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Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

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Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#111

Post by notJim »

webjunkie wrote: post #93

Home for start-up business? Yes. For tech start-ups? I don't think so. I have yet to meet one engineer-driven tech start-up from Berlin. Most founders I met and know are some business guys with oh-so-clever ideas looking for just the right CTO guy to make their plan reality. And most German developers I know also never thought about working for a start-up. They happily flock to every large German company you may know…

Have you met or spoken to the Soundcloud guys? I met a bunch of their engineers here in NYC a few months ago, and they were very cool to hang out with. Seemed like a pretty cool company to me.

Edit: they could be an outlier, of course.

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#112

Post by wickedchicken »

webjunkie wrote: post #93

Home for start-up business? Yes. For tech start-ups? I don't think so. I have yet to meet one engineer-driven tech start-up from Berlin. Most founders I met and know are some business guys with oh-so-clever ideas looking for just the right CTO guy to make their plan reality. And most German developers I know also never thought about working for a start-up. They happily flock to every large German company you may know…

Ableton? Native Instruments?

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#113

Post by yummyfajitas »

bpyne wrote: post #95
yummyfajitas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the numbers, Germany's public education system is basically identical to that of the US (scoring 525 and 524, respectively). http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou... What makes you believe it's education system is better? Or it's health care system, for that matter?

I'll start with health care. I'm referring to the overall system and its premise. The problem is that the system is based on employment and the government fills in for certain populations during unemployment. There are 4 large problems in that simple statement. One is that employers are even involved in shopping for health care. If I own a company that makes software for the education market, for example, why should…

Most of your criticism is of a particular part of the American financial services sector, not of health care.

Finally, according to the WHO, the US ranks 37 in the world for system efficiency.

WHO rankings are predominantly a measurement of inequality of marginal costs of health care. The WHO's measurement is so flawed that one can make all sorts of pareto improvements (e.g., make 50% of the population live 10 years longer, while the other 50% lives only 1 year longer) and reduce one's rank.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1636063

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#114

Post by nirvana »

urgeio wrote: post #10

Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now: 1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets m…

We've been traveling with our startup for about 4 years. Berlin is by far the best city of all the ones we've visited, though Amsterdam is very close in terms of being a nice place to live.

Living on the eastern side of the wall, rents are cheap.

The main thing that keeps us from relocating there more permanently is the immigration issue, but it looks like this may be resolved, at least partially.

One thing though, you probably do want to learn German. While many germans speak english (even more so in the startup scene) a lot of germans don't, and day to day life involves a fair bit of basic german.

But, certainly worth the effort!

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#115

Post by nirvana »

urgeio wrote: post #10

Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now: 1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets m…

We've been traveling with our startup for about 4 years. Berlin is by far the best city of all the ones we've visited, though Amsterdam is very close in terms of being a nice place to live.

Living on the eastern side of the wall, rents are cheap.

The main thing that keeps us from relocating there more permanently is the immigration issue, but it looks like this may be resolved, at least partially.

One thing though, you probably do want to learn German. While many germans speak english (even more so in the startup scene) a lot of germans don't, and day to day life involves a fair bit of basic german.

But, certainly worth the effort!

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#116

Post by nirvana »

spaghetti wrote: post #97
its_so_on wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuine question: if it's so great and the capital of a rich country, why is it so cheap? (e.g. what you mentioned about apartments in the city center.)

Anyone spent a winter in Berlin? It's incredibly cold. Traveling around the city on bicycle, train etc is great during the pleasant summer months but it's literally painful during the winter.

We were there in the winter of 2010, which was called "the coldest winter in berlin in a century" at the time. Walking around outside on the coldest days, it was rather cold, but not that bad at all.

Certainly getting around on the u-bahn was perfectly comfortable and the s-bahn was fine too.

Really didn't mind it much at all.

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#117

Post by Argorak »

febeling wrote: post #102
fallenhitokiri wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In addition, Germany has an amazing social health care system including health, unemployment and pension (when working as an employee)." I am sorry but this is simply wrong. There are social health and pension systems but both of them suck and are horrible broken. If you are under 30 and not nearly dead you should do everything possible to get out of those and take care of your self with private insurances.

Many people in private insurance claim that it is at least equally broken, with some saying it is worse. And some of those people I'm speaking about are MDs themselves. It is broken by German / first-worlds standards, of course, with people not having access to something similar laughing about these claims, if it was remotely funny.

Never get into private health insurance in germany. The problem is that once you are there, you cannot get back. Also, switching insurances gets almost impossible once you actually have a chronic condition. Public insurances have to accept you.

The other problem is that the prices are on a steady rise - the only easy way for private insurances to raise profits is taking it from their clients.

The way to go is public insurance with additional private extensions - it ensures that you can cancel your (sub)-contract without fearing about your general healcare plan.

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#118

Post by nirvana »

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #74

I am a foreigner who has been working as a developer or manager in the software sector in Germany for around 10 years. For a couple of years I have been trying to move towards self-employment, with some ups and downs, but I am making progress on a project together with my wife. Last year I had the chance to switch jobs and move elsewhere so I naturally targeted Berlin. I would like to keep working in a high-paying jo…

I think you're bringing up good points, which I would summarize this way:

The berlin startup scene is great for recent graduates as an employee, but if you're more experienced, then you want to be a founder.

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#119

Post by neilk »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #85
neilk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. This post breaks results down by income segment and suggests that if you exclude poverty, the USA does indeed do great. Otherwise the USA as a whole is no better than average, maybe a little below average. http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3 I have t…

Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. It's trying to prove that US schools are just as good at educating European Americans as German schools are at educating Europeans. (Sanandaji also excluded immigrants from the German numbers.) I.e., any gaps in output between US and German schools are caused by gaps in th…

How are native Americans and African-Americans immigrants?

I said I wasn't sure what the author was trying to prove, but I do have a rather good guess.

Re: Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]

#120

Post by spitfire »

So if someone wanted to relocate to Berlin to start a company, or to expand a team into europe, how would they go about that?

Where do people want to live? Where to locate offices? Where do you find good talent? What are the legal steps to do so? Any pitfalls to avoid? Others should feel free to jump on this.

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