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Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

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Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#11

Post by onion2k »

nailer wrote: post #3
robert_foss wrote: post #2

Was London at any point the startup capital of Europe? Maybe it was the banking capital of Europe, but that time is over now.

In terms of funding, yes. It's also the fintech capital of the world. Regarding being the banking capital: it's been two business days. You might be jumping the gun just a little. ;-)

Regarding being the banking Ng capital: it's been two business days. You might be jumping the gun just a little.

I strongly suspect the UK won't be able to continue any passporting[1] arrangements because it would greatly benefit Germany's financial sector if foreign banks had to establish a European presence to trade within the EU. That is an existential threat to London's finance industry. Obviously it depends on trade negotiations with the EU as the UK leaves, but really, what benefit is there to the EU to let it continue the way it is? Why would they want the UK to carry on as it is now?

[1] https://www.eba.europa.eu/regulation-and-policy/passporting-...

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#12

Post by tluyben2 »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #6

I think this article is completely wrong. The things that make London attractive to startups will stay the same. Not being in the EU won't change that. Additionally, it talks about UK attitudes to immigration, but London is completely separate from the rest of the UK in terms of these sort of things. Expect a lot of very silly things to be written about UK/EU over the coming months.

Offtopic-ish; What makes London attractive besides investors though? I work at a (fintech) startup with an office just outside London and I don't see much positive things for startups there at all compared to, say, Berlin besides money. I see partners and other startups we work with moving out of London for all the reasons I would say London is not all that great for startups. Again, outside companies who get millions of funding so they can pay to be in London.

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#13

Post by HalfwayToDice »

div wrote: post #10
HalfwayToDice wrote: post #6

I think this article is completely wrong. The things that make London attractive to startups will stay the same. Not being in the EU won't change that. Additionally, it talks about UK attitudes to immigration, but London is completely separate from the rest of the UK in terms of these sort of things. Expect a lot of very silly things to be written about UK/EU over the coming months.

The point the article is trying to make wrt immigration is that when the UK leaves the EU, it will also leave the free movement of workers zone, making it harder to attract immigrants, regardless of how London feels about them.

Immigration system for skilled workers is not going to change. If the UK actually does leave the EU, they'll replace EU rules of skilled immigration with something similar.

The UK is a knowledge economy, it will always be open to skilled immigrants. Yet people actually believe that the UK will close down all immigration. It's absurd.

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#14

Post by rayiner »

nailer wrote: post #3
robert_foss wrote: post #2

Was London at any point the startup capital of Europe? Maybe it was the banking capital of Europe, but that time is over now.

In terms of funding, yes. It's also the fintech capital of the world. Regarding being the banking capital: it's been two business days. You might be jumping the gun just a little. ;-)

> Regarding being the banking Ng capital: it's been two business days. You might be jumping the gun just a little. ;-)

Not only is it jumping the gun, it's an absurd proposition. London is the world's top financial center. It has been for the better part of two centuries (sometimes jockeying for the top spot with New York). Nowhere else in the EU comes close.

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#15

Post by branchless »

bertil wrote: post #7
robert_foss wrote: post #2

Was London at any point the startup capital of Europe? Maybe it was the banking capital of Europe, but that time is over now.

> Was London at any point the startup capital of Europe? Yes, very much so. I am an experienced Data scientists, and I looked around Europe for the last four years, needing a new job every three to six months, and London consistently had the top 5 best offers, be it in quality of the project, money raised, size of the db, etc. The conferences have been consistently larger, better and more relevant here than in Paris,…

Life is cheaper there because Germany hasn't (yet) invited the parasitic banking sector into the nest.

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#16

Post by lhnz »

nailer wrote: post #3
robert_foss wrote: post #2

Was London at any point the startup capital of Europe? Maybe it was the banking capital of Europe, but that time is over now.

In terms of funding, yes. It's also the fintech capital of the world. Regarding being the banking capital: it's been two business days. You might be jumping the gun just a little. ;-)

Marginal Revolution had an interesting discussion on the possibility of Finance leaving London [0].

Reading the discussion it seems like there's no real obvious choice for a European city which might end up owning Finance in the way London has. After all London earned its status as financial capital a long time before the EU was created and has a long history supporting this industry. The legal system and services that formed around it are unlikely to be able to be easily transplanted, so despite other cities wanting to offer themselves as substitutes it's not Banks could move without losing some economies of scale.

This is of course assuming that our government attempts to negotiate for us to stay in the 'single market' and that the finance industry itself lobbies for Europe to play ball and keep business as usual.

Of course, it is possible that we could see some decentralisation, which could weaken Europe's banking industry in relation to the US.

[0] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/whi...

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#17

Post by p4wnc6 »

This was shared earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11983154 >

I'll repeat the comment I gave there:

>I don't view Berlin as a viable replacement as a top start-up hub because wages in Berlin are simply ludicrously low.

>With Google's investment in the Zurich office, and the much, much more internationally competitive wages you can earn in Switzerland, I think Zurich could be better positioned.

>There's certainly no reason to believe that specifically an EU city would be the next to take off. And in most other ways, the Swiss job market is just much more competitive.

>I'm also depressed by the article using a picture of an anti-human violently wide open co-working space as a stereotype of a thriving start-up culture. Nothing says you're being totally taken advantage of like a wide open floor plan.

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#19

Post by nabla9 »

In the meantime while Nordics are home to just 3% of Europe’s population, it has created more than 50% of Europe’s Billion Dollar exits since 2005.

If there is startup capital in Europe, it's Stockholm.

https://medium.com/creandum-family/the-nordics-in-context-th...

Re: Berlin is now in a position to usurp London as the startup capital of Europe

#20

Post by germanier »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #13
div wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the article is trying to make wrt immigration is that when the UK leaves the EU, it will also leave the free movement of workers zone, making it harder to attract immigrants, regardless of how London feels about them.

Immigration system for skilled workers is not going to change. If the UK actually does leave the EU, they'll replace EU rules of skilled immigration with something similar. The UK is a knowledge economy, it will always be open to skilled immigrants. Yet people actually believe that the UK will close down all immigration. It's absurd.

I could hop on the next plane to London and legally start working today. If they restrict freedom of movement at all that is going to fall and replaced by some process to obtain work authorization (how else could they distinguish between "skilled" and "unskilled" workers?). If that system looks in any way similiar to the one non-EU citizens have to go through today I wouldn't call that change insignificant. Having to do a financial striptease and waiting some time for the application to be processed (possibly even having to renew that a few times) instead of showing your ID card to HR is going to stop some people from working there.

And I don't want to start talking about other things, such as access to social security and cross-border cooperation thereof, automatic recognition of degrees and certifications, harmonized banking makes it easy to transfer to your home country, being able to quit a job without needing to have a new one lined-up, and so on. All that is now part of the negotiations.

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