I've always felt Amsterdam would make a good startup hub. It has the right sort of atmosphere. Civilized without being pretentious.
Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
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Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#12> Now that Sofa has been acquired by Facebook, the company’s team (ironically enough) will be moving to Palo Alto. But Lee said he doesn’t expect that to affect on Appsterdam’s future...
If the founders don't believe in their own product enough to use it, it's going to fail.
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#13I'm writing the follow-up on this for VentureBeat. Should be out tomorrow and will answer a lot of these questions. But there are several things I liked about Appsterdam. It's a bottom-up, developer-led movement rather than a top-down, government program. It's about creating a haven for indie developers who want to live in a place that is in line with hacker values and have a life as well as a job.
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#14Great initiative, but there is no way to 'join' Appsterdam. I could not even find a Facebook Group. How do people connect with each other online?
http://appsterdam.rs Give it a bit of time, its warming up and will become a relevant movement :-)
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#15It would be helpful if the initiators of Appsterdam worked on gathering information relevant for startups. What makes Amsterdam better than Berlin, Vienna... basically any other city. What are the legal conditions in the Netherlands - especially in regard to founding a company and getting accepted as an immigrant, what other companies are already situated there (foremost what their experiences are), and how the livin…
Check the site http://appsterdam.rs It is going to be much more than an information hub, the aim is to turn it into a movement. Given the enthusiasm of the crowd there yesterday I'm pretty sure it will turn into something big.
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#16Less expensive? not by much is my bet: Amsterdam is the most expensive city in Holland and one of the more expensive ones in Europe (Scandinavian countries + London may be worse is my estimate). It's also impossible to find housing. As far as immigration is concerned, one can fall under the category "kennis-migranten" (loosely translated as knowledge-workers) pretty easily, as long as the company sponsoring you is wi…
Impossible to find housing is not my experience.
I moved here one year ago from Italy. Got an apartment from my first company for 2 months, then rented a shared apartment with other two people.
After a few months I got a mortgage with no money down and moved in my own house not far away from the center, and the government reimburses me part of that every month.
If we speak about renting prices, I can agree they are high, but from what I heard they are still less expensive than in the valley. Places to rent also go really quickly, but impossible is another thing.
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#17It would be helpful if the initiators of Appsterdam worked on gathering information relevant for startups. What makes Amsterdam better than Berlin, Vienna... basically any other city. What are the legal conditions in the Netherlands - especially in regard to founding a company and getting accepted as an immigrant, what other companies are already situated there (foremost what their experiences are), and how the livin…
I'm one of the volunteers in Appsterdam and I can tell you we will do all of it, and more ;) A quick list:
- Creation of a community with meetings and drinks.
- Weekly lectures about technology that will also give speaker training.
- Provide legal and local information to people that will move here, like immigration policies and the like.
- Arranging of venues to work in and be around with other developer: we have the Appsterdam HQ; Igluu and Vodafone will offer a work space for a good price and with facilities like a lab with smartphones for testing; we will locate developer friendly cafes with free wifi.
- Family get togethers in the weekends, so our partners/spouses/children can create a network too.
- The university is interested in creating a course where developers are professors like in (if I'm correct) Berkeley.
- The government is interested in giving money for tech projects.
- At the party Mike announced that there will also be a fund for startups (called Appsterfund).
Maybe I'm forgetting something. Soon the video of the keynote will be online.
Edit: formatting
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#18> Now that Sofa has been acquired by Facebook, the company’s team (ironically enough) will be moving to Palo Alto. But Lee said he doesn’t expect that to affect on Appsterdam’s future... If the founders don't believe in their own product enough to use it, it's going to fail.
Sofa contributed, but they are not "the founders" and this is not a "product" at all. Moreover they are moving because they have been acquired, so it has nothing to do with Appsterdam (apart of telling that this city is a fertile ground for good companies).
More on the subject on this post: http://mur.mu.rs/?p=156
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#19Seems like an odd time to do this, given the strict new law ( http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/dutch-parliament-passes-s... ) on cookies that the Dutch Parliament just passed.
That cookie law, for those just scanning the comments, is EU in origin. All member-states have to implement. Nothing's really being done about it, enforcement-wise, from what I can tell.
The UK has just recently given all businesses an extra year to get their stuff together. The law, by the way, is only restrictive to analytics cookies, basically, if that analytics service is from a third-party.
You have to get express permission from the user if cookies are being used to monitor their activities in ways that are not essential to the site i.e. you don't need to ask for permission if you're using cookies to implement an online shopping basket, as that's essential fairly essential to all online businesses. A blog monitoring user activity, however, would need to get express user permission.
Re: Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
#20Less expensive? not by much is my bet: Amsterdam is the most expensive city in Holland and one of the more expensive ones in Europe (Scandinavian countries + London may be worse is my estimate). It's also impossible to find housing. As far as immigration is concerned, one can fall under the category "kennis-migranten" (loosely translated as knowledge-workers) pretty easily, as long as the company sponsoring you is wi…
Good to know about that treaty. It could make it easier for Dutch startups to attract talented employees from the US. If they eventually want to start their own company they have the option to stay in the Netherlands.