Hey, dear reader!
One of our readers shared with me that Hamburg has started building a new innovation park — Tech City Hamburg in Harburg. Somehow the news slipped under my radar and, surprisingly, barely made a sound on socials.
Anyway, Tech City is the newest of the city's four innovation parks, some of which you might know already, each with its own focus:
Altona: life sciences, quantum
Finkenwerder: aerospace
Bergedorf: energy storage, photonics
Harburg: GreenTech, robotics, AI, materials, new food
I looked through their pitch, which I also encourage you to do, and saw quite a few promising initiatives.
First, container labs, already up and running this year. Building hardware has been a bottleneck in the city for years, and this is one of the projects to tackle it.
Second, a franchise of École 42. It's a coding school with no tuition, no teachers, and no diploma needed to get in. You apply, and if you survive a month of writing code, you're in.
Third, self-driving research labs, where AI runs the experiments instead of just assisting with them. And next to them, a school where humanoid robots learn, not where people learn robotics.
Of course, most of this is still on paper, but the cool thing is that we as a community can help make those plans real. If any of those initiatives could help you, or you could help them, reach out to the team on the website. I already did, let's see what comes next.
P.S. In the new episode of the found podcast, we sat down with Florian Birner, co-founder of Planeteers, building one-of-a-kind CO2 capture technology and tackling climate change. Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
found community 🤝
Our WhatsApp community for Hamburg founders and operators.
We created a WhatsApp group to keep the conversation going between the newsletter and events.
Need an intro, a first hire, a warm lead, or an honest second opinion, just ask. The community is what we all make of it. Can't wait to welcome you there!
Save the Date 🗓️
The events I'm most excited about in the weeks ahead.
Thursday, August 6
Defence Tech Meetup (English) — Connect with engineers, founders, and investors building and funding defence tech in Germany, Ukraine, and beyond.
Thursday, August 6
AI Builders Hamburg: Launch Edition (English) — Connect with the city's AI builder crowd for live demos, hands-on talks, and honest shop-talk.
Wednesday, August 12
Female Founder's Breakfast (English/German) — Swap startup questions and grow your network with other women founders over a relaxed morning coffee.
Thursday, August 13
The Garage (English) — Meet Hamburg's builders at this recurring evening of demos, conversations, and new connections.
Thursday, August 13
AI Beavers Summer BBQ (English) — Wind down the summer with Hamburg's AI builder community over grilled food and good conversations.
Weekly Picks 📍
All the events on my radar for this week.
This Issue’s Gem 💎
Tuesday, July 28
YFN x Codex Community Sprint: Build Something That Matters (English) — Team up with Hamburg's young builders for an evening sprint shipping real projects with AI tools, hosted with Körber Start-Hub.
AI Everywhere 🤖
Saturday, August 1
agentic coding studio (English) — Spend a focused morning building with AI agents alongside people shipping products where agents do the heavy lifting.
Sunday, August 2
Claude Code Sunday for Beginners (English) — Get hands-on with Claude Code and agentic AI in a beginner-friendly weekly session.
Tech Bite 🧑💻
Thursday, July 30
n8n Meetup: Socializing (English) — Trade automation war stories and workflow ideas with Hamburg's n8n community over a relaxed evening by the harbor.
Startup 101 🔨
Friday, July 31
build fridays (English) — Ship your product alongside other builders, demo your progress, and get unstuck with feedback from fellow founders.
Get Inspired ✨
Thursday, July 30
Climate Coffee (English) — Meet Hamburg's climate-tech founders, investors, and enthusiasts for an easy morning of coffee and honest conversation.
Thursday, July 30
Founders for Good Afterwork: One-Year Anniversary (German) — Celebrate one year of honest founder networking, with the entry donation going fully to charity.
Saturday, August 1
Founders Running Club (English) — Kick off Saturday with founders and tech folks for an easy-paced 5K run, fresh air, and coffee conversations after.
Open Calls 📣
Grants, programs, and opportunities waiting for your application.
ESA BIC Northern Germany — For startups using space tech or satellite data in any product, from logistics to AI. EUR 60,000 cash with zero equity, plus 24 months of incubation, technical experts, and office space. Deadline: August 16.
Encourage Ventures Founder Challenge 2026 — For EU startups with at least one female founder holding 20%+, building AI-driven tech-for-good. Mentoring, investor visibility, and a pitch stage in front of angels and corporate leaders on November 11, backed by the Mercedes-Benz Fonds. Deadline: August 31.
Job Picks 💼
3 open roles worth a look this week.
Principal Machine Learning Engineer at exmox, an adtech startup building performance-based mobile ad campaigns.
Brand Communication Lead at Infinite Roots, a biotech startup growing mycelium-based food.
Werkstudent Founders Associate at toern, a circular-economy e-commerce startup.
Want to feature your job and put it in front of 1,300+ 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