Hello everyone,
thanks to my good friend Dejan (and my go-to designer who has been helping me since my logo and I don’t pay a tenth of what he deserves), the newsletter finally got the visual transformation it deserves. I love it and would love to hear your feedback: reply to the email or drop a comment on the web version. I also used the opportunity to shift things around a bit based on your feedback. If you notice anything strange, do let me know, please.
But this is not the end: I will also make content changes in the coming weeks/months, because the newsletter evolved and many of us share the feeling that it has become a bit long and would benefit from more focus on some sections. 😅
Due to the platform change, expect a few hiccups (hopefully this landed in your inbox and not in spam) and fewer outgoing links than usual. If you would like a source for any particular snippet, reply to this email.
❤ Community
Meet — 5 events:
Raffle Join me at the Sofar Sounds Singles Night or take your date to the Date Night on Valentine’s Day. Both events with secret locations, raw live music and intimate shows you won’t find anywhere else. We will raffle two tickets for each event - enter the raffle here. The winners will be emailed and announced on my Instagram channel on Wednesday this week. | Sat, 14/02 19:00 or 19:30 | Secret locations in Charlottenburg
BLISS x Google: Workshop - Unleash the power of agentic AI | Tue, 03/02 17:45 | Location after the registration
Ladies socials hour @ Kalle Halle | Wed, 04/02 18:30 | KALLE HALLE
Out-Of-Office Club | #3 - for everyone currently not being employed | Wed, 04/02 15:00 | Hotel Amano
Behind Closed Doors - three original plays about what we hide from the light | Fri, 27/02 19:30 | Theatre Pool
(The regular event submission link has now moved below.)
Show cool stuff or Ask for something:
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👀 Jobs
Job highlights of the week
This week I prioritised other links, but this section will also expand in the future. You will find the job selection of the week on the Handpicked job board. This week’s focus was on jobs Tech & Dev.
Try something different: work with Handpicked Berlin!
Based on my experience with several advertisers in the last six months, I will be updating the prices and advertising packages soon. In addition, I will be able to give more guidance on what works and what doesn’t.
Do approach me if you’d like us to work together!
☕️ Coffee Talk
Mackenzie Fly is a fellow community builder from Berlin and runs an online community coworking cuties. Here is what she prepared for you:
Café Bäckerei Mona Lisa - My first cafe I ever coworked at in my first month in Berlin, and where I first fell in love with Turkish breakfast. It’s cozy, they serve breakfast until late afternoon, and you’re right next to the Maybachufer. Perfect for long walks on the water to walk off the giant plates of food they serve.
The Mountain Is You - The book that inspired me to take many leaps in my life, it goes deep into our psychology and explains why we self-sabotage and how to overcome it. Warning, will cause internal chaos that will change your life.
Rocycle - My favorite workout class in the city! A spin class where you ride to many different genres of music (my favorite is techno, in true Berlin fashion). Each ride is a tough workout, but by the end you’re guaranteed endless positive energy to tackle your day.
🗞 Berlin & Germany
Money Talk is finally back! This time with Rahul, 36M from Friedrichschain! More is coming soon. If you’d like to participate, let me know. It starts with a form followed by a short interview with Marta. I am very excited about the segment, and more content around it is coming soon.
Today we have the first strike of BVG of the year. I ran a poll on Instagram, and most of you expect at least a couple more. According to BVG, Verdi is demanding a 35-hour work week, more vacation days, shorter shifts, and higher allowances. These demands would create an additional staffing need of 1,330 positions. A weather-related fun fact: the trams will still run, so the tracks don’t freeze over. But without passengers. The next meeting is scheduled for the 18th of February.
I am ashamed to admit this, but I only started to use a VPN very recently. This was silly: the benefits are great, and it’s extremely simple to use and set up on all the devices. I’ve been testing a couple of providers, and I can recommend Surfshark (Netherlands) and Mullvad (Sweden). Surfshark (← affiliate link) offers more features for less money, while Mullvad is for privacy purists who wanna send cash in an envelope and don’t even wanna use logins.
Last week The Federal Court of Justice ruled that making a profit with subletting is illegal. In short, someone in Berlin charged the subtenant double the price because the flat was furnished, and they eventually both lost the apartment. This is a step in the right direction because the abuse of the sublet model was rampant. I also suspect that a lot of people subletting their 2005 contract are totally against building apartments at Tempelhof. If you are a subtenant getting ripped off, you can now sue the main tenant, but you will probably both lose the apartment (or maybe you can make a sneaky deal with the landlord?). I am not sure what this means for people who rent rooms for bizarre prices. In any case, join Mieterverein; it’s around €130 per year, and they will be able to help.
Related tip: the sooner you join any of the Berlin Mietervereins, the better. Legal insurance has a 3-month waiting period, so you will only be covered by their insurance if you signed up before you signed the contract. But they will still be able to consult you.
The new 2026 Numbeo cost of living is out. Out of 25 German cities, Berlin ranks #13 on the cost of living index, #15 for restaurants, #2 for rent, and #24 for groceries. In Europe, Berlin is #65 in terms of cost of living. I am not sure about the data quality, but I think we are getting a pretty good deal, no? [more]
If you bought a flat in Berlin with cash in 2010, you are worse off. S&P500 easily outperformed the index of Berlin apartments (average total price per unit) with 5.4x (vs 2.6x). But since almost nobody besides drug dealers is buying flats with cash (this was actually possible until very recently!), apartment owners are still doing quite well, since the average mortgage is around 90%, their downpayment is now worth a lot more. I didn’t buy in 2010, because I was still thinking I’d be changing the world with an NGO. I also didn’t buy later. “Probably I should have bought,” said everyone remembering the day when that friend told them about this thing called Bitcoin.
Guthmann Residential Market Report 2025. I posted the chart on Instagram.
Speaking of prices: eating out in Germany has gotten pretty expensive compared to 2020 — main courses are up 35.7%, alcoholic drinks +29.3% and fast food at +39%. Rising energy and labour costs are the main drivers. [more] Cooking a lot at home is such a blessing for the wallet!
The gorgeous Kino International is reopening two months earlier than planned at the end of February, two years after the renovations started. If you haven’t been yet, go!
Stats: German unemployment rose to 3.085M in January 2025 (the highest January figure since 2014), driven mainly by seasonal factors, with the jobless rate reaching 6.6%. In Berlin, it rose from 10.1 to 10.7% (228k).
Berlin-related headlines
Run-down, eastern district, investment property: US investors are back in Berlin — and now allegedly even want prefab (Plattenbau) apartment blocks [more, €]
The federal government offers a million-euro reward for solving the arson attack [more]
New campaign aims to bring the Olympics to Berlin [more, video]
🧭 Career and timeless
Career: Defence tech is unfortunately on the rise, and a subscriber approached me with a moral dilemma. Just shortly after responding to his message, I found this discussion on Reddit with some great perspectives that might help others facing the same question: would you work for a defence tech company? I probably would, but I would really need to think hard about it.
Career: Here’s a very solid thesis that the tech job market is crap because of the last decade and more of cheap money. And it makes sense. Now the AI seems like a convenient excuse for tightening the belts. Each passing week, I am more convinced that the best way forward is maybe not to “land a job in tech”, but to pivot to something that people around you will need tomorrow, next week and in 50 years. Ok, PEOPLE tech might make a lot of sense.
Career: Closely related is this essay on why layoffs actually don’t work, yet companies keep on doing them. I really like this point: “If overhiring or underperformance was the true problem, /…/ the companies should question their leaders, who green-lit the overhiring and may have failed to develop productive roles for their employees.” Instead of doing layoffs, companies could cut the hours. Worth a read.
Timeless: The author of the last “self-help” book I plan to read for the next few years (4000 Weeks), Oliver Burkeman, has this great article about the secret to being happy. And it’s not about self-improvement, but an instruction on how to give yourself permission to focus on doing what you like and want. For example, I love this: “Stay offline by doing things so engaging that it wouldn’t occur to you to drift online in the first place.” Let’s try to enjoy and have fun as much as possible, you never know how long it lasts.
📌 Briefly
Native Instruments (Berlin, music software and hardware) filed for insolvency; Amazon -16.000 (10% of corporate workforce) and also shutting down their Fresh grocery stores and Go markets, ASML -7.000 (mainly managers).
Dark Matter (Berlin, modern art museum) celebrated its millionth visitor. I am somehow still missing in the stats.
The Baller League (Berlin, football) paused its operations in Germany, citing market size and structural conditions.
Enpal (Berlin) 2025: €1.1B in revenue (+25% vs 2024), positive cash flow for the first time. Plans to grow profitably in 2026.
GetYourGuide (Berlin) 2025: €1B revenue, 33M experiences booked. [more]
Clue (Berlin, period tracking) 2024: €10.9M revenue, loss of €4.8M. [more]
Flink (Berlin) is now delivering for Uber Eats in selected cities. [more]
NAO (Berlin, fintech) caused controversy by using US investor Cathie Wood as a spokesperson for a new investment fund, suggesting retail investors can invest in SpaceX, OpenAI and Revolut, but the fine print revealed that’s not the case. [more]
StackFuel (Berlin, EdTech) was acquired by Multiverse (London) to scale AI upskilling across Germany. [more] I learned Python with them in 2016!
Seamless Therapeutics (Dresden) closed a research and licensing deal with Eli Lilly worth over $1.12B for gene-editing therapies targeting hearing loss.
Siemens temporarily overtook SAP as Germany's biggest company by market cap last week after SAP missed its short-term cloud contract backlog by 1%. On Friday, SAP was back in the lead.
Kaia Health (Munich) was acquired by Sword Health in a $285M deal.
Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland) acquired Bosch Ventures' stake in Aleph Alpha (Heidelberg, AI).
Deutsche Bank 2025: €6.12B net profit and 10% return on equity. They have a big tech centre in Berlin. Meanwhile, their offices were raided as part of a money laundering investigation (between 2013-2018).
Anta (China, sportswear) acquired a 29% stake in Puma for €1.5B. Anta is now the largest shareholder.
Germany’s Defence Ministry plans to purchase almost 4.4k combat drones from Helsing for €267.7M with an option of additional 20k. But an internal Ukrainian report showed only 36% success rate in recent deployments. [more] What would be the expected success rate?
FIFA's crypto portal for World Cup 2026 ticket pre-purchase rights is under investigation by German gambling authorities.
💸 Funded in Germany
Recare | Berlin | AI care coordination platform | €37M | Careers.
HeyData | Berlin | GDPR compliance platform for SMEs | $16M Series A | Careers.
Blockbrain | Stuttgart | AI agents for critical sectors | €17.5M Series A | Careers.
metergrid | Stuttgart | Tenant electricity software solutions | €10M Series A | Careers.
Co-reactive | Düsseldorf | CO₂ mineralisation for cement | €6.5M Seed | Careers.
Twogee Biotech | Munich | Enzyme solutions for biomass conversion | €2.16M Seed | Careers.
Arctis AI | Munich | AI construction project management | $1M Seed | Careers.
😅 Meanwhile
I actually am an idea guy
Weekly social and outside interests
Reddit: Someone asked whether anyone even got the potatoes at the event that will go down in history as the largest distribution of free potatoes in the history of Berlin. Spoiler alert: it was very hard to get them. I didn’t even try since I am dieting.
Reddit: For all the pet owners: a discussion on where to cremate pets.
Instagram: I always believed you can safely drive approximately a bit below 60 on a 50km/h limit. Or 140 on a 130 km/h limit. It turns out the tolerance in Germany is 3 km/h until 100 km/h and 3% at over 100 km/h. Now we know.
elsewhere: Are you also hustling? 7 years old but still true.
Don’t miss
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