🗂️ handpicked February 2023 snippets

The Exploration Company, a Munich-based European answer to SpaceX, raised €40M Series A. Careers.

Sdui, a Koblenz/Berlin-based EdTech, raised a total of €25M in the extended Series A. Careers.

Maya Climate, a Berlin-based green projects financier, raised €1.2M pre-seed. Careers.

XbyX, a Berlin-based female HealthTech startup, raised seven figures. Careers.

Specter Automation, a Cologne-based construction tech company, raised €2.7M seed. No careers yet.

Based on the report from the The Pragmatic Engineer, Apple is getting strict with the Return-to-office policy. Maybe the power is shifting back to the employers? It appears you can only have two: “1. A well-known tech company, 2. Lots of flexibility on remote work, 3. Relatively good job security.” All three are a miracle?

Swiss insurer Baloise invested in Tronity, a Manheim-based provider of solutions for EV owners. Careers (0 at the time).

Handelsblatt has an interesting paywalled profile of German Bionic (🇩🇪), an Augsburg-based company producing exoskeletons. So far, they have raised around €50M. Their product is production-ready and will set you back for almost 10k, but you will be lifting heavy stuff easier. They say they will break even without further financing. Careers (scroll down).

If you like beer, you need to get ready for further price increases. (€, 🇩🇪) Besides energy, inflation also hit the ingredients. According to Stefan Fritsche from Brauereiverband Berlin-Brandenburg, a beer in a bar would cost €7.5 by the end of the year if the increased cost is completely passed on. Well, Herr Fritsche is from a Verband, after all, so I take it with a grain of salt. Speaking of beer, I had one last week for €2.5 in “Zum Magendoktor” in Wedding.

Have you ever wondered if döner is a Spezialität (food speciality)? The administrative court says no. A Turkish chef sued because he did not get his visa approved and lost.

DeStatis, the Federal Statistics Office, reports that the hourly earnings of women are 18% lower than those of men. We have a long way to go. (And this link already got broken 3x, so sorry if it doesn’t work)

layoffs.fyi & other sources: Paypal (7%), Delivery Hero (156), Heycar (73, 16%), wefox (100).

r/berlin choice of the week: OP got an apartment after 484 applications and 13 viewings. Spoiler: they wrote a script. And if you are considering a bootcamp in Berlin, here is an excellent overview, which is probably also a blog post somewhere.

I support people being active and fighting for a cause, but I found the fact that the two Last generation activists did not show up for trial in Bad Cannstatt (Stuttgart) because they vacationed in Bali hilarious. I mean, come on, such a low-hanging fruit not to go to Bali at all or precisely at that time. It just increases the surface of the attack. But maybe they booked flights before becoming activists and did not want them to go to waste?

Here is also a possible Berghain love story with comments ranging from “wholesome” to “hey, it’s Molly. Take it easy.

Daniel Ek of Spotify made it official! He is going to HealthTech with Neko Health. Careers?

Powerfield, a Dutch solar play, raised €500M. Careers.

Jeff, a Valencia-based entrepreneurship-for-all company, raised €90M Series C. Careers.

Fairphone, an Amsterdam-based company with a straightforward name, raised €49M. Careers.

Recycleye, a London-based producer of sorting robots, raised $17M series A. Rubbish (their words!) careers here.

Planet A Ventures, a Berlin-based fund, raised €160M fund to support green tech investments. Careers.

Degura, a Berlin-based pension schemes operator, raised €2.2M pre-seed. Careers.

Bayes Esports, a Berlin-based live esports data ticker, raised a total of €9M in 2022. Careers.

Brighter AI, a Berlin-based AI-supported anonymization tool, raised undisclosed funds from Deutsche Bahn. Careers.

EatFirst, a Berlin-based corporate catering provider, acquired UK based Feedr. Careers.

Build38, a Barcelona/Munich-based mobile security company, raised €13M Series A. Careers.

Nui Care, a Munich-based home care support startup, raised seven figures from ADAC. Careers.

Enmacc, a Munich-based energy trading platform, raised an undisclosed Series B. Careers.

IONOS, a Karlsruhe/Berlin-based web-hosting company, IPOed with a mixed reception.

📫 I used a mobile stamp for the first time. You simply buy it with an app and write the code on your letter. And we complain that Germany is not digitized?!

🤖 On ChatGPT: here is a thread on interesting use cases. We also got tools to detect if a text is written by LLMs: one from OpenAI, another independent. I checked my own going-paid text, and it is “likely entirely written by a human.”

On the topic of the apartment crisis: from 2018, only 454 flats were successfully “exchanged”. But the demand was much higher: 15.000 people wanted to do it (🇩🇪); 51% of people wanted a bigger flat, and only 11% a smaller one. You can try your luck here.

💕 If you are able, you can register to be a bone marrow or blood stem cell donor at DKMS; they will send you the test kit, and you can save lives. Inspired by this post.

layoffs.fyi & other sources: another delivery service bites the dust: Yababa is insolvent (111 employees according to LinkedIn).

A relevant resource related to layoffs: what to do if you lose your job or get fired at arbeitnow. In short, double-check and do not sign anything too fast.

Delivery Hero reported Q4 numbers. People are ordering less. Interesting to compare the narratives; the company really tried to put a positive spin on the numbers, but analysts were not impressed. (🇩🇪)

r/berlin choice of the week is a typical state of the subreddit. Someone asks a question (WTF is my delivery scrambled egg so expensive!), gets the famous r/berlin treatment (WTF, you are ordering scrambled eggs??), which then gets called out (WTF, why are you so rude), and finally, someone provides a good explanation (because of venture capital subsidies). You gotta love this place! ❤️

In the same place, people were also discussing a difference in the pricing of Turkish vs Arabic food. After a decade of being away, I cannot believe there is still a line at Mustafa’s; besides, how a normal sandwich can only cost 3.5-4€ at Jakoub, considering the cost of rent, ingredients and work?

🍺 If you need ideas for good places to drink some beers in Berlin, check out this fine article and a convenient map by Jonny Whitlam.

📢📢📢 If you have any great content to share, do let me know! 📢📢📢

Carbonplace, a London-based carbon credit transaction network, raised almost €42M seed. Careers.

wefox, a Berlin-based insurtech, raised €51.4M at 4.5B valuation. Careers.

Pliant, a Berlin-based credit card providing fintech, raised €26M. Careers.

Dance, a Berlin-based electric mobility subscription service, raised €12M. Careers.

Selfapy, a Berlin-based therapy app, raised €7M Series A. Careers.

Beazy, a Berlin-based creative economy company, raised €1M. Careers.

cylib, Aachen-based recycled batteries play, raised €8M extension to seed. Careers.

ChefCoco, a cooked meal delivery service which is not a restaurant, is emerging from stealth in Berlin. Careers.

Tesvolt, a Lutherstadt Wittenberg-based lithium battery producer, is upgrading its plant to 4GWh production capacity. Four gigawatts sounds like a lot to me; maybe they will have some cool jobs for you? Careers over here with an office in Berlin, too.

I previously told you about Daniel Ek’s (Spotify) new project, Neko Health. Now Sifted went to do the actual body scan! How was it? Two thousand pictures later, some concerns include finding issues that are not really issues. In that regard, I warmly recommend Gerd Gigenrenzer’s Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisionswhich also gives a good critical view of Kahneman and Tversky (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

🧹 Good news! In 2022, we were breathing THE BEST AIR EVER IN BERLIN. (🇩🇪) This was the year with the lowest emissions since the 1980s and 1990s. On the downside, I realised I live close to one of the worst streets. I had no time to compare Berlin's air standards to any other city, but you can do it yourself here.

Oda, a new weekly grocery delivery service, could have also advertised here, but it didn’t. I still am kind enough to include a link to this half-PR article from Handelsblatt (🇩🇪), which describes their plans (€250M revenue in Germany, delivery in the circle of 250km). I checked the app but have not ordered yet.

🚌 Flix says it was EBITDA profitable for the first time last year but provided no numbers (🇩🇪). They plan an expansion to Chile (41st market). Judging by my first trip with Flixtrain in December, the operations department definitely receives less attention than M&A. After 15 years, AirBnB is also profitable for the first time.

layoffs.fyi & other sources: another delivery startup bites the dust: Dropp (60 people), Avocargo (17) also sadly did not make it. After Apple, now also Amazon is introducing a Return-to-the-Office policy. We will see more and more of this.

r/berlin choice of the week is the “Berlin hacks.” The top rated is to learn German. Wo unterschreibe ich? Another one I like is solving the housing crisis by moving in with your GF/BF who already has an apartment or leave. 😅 I also liked this AbEr iN BeRlIn fUnKtiOniErt nIcHts. Because, honestly, compared to many many many less fortunate people, we have it real good!

Berliner Zeitung has a good article (🇩🇪) about how to buy an apartment in Berlin. Price drops seem unlikely because compared to other big European cities, Berlin is still cheap. 6-10k per sqm! 😅 The other part of the equation must be salaries!

💸 Here is a great inflation calculator by RBB. (🇩🇪) You can determine your own personal inflation rate for groceries, which is a good start. The inflation rate is very individual, but this fact is always neglected. Another interesting comparison is that it makes more sense to buy tomatoes than ketchup.

🦗Have you ever eaten insects? I tried grasshoppers in Mexico and would do it again. You can go to Mikrokosmos (📍) and try some there. Here is an article from Tip-Berlin. (🇩🇪) More PR than not, but interesting.

Zunder, a Spanish fast-charging startup, raised €40M. Careers.

Brigad, a Paris-based hospitality staff shortage problem solvers, raised €33M. Careers.

Myflexbox, a Salzburg-based smart locker network provider, raised €75M. Careers.

Volocopter, a Bruchsal-based flying taxi company, raised some more money in their extended Series E. Careers.

Choco, a Berlin-based gastro champion, raised €25M. Careers.

konfetti, a Berlin-based team events & workshops marketplace, raised €2M. Careers.

Finway, a Munich-based credit card startup, raised €9.2M. Careers.

HBOX, an Aachen-based health tech, raised €2.3M. Careers are not there yet. Their Linkedin.

Flexvelop, a Hamburg-based equipment leasing company, raised €3M. Careers.

Aleph Alpha, a Heidelberg-based AI company, claims that its LLM Luminous is better and more efficient than ChatGPT. Careers are not really in focus.

planqc, a Munich-based quantum computing startup, got a seven-figure investment from Hermann Hauser. He also took a board seat. Careers is more like an e-mail.

🔓 I published the first article for supporters last week: all the links from the "timeless and useful" section published in 2022.

🧑🏻‍💻 Hybrid, remote, on-site, four-day week. Thanks to Corona we can all have strong opinions! For example, Startups with employees in offices grow 3 1/2 times faster and Four-day week: ‘major breakthrough’ as most UK firms in trial extend changes. From my experience office brings a great dynamic to solve complicated problems. But whatever rocks your boat, CEO and Head of HR.

👨🏻‍🍳 If you have ever wondered how you could make excellent Cacio e Pepe, one of the hardest simplest things to make, look no further: last week I published the last words that were left to be said about it.

🇷🇺 You probably heard about the tank in front of the Russian embassy which was placed there on the anniversary of the start of this moronic war. Here you can read what it takes to make something like this happen. (🇩🇪) I have strong opinions on “demo for peace”, but let’s leave politics out of business!

Remember the big European energy crisis and theories on Putin playing 3D chess with gas? I vaguely do. As it turns out Germany already has enough gas for next winter.

🎥 BVG's marketing department is excellent. They have a good sense of humour and made a new commercial to invite us to explore Berlin, based off €49 Deutschland ticket. Du warst noch niemals in Marzahn or Visselhövede, Lower Saxony …🐻🐺

… the advice is always the same: when facing some big beast, do not run; make yourself big and loud. Well, this 24-year-old cyclist did not really follow the advice(🇩🇪) after being chased for 200m by three wolves in Lower Saxony. She got saved by her e-bike. I mean, fair enough, wildlife experts: but would you stop and make yourself big? You now know where to meet wolves in Germany.

🚃 If you ever wondered why some newer S-Bahn trains do not have the legendary TANAANAAAA sound, it is to make trains more accessible for people with disabilities and people with reduced mobility EU-wide. Related: Adi from Arbeitnow made a guide for shifting to the new 49€ Deutschland ticket in English. 🙏

layoffs.fyi & other sources: Onefootball (150, 32%), Zalando is planning to let hundreds of their 17k people go, RBB (100), Sono Motors (Munich, hundreds), Auto 1 made losses of 165.6M in 2022 and Banovo (Munich) is insolvent.

r/berlin choice of the week is the discussion about spiders; I hope I do not meet one of these.

To experience socialism, you do not need to move to North Korea or Cuba. You can book this apartment in Prignitz, two hours from Berlin. It will set you back 100€/night.

When looking from the outside things often look better than they are. Here is an insider perspective on Praveen leaving Google. Some of the things he mentions really are a pattern in many organisations, and it really makes you wonder: what are the upper limits on an organisation's size? Is it 15? 150? 1500? 15k? 150k?This was it. Let me know if you have any suggestions.