A month has passed, and here is the collection again. A roundup of my favourite snippets, up to 6 per week or more. Thank you so much for your support! ❤️ You can also easily navigate to each issue by clicking on the title.
I published my second Perspective, and you can still join our WhatsApp Community, where we try to cut down the screen time together:
Unpublished extras
Juilliard Jazz Prof Hears Nirvana For The First Time (YT) - I have no idea about drumming, but it was so fascinating to watch these guys just laugh with such genuine joy. I was fascinated by it while having no clue why they laugh. Humbling.
How is it to be named James Bond in the US? (Twitter) Spoiler: terrible!
The Rehbinder effect is “the reduction in the hardness and ductility of a material, particularly metals, by a surfactant film.” Here is an example (Twitter) using a nail, hammer, cup and water. You can cut glass underwater with a pair of scissors because “the water acts like a damper and removes energy, preventing local stress from breaching the threshold where a crack would form.”
The future belongs to those who prepare like Dwarkesh Patel - when someone says “but there are alreday so many podcasts…” you can show them this article. I have a strong conviction it also applies to other fields.
“Cha" and "te" are both Chinese words for tea:
📍Berlin has a Denkmal karte where you can check which buildings close to you have a special protected status with links to descriptions to get lost and improve your German.
🏡 Housing crises are permanent. I learned it in this excellent 24-minute podcast from DLF. (🇩🇪) It’s like Groundhog Day. Apropo apartments, according to IW, rents in Berlin have increased by 9.2% in the last quarter (YoY), more than in Munich (7,3%) and Leipzig (7,8%). For buyers, the median asking price in Berlin has “fallen from 5,256 to currently 5,007 €/sqm,” since July 2022 (BZ, €, 🇩🇪)
🏢 Remote work (for large companies) is dying, and remote workers are the first in line for layoffs. I’ve been hearing about return-to-office mandates coming back in Berlin and Germany—at least for a couple of days per week. Here is a thesis from the US (Tweet), and since the US is ahead of Europe, we might be getting there soon (office five days per week). (🤫 By mandating RTO, companies also hope to speed up the natural attrition.)
🌬️I cannot believe I am writing this: I did my research and bought a CO2 sensor and an air purifier with the stupidest name ever (Airmega Mighty). I’ve been sleeping the best for years, and now I finally understand the German obsession with lüften:
Here’s a cool piece: Overchoice and How to Avoid it by Gurwinder. He offers five great philosophical razors to choose from, and I can’t pick my favourite, huehue.
💬 Briefly:
Peter Thiel, a billionaire, venture capitalist and right-leaning political activist, invested in Enhanced Games. Think Olympics, but with doping allowed and encouraged. Sick.
🤡 In Berlin, we had a 30 km/h speed limit on 34 main roads, introduced years ago to improve the air quality. Since the air got so much better, the speed limit will mostly be increased back to 50 km/h. Fascinating. (RBB, 🇩🇪) Related, the Senate decided there will be no higher parking fees for SUVs in Berlin as in Paris (they tripled the fees recently).
🎨 Exberliner made an excellent overview of the most important exhibitions in Berlin this year. I’ll meet you at Infinite Landscapes, Art Week and Berlin, Berlin!
The percentage of people riding BVG without a ticket in 2023 was around 5% (so if we are 20 in a train car or a bus, at least one of us is most probably without a valid ticket!). Around 540 people were ultimately imprisoned in 2023 because they hadn’t paid their fines. (more Instagram, 🇩🇪) The numbers of total controls are pretty random estimates (16.4M inspections and 1.05B passengers).
✏️ Often, “X years of experience in Y” requirement in job descriptions is useless because the willingness to learn and the drive matter more. Here is an excellent piece of advice on How to hire low experience, high potential people byTara Seshan. A must-read and something for your archives.
💡 I’ve never followed Casey Neistat, the godfather of vlogging, but I was impressed by the interview he gave to DOAC (YouTube/Podcast)—a massive lesson on originality and patience. The first hour was especially strong and resonated strongly with me. (h/t Manoj!)
😳 Unbelievable data, but 16,000 children die daily (11 every minute)! But we’ve made so much progress; it’s the best time to be alive for most of us. “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better” is a great insight.
💬 Briefly:
Berlin has 3.7+M people and 130k dogs registered. This is a significant Coronavirus-related increase from 2019 (111k). (RBB, 🇩🇪) Pick up the 💩, ok?
🚨 I’ve done another collaborative and timeless piece-of-law-explaining article with Jean, this time about things to check before you sign your new employment contract—another classic to bookmark. Enjoy!
🍖 I’ve also reviewed the Filthy Pleasures BBQ pop-up on my Instagram. If you are a meat eater, one of the musts in this city, for sho. The next one is in early March.
🗺️ That’s a great animation of maps showing the West/East German divide. (Twitter) I found Religion, Olympic Medals and Tennis Courts interesting. Apropo tennis, why on earth can’t you just book and play in this country?
👌 For the managers amongst you: a good thread from Hacker News on books and articles on managing people. I recommend Peopleware, a beautiful book.
💩 Very ordinary men is a gorgeously written review of Isaacson’s Elon Musk, biography. “Some books are so utterly bad that the case against them can be made based on almost any excerpt. Elon Musk is one of those books.” I liked Einstein, but after reading this review by Sam Kriss, I realised this is one of the books I don’t need to read.
📍 A cool game to try: Timeguessr. You pin the location but also need to guess the year of the photo. I played a round for a test and, unfortunately, didn’t write down the score. But it was a lot. 😅
💬 Briefly:
Gloves are off! noyb chose to fight Schufa, accusing them of earning “millions through unlawful customer manipulation.”
💰 How much do startup founders earn in Europe? VC fund Creandum published a nice report. Not bad, founders, not bad.
🤓 I’ve noticed a paywalled article about the role of Chief of staff in 🇩🇪 and tried to find something for us in English. I found this long (and great) article by Harvard Business Review, which has a bit of a big corp spin but is a useful insight into the role. If you are ambitious and want to have a stellar career, go for it—a lot of startups also look for Chiefs. In Mercedes, my previous employer, a career fast-track was to become an executive assistant.
👩🏻🔬 I enjoyed this gorgeous essay on How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math, but it also saddened me: I realised I will need to repeat deklinationen endlessly if I ever want to speak amazing German. Memorization and repetition.
📅 Check out this printable calendar on a single page. I printed several for planning… and just because you never know. You can override the year by adding “year” parameter, e.g. https://neatnik.net/calendar/?year=2025.
💬 Briefly:
Just after Picnic launched in Berlin, there was a report in the media that Rewe’s partnership with Flink wasn’t going well. (🇩🇪)
Funded in Berlin & Germany
myo | Berlin | Communication platform for nursing homes | €8M Series A | Careers.
BlueLayer | Berlin | Software solutions for carbon project developers | $5.6M Seed | Careers.
akirolabs | Berlin | AI-powered SaaS for strategic procurement | $5M Seed | Careers.
WAY | Berlin | Smartphone and laptop acquisition for SMBs | €1.2M Pre-Seed | No careers.
Colipi | Hamburg | Converts CO2 and industrial waste into oil | €1.8M | Careers.
Rabot Charge | Hamburg | AI-based algorithm development for power purchasing | €17.5M Series A | Careers.
Planet A | Munich | Fermented oats and sunflower seeds for a patented cocoa alternative | $15.4M | Careers.
BOX ID | Munich | Supply Chain visibility platform for industrial logistics | €3.5M | Careers.
Wegatech | Munich | Renewable energy system solutions | €5M | Careers.
encentive | Neumünster | AI software for shifting industrial power consumption | €2.7M | Careers.
SEMRON | Dresden | AI chips for small devices | €7.3M Seed | No careers.
Framen | Berlin | AdTech for digital billboards | €10M+ | Careers.
Dude Chem | Berlin | Green chemical manufacturing | €6.5M | No careers.
Daedalus | Karlsruhe & San Francisco | Autonomous factories with AI-driven robots | $21M | Careers.
Neocom | Munich | AI-powered product advisor for online shopping | $4.5M | Careers.
Kauz | Düsseldorf | Chatbots and AI assistants | €2.3M | Careers.
Rasa | Berlin/Remote | AI-assistant development platform with low-code UI | $30M | Careers.
Pacifico Biolabs | Berlin | Fermentation-based meat and fish product alternatives | $3.3M pre-seed | No careers.
Simplyblock | Berlin | Cloud storage solutions with low latency | $2.75M | Careers.
Una Health | Berlin | Digital therapy for Type 2 diabetes | $2.5M | Careers.
Medea Biopharma | Ludwigshafen | Products for combating antibiotic resistance in veterinary medicine | €1.6M | No Careers.
Atmos | Rheinmünster | Reusable space capsules development and manufacturing | €1.3M | Careers.
Cirplus | Hamburg | Marketplace for plastic waste and recyclates | Seven-figure sum | Careers.
Monite | Berlin | Payment automation software for B2B | €5.5M | Careers.
Kolonne Null | Berlin | Alcohol-free premium wines | undisclosed | Careers.
Embea | Berlin | Life insurance solutions | €4M | Careers.
Buycycle | Munich | Online marketplace for racing bikes | €20M | Careers.
Silencio | Munich | Sensor network to combat noise pollution | $1M | Careers.
Threedy | Darmstadt | Spatial computing technology for 3D apps | €9.6M | Careers.
Cyclize | Stuttgart | Recycling mixed plastic into synthetic gas | €5M | Careers.
Altavo | Dresden | AI-based speech rehabilitation tool | €5M | Careers.
Flower Labs | Hamburg | AI advancement through federated learning | $20M | Careers.
Acto | Paderborn | Data provisioning for B2B teams | €3M | Careers.
Xito | Ulm | Low-code development platform for robotics | €1.2M | No careers.
I hope you enjoyed and thank you for your support once again! ❤️