Hey, dear reader!
I'm still processing what just happened in Saxony-Anhalt. AfD pulled off its best result in any German state ever, nearly 45% of the vote. Shit has hit the fan big time. How are we going to pick up?
Many of us ask ourselves why on earth people vote for AfD. I went down that rabbit hole again and watched all of Marcant's interviews in the days prior to the voting. The more I watched, the less hope I had in appealing to reason in these people. It's a lost case.
Deep breath in and deep breath out. Let's move on to some positive news here in Hamburg.
We have a new deep tech VC fund! Uplift Ventures, a venture arm from Jungheinrich (a forklift manufacturer), has announced a €100M fund for Seed & Series A startups (1-5M a company) in Physical AI, Energy, Enterprise AI and Logistics. Awesome news!
Speaking of Physical AI, it's the new cool kid on the block. We've had some big rounds lately in Neura Robotics (Metzingen, Series C, $1.4B), MicroAGI (Munich, Seed, $55M), and Sereact (Stuttgart, Series B, $110M). And in Hamburg we have GoodBytz (Series A, $12M), who are, by the way, coming to our podcast soon.
As Andreas Klinger said: "...this is the best year ever to start a robotics company." Maybe your startup will be the next in line? Luckily, there are spaces forming right now where you can connect with likeminded builders, e.g., Hardware Meetup, MAKERs' Breakfast.
You can also actively shape the grassroots of the community working with students. Community building is super exciting, if you ask me :)
Lastly, next week we'll do a community vote for the best guest post some of you have sent me. If you haven't yet but have a piece to share, fill out this quick form, you have time until EoW.
found community 🤝
Our WhatsApp group for Hamburg founders and operators.
Need an intro, a first hire, or an honest second opinion? Just ask in the community.
Sponsored
Your next 100 customers are already in Apollo
Find, reach, and close your perfect deals — without juggling five tools or hiring more reps.
Apollo gives you everything you need to build real pipeline, fast. From inbound to outbound, first touch to close.
All in Apollo.
Save the Date 🗓️
The events I'm most excited about in the weeks ahead.
Wednesday, September 16
AIRL: Offline Get Together (German) — Meet the people watching AI reshape design, film, coding and music, away from the timeline.
Thursday, September 17
Gründergeist Awards Ceremony (German) — Watch Hamburg's top three startups take the stage, with investors and operators in the room.
Saturday, September 19
SPECIAL: Founders Running Club x Young Founders Network (English) — Collab edition of the weekly run, with the Young Founders Network joining for the networking half.
Monday, September 21
Hamburg Frontier Research Club: Series Launch (English) — Dig into frontier AI papers over dinner with researchers and engineers, in the launch edition of a new technical series.
Wednesday-Thursday, September 23-24
bit summit (English) — Hamburg's engineering conference on AI, infra and backend at scale. Use code COMMUNITY_25 for 25% off. Refer people using your unique link at the bottom of this email, and the top 3 referrers each get a free ticket from us.
Weekly Picks 📍
All the events on my radar for this week.
This Issue’s Gem 💎
Saturday-Sunday, September 12-13
AI.WOMEN Hackathon (English) — Two full days to experiment and build with AI, in a space created for women.
AI Everywhere 🤖
Wednesday, September 9
ElevenLabs Voice AI Meetup (English) — Three speakers, eleven minutes each, on real voice AI use cases and the production numbers behind them.
Wednesday, September 9
Global AI Meetup: September Edition (English) — Compare notes with Hamburg's Global AI chapter, now registering on the community's own platform instead of Meetup.
Thursday, September 10
AI day-to-day: use cases for work & life (English) — Pick up AI tools you can use the next morning, in five-minute talks and hands-on demos that assume no tech background.
Tech Bite 🧑💻
Thursday, September 10
Data Engineering Meet-up (English) — Compare pipelines, platforms and AI data systems with the practitioners running them in production.
Sunday, September 13
agentic coding studio (English) — Build with coding agents next to other developers in the bi-weekly working session, no talks and no slides.
Sunday, September 13
Claude Code Sunday for Beginners (English) — Trade Claude Code workflows over coffee in a relaxed session aimed at people just getting started.
Startup 101 🔨
Tuesday, September 8
Hub-Fokus: Storytelling feat. Aaron Night (German) — Turn your positioning into a story people recognise and trust, and leave with your own narrative rather than a template.
Tuesday, September 8
Impact Academy: When Things Get Tense (German) — Work through the conflicts that quietly drain a small team, and the moves that resolve them.
Friday, September 11
build fridays (English) — Work on your own startup alongside other founders doing the same, and end the week with something shipped.
Get Inspired ✨
Tuesday, September 8
Art & Innovators (German) — Meet scientists, engineers and founders showing artworks made alongside their deep tech research.
Wednesday, September 9
Defence Tech Meetup (English) — Meet the people building, funding and supporting defence technology across Germany, Ukraine and beyond.
Thursday, September 10
12min.me IGNITE #122 (German) — Catch four twelve-minute talks and stay for the part where everyone actually talks.
Thursday, September 10
Deep Tech Afterwork (English) — Meet the deep tech founders and researchers building hard things in Hamburg, over a drink.
Saturday, September 12
Founders Running Club (English/German) — Run an easy 5K with founders and tech people, then network over coffee once everyone is back.
Open Calls 📣
Grants, programs, and opportunities waiting for your application.
NLnet — For developers and open-source builders. €5,000 to €50,000, non-dilutive, no equity, to build software under open licenses and open standards. Deadline: November 3.
Job Picks 💼
3 open roles worth a look this week.
Head of Engineering at Planeteers, a climate startup building a sustainability data platform for businesses.
Sales Development Representative at Impossible Cloud, a GDPR-compliant alternative to Amazon S3 storage.
UI / UX & API Developer at Pakajo, a Hamburg logistics startup looking for someone with AI and Claude experience.
Want to feature your job and put it in front of 1.400+ readers? Submit it here.
That’s a wrap!
Check out the tune of the week from the found playlist
🏄♂
Share found Hamburg with your friends
See you next week,
Kyrylo from found Hamburg