Aspiring Founders Meetup #10
Are you an aspiring founder in Berlin who sometimes feels overwhelmed by the journey of launching a startup or becoming self-employed or starting up? You’re not alone.
Employed.World is here to create a safe, supportive space for people—especially those affected by layoffs—who want to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Whether you’re exploring a self-employment initiative or building your next big thing, we’re building a community that offers know-how, networks, and access to help you go further, together.
Important: Our meetup is within the amazing Venture Café Berlin Thursday Gatherings, please ask or look for the session event room on the reception/check-in and navigate to the room quickly after grabbing your drink :) Then we come back after our event to the network with the beautiful Venture Café community!
🌟 Our Inspiring Founders/Speakers:
1. Anil Can Baykal, Co-Founder & CTO @ Integral
"How to find and keep your co-founder"
About the Speaker:
Anil Can Baykal is the co-founder and CEO of Integral, a Berlin-based tax advisory and software company building an integrated, AI-forward suite for accounting, collaboration, and tax automation. Previously, Anil spent years in startup building, technical due diligence, and large-scale commerce transformations Penta, Kfzteile24, serving at times as interim CTO, advisor to CTOs, and hands-on engineer. He began his career in mobile banking, founded a payments startup in Turkey, then moved to Germany in 2016, working with the company builder Finleap in Berlin on founding and supporting ventures, before leading technology modernization at a large automotive e-commerce company undergoing a private-equity-backed turnaround.
At Integral, Anil’s approach is unapologetically product- and operations-centric: he and his team established an in-house tax advisory to “own the problem,” sit side-by-side with tax experts, and build tightly integrated tools that mirror real workflows. He favors a small, senior, office-first engineering team, fast whiteboarding over bloated process, and a pragmatic stack, with heavy emphasis on code generation for boilerplate and simplicity over novelty. The near-term roadmap focuses on collaboration and case-management tooling, a shadow accounting system that learns from production data, and a precise tax computation engine—aiming to automate the majority of a tax advisor’s repetitive work while keeping experts in the loop.
Anil, grew up in Turkey, studied Mathematics in France and has worked across banking, payments, infrastructure, and AI-enabled workflows. He believes great engineering teams are small, highly collaborative, and deeply conversant in the business they serve—and that best ideas win when engineers own the product as much as the code
2. Lena Kul, Founder @ ku:l
"Want to Be a Founder? Start Here"
five fundamental tips without which you simply can’t kick off and succeed as a solopreneur or founder in 2025 and beyond. These are the non-negotiables that set the stage for growth, stability, and real momentum from day one.
About Lena: Design recruiter turned researcher turned founder.
After building one of Europe’s strongest design and UXR teams at Miro — hiring 30+ senior talents from FAANG and other top organisations — Lena launched kuːl to change hiring from every angle:
→ Recruitment advising – helping companies identify, attract, and hire exceptional design talent.
→ 1:1 career advising – guiding designers and researchers on building standout portfolios, case studies, and job search strategies.
→ Courses & workshops – running self-paced and cohort-based programmes that prepare candidates to land roles faster.
→ Content – sharing raw, practical hiring advice with 45k+ professionals on LinkedIn and through her Substack, making high-quality recruitment and job search insights accessible to everyone.
Lena’s approach blends recruiter insight, design sensibility, and founder-level strategy — always rooted in what actually gets people hired.
Follow her newsletter
3. Sharif Malik, Cofounder & CTO @ CATHAGO
"Convert a Startup into Enterprise"
4. Isabella Rossi, Founder @ MaSí
"Impact Isn’t a Job Title and Burnout Isn’t a Badge of honor"
5. Supporter: Enrico Kalinka & Pascal winter
Independent insurance broker | Expert for Expats
Enrico will be presenting Win Insurances at the meetup: "Your experts for insurance and investments as an expat. We help you develop customized concepts – whether as an employee or founder – to secure and shape your future."
WIN Insurances is supporting transparent and English speaking access to legal and other insurance needs for private, self employment as well as business insurances in Germany for our community.
🗓️ Agenda
17:00 – 17:15 – Check-in, Grab a drink and navigate to the event venue
17:15 – 17:30 – Welcome Intro
17:30 - 18:00 - Know the Audience
18:00 – 19:15 – Talks
19:15 – 19:30 – Closing
19:30 - Open Networking with Venture Café Thursday Gathering
💼 Support for People Affected by Layoffs & Pursuing Self-Employment
Employed.World is here to help with:
Business coaching (funded by the Agentur für Arbeit for people on ALG1 & ALG2)
Registering as self-employed or founding a business
Navigating German taxes (with expert tax advisors)
Visa challenges for international founders
Applying for the Gründungszuschuss or other startup subsidies
Connecting you to founder-friendly coworking spaces, VCs, and communities
Discount to Co-working space like CIC Berlin
Deals on Tech softwares/tools
📸 Photos & Videos:
We’ll be capturing moments from the event. If you’d prefer not to be photographed or filmed, just let one of our team members know on-site.
🍊 Aspiring founders Starter Kit:
Co-working: CIC offers a special 20% discount to aspiring founders community, instead of 250 euros a month you can join and pay only 200 euros saving you 600 euros a year. You can email [email protected] or ask in the whatsapp community to get access to the deal.
Bank account: Looking for a business bank account, with Finom we are currently offering a 250 euro cash reward to aspiring founders community, contact Yashvir on email or ask in the community whatsapp group for the discount :)
Legal & Personal Financials consulting support: Enrico from our community is offering free 30 min consultation to anyone on various topics to help you start self employment or business with peace of mind, you can book a call with him here.
Gründungszuschuss and business coaching: You can book a coffee chat with Yashvir to get to about the business coaching program (funded by the arbeitsamt) to get support with navigating into self-employment or status. Book a call