Issue #81 • July 11th, 2026

Hi Reader,

Eleven names before mine.

I stood in Berlin's Rotes Rathaus on Monday watching Senator Franziska Giffey work down a line of people from around the world, shaking each hand, placing a certificate in each pair of hands. I kept thinking about a cafeteria line in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1994, where I used to just nod yes to questions I couldn't understand and hope I ended up with something edible.

Then it was my turn. Honorary Business Ambassador of Berlin. One of twelve, chosen worldwide, representing the United States.

Here's the part most people don't know. I never applied for this. Never asked for it. Someone in Berlin remembered my name and reached out.

I used to call that luck. I don't anymore.

I left Germany at 19 with two suitcases and almost no English. Spent over a decade in consulting. In 2014, I brought my brother Marcus's small bike company out of a Vienna garage and into the US, bootstrapped it past $20M in six years, and built it into a real love brand for American families. When we merged with woom's European side, I ran the combined $100M+ company for a couple of years, then handed it to a professional CEO and walked away on purpose, not to retire, but to build the next thing instead of managing the last one.

These days that's coaching business owners one on one, mentoring and advising founders, investing in a few businesses I believe in, running the regional cohort for Birthing of Giants, and mentoring in a handful of accelerators around the country. None of that got me the Berlin role. Thirty-two years of just doing the work, without needing anyone to notice, is what got me the Berlin role.

My father would understand that better than anyone. Born on a German farm in 1944, out of school at 15, two jobs most of his life, welding by day, a refinery by night. Some nights, dinner in our house was buttered bread with sugar. My mother still winces telling that story. I hear something else in it: proof that the right values carry you further than the right resources ever could, even when nobody's counting.

Try this today. Name one thing you're doing right now that has zero proof it's working. No feedback, no traction, no applause. Then decide, on purpose, to keep doing it for 90 more days before you let yourself judge whether it's working. Most people quit in the gap between the effort and the evidence. That gap is exactly where the compounding happens.

Here's the real question underneath all of it.

What are you doing right now, without any proof it's working, that you're willing to keep doing anyway?

I wrote the fuller story, the ceremony, the full arc from Louisiana to Berlin, and what it means for anyone building something between the US and Germany, in this week's issue. Read it here.

Mathias

P.S. Writing this on a train from Paris to Frankfurt, hoping the Wi-Fi holds up long enough to hit send. And if you're ever curious about the German market, Berlin is a genuinely great entry point, and if you're a German company eyeing the US, Texas is worth a serious look. Either way, you know where to find me.

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