Reflection and plans for 2023

Repost from Substack

Programming note: regular format will be back on Monday, 9th of January. This time a short reflection and some news for the intermezzo. 🎉

I never imagined I will be writing a year-end summary for handpicked. The only reason I started in early May 2022 was because I found the idea of ExitUp interesting and figured I could do something similar myself.

Giving up was always an option, huehue, not gonna lie. Curating a niche weekly newsletter requires a special type of discipline: a lot of browsing through the crap to find interesting stuff. Week in and week out. 

I stopped thinking about giving up

somewhere after issue #15 and I am happy I did because we are now almost 1500. I owe a lot to the coolest guys I never met, Andrew Bulkeley and Maurice Frank from 20 Percent Berlin. They gave me a shoutout, and I wish I could write “…, and the rest is history”, but 

I actually need to thank you, all the readers, because you are the ones that keep me going. 🙏

Thank you so much for reading and showing interest!

👊🏻 Why continue?

It is not that I am only continuing, I am actually doubling down. 

First, it’s all fun and games with GPT3 and whatever AI comes next, 

but I strongly believe there is great space to occupy for human curators. The pile of shit is getting bigger by the day, and I think we will see a moment of a reversal towards more curated content with a human touch.

Second, there is a big problem to solve in the job market

where great companies easily get lost in the spam of job boards and where both, employers and employees, more or less hope for the best in the hiring process. There is a lot of room for solutions, and handpicked is on the way to be one of them.

And third, I enjoy doing it

because there is still so much to learn, try and do. Here I also need to thank Vika & the Grammarly team for having the courage to try something different.

👀 What’s coming next?

In the immediate future:

• ✅ a handpickedberlin.com website with a job database (database still work in progress), 
• ✅ a Patreon page, where you can support my work for a price of an alcoholic drink per month, 
• 🔲 experiment with different growth channels (eg. handpicked Twitter, TikTok),
• 🔲 more professional logo.

And plenty of other things that are at the moment only in my notebook. 

🙏 How can you help?

Feedback of any kind means the most. If possible, I would love to include it in the Testimonials section of the website. Other possibilities:

• if you use Twitter: follow @handpickedBln,
• support via Patreon would be next level 🤯
• and if you can share handpicked with someone, please do!

Thank you so much for your support and a healthy and peaceful start to 2023!