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We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

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Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#121

Post by fransje26 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #65
theiebrjfb wrote: post #11

For start Germany needs better internet connectivity. Getting 1gbps symmetric fiber or 5G coverage is a scifi! Even Romania has better infrastructure!

Fiber has been laid out in many areas already, it won't be long until most households are upgraded. But to be honest it's not as much of an issue as people make it out, in most areas you can get 250 Mbit downstream and 50 Mbit upstream through DSL, that is plenty for most home use cases, there's just not enough demand for higher speeds. Don't tell me people are regularly maxing out their 1 Gbps lines. In most rural p…

> But to be honest it's not as much of an issue as people make it out, in most areas you can get 250 Mbit downstream and 50 Mbit upstream through DSL, that is plenty for most home use cases, there's just not enough demand for higher speeds.

Ha ha ha! No.

The option we have in my neck of the woods is 4.5 Mbps/s, via DSL. Take it or leave it. And were are talking about BW, in a place where the average 100 m2 house is being sold for 500'000 €.

> (or let's say they are not willing to pay 50-100 € per month for it)

Good that the criminal prices of telecom providers are being mentioned. "We are cheap!" Vodafone was advertising lately on the radio. Yeah, for 50 € per month for a DSL connection with a 2 year contract. No, that's not cheap, that's extortion. And your advert is called gaslighting.

Fun story. In the previous village were I was working, the only way to get semi-fast internet was via Vodafone LTE (for a nominal fee, of course..). Then the region awarded a grant/bonus for the first company to bring glass fiber to the area. All at once, 3 different companies were scrambling and pulling glass fiber to try to be the first ones to provide coverage. They now have 3 different glass fiber providers there.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#122

Post by pembrook »

Zanfa wrote: post #117
pembrook wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that the market can be described as regular people deciding things is, by the way, fairly funny. We don't get to choose what gets made, and have to select from a buffet of often pretty poor options served up to us by people who are by and large not interested in anyone's wellbeing but their own. Is Europe more communist than I thought? You do realize if you aren't happy with the options on offer in the mar…

That’s a bit naive. There are a lot of markets that are effectively impossible to enter without massive amounts of capital and current players are selling below cost.

The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost.

And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sounds like they're actually happy with the current offering and that's not an area that your fellow humans would find useful for you to work on.

Yes, one of the responsibilities of a founder is fundraising. If you can't sell people on investing in your vision that is...a somewhat bad sign.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#123

Post by fransje26 »

aqueueaqueue wrote: post #62
theiebrjfb wrote: post #11

For start Germany needs better internet connectivity. Getting 1gbps symmetric fiber or 5G coverage is a scifi! Even Romania has better infrastructure!

Tell me about it. Australia has no 1gb symmetric. Might get 800/100 if lucky.

Still better than the 4/0.5 Mbps DSL provided in my area in Germany.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#124

Post by onli »

fweimer wrote: post #101
manmal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally have never seen Bosch listed as Mittelstand. By definition, SMEs have less than 500 employees. Are you mistaking the concept with something else?

Bosch is a bit of an outlier due to its structure and age. But there are definitions that would include Meta as Mittelstand, like this one: https://www.ifm-bonn.org/en/definitions/mittelstand-definiti...

Not an accepted definition. The one used by the government (for projects) and the public includes revenue and amount of employees. Ownership by a family is not a factor at all.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#125

Post by internet_points »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #50
InDubioProRubio wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might also be a successful recipe- you let a startup become the next big thing, then it ruins it as a mega cooperation- and you just cook up the same thing with paid for quality and slowly hover up there fleeing customers. Slow and steady wins the race?

They're very successful, but, unless they change their ethos, they never will have success on the scale of a tech giant. They have been Apple-only for 15 years. If they wanted to rule the world, they would have transitioned Things to the web and to Windows. To do that, they would have had to hire three times as many people. It's easy to imagine an alternate timeline in which CulturedCode had spent the past decade 'en…

> They're very successful, but, unless they change their ethos, they never will have success on the scale of a tech giant.

Exactly why they're still great. It takes courage and conviction to not grow.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#126

Post by impossiblefork »

pembrook wrote: post #74

The authors examples of “Digital Mittelstand” companies are not businesses at all but tiny “creator economy” side projects. These do not scale to 30% of GDP in the same way high value B2B industrial equipment does (in manufacturing you happily pay $100,000 for a piece of machinery because it can turn inputs into more valuable outputs at scale). Instead of coming up with incorrect ideas about what the government shoul…

Yes, but what if the big-software type economy isn't actually that useful?

Maybe you can grow it to 30% of GDP if you start doing a bunch of bad stuff, but if it can be replaced by open source local stuff-- if it's possible to simply kill facebook, Microsoft etc. and replace them with Linux together with a couple of not incredibly expensive software packages developed to provide a substitute, then why should we have a big-software economy?

I think this is more the idea. The interesting thing isn't to build a European Facebook or an EU SaaS economy, it's to kill the whole concept, globally.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#127

Post by layer8 »

pembrook wrote: post #122
Zanfa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bit naive. There are a lot of markets that are effectively impossible to enter without massive amounts of capital and current players are selling below cost.

The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost. And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sounds like they're actually happy with the current offering and that's not an area that your fellow humans would find useful for you to work on. Yes, one of the responsibilities of a founder is fundraising. If you can't sell people on investing in your vision that is...a somewhat bad sign.

The problem with many digital offerings nowadays, in particular those that dominate the end user market, is that the user isn’t the customer, but is the product (i.e., directly, or indirectly, ads). Another problem is oligopolies, like Android vs. iOS.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#128

Post by lnsru »

gizmo wrote: post #104

> However, if you’ve ever used a product marked “Made in Germany,” you’ll understand what German culture truly values: mastery of a craft and uncompromising quality. You won’t find many Germans willing to sacrifice their health or personal milestones—like the birth of a child—for work, or to forgo their well-earned vacation in Mallorca. They’re not the kind to release half-baked products and patch issues later, nor a…

The attitude isn’t changing, I can assure you. Few people see what’s happening for real in the country. The other ones are living in the delusional small nice Germany preparing for 1972 Olympics. If you ask about limiting uncontrolled immigration you’re already Hitler’s son. If you ask about basic product improvement, that makes production cheaper you shouldn’t rock the boat, because it was always done that way. Example from last week: we have here a trainee in the field of electronics. Electrical check of the office equipment is due for many years. My proposition: buy the trainee a device, that does these tests automatically, send the trainee through the office to conduct tests and save 15000€ not hiring external company with the same 1500€ tester. No, can’t be done. The trainee is bored to death toying with some cables and circuit breakers. The lack of flexibility will kill the country.

The thing is that now many countries can process metal precise enough to satisfy customers. Maybe it’s only 75% of German quality, but at 40% of the price it’s unbeatable. Looks like, that German companies are sabotaging themselves. Volkswagen and defeat device. Bayer and Monsanto acquisitions. I have no explanation for this. Maybe as you say German arrogance.

Re: We don't need startups, we need Digital-Mittelstand

#130

Post by TFYS »

pembrook wrote: post #122
Zanfa wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bit naive. There are a lot of markets that are effectively impossible to enter without massive amounts of capital and current players are selling below cost.

The vast vast vast majority of companies do not sell a product below-cost. And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sounds like they're actually happy with the current offering and that's not an area that your fellow humans would find useful for you to work on. Yes, one of the responsibilities of a founder is fundraising. If you can't sell people on investing in your vision that is...a somewhat bad sign.

> And if the customers are not willing to pay more, it sounds like they're actually happy with the current offering and that's not an area that your fellow humans would find useful for you to work on.

People would need to have perfect information about all the products they buy in order to truly know if they're happy with them. If they knew and saw first hand all the effects that a product has (poor working conditions, poor pay, environmental destruction, effects on health, etc) they might not actually be happy with these products. It's impossible to research all of these things on everything you buy, and therefore the market does not "care" about any of these things, only about the immediate effects that the buyer can feel.

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