Welcome back. This one's all of May. The last one came barely two weeks ago but mostly covered April – so, the proper May wrap-up. I've now been back in Germany for a little over a month.

And let me tell you about trains. I've spent way too much time on them, going back and forth between Hamburg and my hometown area, NRW. By high-speed train that's four hours – but I'm too broke for those right now, so I've been on the slow ones on my flat-rate ticket: 8-10 hours one way, sometimes packed because of the holidays, sometimes hot as hell. German railways are exactly as unreliable as their reputation. It's been brutal – I'd now like to sit very still in Hamburg for a while. But it was worth it: lots of friends I hadn't seen and a few events I wanted to catch.

01 Back home in NRW

First, the 10-year high school reunion – honestly a banger night. We rented out our own café and partied into it. Way more people showed up than I expected. Everyone's changed and somehow hasn't changed at all – same people, completely diverged paths. In school you're thrown together because you live in the same town; ten years later you see how different the personalities and values became. The full spectrum. And a surprising number are building their own businesses now, which made for interesting conversations.

Then a week in Aachen with family and a few meetings. The standout: the Charlemagne Prize. Mario Draghi – former Italian PM, former head of the ECB, properly famous in European politics – got it, and came to our university for a lecture and Q&A. He's famous for the report on European competitiveness he put his name on last year; I'd been hyped to read it back then and got through part of it (it's hundreds of pages, very scientific). Turns out he's a former professor himself.

And then a small funny encounter. The talk ends, a few hundred people file out, and I'm still sitting there. Security wants to kick me out – but I want to say hi to the president of RWTH, who was hosting Draghi. The room's nearly empty now, maybe five people left. Security walks over to him: "there's this guy sitting there, do you know him?" He looks over, breaks into a grin, genuinely happy to see me. Why does the president of my university remember some random graduate? Because three weeks earlier we'd been in Beijing together for that talk I told you about last episode – and I'd named him directly, multiple times, on stage. Apparently that lands. The first thing I told him was "I hope you remember me" – and he immediately brought up the talk. Surreal to bump into the same faces on opposite ends of the planet within three weeks.

Which brings me to something I've really noticed this past year: I'm using my network in a way I never used to. Not building it – activating it. Meeting decision-makers again and again, sometimes with a business angle, mostly just as humans. Grabbing a beer with someone drops all the filters a formal meeting puts up; you build a real connection, and that's what opens doors. China was the ultimate cheat code here – so few foreigners that almost every German you meet is a senior expat exec (it's so expensive to send Germans abroad that companies only do it for top leadership). You end up one beer away from people you'd never normally reach.

02 The lawyer meeting

The biggest milestone of the month: my second meeting with a potential client for my software, in person this time. I'd found him online (a lawyer doing exactly the process my software solves), cold-called him, did a one-minute pitch, and he said "interesting, let's talk." Then a discovery call, booked for 30 minutes – I showed him what I'm building, dug into his problems, and we agreed to look at piloting it. For the follow-up I pulled a trick I stole from Y Combinator: tell the client "oh, I'll be in your area those days anyway, let's do it in person" – and only book the ticket once they say yes. He said yes.

I was horribly nervous beforehand. In my head I'd already decided I had to walk out with a verbal commitment on price. I went to Primark (cause I'm too broke for anything else) to buy clothes so I'd look sharp for the big business lunch I'd pictured in some fancy restaurant. Reality: the guy's maybe 5-10 years older than me, completely chill, the kind of person you'd just grab a beer with. I was better dressed than him. And I paid for lunch – never mind that he's ten times richer than me. We'd planned an hour and sat there for three. Somewhere in the middle it hit me: we're nowhere near pricing, I barely understand his workflow yet, and he wasn't expecting contracts either. I was massively overcooking it. (Thanks Till for calming my nerves.)

The win: in June he's got a new project he wants to test the software on. A real person, a real pilot. But it also taught me where the difficulty actually is. Building the software – functional, professional, secure – is the easy part. Finding people, convincing them, and waiting is the hard part: decision processes are slow, weeks between meetings, days between emails. And to do it properly I'll need €5,000–10,000 up front, one time – lawyer for contracts, tax accountant, incorporating the company, an expert to review the software's security. Which I don't have. So progress will be slower than I hoped.

03 Broke, not poor

Now the real story. Let me be transparent: I'm dead broke. My bank account is at about €30, three months without serious income, unemployment money overdue, credit card maxed – I've never been this broke in my life. Not even sure I can go further into my overdraft.

But the distinction I keep making: I'm not poor, I'm broke. I've got savings (in stocks) but that's retirement money, I'm not touching that. I've got my family who would back me up anytime. And I'm only this broke because I chose to be: I could take a normal job tomorrow and live comfortably. This is the path I picked.

And I'm not alone – most students know this place. I remember sitting at a hotpot spot at 2 a.m. with Harrish earlier this year in Shenzhen, seriously working out how to make the bill as cheap as possible: hot water base, cheapest veggies on the menu, and methodically working through everything free at the sauces bar just to get full for the least money. Or lately, the entire Animal Kingdom refreshing Ping An every other second. Very fun times, ngl.

So I'm at a real crossroads – the oldest founder dilemma there is, especially since I'm bootstrapping (no investors, because I want to stay small and keep control). It's runway vs. progress, or more bluntly: progress vs. not starving. I want to pour my time into the company, but I need money to live – and right now the money side is screaming a lot louder than the time side.

Because here's the thing – the whole point of this isn't to get rich. My goal is just a nice lifestyle, and that's actually simple: nice flat in a nice neighborhood, wake up slow, meditate, gym, slow breakfast, five focused hours of real work, then evenings with friends, repeat. That's it. A worry-free, flexible life where I don't have to think about money – where I don't take the slow train because I can't afford the fast one; I just buy the ticket and go. Right now I'm basically living that life, minus the money part. Which is exactly what makes it unsustainable.

And the software isn't paying yet – pre-revenue, totally normal for this stage. I recently shifted my target customer too, so I've restarted with a new group, only a handful of conversations in. Realistically it's six to nine months before the first euro. So I'm dialing the startup down to a steady minimum, maybe 10 focused hours a week, and finding income another way.

04 How I'm going to get money

Before I go on, a disclaimer: this section is mostly money and business talk. If it's not your thing, skip to the next section.

I talk about money this openly not to flex (I got nothing to flex about but €30), but because I think we should all be way more open about it, and it's the fastest way to learn. Every business owner I meet talks numbers without blinking (building a business is, in the end, literally a financial thing). It's also just where my head is right now (broke, building something), which is why these newsletters keep filling up with it. There's plenty in my life that isn't business or money, though, so let's meet and catch up on all the rest, yours and mine. Anyway:

I've got more options than I deserve, each a trade-off between six things: how much it pays, how much time it eats, how soon it'll pay me, whether it's good for my lifestyle, whether it's good for my CV, and what the actual chances are of me getting it. Quick tour:

1. Independent consulting – my favorite.

• Money: INSANELY GOOD! €1,000/day gross, sometimes up to €1,300-€1,600/day. €4,500/month net for 2 days per week. Can technically even be combined with the €15k scholarship, if less than 15h/week.
• Time: Good. Lot of flexibility to decide how much and when to work. Either part-time (e.g., 5 days per month), project-based (full-time for a few weeks).
• Time to Money: Mid. Unpredictable. Generally needs a few weeks/months of conversations with people until you're ready for a contract. Can sometimes even take more than a year. Optimistically at the earliest in 3 months.
• Lifestyle: Good. Would work with people (but probably remote). Relatively flexible (e.g., part-time, independent asynchronous work). Can be stressful, especially if 5 days/week - but temporary.
• CV: Gold. I'd be directly working with senior leadership on high-stakes problems, not as a junior analyst reporting to an analyst reporting to a manager reporting to a senior manager.
• Chances: Low to Mid, if I'm optimistic. I'm in a few talks already, but nothing specific yet. Only way in is warm network: RWTH/Tsinghua/WZL alumni now in top management, especially German firms in China. Catch: not guaranteed, my first independent gig, they have to trust me. If I get a gig, I'm confident I can deliver good work. Consulting is what I've lived and breathed my whole career.

2. A normal industry job.

• Money: Good. €3,500/month net (€65–70k/year gross).
• Time: Bad. 40h/week. In practice maybe 25h/week if the job is chill. Tough to do 10+h/week of software startup on the side.
• Time to money: Meh. A few months till first paycheck.
• Lifestyle: Mid. You get to work with people, but you're not flexible.
• CV: Good. The standard what every recruiter expects of a graduate.
• Chances: Meh. The worst time in years to apply: hiring freezes, rough economy, now 10 applicants per job (vs. 5 jobs per applicant three years ago). My 10 half-hearted applications: mostly rejections. Tracking systems undersell my profile – recruiters don't know Tsinghua (top-20 worldwide), and just see a fresh grad who never worked full-time. Real way in: referrals and network.

3. Part-time at a startup.

• Money: Meh. €1,800/month net - not much for Hamburg costs of living.
• Time: Mid. 20 hours.
• Time to Money: Mid. A few months till first paycheck. Faster than industry.
• Lifestyle: Good. You work with cool people who could become friends. Some flexibility.
• CV: Good.
• Chances: Decent. Young companies with fresh funding raised are growing and have a need for support.

4. Unemployment money.

• Money: Meh. €1,400–1,700/month net. Funny thing – it's more than I lived on as a student, yet it's officially Germany's legal bare minimum (Existenzminimum); meaning loads of students live below the minimum, just normalized for them.
• Time: Fabulous. Zero hours of work needed. Some admin work here and there.
• Time to Money: Good. Starts immediately (hopefully next week) - which matters at €30.
• Lifestyle: Decent. I don't get to interact with people in a structured context, so I'll be mostly vibe-coding at home every day. And they are brutally strict: they comb your bank statements, cut every wrong euro, bury you in paperwork, push you off fast, and forbid other income.
• CV: haha.
• Chances: Good. Pretty much guaranteed. Some bonus support not guaranteed, but that's nice-to-have.

5. The €15k startup scholarship.

• Money: Alright-ish. Ca. €2,200/month net. Consists of €1,200/month base. Can combine with up to 15h of normal job income (ca. €1,600/month for avg. job).
• Time: Good. Zero hours needed, I literally get the money to work on the software - that's what I got the funding for in the first place. Up to 15h/week part-time job for more money.
• Time to Money: Meh. Will probably start in October (slow German bureaucracy).
• Lifestyle: Good. Could do it from Thailand for cheap costs of living and socializing in coliving spaces, though grey zone. Flexible.
• CV: Meh. My software startup will remain the only thing on my CV. If it doesn't work out, I'll technically still be a uni grad who has never worked full-time 1.5-2 years after graduation.
• Chances: Very good. I got it already. Just formalities outstanding.

6. Becoming an independent, certified energy consultant.

• Money: Good. At least as nice weekend money. If you get a client, usually between €300 (2 hour workload) and €2000 (2 days workload) per gig.
• Time: Good. Can do it as a side or on the weekends.
• Time to Money: Low to Mid. Will have to do 2-month-long certification first (costs €2,000 one-time; 1 day per week self-study online with exam). Takes time to get clients.
• Lifestyle: Good. You see people (clients) here and there. You're fully flexible. Can't do it remotely from Thailand, cause you gotta visit the apartments of your clients in person.
• CV: Mid. Nice-to-have, but not comparable to a real full-time job.
• Chances: Mid to Good. Getting the certification is easy as an engineer, the course is not difficult. Getting clients is also surprisingly easy, there is massive demand and not many energy consultants in Germany. A friend – same program, same uni, engineer my age – did 50 projects last year through friends and family alone, and made €30,000 through it as a side gig. Downside: €2,000 upfront investment.

7. Small side gigs.

• Money: Mid. Nice pocket money on the side (e.g., with scholarship), but unreliable. E.g., last episode's translation gig (fixing a bad user manual) can get you €1,000 per client (workload: 1 day).
• Time: Good. Flexible.
• Time to Money. Meh. Unpredictable. I'm in a few talks, but at the earliest in 3 months, maybe only in 2 years.
• Lifestyle: Good. Small tiny one-time gigs, don't affect your lifestyle at all.
• CV: Mid at best. Not CV material.
• Chances: Mid at best. I'm in a few talks, but nothing specific yet.

None of it is guaranteed, none of it perfect. But getting to even pick between all these is, I'm aware, an absurd privilege.

05 The part nobody sees

Let me be real about the emotional side, the bit no one warns you about. This phase – right before your first sale – is supposedly the hardest (not that it gets much easier after). It's a rollercoaster. One day I'm completely convinced this works. The next I look at my €30, count the months I've poured in with not a cent to show for it, and think: bro, you're a delusional random who just talks about it. The conversations, the features, the rejections – it's invisible work. Your parents tell you to get a normal job. Your whole identity gets tied up in it. And the only real validation there is, is someone actually paying you.

Which is why I want that first euro so badly – not for the money, but for the proof that the process works. And when it happens, I'm going to run to every one of you and not shut up about it: look, it works, go do the same.

But I keep having to zoom out: this is a bonus round. None of it is because I have to – it's because I can, and I want to. Getting to even consider all this – a wealthy, well-connected country behind me, one of the best-paid fields, the China network, a safety net I can always fall back on – is an absurd privilege. Most people don't get to play this round at all. So even with €30 in the bank, I'm genuinely happy. Stressed sometimes, sure. But happy.

Random

• Most grateful for, embarrassingly: a software update. Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 4.8 and gave back the "effort" setting – for months they'd quietly dumbed Claude down to save compute and the answers were trash; now you can turn it back up and it thinks again. Tells you something about my life that this is a highlight.
• Germany is expensive. €10 for a kebab, €5 for a coffee, €6–7 for a matcha latte. After living on €1,000/month in China and Southeast Asia, my brain hasn't recovered.

What's next + how to find me

• Hamburg through June. After that I need a new place – probably a 3-month sublease in Hamburg for July–September while I sort out income. Then I think I'll either settle in Hamburg or head back to Thailand for the cheaper life.
• Know anyone subletting a flat in Hamburg for July–September? Send them my way.
• Consulting intro? The big one. Do you know anyone in senior management at an industrial company (especially German firms in China, but others also fine), or independent consultants / small consultancies who farm out projects? That's gold. They need to be senior enough to approve a budget themselves, or well-connected to those who can. RWTH/Tsinghua/WZL alumni work well here. I'd love an intro!
• Industry intro? Do you know a team lead/decision-maker around Hamburg who could use a sharp pair of hands and wouldn't need me 50 hours a week? I'd love an intro.
• Startup intro? Do you know someone working at a startup (ideally Hamburg-based, but remote also fine) who needs some flexible part-time support (and pays decent money)? I'd love an intro.
• Are you interested in building your own business as well? There's a whole detailed playbook behind all this that's actually quite simple (just not easy) – if you want it, reply to this email and I might put the full step-by-step playbook in a future email.
• Reply to this. Voice note, call, text – whatever. I want your honest thoughts, especially on the money and build-a-business stuff. Most of you haven't taken this path, so you'll spot blind spots I can't. Tell me where I'm right, where I'm naive, where I'm completely wrong.

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Love you all, take care.

Alper

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