Talent Crunch in 2026 — Part 3: The Direction & Vision

Written, again, mainly in 1st person — this will continue until we have a solid team building this together every day.

2025 taught us what we can carry. 2026 will be the year we choose what we carry. We want clarity. We want depth. We want calm growth. And I personally want a community that stands for something clear and strong.

This part is about where we go next.

What 2026 must feel like

2025 was intense:

• Delivered twenty events.
• Paid thousands of euros from our own pockets.
• Carried operational strain quietly.
• Held a community that grew faster than our systems.

In 2026 I want us to achieve:

• Maybe fewer events, but stronger events (spoiler: I already have 10 events cooked, just need to plan them throughout the year).
• Stronger structures.
• Sustainable energy (for me and anyone who will help me with building the community further).
• Cleaner planning (in advance), to avoid chaos like October 2025.
• Reliable, long-term and aligned partners.
• Reliable, engaged members.

I want to better understand what this community needs — this will be a theme I carry from month to month. It won't ever be a "ah, ok, now we are done".

What we are building next

We signed a long-term partnership with Ashby for the full year. This shows what is possible when trust and respect are present. We want more partnerships like this 💗

In the process of signing the continuation of our Satellite Talent partnership with Talent Crunch for HY1 2026 — we bring you professionally led workshops 🥳!

Also I will only work with: partners who understand community. Partners who trust my judgement and knowledge of the community and our markets. Partners who do not treat me like an event planner.

The community I dream of in 2026

If Talent Crunch worked exactly as it should, the culture would feel like this:

• People feel safe enough to ask uncomfortable questions.
• People feel encouraged to admit uncertainty.
• People feel supported by others who understand the work.
• People feel included regardless of their level of expertise, languages they speak, personality types, where they come from, how they show up… and everything else.

I want everyone to have the same feeling I have from being in this community — that it is a place where they can be who they really are, in full.

• People regain confidence in their profession.
• People share more.
• People help each other on Slack.
• People comment on posts.
• People step in with ideas and experience.
• People contribute, not only consume.

This is how we grow from an event series into a living network.

What else is coming

• Partnerships with co-working spaces, to allow us to come together more regularly.
• Pre-scheduled AMA sessions for 30 mins every month, online.
• Volunteers and collaborators will have at least a meeting every 2 weeks with me.
• An exclusive sub-community — soon to be released 👀, allowing coaches, solopreneurs, freelancers and consultants (no HR tech, no vendors, no enterprise) to promote themselves in the community — including their courses and co.

Beyond Berlin

Talent Crunch is international. I run events in English because I care about expats and internationals who may feel excluded in other spaces. And because I myself am an expat.

• We will run events in more German cities this year.
• Barcelona will be our international expansion hub.

A cleaner, smarter event structure

• Setting a calendar early.
• Spacing events so we do not burn out our members or ourselves.
• Reducing the no-show rate to below 20 percent.
• Choosing practical themes over abstract ones.
• Designing formats that people can use at work the next day.
• Running more high-touch in-person sessions instead of surface-level panels.
• Building workshops with depth, not general conversations.
• Partnering with maybe fewer sponsors, but making sure we deliver quality over quantity.

Improving the engine behind the community

Talent Crunch grew faster than its systems. In 2026:

• Sunset Substack and move to a CRM.
• Move the newsletter to a GDPR-compliant system that also allows ad-hoc community communication.
• Leave Humanitix and move to Luma.
• Decide which social media channels stay and which go.
• Keep Instagram only if it supports our goal.
• Grow Slack into an active, useful hub — I need to find a collaborator who can help make this truly active and relevant for the members.
• Release the ultimate Members Services Directory for all our consultants, freelancers, coaches.
• Explore new locations for our events.
• The No-Show Ban will stay and will be enforced.

What the community taught us all in 2025

People told us they:

• Met their partners at our events.
• Landed jobs through the community.
• Found freelance clients.
• Felt less alone in Berlin.
• Regained their love for their work.
• Felt safe for the first time in a professional space.
• Valued the mix between TA, engineering and business.
• Trusted the quality of curation.
• Enjoyed learning from people who live the work, not talk around it.

These are some of the reasons we continue.

What we want the community to learn

We want people to understand what a real community is.

It is not a sales funnel. It is not a marketing list. It is not a lead machine. It is not a series of events.

With real care and respect,
Andreea — Founder of Talent Crunch — Berlin