: Horror story about homeless delivery drivers (aka modern slavery) in London.
Instagram: This take from Slavoj Žižek is very good. Everyone is attacking Europe because of what it represents.
Last week’s poll was about if you know anyone paying over €25 per square meter:
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