Programming note #136: If it did land in spam/promotions, you can move it to your Inbox and reply to this email address to add it to the contacts.

For most of you, this is the first email from my new email provider, Buttondown. Besides red links, the only visible change is that I paused the usage of polls because they aren’t anonymous.

I’d appreciate your feedback if you notice something strange.

🌟 Handpicked community

is a place where we meet, share projects and ideas and look for help.

Meet — handpicked events:

Show cool stuff or Ask for something:

  • EasyPZ is a free-to-use mobile app that helps locate the nearest toilet in Berlin. Users in the community will be able to share their reviews to help the next person (feature now in development). More community features to come! No sign up required.

  • Silicon Allee’s tech accelerator program applications will open next week!

📨 Submit your input for the community here. This section is also featured on LinkedIn in the weekly post.

👀 Handpicked jobs

is a rotating selection of jobs from companies I’d check out.

5️⃣ from the rotation this week: Sales, Customer Success and Operations

The remaining jobs (also outside rotation) are in the Handpicked online database.Are you looking for new colleagues or work in HR? Submit a job.

✨ Handpicked Deals

is where you find good stuff. Your purchase/interest will help sustain this project.

☕️ Coffee with section is paused for a while

and is coming back soon.

🗞 Snippets

is a selection of links focused on Berlin/Germany, career, timeless content and business.

Berlin & Germany, career & timeless

  1. After SumUp I now profiled the runner-up: On. This time I extended the article slightly and made it more personal. I am still looking for the right format. You can feedback on r/handpickedberlin.

  2. Remember the deals I promised for the coworking spaces? They are now online for teams and individuals: Ahoy, Impact Hub, The Drivery, workish.berlin, Factory, MotionLab and Space Shack. A couple more are coming.BTW, you can check out Impact Hub on the Open House Week #3 this week.

  3. Berlinale starts on Thursday. My strategy for overwhelming choice is to get a ticket or two for any of the Competition movies. Berliner suggests 14 movies, Mit Vergnügen 11 (🇩🇪), and unfortunately (or fortunately?), the consensus is low. Timestamp is their only common recommendation.

  4. According to IW, German property prices remained stable in Q4 2024 (+0.6% for houses, -0.4% for apartments), while new rental contracts rose 4.7% YoY nationwide. Berlin leads with +8.5% rent increase, followed by Essen (+8.2%) and Frankfurt (+8.0%). You can read their full study here. (🇩🇪) What’s interesting is that “affordability is still significantly worse than in 2022, meaning many potential buyers are delaying the move or are more likely to ask for rental apartments, which is putting additional pressure on the rental market.” See also the new initiative in the Weekly social section. 👇

  5. Only indirectly Berlin-related, but here is something to be optimistic about. According to Perplexity, a gigawatt can power up to 1M homes.

  1. 💎 (Not so hidden) gem: go and try Trio, if you haven’t yet. I finally did and it’s an instant Top 5 Berlin restaurants contender.

  2. Politics matter: After Real-O-Mat last week, we now have Wahl-O-Mat to check which party to vote for. Also relevant, this DW’s explainer “What is the AfD firewall.” Prepare to hear Brandmauer a lot in the next months. I’d also like to share an excerpt from a book “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945”. It reminded me of a Russian colleague explaining how he eventually realised they were boiled like frogs.

  3. Career: This would also fit into the meme section, but Anthropic (Claude LLM) asked job applicants not to use AI in job applications. Be careful what you build.

  4. Career: Bookmark this article to have your answers ready when recruiters start to ask you about your salary expectations. Always try to negotiate - 10k or 20k annually is nothing for a serious company.

  5. Timeless: 52 things Kent learned in 2024. Number 52: Bulls can’t see red. It’s not red that makes them mad. It’s “being treated like crap” that makes them mad.

Briefly

  1. Bad news: refurbed (refurbished electronics, Vienna, -20%); it could be that you are impacted by the bankruptcy of Element, a Berlin-based white-label insurance provider (check your contracts if Element is listed as a Risikoträger. Relevant insurers: Auto Protect, Asspario, Die Bayerische, Direkt-AS, Friday, Hepster, Manufaktur Augsburg, Panda and Schutzgarant). More at BaFin.

  2. Stats: around 750 vehicles were burned in Berlin in 2024, significantly more than in a year before (570). Most incidents were non-political (429 cases) with 243 additional vehicles damaged as collateral. 58 cases were politically motivated (+ 22 burning as collateral damage). (RBB)

  3. Tesla sales in January are down 60% (YoY) in Germany. France -63%, -44% Sweden, -38% Norway, -42% Netherlands, UK -12%. What could be the reason?

  4. Solaris was saved with a last-minute investment of €140M (Series G). Early investors lost most of their investment. (MM)

  5. OpenAI will open an office in Munich and not Berlin. Nothing on the careers site yet. Altman was in Berlin on Friday (at TU) getting booed by a few protestors.

  6. If you’d like to see what €80M+ gets you on the Schwanenwerder island at Wannsee, click here. (Tagesspiegel, 🇩🇪) Spoiler alert: it’s a big house.

  7. Cherry Ventures raised $500M for its fifth early-stage fund and an opportunity fund (Series B and above).

  8. Signa-owned high-rise at Berlin Zoo (“Upper West”) was sold for €450M as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

  9. Trade Republic’s growth hack of offering high interest rates on checking accounts in 2023 is investigated by BaFin due to a lack of transparency about where the money actually “is”. (MM, €)

  10. To spur growth, HelloFresh started to sell ready meals also in Germany. (HB) I didn’t find any offers on their website.

Weekly social

  1. Reddit: Conny commission situation and related…

  2. …a reader sent me a warning letter on a landlord trick last week. If you have similar stories, do send them over. The offer is also valid for landlords (e.g. cases of Mietnomaden).

  3. Twitter: I also wasn’t expecting that view.

  4. Practical life tips: If I freeze something last day of shelf life, do I have to eat it immediately when I unfreeze?

💸 Funded in Berlin & Germany

is a list of companies that received funding over €1M.

  1. hallo theo | Berlin | AI property management platform | €10M Seed | Careers.

  2. Cargobeamer | Leipzig | Railway cargo automation system | €65M | Careers.

  3. Avelios Medical | Munich | Hospital information system | €30M | Careers.

  4. Roadsurfer | Munich | Campervan rental platform | €30M | Careers.

  5. Zellerfeld | Hamburg | 3D-printed sneaker technology | $30M | Careers.

  6. PriorLabs | Freiburg | AI data analysis platform | €9M | Careers.

  7. Akribion Therapeutics | Zwingenberg | RNA-guided cell depletion technology | €8M Seed | No careers.

  8. octonomy | Cologne | AI customer support automation | €5M Pre-Seed | No website yet.

  9. PartsCloud | Stuttgart | AI spare parts logistics | €5M Seed | Careers.

  10. Assemblean | Paderborn | Manufacturing automation platform | €1.8M Seed | Careers.

  11. Pixel Photonics | Münster | Single-photon detector technology | €1M Grant | Careers.

😅 Meanwhile

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