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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

#31

Post by _petronius »

Jdam wrote: post #19
_petronius wrote: post #5

We 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.

I would humbly submit that your sample size is too small. Even just the Rocket Internet output is a pretty good indicator of the size and diversity of successful startups tsrgetting the German market specifically (and thus with no incentive to move out to the US).

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#32

Post by olavgg »

eksemplar wrote: post #4

Germans 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…

I am working for startup in Norway that has seen extreme growth in just 2 years. We are in the chatbot/virtual assistance space and our biggest competitors are big multi-billions US companies.

When it comes to european languages, we are at least an order of magnitude better in understanding natural language and delivery speed(from start to production) than these big companies. But oh boy how many times EU companies pick one of these big players over us and fail. Today we have a range of HUGE clients, half of them who has even failed with a competitor. We have a really good story to sell. Still it is impossible to convince 1 of 2 companies to go with us first. They really want to fail hard before giving us a chance. I just can't understand why it is like this. The trust in US companies with a strong name over decades is really huge here in EU.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#33

Post by antt »

pjmlp wrote: post #12
eksemplar wrote: post #4

Germans 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…

Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to speak German than English. And in southern Europe I am lucky to be able to speak most languages, as anyone beyond a certain age hardly speaks any word of English, specially outside the major cities. Which is indeed a challenge, on the other side is also something quite rich, as most traveling Europeans tend to speak fluently three languages on…

>Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to speak German than English.

Everyone who knows English has already left. I'm not sure how much it's worth to other people but for me knowing English has been a ~x50 income multiplier.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#34

Post by fulafel »

jayalpha wrote: post #15
mprev wrote: post #9

Has 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.

Very few startups are based on a novel big idea. It's the execution that counts. Dropbox, Google, Amazon, Facebook.. none of those were novel ideas.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#35

Post by usrusr »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
eksemplar wrote: post #4

Germans 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…

> Except for maybe eBay who couldn’t enter the market. https://www.ebay.de/ ??

...didn't really get a foot on the ground in Germany twenty years ago.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#36

Post by expertentipp »

yorwba wrote: post #28
jayalpha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By "execution" you mean a wasp nest of POs, PMs, MBAs, friends'-friends and lawyers standing over and yelling at engineers and developers imported from Eastern Europe and India?

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#37

Post by friedman23 »

chobeat wrote: post #13
mrhackerpoland wrote: post #11

It'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…

> 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

Completely false, the standard is more like 35 hour work weeks with "work from home" one day a week. Judging from the fact that you know how people work in Berlin I'm going to guess you have no personal experience with SV work culture and have only read some horror stories that are not at all representative of what work is like for the average software engineer in SV.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#38

Post by catdog »

yorwba wrote: post #14
eksemplar wrote: post #4

Germans 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…

As a German, I have no idea what you mean by the German eBay and PayPal (Facebook was StudiVZ, I guess, but now it's just Facebook).

Maybe alando which was basically a blatant copy of ebay and quickly acquired by ebay? But this was a long time ago.

German PayPal? Not that I know of. The banks are helplessly trying now after many years but they aren't even able to match what PayPal provides let alone being innovative.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#39

Post by baxtr »

_petronius wrote: post #5

We 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 have to disagree. We don’t do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes, we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that’s easy to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a large scale? That’s one reason the big US companies have offices here, to attract the talent.

Re: Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that

#40

Post by hef19898 »

Jdam wrote: post #27
destartupop wrote: post #2

I'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.

Yeah, and than you have to pass a panel deciding whether your "idea" is innovative enough. It reminded me more of a game of buzzword bingo than a viable investment procedure. As your not allowed to incorporate before enter EXIST it is just a waste of time. Not to mention that it all depends on how well you are connected at your university, and if government funds are available.
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