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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

#121

Post by lagadu »

m00dy wrote: post #109
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...

Stockholm has severe housing problem. It is impossible to get long term contracts which means you have to move somewhere else every six months approximately. Living expenses are too high comparing to low salaries. Only a few companies in Stockholm pay higher than 40k swedish krona. (that means 25k after tax. 25k -> 2.6k euros). If you are not a native here, you can only get a flat through black market. Eventually, yo…

> no rent problem

I take it you don't live here, it's arguably worse but salaries are noticeably higher so it's impact is not as big.

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

#122

Post by adimitrov »

twright0 wrote: post #57
LunaSea wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Well, if all you ever do is winning "world" championships…

Baseball, (American) Football, Basketball, … I guess coming in fourth does feel crushing.

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

#123

Post by fulafel »

dogma1138 wrote: post #98
MagnumOpus wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eesti can into Nordic?

Estonia is as "nordic" as Finland.

Don't know about that[1] but Skype founders were Swedish & Danish and Estonia is close by.

[1] "consist of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries

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

#124

Post by aukaost »

dogma1138 wrote: post #113
nabla9 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King (Candy Crush), Mojang (Minecraft), Rovio (Angry Birds), CCP Games (Eve online), Supercell (Clash of Clans), Unity (game engine) ...

CCP is Icelandic and while it's "nordic" it's kinda far out there, it's also not a particularly big company. Unity Technologies started in Denmark but they moved to SanFran quite early and effectively Unity grew up in SV AFAIK Unity Tech doesn't have an office or any presence in Denmark and that has been true since the very early days. There are quite a bit of other game related successful ventures up in the north, D…

Unity definitely has an office in Copenhagen, Denmark. https://unity3d.com/jobs

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

#125

Post by dogma1138 »

aukaost wrote: post #124
dogma1138 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CCP is Icelandic and while it's "nordic" it's kinda far out there, it's also not a particularly big company. Unity Technologies started in Denmark but they moved to SanFran quite early and effectively Unity grew up in SV AFAIK Unity Tech doesn't have an office or any presence in Denmark and that has been true since the very early days. There are quite a bit of other game related successful ventures up in the north, D…

Unity definitely has an office in Copenhagen, Denmark. https://unity3d.com/jobs

Looks like they have reopened their offices, it still doesn't change the fact that Unity grew up in SV not in Copenhagen.

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

#126

Post by dogma1138 »

fulafel wrote: post #123
dogma1138 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia is as "nordic" as Finland.

Don't know about that[1] but Skype founders were Swedish & Danish and Estonia is close by. [1] "consist of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries

Finnish is not a Nordic language, while Estonian is a Finnic language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnic_languages Ethically Finland is a Baltic nation rather than a Nordic one, It's also was never a part of the 3 monarchies of Scandinavia until the more modern use of Scandinavia for tourism.

Hence my reply to "Does Estonia count as a Nordic state" question :)

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

#127

Post by dmix »

cylinder wrote: post #89
corford wrote: post #82

I think Berlin will benefit from brexit but I'm more interested in watching Dublin. Seems to me it should do very well: big tech companies already there, attractive corp tax rates, cheap and easy to incorporate a company (AFAIK?), similar legal concepts and biz regs as the UK, similar banking environment, cheaper rents, everyone speaks english, there are local VCs and presumably London VCs would also find it very eas…

Dublin will be corporate/enterprise IT and Berlin will be more consumer.

I don't know of many big startups coming out of Dublin. Having many big corp HQs (who are there for tax sheltering and lower income workers) doesn't translate to a lively entrepreneurial scene.

For example, just north of Toronto is a small suburban city called Markham which calls itself the "high-tech capital of Canada" but the only notable thing about the area is the countless glass office towers of multi-national tech companies who built their Canadian HQ there. But the Toronto startup scene is entirely downtown, far from Markham. Or in Waterloo near the university there. I've even not heard of any events taking place up in Markham either, it's just not part of the community in any significant way.

The kind of people who go to work at IBM and AMD don't often leave to create companies nor do the CEOs participate in the startup communities very much. They're people who usually live in the suburbs with families and are happy working 9-5. Nothing wrong with that but the distinction between high-tech corps and startup scenes are often confused as homogeneous entities by outsiders.

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

#128

Post by speleding »

hocuspocus wrote: post #47
p4wnc6 wrote: post #17

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 cer…

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…

Wages in Amsterdam are lower than London, but the Netherlands have a great deal for ex-pats: the so called "30% rule", which means that you only pay tax on the remaining 70% for the first 8 years there. So your take home pay can be really good (and it has other benefits like a good healthcare system, free education for the kids, etc).

Also, if you want to start a start-up low wages are actually a plus...

(Source: I started a startup there and have several employees on the 30% rule)

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

#129

Post by fulafel »

dogma1138 wrote: post #126
fulafel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about that[1] but Skype founders were Swedish & Danish and Estonia is close by. [1] "consist of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries

Finnish is not a Nordic language, while Estonian is a Finnic language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnic_languages Ethically Finland is a Baltic nation rather than a Nordic one, It's also was never a part of the 3 monarchies of Scandinavia until the more modern use of Scandinavia for tourism. Hence my reply to "Does Estonia count as a Nordic state" question :)

Geographic/country classification, languages and genetic roots all mesh differently in this case. Languagewise the Baltic countries apart from Estonia have Slavic majority languages. Biologically Finnish genetic makeup comes from a mix of Sami, Swedish & ugric peoples and is quite diverse [1] but does have a lot of overlap with Estonians. Culturally Finland differs due to having avoided Soviet occupation.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finns#Genetics

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

#130

Post by secfirstmd »

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…

People of Ireland speaking here:

-Want to stay in the EU?

-Want to trade in the Eurozone?

-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government?

-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment? (Look how much fun even our soccer fans are http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-rea...)

Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)

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