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Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

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Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#71

Post by Normal_gaussian »

danielbln wrote: post #36
hellofunk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dresden is a much more beautiful town than ugly Berlin. That is certainly subjective (and offensive). I have not been to Dresden but I found Berlin to be quite an interesting aesthetic environment and hardly sore on the eyes. It has huge, lovely green parks and I find the wide open spaces throughout the town rather refreshing.

It's a big city, there are ugly parts, and there are pretty parts. Same for Dresden, it has some really lovely buildings, but anything that was built after the 50s is ugly as sin.

How much of Dresden was rebuilt 45-60 and how much was rebuilt later? I presume most land was made usable pretty quickly however I can't imagine they were high quality long term buildings.

I need to go to Dresden.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#72

Post by royroyroys »

k__ wrote: post #5

Before I click the link: Berlin is cheaper than London. Edit: And I was right, haha. While London is one of the most expensive cities in the world, Berlin is cheap for German conditions. At least the parts that haven't been gentrified yet ;) Berlin is really cool and has lots of alternative people and seems to be the only german city with a bigger start-up scene, but it's poor AF. I'm living in Stuttgart and while I…

There are cities near London, with relatively cheap property prices. Like Portsmouth and Northampton.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#73

Post by rubber_duck »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #63
rubber_duck wrote: post #52

Why Western Europe if you want to get cost of living down and move somewhere ? Eastern Europe is 1/3 cost of living, usually has very good tax rates (Bulgaria has 10% flat tax on income + local tax for example, Hungary is close AFAIK) and there are startup accelerators trying to take advantage of that. If you're using your own money to fund it and have customers who don't care about your location you'll have much eas…

Quality of life varies greatly between countries. That said I would certainly consider Bratislava if I was moving East. Its proximity to Austria (Vienna in particular) means that you can, in many ways, have the best of both worlds.

I think in most capitals I've seen quality of life isn't that much worse, don't get me wrong it's not really on the same level as Paris or London (rural areas on the other hand - just don't make any random country trips on your own), but at the same time it's not like moving to Syria or something like that - for example I find Vienna to be quite unsafe and unappealing, compared to say Zagreb (related to that I actually know a guy who commutes from Bratislava to Vienna for work - the rent difference alone covers the commute).

It depends on what you want, but you can actually compete for staff even if you have < million € in seed capital, rent and office space is cheap, etc. if your goal is to bootstrap your company then moving to Eastern Europe can help you with that.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#74

Post by ThePadawan »

justanton wrote: post #65
DasIch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash is much more popular however another big factor is that credit cards aren't really a thing. Instead Germany has its own system of EC cards which are directly tied to your bank account (which most people get as a child here) and work more like debit cards. The only reason to have a credit card as a German is for buying this outside of Germany.

I live in Germany, and I always wondered: how Germans buy online and/or book hotels/tickets online, if most of them don't have credit cards and only have this EC-Karte?

This differs quite a big on the size of the respective business (of sales).

Amazon.de e.g. offers the choice of * credit card (as internationally) * direct withdrawal (meaning you give them your bank account details and they withdraw the amount directly - sort of sketchy from the customer's point of view, but no different from credit cards - if anything goes awry, you just challenge the charge directly with the bank instead of the card issuer) * bill-based (generally only for small amounts or trusted customers - might involve a "credit score" check from Schufa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa) to deter fraud)

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#75

Post by uola »

icebraining wrote: post #45
scrollaway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. If you're shooting for affordability, Athens is a much better bet. 20sqm studios below €100/month in the heart of the capital. (Good luck getting decent internet, though.)

There's Lisbon, as a middle point. 300-400€/m for a 60m² and you can get a 1Gbps/100mbps connection to your home.

From what I've heard Lisbon is about the same cost as Berlin. But the economy is worse, the tax system seems more complex and it's less accessible to foreigners. I guess the weather is nicer, but the location is worse. To legitimately compete with Berlin I think one really has to offer something special, otherwise Berlin wins by default in the low-medium cost category. Lisbon would still be on my shortlist for European bootstrap cities, but there are also at least half a dozen other cities that could be equivalent.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#76

Post by jorgemf »

scaryclam wrote: post #34
jorgemf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is affordable compare to London where the same thing it is probably 3 times more expensive. There are other cities with more affordable prices (Athens) but obviously the startup environment is not the same there. But Berlin it is catching up with London, so it is worth to consider.

I've actually just moved offices in London, so I can say that it actually isn't much different. There's plenty of offices that are very comparable to that price.

She is talking about the price of a room, not office space.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#77

Post by hellofunk »

elcapitan wrote: post #56
hellofunk wrote: post #8

Wow, 20 square meters for €480? That doesn't register as affordable on my books (even with utilities included).

It depends on where you are looking, I'm paying that for 60sqm in Berlin. It's a 7 year old rent contract though, may be more in the same area now.

Well property values in Berlin have risen 40+% in 7 years, so I'd expect rent to follow suit.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#78

Post by uola »

petre wrote: post #37
alicelthwaite wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there - I'm the author of this piece. I don't actually speak German. I'm trying to improve - however, I wouldn't say it's required in Germany to start something on your own. Many of the meetups are in English and everyone I've spoken to is fluent. I think it's another story if you're trying to get a job though...

Why not start a business in Central or South Eastern Europe? Most cities are even cheaper than Berlin and still open to young people. Plus people are fluent in Englush, except maybe in Hungary.

Generally the cities tend to be too small, too expensive (for what you get) or not international enough. More than anything "even cheaper" doesn't necessarily matter, around €750 is pretty much the sweet spot in terms of cost of living. Ljubljana seems pretty nice though.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#79

Post by allendoerfer »

hellofunk wrote: post #13
jorgemf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She must learn German. The thing with Berlin is that there are a lot of startups with foreign people, and a lot of Germans speak English. But when you want to do normal day things as going to the market you need German to understand what are you buying and to talk with the people. It is not like other countries where you cannot get a job or life if you don't speak the language. You can get a job in Berlin as a Englis…

I agree, my experience after a week of work in Berlin was that a lot of the restaurants I visited, the waitress couldn't speak English at all. Or taking a cab was sometimes quite an effort to communicate as well. Even more strange, Berlin (and perhaps much of Germany, I don't know), places much greater emphasis on cash than on electronic payments like credit cards. I gave a credit card to a vendor once and they looke…

> because Germans generally place low emphasis on learning other languages (just like Americans do)

I agree with everything you say, except that. Older people form Eastern Germany obviously did not learn English in school.

In Germany it is not like the Netherlands or the Nordic countries, but I would say in Western Germany you have a much higher chance to meet people who can speak English or French at a decent level than you have in France or Italy to find someone speaking English or German. And that is inspite of the German market being much bigger and people from Eastern or Northern Europe also often being able to speak German.

Of all highschool student exchanges to France or Britain I know of, the students ended up speaking the other language, not German. I remember a neighbour had an exchange student from England over at his home. He supposedly learned German in school, but just repeated his sentence "Um 5 Uhr fährt der Zug nach Berlin.". This really changed my perspective on the foreign language education in Germany.

Re: Why a Brit chose to start a business in Berlin

#80

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

woodcut wrote: post #61

Welcome to Berlin. :) I came to Berlin roughly 5 years ago before the investment started pouring in and most startups were existenz grundungs, this is when you get 50k from the government and you underpay some interns to build your MVP. It was pretty shabby back then, and things have changed dramatically in the intervening years, but most people came for this vague idea of living cheaply and doing what they want - yo…

>Registration takes ~3-5 months to get an appointment, god forbid you're a foreigner and have to also register at the ausländerbehörde and wait from 3am for the 1 of 50 tickets available that day.

Your bureaucracy makes American bureaucracy seem amazingly efficient in comparison. I did not know such a thing was possible outside defunct communist states.

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