Hey, dear reader!
The Hamburg Startup Monitor 2026 is out, and if you've been on LinkedIn last week, you've already seen the highlights. GreenTech is booming, more startups than in 2024, optimism is high. All true.
But I did something different. I went back and read the previous editions. And what stood out wasn't any single number. It was the repetition.
Capital access is a top challenge. Office space is too expensive. University-startup ties are weak. These aren't new findings — they've been flagged in every single edition since 2019. The diagnosis hasn't changed because the problem hasn't changed.
And the numbers back it up. In January, I wrote about Hamburg adding 203 new startups, roughly the same as 2019's 205. Meanwhile, Munich went from 192 to 290 in the same window. VC investment peaked at €547M in 2022 and has dropped every year since — down to €176M last year.
Then there's the internationality gap. The Monitor says 49% of founders rate Hamburg as attractive for international talent, above the national average. But only 40% use English as their working language. Berlin: 67%. Back in October, I looked at our own event data and found that 57% of startup events in Hamburg are in German. The pattern is the same whether you look at workplaces or meetups: Hamburg wants to be international but hasn't made the switch.
Now — this isn't all bad news. Some numbers genuinely surprised me. 66% of Hamburg founders want more in-person events, compared to just 36% in Berlin. The appetite for community is real and growing. GreenTech startups make up 22% of Hamburg's ecosystem versus 16% nationally, and many of them are hiring (check the job board). And investment optimism sits at 39%, well above Berlin's 23%.
So the energy is there. But will next year's Monitor actually read differently, or will we highlight the same numbers and nod along again? Reports don't change ecosystems. What we do between them does.
Save the Date 🗓
The events I'm most excited about in the weeks ahead.
April 9-10
Hack the AI Future (English/German) — Build real AI solutions for 9 corporate challenges alongside 350+ participants.
April 14
LogisticsTech Talks (English) — Hear three logistics entrepreneurs — Zauber, Rail-Flow, and rethink Ventures — share how they're reinventing supply chains.
April 18
WoHa! | Women's Hackathon (English/German) — Build real tech solutions in interdisciplinary teams at Hamburg's third edition women-focused hackathon.
Weekly Picks📍
All the events on my radar for this week.
This Issue’s Gem 💎
April 2
Women in Tech Kick-off (German) — Explore how women sustain peak performance in tech through a panel with founders from Kandu, COzero, and Montblanc.
AI Everywhere 🤖
March 31
OpenClaw Setup Night (English) — Get hands-on with OpenClaw's AI framework, bring your laptop, and get it running with expert help — no experience needed.
Tech Bite 🧑💻
March 30
n8n Community Meetup (English) — Connect with Hamburg's automation and AI community for a keynote, open space sessions, and networking around workflow automation.
Startup 101 🔨
April 1
How to: Pitchdecks #RoastingEdition (German) — Learn what makes a killer pitch deck as investor Nikola Seidel constructively roasts selected decks and reveals what works.
Get Inspired ✨
Every Saturday
Founders Running Club (English) — Energize your weekend with fellow entrepreneurs during a judgment-free 5K run followed by coffee and meaningful networking conversations.
Open Calls 📣
Grants, programs, and opportunities waiting for your application.
Silicon Allee Venture Lab — For deep tech startup teams working with explainable AI or 3D Gaussian Splatting. Get access to Fraunhofer HHI's compute infrastructure, researcher collaboration, and up to 12 months of salary funding with founder-friendly equity terms. Rolling applications.
Antler ONE — For early-stage founders building from scratch or with early traction. Up to €500K in pre-seed funding, office space in Berlin, and €4M+ in startup perks. 10-week residency for solo founders, 6-week sprint for teams. Rolling applications.
EIC Accelerator — For EU-based startups and SMEs ready to scale. Up to €2.5M in grants and €15M in equity from the European Innovation Council. Deadline: May 6.
Job Picks 💼
3 open roles worth a look this week.
Senior Machine Learning Engineer (NLP) at Sonia Solutions, a speech AI startup for healthcare (Seed, €12M).
AI Operations & Knowledge Systems Specialist at Sport Alliance, a SaaS platform for fitness studios and sports clubs ($106M total).
AEO / LLM-Search Lead at HeyFlow, a no-code interactive flow builder (Series A, $22M total).
Hiring? Submit your job here. Want to feature it in the newsletter? Reply to this email.
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