Why Germany should copy Silicon Valley's culture rather than their startups

1. Start-Ups are lacking incentives:

Germans are obsessed with evaluating risks and will almost always go for the safe bet, rather the risky way. Its somehow ingrained in our culture. So the college grad has two options: 1- Land a safe job in the industry (eg. automotive), company benefits maybe even a company car. Thanks to relatively good job security and the good state of the economy you can probably work there for a long time, maybe not the highest income but good for suburban life + 2 spain vacations a year. 2 - You have that Idea. But there is a high chance you will fail. You will have to spend alot of time learning company laws, tax problems, etc. And while there is a chance that you can be a wealthy man while building you dream product. You will spend most of your time thinking about failure (even if you dont even have wife and kids to support). - By the time I finished building product x (and then probably fail), I will have reached a higher position and a company car a bigcorp - why bother the risk. Also talent acquisitions are rarely head of, we don't have Google or Apple who will aquire a small media/tech company for the people. Big money is in other industries that have a higher barrier of entry than web-startups.

2. Germans don't get the valley VC investment strategies:

Throwing millions of $'s on company's that dont have a business plan, just because it may be the next google/facebook/...? Considering failure as the norm, just because one of 100 company's you fund will go public. Germanys company culture is built around long time growth and substitutability. Big companys like Bosch ( €51billion revenue, 300k employees) are family owned (and 92% goes into a charity). Try to explain your SV funding business model to a german business person and he will shake his head and dont even try to get a bank loan.

3. Lack of entrepreneur networks:

SV is described in the way of "you can bump into a VC guy in a coffee shop and pitch him on your idea". Everyone know everyone, several events, money everywhere. I am not 100% up to date with the berlin scene but I dont think it is quite there. Although universities try to built networks and encourage students to start a company its nowhere near the possibilities of SV

4. Perfection mentality

Also known as "Ingenieurs-Mentalität". Its also a cultural thing I guess, especially at technical institutes / universities. If it isnt perfect you dont even think about bothering someone else with it. Never ship something that is half baked.

That said I consider myself an entrepreneurial person but also struggle with those points. (Like most people on HN, I guess) I have a long list of ideas. I sometimes start to build but stop when I realize how long the way to perfection will be. I set myself a goal for this year to complete one project and release it just for the heck of it. I will report when I reach this goal.

(Yes, including the sauce!)

I participated in a German Government startup program in 2004/2005 called EXIST-SEED (nowadays called EXIST Gründerstipendium). I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. The funding I got was relatively modest (35 kEUR in my case -- as a consultant I now earn more than that within 4 months) and I was drowned in bureaucracy. To this very day, I am arguing with the German IRS because they do not want to treat a failed startup as a business and thus refuse to deduct the expenses I had. I literally ended up spending more time with bureaucracy than doing real work.

If you compare the modest startup funding provided by the federal government to the amount spent on the German cash-for-clunkers program in 2009 ("Abwrackprämie"), which was 5 billion Euro, you get an idea what the government's priorities really are: Firstly big (automotive) corporations, then a lot of nothing, then the Mittelstand, again a lot of nothing, and then as an also-ran the startup scene.

You're ultimately fighting an uphill battle as a founder in Germany: A tiny private VC scene, meager support from the government and a mind-boggling bureaucracy.

I don't see this changing so I drew the frustrating conclusion to become a consultant fleecing fucking big corps.