Brazil’s new president must reconcile a divided country

Good morning dear readers,

An election result could hardly be closer: Brazil’s ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election last night with 50.84 percent of the vote. According to the electoral office in Brasília, the right-wing incumbent made it to 49.16 percent. For the equally popular and controversial Lula, who ruled the largest country in Latin America from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2010, the main thing now is to reconcile the divided Brazil.

The federal government wanted to be a progressive coalition when it took office a year ago. But when it comes to progress, the traffic light does not deliver enough, according to more than a dozen of the best-known German start-up entrepreneurs. That’s why they wrote a fire letter to Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), among others.

“As German founders, we are concerned and call on you as the federal government not only to protect established industries in Germany when dealing with the crisis, but also to consistently make policies for the economy and growth of the future,” write the entrepreneurs among them Hanno Renner, co-founder of Germany’s third most valuable start-up Personio, Delivery Hero co-founder Niklas Östberg, Jochen Engert, co-founder of the mobility platform Flix, and Outfittery co-founder Julia Bösch.

Among other things, they demand faster visa procedures for foreign skilled workers, more growth capital, tax advantages for employee participation and a reform of pension schemes.

Curious: The federal cabinet only decided on a comprehensive start-up strategy at the end of July, which includes most of the demands made by start-up entrepreneurs. Nothing has been implemented yet, but the legislative period is still almost three years away. Apparently, the ladies and gentlemen from the entrepreneurial community are not progressing quickly and far enough.

However: Packing your frustration in a fire letter should be as effective a lobbying strategy as stamping your foot three times and shouting “Oh, man!”. In both cases you might be heard, but you certainly don’t collect any sympathy points from the addressees in politics.

Why do we actually need start-ups? Among other things, because long-established companies are notoriously bad at stirring up an existing market with innovations – because that would be competition with your own products. Management thinker Clayton Christensen dubbed this weakness “Innovator’s Dilemma”.

An exception to the rule is the Rügenwalder Mühle company. The family business is likely to be remembered by the Prilblume generation as the manufacturer of the legendary Teewurst, which was a must-have on every lunch break of the 1970s and 1980s. But Rügenwalder didn’t want to be satisfied with that and started to invest in the rapidly growing market for meat substitutes. In the meantime, Rügenwalder has risen to become the market leader in Germany with veggie sausage and plant-based meatballs. Of course, the Teewurst is now also available in a vegetarian version.

Rügenwalder boss Michael Hähnel is now announcing the next step in innovation, which is once again about competing with our own products: “We want to be one of the first on the market with cultivated meat.”

Rügenwalder is cooperating with the Swiss start-up Mirai Foods. The company grows fat and muscle cells from cattle in the laboratory. It is real meat, but no animal has to die for it. Rügenwalder’s goal: to develop a hybrid burger by 2025 that consists of vegetable proteins and cultivated beef fat. According to Hähnel, this taste cannot be imitated with vegetable fat alternatives to this day.

For Elon Musk, the innovator’s dilemma has been a loyal ally so far. He was also able to be so successful with Tesla because the established car companies tried to prevent the electromobility market for years rather than trying to conquer it.

With Twitter, the serial entrepreneur has now bought a new toy. The weekend brought a first glimpse of how Twitter will transform under its new ownership. Musk wants to create a new body to deal with controversial content. Before such a council meets, there will be no major decisions on content policy or account recovery, Musk wrote on Twitter. The activation of ex-President Donald Trump’s account, which Musk had been discussing in the past few months, should therefore not be expected immediately.

At the same time, Musk promised in a tweet over the weekend: “Anyone banned for minor and dubious reasons will be released from Twitter jail.” He was also open to lifting the 280-character limit on tweets. He also thought it would be a good idea to give users a choice between different versions of the service: “Like an age rating in a movie theater.”

Musk completed the $44 billion takeover of the short message service on Thursday. With the purchase, Musk is delisting Twitter and no longer has to provide information about the development of the business.

Musk himself tweeted a conspiracy theory about the attack on politician husband Paul Pelosi yesterday. “There’s a tiny chance there’s more to this story,” the billionaire wrote on a shared link. Musk has 112 million followers on Twitter.

82-year-old Paul Pelosi was attacked and injured with a hammer at the couple’s home in San Francisco on Friday night. According to police, the attacker asked to speak to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But she was in Washington. The 42-year-old attacker was arrested. The conspiracy theory Musk tweeted suggests, without any evidence, that Paul Pelosi may have gotten into an argument with a call boy he let in himself. The police, however, clearly speak of a burglary. Musk later deleted the tweet.

And then there was Saturday’s gathering in Tokyo, where 178 boys and men named Hirokazu Tanaka got together in a room, setting a new record: Never before had so many people with the same name gathered. The record has so far been held by 164 Martha Stewarts. The British “Guardian” takes this as an opportunity to bring us closer to the people who organize such record attempts with great effort. According to the newspaper, the record for the largest meeting of people with the same first name is held by the 2,325 Ivans who met in Bosnia in 2017. They dethroned Muhammad in 1096.

In today’s Handelsblatt I found out from my colleague Lazar Backovic: There are more men in German top management named Christian than women. This offers potential for a new record: Most people with the same first name in a German boardroom.

I wish you a day when nothing babbles down.
Best regards
Her

Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt