Live data from Hacker News

Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

venturevillage.eu

11–16 of 16 posts

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#11

As a native Berliner and ex-Bostonian, I have to unfortunately concur with the article. There is quite a lot of talk. While I love Berlin as a city, and even love the generally positive and helpful atmosphere of the startup scene in Berlin, there is no denial that doing a startup is the hip thing to do, and it wouldn't hurt some people to get to work. "I'm CEO of a startup" is a phrase I have heard way more than in t…

I wonder if the typical German necessity of a title (Germans LOVE titles) has any input on the "I'm a CEO" bit.

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#12

Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups o…

"the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates" Best sentence I read about that. So true.

I second that!

I think many people in the germany hacker community don't want to be associated with "those startup guys" because many of "those guys" lack technical understanding. Like you said, many business guys hire developers to build yet another ecommerce site.

We're a small Company (https://futurevps.de/) that offers custom Servers fully based in Germany (for data privacy reasons) and get much less media coverage than "ecommerce" companies. I think that nearly 99.9% of the german startup newssites cover ecommerce-ish businesses.

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#13

Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups o…

I worked for gate5 (Now Nokia gate5 GmbH) in 1999 and it was surely a technology driven company in Berlin.

Maybe most companies anywhere are not so much technical driven? The company I founded myself was only technical and that was the reason it didn't last long.

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#14

As a native Berliner and ex-Bostonian, I have to unfortunately concur with the article. There is quite a lot of talk. While I love Berlin as a city, and even love the generally positive and helpful atmosphere of the startup scene in Berlin, there is no denial that doing a startup is the hip thing to do, and it wouldn't hurt some people to get to work. "I'm CEO of a startup" is a phrase I have heard way more than in t…

I wonder if the typical German necessity of a title (Germans LOVE titles) has any input on the "I'm a CEO" bit.

or its the consultants and management grads who LOVE to be CEO of something! :-)

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#15

As a native Berliner and ex-Bostonian, I have to unfortunately concur with the article. There is quite a lot of talk. While I love Berlin as a city, and even love the generally positive and helpful atmosphere of the startup scene in Berlin, there is no denial that doing a startup is the hip thing to do, and it wouldn't hurt some people to get to work. "I'm CEO of a startup" is a phrase I have heard way more than in t…

I wonder if the typical German necessity of a title (Germans LOVE titles) has any input on the "I'm a CEO" bit.

Then it is more like "I am an MBA and CEO of a startup"

Re: Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype

#16

Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups o…

I think it is easier to find money for these more hip startups than for a more innovative kind of company, where still some research time is involved. Maybe that is also one reason for the lack of innovation.
Post reply on HN