Hello everyone,
This is the last newsletter before September. I am taking some days off, but I will also work to improve the curation of both newsletters.
The job board will still be updated, so make sure to bookmark it. Luma calendar will also be updated. Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to suggest improvements, respond to this email.
👀 Jobs
🌶️ Our friends at Femtasy are looking for a Senior Performance Marketing Manager. Check it out!
💸 Funded in Germany
Augustus (formerly Ivy) | Berlin | Stablecoin clearing bank API | $180M Series B (unicorn) | Careers.
telli | Berlin | AI voice agents for customer ops | $15M seed | Careers.
Passionfroot | Berlin | AI B2B creator marketing platform | €13.95M Series A | Careers.
Metr | Berlin | IoT for building energy efficiency | €10.5M Series B | Careers.
VREY | Berlin | Solar energy for multi-family buildings | €3.3M | Careers.
kausable | Heidelberg | Causal reasoning AI models | €12M seed | Careers.
WERK1 | Munich | Digital startup hub | ~€30M state funding | Careers.
DeltaVision | Munich | Orbital refuelling and aerospace fluid systems | €10.2M | Careers.
Aampere | Munich | Used EV resale platform | €4.2M | Careers.
5U AI | Munich | AI freight forwarding workforce | $3.2M pre-seed | Careers.
Ad
What if you could save €600+ filing your company taxes with us?
No tax advisor for your holding & startup yet? July 31 is the last day to file your 2025 annual statements, tax returns, and Bundesanzeiger filings, often costing €1,400+/year, with penalties if you miss it. The moment you switch to Fideus, you're covered by a licensed tax advisor and your deadline jumps to December 2026.
Automated, from €600/year, up to 60% less. 500+ founders already trust us.
P.S.: Don't file in a panic. Switch now, relax until the end of the year.
📅 Events
This week we reviewed 50 upcoming events and handpicked 10. Check all 24 events at luma.com/handpicked
From our partners
Viral Lead Magnets Workshop with Coach Amp - Building an audience is only half the journey - owning it wins. This workshop shows coaches how to turn LinkedIn growth into leads: create lead magnets, set up a signup, automate it. | Wed, 19/08 18:30 | Impact Hub Berlin
SummerUP – Launch your startup from 0 to 1 | One Week of Building & Selling Idea → MVP with paying customers in 8 days. Pitch investors on stage, 10k€ prize money. SummerUP flips the script on hackathons: built for people who ship — devs, designers & operators who'd rather close first customers than polish decks. | Fri, 07/08 10:00 | CODE University
Our picks
build fridays berlin - work on your startup alongside others (bring laptop) | Fri, 31/07 16:00 | Miro DACH GmbH
Bilt in Berlin community night | Fri, 31/07 18:00 | The Delta Campus
BAD1 & Steffen Krach: Shaping the Future of Berlin's Startup Ecosystem | Wed, 05/08 14:45 | The Delta Campus
Berlin Local Hub: Solopreneur Series #1 - Find Your Niche: The Foundation for Your Solopreneurship | Thu, 06/08 18:30 | Techtelmechtel - Coworking Space & Eventlocation
NLND Campus Tour | Thu, 13/08 11:00 | NLND Neuland Berlin
FLYLEAF Book & Zine Fair | Fri, 21/08 15:00
☕️ Coffee Talk
Coffee talk will be back in September.
Don't miss what Berlin's talking about
Thousands start their week with my Berlin weekly briefing. News, business, tech & culture you won't find elsewhere. Mondays, 7 AM. Free.
Most popular last Monday:
🌍 From the Community
This week we had no submissions. This section will be back in September.
Last week I asked you if you trust the tech bros running AI: 74% no and never did, 14% trust the tech but not the bros, 6% trust some but definitely not others…and the rest split across 2 choices.
🧭 Career compass
Signals from Monday: SAP cloud backlog up 27% YoY and closed Dremio + Prior Labs acquisitions [careers]; Prior Labs acquired by SAP 18 months after launch [careers]; Schwarz Digits opened "Home of Digits" campus for up to 5,500 employees [careers]; Picnic Germany revenue up 28% to €774M [careers]; Adam Riese absorbed 400k customers from Neodigital [careers]; Neodigital pivoted to Insurance-as-a-Service only and returned its BaFin license; Zalando cutting 200 more Berlin roles while spinning up a Bucharest office; AUTODOC internal layoffs of 20-45% in some teams; Porsche to cut 5-6k more jobs by 2035; Galeria Kaufhof may close all four Berlin stores; Varta filed for insolvency in self-administration.
This looks like an interesting idea: reports of ghosting by recruiters (seems like US-focused). But reading a bit about it online (HN) made me think: sometimes ghosting is very unfortunate. For example, a recruiter might have gotten sick, been laid off suddenly, or, god forbid, died. In some ideal world, their workload would be picked up by someone else, but since everyone else is busy, it probably never gets picked up. Another option is that someone simply forgot to do something. In any case, I feel sorry for everyone being ghosted and everyone not intentionally ghosting others (including dating apps, hah!).
Here is Head of Economics at Anthropic, Peter McCrory, essaying about the impact of AI on employment, and it looks like AI doesn't have much impact, because it currently still complements domain expertise. In simpler terms, there is still a need for human typing "yes" to Claude/ChatGPT all the time.
Related, this post on the fatigue of supervision of LLMs pairs well with the previous point. Programming with LLMs is a solitary and addictive exercise.
Anecdotal evidence from Reddit about the length of job search for software engineers in Germany.
What are you getting paid in? by Leila Clark. Money was my default thought. But, "politics pays in power. Finance pays in money. Music and art pay in 'coolness.' Nonprofit work, teaching and healthcare pay in meaning and, a friend reports, sometimes a sense of superiority over others too." It’s excellent and worth a read for a new perspective.
I am ending this season of the Careers newsletter with an image, because we will be circling back pretty soon. See you!
Don’t miss
Need help with finding a flat, insurance, have problems at work or are you lost in career or life? Talk to our Handpicked Experts.
Going into a salary review or offer? Walk in with the numbers and 12 negotiation tips.
Handpicked Community talking about money. Plus ideas for your setup.
How to learn German? Three very hands-on articles.
Handpicked recs: a growing archive of recommendations.
