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

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

#61

Post by zalew »

nir wrote: post #55
zalew wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The kebab is a Berlin invention Wait, wat? Kebab is middle-eastern food with hundreds of years of history. 'Doner kebab' (the popular one in a bread) is Turkish. German sausage has nothing to do with it. There are lots of ways you can serve kebab/shoarma and none of them are 'wrong' per se. The popularity of doner and roll is probably just a matter of convenience for customers and business owners. The sauce thing w…

The word "Kebab" describes a different dish in the Middle East and in Germany.

All dishes are different around the world - spaghetti, sushi, pizza, hamburger, etc. Sometimes a dish is luxury in one country and casual food in the other. It always differs, even across regions of one country, regional influences, etc. It doesn't mean it's a different dish by definition.

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

#62

Post by leon_ »

derrida wrote: post #39
zalew wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greesy kebabs with a lot of sauce 'spicy, mild or mix?' are a European invention I think. I've been to a few middle-eastern countries including Turkey and haven't seen sauce in kebab ever (still they give sauce in Berlin).

That is because they are Shwarma's and are completely different again. The kebab is a Berlin invention (according to TimeOut Berlin). Which makes sense, a marriage of the German sausage + bread culture with some dish from the middle east.

Döner - not Kebap - is a german (berlin) invention.

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

#63

Post by derda »

blumentopf wrote: post #28

Tell HN: 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 fai…

Do you mind sharing any details, especially about the issues with the Finanzamt? As someone who considers a startup in .de I fear issues like that.

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

#64

Post by mjw »

alan_cx wrote: post #3
chaostheory wrote: post #2

"People in SV are not afraid to fail. In fact, having failed before is considered a great quality. If you haven’t failed, you’re either inexperienced or suspicious. Startups try, fail, try again, pivot, fail and try again." I think aside from maybe regulation, this is the biggest issue that Germany has and it's also the same one that Japan faces. The fear of failure and losing face. I'm not even sure that you can cha…

In the UK, if you fail, its pretty much game over. You get black listed and pretty much, that's the end of it. If you fail and go bankrupt, then set up again, you are almost seen as a fraudulent criminal. In the US, it seems to me that you can try and fail as much as you like, as long as you keep trying and don't get criminal. Trying seems to be enough to get some level of respect. It is absolutely one of the things…

No doubt there are some differences with the US here; the start-up career path perhaps isn't necessarily so widely known about and recognised outside the tech community, nor is it quite as breathlessly cheerled as in the bay area.

But still, this isn't really the UK (or at least the London tech scene) which I know. A failed tech startup is very different to personal bankruptcy or some shady business operating on the edges of the law. And I think a lot of the tech sector here see it as a positive thing if you've learnt from it.

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

#65

Post by UK-AL »

I think the culture is too different, I also think their education system has something to do with it, relatively few go the gymnasium and then to university(thus study formal computer science) where as in the US, university is something everyone is expected to do. I am not sure how their vocational education is for computer science, or even if their expected or encouraged to start up on their own.

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

#66

Post by pablasso »

ThomPete wrote: post #13

It's a European cultural issue. Denmark is not any different. There are big discussions in Denmark right now about how to create growth. So the following can be applied to Germany as well I think. I am saddened to see that most politicians thinking is: 1. Education 2. Green Tech (Wind Mills and Wave Mills primarily with government funding. Yes you heard that right) 3. Upgrading your education 4. Education 5. Innovati…

You're lucky. I'd love it if our politicians in Mexico had those priorities.

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

#67

Post by hollerith »

endymi0n wrote: post #25
davidw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no corporate politics in Germany? That's pretty awesome. In all seriousness though, you're cherry picking some of the bad stuff about the US. I'm sure if you wanted, you could do the same thing about Germany or anywhere else. For instance: the weather, the lack of anything remotely resembling a mountain near Berlin, and, most importantly, the lack of good Mexican food.

Let me rephrase. Of course there's corporate politics here. There will always be because greed is a very human trait. The difference is that greed is something commonly seen much more positive in the US. We just fired our president because of a "corruption scandal" that would have been piecemeal for Romney or Berlusconi (we're talking about some couple thousand bucks here). It's one of the first countries with a poli…

>It's one of the first countries with a politically meaningful and rapidly growing movement for net neutrality

Although it does not use the term "net neutrality" (which I had never seen before about 5 years ago), the 1956 "Consent Decree" (a kind of court ruling), which resolved the second anti-trust suit against AT&T, imposed a version of net neutrality on the U.S. telephone network, and I have seen at least one writer credit that "Consent Decree" with enabling the growth of the internet beyond the purely government-operated stage (because the growth of the internet at that stage came from large organizations' leasing "dedicated copper" from AT&T Long Lines, which wanted to but was was unable to turn down requests for such leases because of the Consent Decree).

This version of net neutrality was restricted to large corporations (IBM was a very vocal advocate of this version of net neutrality) and the judicial system, and had almost nothing to do with popular opinion or electoral politics, but it was the law in the U.S.

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

#68

Post by rdl »

rwmj wrote: post #29
derda wrote: post #24

I am a German engineering student. I will try to describe the situation as I see it from here. 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 t…

Your first point raises an interesting issue: For an individual, working for a start-up is almost certainly a bad bet. Most likely the company you start will go out of business. Moderate upsides are rare. Massive gains are incredibly rare (although obviously they're the ones everyone points to and remembers). However for the German (US, etc) economy , having a start-up culture is valuable. That's where the future tec…

Working for a startup is low risk in terms of getting to work with decent tech, with smart people, etc. It also raises your employability in general. It's higher risk financially, sure, but for a funded company, you still get paid a decent wage while working, so that's not as big a risk.

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

#69

Post by thomasbachem »

DasIch wrote: post #57

I'm currently in the 12th grade of a Gymnasium in Germany and while we get a lot of information on jobs, possible areas of study and things you can do after studying at a university creating or joining a startup is not even considered. The risk is generally considered to be so high that you have to be unbelievably good at what you are doing, insane or most likely both to take it under consideration.

That's exactly why I and a friend go into schools and talk about entrepreneurship for some years now. They won't ask for it, so we call them. But only in Cologne right now.
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