I'm Igor Ranc. I run Handpicked Berlin, which is a newsletter I started almost two years ago. Basically, I began by reading a lot of stuff and then curating the news I came across — whether it's tech news or career-related updates — and putting it all into a weekly newsletter. It's now sent out to 10,000 subscribers. It started as a hobby and still is a hobby, but I really enjoy doing it.

For the growth, initially I used every method I could find—Slack channels, LinkedIn, also Reddit—just basically posting it for a very long time. Then I think readers started to share it a bit. After the first 8 months, I started to build a website. I also did some projects, for example, a salary trend survey for Berlin, which helped with growth as well. I didn’t use any paid advertising, or very little—so it’s basically organic plus spamming. Spamming in a good way, of course.

I support betahaus with newsletter activities, and then I also thought, okay, it would be great to have a space where I can go—because otherwise I'm at home the whole time. So now I'm trying to go to betahaus at least once or twice a week, to shift the mood a bit from just sitting at home. And also to meet some other people and be around others who are doing great stuff.

I think the startup scene has seen better times—especially when there was a lot of cheap money around. We had a wave of funded startups, but of course that has declined. I also regularly publish who got funded, so I’ve seen the trend. But honestly, I think now is the best time ever to start something in Germany. With all the political uncertainty, Germany is expected to invest significantly—hopefully with the new government. And Berlin has so many great people. I think it’s thriving, and it will thrive even more.

It dipped quite significantly, but now I believe it’s a great opportunity to start building again and it will go up soon. I'm very optimistic about Berlin, but also Munich, especially when it comes to big tech. Sadly, also the defense industry.. But still, I think Berlin is the best place to be.

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I think one important thing is to keep building stuff, keep doing great things. And if you need some support—for example, with your startup or beta users, or if you're looking for anything—you can always approach me. I'm really happy to lend the audience to great projects and great ideas. So yeah, just keep on building great stuff, because we really need that.