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Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

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Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#101

Post by jashmatthews »

baxtr wrote: post #39
_petronius wrote: post #5

We do have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also ve…

I have to disagree. We don’t do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes, we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that’s easy to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a la…

> Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a large scale?

Global companies have massively increased their presence here.

Google has a huge presence in Munich, notably including a chunk of the V8 developers. Apple has a large hardware team in Munich. Amazon Berlin is aggressively hiring for developers to work on AWS. If you're after SF style salaries go work for Google Zürich and take home €200k.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#102

Post by expertentipp »

baxtr wrote: post #92
expertentipp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As engineer coming from university it is clear where you want to work in Germany: Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Audi, great places to start a career. meh, working with embedded hard-heads on experimental features for a car segment driven by oligarchs, CEOs, and mafiosos.

Please have look at that ranking: https://www.ingenieur.de/karriere/arbeitsleben/arbeitgeber/d...

I don't buy the German automotive dream and it doesn't impress me, sorry.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#103

Post by jashmatthews »

thatsaguy wrote: post #71
raverbashing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody complains about taxes but I don't think that's the most important factor tbh Whenever someone discusses corp. taxes in the US and incorporation it seems it's full of gotchas, corner cases and traps. Not to mention every state having its own legislation as well. Taxes might be higher outside of the US (but then again, they're taxes: no profit, no taxes) but they're not necessarily more complex (though German…

I don't know the exact situation in Germany or US, but in Italy, the "no profit, no taxes" is definitely not true. Depending on the company type you registered, there's a significant cost to just keep the ability to run the company to _do_ business in the first place. By experience, the dead cost of the smallest company you can run is between 5-15k per year. It might not seem much, but I've heard here on HN over and…

> And there's no legal way to do the business below that.

Actually, there is. Register an Irish company. All the paperwork is in English, costs are low, and you can operate across the EU.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#104

Post by andor »

mk89 wrote: post #30

The mindset in SV is to fail fast - yes, with all the consequences for the investors. That's why investing in startups is a high risk investment. And that's also why the cautious way of doing business in Europe doesn't help with the startup economy. Being too cautious prevents from taking high risks. I interviewed several times with startups proud of not having any funding behind. Very nice. Still, my question is...…

Failing fast is done to reduce risk. The quicker a company fails with an idea, i.e. discovers that there is no market fit, the fewer money was wasted on it. The remaining budget can be used to try other ideas.

The big company model, where something unproven is developed for a long time by a large team, is substantially more risky. Only when they go live after "finishing" their product they might discover that nobody wants it.

Anybody trying to innovate will fail at one point or another, because not all bets play out. So the key is to make the bets as small as possible and therefore "fail" as quickly as possible.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#105

Post by baxtr »

expertentipp wrote: post #102
baxtr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please have look at that ranking: https://www.ingenieur.de/karriere/arbeitsleben/arbeitgeber/d...

I don't buy the German automotive dream and it doesn't impress me, sorry.

Sure, but my comment was not about you. I’m just pointing to some stats to substantiate my point

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#106

Post by baxtr »

jashmatthews wrote: post #101
baxtr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. We don’t do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes, we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that’s easy to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a la…

> Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a large scale? Global companies have massively increased their presence here. Google has a huge presence in Munich, notably including a chunk of the V8 developers. Apple has a large hardware team in Munich. Amazon Berlin is aggressively hiring for developers to work…

That’s exactly my point

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#107

Post by mk89 »

maze-le wrote: post #82
mk89 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is worth more than artificially (VC-)inflated companies, that might make it... one day... maybe. For who? It's probably more satisfying because you are making it without any help. But that's it.

A colleague from sales told me an anecdote once, that she is not going to use the word 'Startup' again during sales pitches and general customer interaction. I worked in publishing at that time and customers in this sector tend to be more conservative and long term planning than in other sectors. Essentially they feared that the company might not exist anymore in 2 years to come, because of {acquisition, restructurin…

I think this is unrelated to being self funded or being in the A, B or C round.

It's more about the fact that any new cool young company can disappear soon, if there is no business. And this happens both if investors give you money or if you simply don't make enough money. That's the way it is...

Eventually, if the business doesn't work well, it doesn't work well...

It's also somehow the reason that nobody got ever fired for hiring ibm or whatever the saying says...

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#108

Post by k__ »

baxtr wrote: post #39
_petronius wrote: post #5

We do have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also ve…

I have to disagree. We don’t do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes, we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that’s easy to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a la…

We have a few, but a bunch of "mittleständische IT firma"/"Enterprise" manager dudes are just founding new sub-companies so they can call their old crap start-up.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#109

Post by k__ »

groestl wrote: post #29
Jdam wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in Berlin for some years. What I‘ve seen from most of the startup scene there was that people are more collecting memories than building businesses. The predominant mindset was like „we don’t want to take over the world and we will most likely fail anyway“. The successful ones, like Dubsmash, leave for the US after a while. If I, as a German, was to create a startup in Europe today, I’d do so in London.

> collecting memories than building businesses The lifestyle entrepreneur is a phenomenon that you can find in the US as well.

Guess it's predominant in Berlin, people are as removed from business thinking as possible up there.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#110

Post by k__ »

Jdam wrote: post #50
_petronius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would humbly submit that your sample size is too small. Even just the Rocket Internet output is a pretty good indicator of the size and diversity of successful startups tsrgetting the German market specifically (and thus with no incentive to move out to the US).

I‘ve worked at a major company that is more or less controlled by Rocket and my direct neighbor was the Germany-CEO of one of their successfuller ventures, so I think I have a rather good picture of Rocket. However, I think they have not met expectations. They have not become huge, and are just doing okay, what I consider as a failure, given their goals.

Yes, but that was to be expected from a company founded by a bunch of copy-cats.
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