Week 32: offline, boat, mountains, Friends, and Family
Back from summer vacation
Hey there! I was offline. Well, not really, but I only wanted to read what I wanted to read and did not want to have any obligations to do something.
I very much enjoyed focusing on not being focused and spent time outdoors, doing a bit of sport, and did a reset.
Summer Road Trip: Mountains and boat
We made a long summer trip. We went on a road trip that we planned the weekend before we left. Usually, we go with the flow on our road trips. And we like to have very few preplanned destinations on our agenda and plan while we go. This time we had two ideas: We wanted to relax at one place for a few days, and we also wanted to see something new.
I send a message to a restaurant Dina and I have wanted to go to for a long time: Hiša Franko. They actually had a table (and rooms to sleep) on the following Friday. So our first “destination” was set: Slovenia. We left Berlin on Wednesday and drove to Salzburg, booked rooms from the car, and spent the evening and Thursday in Salzburg exploring the city.
Our next destination was Hiša Franko, where we spend a day and a morning. The atmosphere was super nice, and the food was delicious—a high recommendation to go when you are around there. We then spent more than a week in Slovenia exploring the mountains, rivers, and Ljubljana. We rented mountain bikes, did hikes, and spend time in the city.
Then we drove to Croatia, met friends, and boarded a catamaran we had chartered through Zizoo Boats shortly before we left Berlin. Boatlife was amazing, especially because of our amazing skipper, Borna, whom we also found through Zizoo. We sailed (and motored) through the islands and spent super relaxing days and nights between the islands off Croatia’s coast.
Hard decision: What is APX’s home?
After coming back to Berlin, Henric and I had to make a hard decision: What kind of office do we need for APX? And with all our learnings and experiences from the past 18 months, we have learned that the days of the coworking space are over. So we decided that we do not need our new office anymore. I wrote a longer piece on medium about this decision, its reasons, and its consequences. Check it out in case you want to know more about the reasons.
What I read and watched over the past few weeks:
I did not watch too much youtube. So there is nothing I can recommend. We listened to quite a bit of music: Whenever there was a TV with good speakers in one of the AirBnBs, we listened to (and watched) Be Svendsen at Mount Nemrud.
And this is our summer playlist on Apple Music.
I very much enjoyed reading The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary. I think it is one of the best “shortcut collections” for building and scaling a company. Very relevant content and very actionable when you are building a fast-growing company.
I enjoyed this article by first round about how to create community and sharing events. We have started with more sharing formats with our portfolio of founders, and I share a lot of the learnings of
That’s it for today. Have a great rest of the weekend and a good week! Thank you for reading, and
cheers!
Joerg