Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

geektime.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 149 posts

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

#51

Post by speeder »

harryf wrote: post #31
nabla9 wrote: post #19

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...

Part of that is mobile games companies like Supercell with Clash of the Clans - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercell_(video_game_company) ... Hay Day, Angry Birds and others. Basically out of the ashes of Nokia, a bunch of mobile gaming companies has sprung up and to some extent are dominating the industry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_companies_... - more at https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10…

It is not just a nokia thing.

Also from Nordic countries:

1. Linux 2. Irc 3. Demoscene 4. DICE

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

#52

Post by onion2k »

krona wrote: post #33
onion2k wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

MiFID 2 will make most of this talk about passporting a side show during the renegotiation. The EU FFT is a prime example of why finance in Frankfurt or Paris is unlikely to be in a position to compete with London, NY, Hong Kong, or Singapore. An indication of this will be on July 4, when LSE votes on the Deutsche Boerse merger.

If there were more financial institutions with their headquarters within Europe I suspect the EU would be a bit less enthusiastic about FTT.

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

#53

Post by hocuspocus »

peterbraden wrote: post #50
hocuspocus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the tech landscape in Zürich grow but there are a few problems: - Sponsoring non-EU immigrants has become extremely difficult in Swizterland. - Google trounces the competition by a margin that is completely out of reach for European start-ups. - Switzerland itself is a very small market. The cash-flow of your typical SaaS start-up is going to be mostly in € or $ with all the associated burdens and ris…

The Swiss tax system also cripples startups in Zürich

True, but they're working on that (I think?), and you can always put your HQ in Zug :D

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

#54

Post by digi_owl »

fredley wrote: post #30
rwallace wrote: post #26

Shouldn't we hope that something does? By all accounts, the house price situation in London has become bad enough that it's wiping out the middle class, which is very bad news; the rise of the middle class was a key factor in enabling the transition from feudal society to modern civilization. But while I'm here, I'll throw in a shameless plug: Dublin is still in the EU, and is an English-speaking capital city with mo…

The house-pricing problem is not due to startups (although this has put pressure on/gentrified a few small areas). The startup scene is a very small part of London as a whole. It is the combination of under-investment in new housing, building the wrong types of new housing (vast luxury flats instead of smaller, affordable units), and selling large amounts of it to foreign buyers as investments (often left unoccupied)…

Sounds to me like the same kind of crap that has been going on everywhere since the 80s or there about. A while lot of household debt being funneled into a Ponzi scheme based on flipping properties.

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

#55

Post by TorKlingberg »

nabla9 wrote: post #19

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...

It is very common for Swedish startups to incorporate in the UK, even if you keep the office in Sweden. It is easier and cheaper to incorporate there, and you get better access to London VCs. I wonder if that will get more difficult.

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

#56

Post by AndreyErmakov »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #35
philefstat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages being low is a good thing, no? CoL is significantly lower too which is great.

In what way are lower wages good for the employees you're trying to attract? While some aspects of cost of living are low, others are not low at all. I guess if you're looking for nothing more than a temporary lifestyle involving enough money to go to concerts and eat at restaurants, the wage is fine for a younger person in Berlin. But it's a fantasy to believe you can effectively grow a company that way. You really…

A bit of feedback from someone who tried to make it in Germany with a 40K salary (in the south) and couldn't. It's just not doable. You need at least 60-70K to get started in medium towns, and around 80-90K for large expensive cities. Otherwise you either have to downgrade your standard of living to that common in third-world countries or accept it to live with a chronically empty bank account and most likely with a long-term debt as you're trying to pay back your initial accommodation expenses. Cheap is an illusion for a brochure.

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

#57

Post by twright0 »

LunaSea wrote: post #48
dragonwriter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "startup capital of Europe"? Is that like being the soccer capital of America? Wouldn't that mean that Europe has a fairly strong, by global terms, actual performance in startups, despite European popular culture mostly ignoring startups?

The American national soccer team got crushed in Copa America so they are pretty far from strong.

The American team made it to the semi-finals. They had one bad loss to Argentina but it's pretty inaccurate to characterize their performance as "getting crushed".

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

#58

Post by Xylakant »

Symbiote wrote: post #34
germanier wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I could hop on the next plane to London and legally start working today. That's exactly the point, and something I don't think many British people realise. (I don't think Americans etc realise it either, but I don't expect them to.) Moving to work in a different EU country requires what I'd guess is a similar amount of paperwork as moving between US states. - Register your address with the local government (which m…

> nothing can be refused

This is a very crucial point that a lot of people fail to grasp. With the EU laws as backing, we moved from "this is easily granted unless you fill in the wrong paper" to "this can't be denied and you don't even have to ask." which is a complete turnaround in the power balance. Employing a person from the EU requires that I notify the relevant authorities, moving within the EU requires me to merely notify the right parties. There's no applying for a permit. Having a polish partner is much less stressful, because she can't be thrown out, no matter what, no need for a residence permit, no travel documents.

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

#59

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fredley wrote: post #43
rwallace wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're right, startups aren't the main cause of the problem, but anything that moves out of London will help a bit, and it would certainly be good if people who want to create or work in startups had better options.

Yeah, the extent to which the banking sector leaves might make an impact, but the collapse of sterling is probably going to drive more investment into London property, not less.

Unlikely while sterling is crashing. London prices will soon follow, as The Money leaves town.

If there's a recovery it will be years from now, when there are easy profits to be made.

Currently there are easy losses to be made, and no one wants that.

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

#60

Post by TorKlingberg »

urlwolf wrote: post #18

I have been in Berlin for 8 years and would not change it for London at all. In data science at least there's far more action here. More interesting technologies (Flink), people taking more technological risk and reaping the benefits.

How much German do you need to speak in the Berlin startup community?
Post reply on HN