“Germans don’t do tech startups” is obviously clickbait but it’s equally obvious that Germany can’t compete with SF when it comes to startups. As a Dutch founder of Germany based scaleup Transloadit.com I’d say taxes and workforce-legislation are more prohibitive than a lack of funding (tho it may also be a problem for others as clearly there’s less going around). I realize why taxes and protection of the workforce are necessary and am happy to live in a country that sands down some sharper edges of capitalism, but when you are just starting out, it’s overwhelming the amount of money you can’t allocate for more growth, and the commitment/risk that comes with having people on the payroll. Even though we have work, and money to spend on having that done, going that route is like the last resort because it’s so scary (maybe there isn’t money/work next year, what if they become sick, it could just ruin the company). Not even talking about resources needed to get acquainted and comply with the rules. So currently we try to work with freelance/invoicing as much as possible, but that comes with its own set of legal constraints and high costs. Feels a bit like driving with the emergency brake on. If somehow the government could have a special set of lightweight rules for folks just starting out, I think you’d see more startups flourish.
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
#22Has the author not heard of Rocket Internet? Hello Fresh? Zalando? Contentful? SumUp? Wooga? Deepstreamhub? Delivery Hero? N26?
I'm European and I have never heard of any of those.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#23It's because they don't need to. Startups often include difficult and intense work environment. For exactly what? Better than average compensation discussion is frowned upon in Germany. There is ramphant latent descrimination against people from other countries. Which German company has a foreign born CEO? In US, Google and Microsoft have foreign born CEOs. This is my own experience, so downvoting is only silencing a…
> Startups often include difficult and intense work environment Compared to the USA? Lol, you have no clue. The standard for a software engineer in SV is to take drugs to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week, pay a fucking high rent living with 4 other people and if he's foreigner and freshly arrived, he has to suck his boss' cock everyday because they might take away his visa sponsorship and put him into troubles. In B…
In addition to being uncivil, this is wildly wrong ("The standard for a software engineer in SV") and you misread the parent comment.
Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#24Germans absolutely do tech startups, in fact they’ve been on the forefront of building tech companies that mirror Silicon Valley, but in German. There’s been a German eBay, PayPal and Facebook. Europe doesn’t really do major companies though, and part of that is certainly a lack of demand to go global from capital investors, but there are other parts as well. Like language and regulation. I went to harzen for holiday…
> German eBay
That's a startup?! It was some dodgy scheme set up by infamous brothers, hysterically taken over by eBay within first couple of months of its existence.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#25I've been trying to build deep tech startups in Germany for 6 years. I managed to sell the first one I built to a US company (for a very small amount of money) and started afresh after taking a break as an employee. Right now I'm at the point of giving up again because it's so damn hard to find customers here. In my opinion, for deep tech startups the problem is not primarily access to capital but access to customers…
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Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#26It's because they don't need to. Startups often include difficult and intense work environment. For exactly what? Better than average compensation discussion is frowned upon in Germany. There is ramphant latent descrimination against people from other countries. Which German company has a foreign born CEO? In US, Google and Microsoft have foreign born CEOs. This is my own experience, so downvoting is only silencing a…
> Startups often include difficult and intense work environment Compared to the USA? Lol, you have no clue. The standard for a software engineer in SV is to take drugs to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week, pay a fucking high rent living with 4 other people and if he's foreigner and freshly arrived, he has to suck his boss' cock everyday because they might take away his visa sponsorship and put him into troubles. In B…
Startups are not average cushy corporate job.
The only way to get any startup to work in EU is by importing immigrants and they'll work hard on their own and compensating them appropriately and making sure they can reach top ranks in a company otherwise no one will ne motivated to work hard.
Germany has infrastructure. Taxes are not that bad.
Any country which will accept foreigners with open heart and give them opportunities will have plenty of startups.
There are still clubs in Germany which do not accept people of color.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#27I've been trying to build deep tech startups in Germany for 6 years. I managed to sell the first one I built to a US company (for a very small amount of money) and started afresh after taking a break as an employee. Right now I'm at the point of giving up again because it's so damn hard to find customers here. In my opinion, for deep tech startups the problem is not primarily access to capital but access to customers…
I‘d have been eligible for EXIST, but that program is a bad joke. 100k for 3 persons for one year before tax? C‘mon. That is financial sucide, if you’re in tech these days.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#28Has the author not heard of Rocket Internet? Hello Fresh? Zalando? Contentful? SumUp? Wooga? Deepstreamhub? Delivery Hero? N26?
Rocket Internet were just the scumbags that ripped off every US based idea and tried to implement it in Germany. A few "me-too" businesses. Okay. There are very few big ideas that investors in Germany would pour money into.
Their big idea was to copy every idea in markets where the original company hadn't expanded yet.
It might not be the greatest technical achievement, but it certainly paid off for them, demonstrating that execution is more important than being the first to have an idea.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#29We 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’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.
Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that
#30The 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... Who cares? The main difference is that in the USA money is constantly being invested, there is a lot of debt but that's the way to innovate. In Europe on the other hand, if you fail, or if you make debts you better hide yourself.