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 - you could say they washed up here as tourists and stayed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but these people are being replaced with people coming here for startup jobs that pay real salaries. It used to be that ~500 euros a month was a good startup job, now it's more like 4-5k.
All of this change is happening while Berlins administration is still the bureaucratic and slow machine that it always has been, they haven't built affordable housing in 25 years, there's no plan on how to reduce congestion or prevent gentrification from wiping out existing communities. 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.
It's nice that people still see a future here, but i take an issue with such a rosy picture of what it's like to live here, because it really isn't the case.
"Existenz grundung" just means "founding a company". It doesn't imply anything about grants being taken. What you're probably referring to is a "Gründerzuschuss", which is a form of unemployment payment which gives you about 60% of your former salary with a fixed amount of time to get out of unemployment benefits via founding your own company. It's only available to those that were previously full-time employees.
Also, it's horseshit that €500/month was a good salary 5 years ago. More like €3500/month. Rent is also still far cheaper in Berlin than virtually any other western European major city.
My first registration was in Bürgeramt Wedding - appointment was scheduled one month before via Internet. There were lots of people waiting. Later on when I moved and had to register again, I tried to make an appointment, but it was impossible. My co-worker went to the Bürgeramt without appointment one hour before opening. Then he had to wait 3-4 hours. I went to Bürgeramt Pankow on Friday around 10:00 and there in 30 minutes it was done. It was not crowded. Later on when I asked around at work how is that, they told me that people seem to prefer to go to the nearest office (with hope that it will be quick enough) and wait several hours, than take 20-40 minutes of journey more and wait 0.5 an hour.
>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.
The benefits she mentions are legitimate, even though two of them have nothing to do with Berlin and could be obtained by moving to any new city. (no distractions, and changing environment equals greater creativity)
So it really boils down to this for her: Berlin is affordable and it has a good meetup scene. Affordable is relative, salaries are lower in Berlin than in many other cities and the cost of living has been on a rise as more people move in, but at the moment she is absolutely right about this much: cost of living is still significantly lower in Berlin than in London (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...) [1]
Depending on your product Berlin can be good or bad. I think its almost always a great fit if your product targets the German market initially and you want to eventually expand out from there. The other way around will be much more difficult, mainly because you're sitting in Germany and you're whole business side of operations must be run in German, under German law, rules, and regulations.
Having said this, as far as her specific product idea goes, I could see Berlin being a good fit for her. The super young hipster culture is pervasive throughout Berlin, and it seems like an idea that would work well in that market.
1. I worked on a German startup for 3 years in Berlin
Thanks - I agree with everything you've just said. The thing I didn't mention is that I love the Berlin culture. I knew I'd feel at home here. So there's a subjective reason too.
"My business is called The Echo Chamber Club — we curate articles that counter a traditional metropolitan viewpoint and send them to our hundreds of subscribers. It makes sense that I remove myself from London to understand new points of view and communicate them with my subscribers."
With regards to "liberal metropolitan" viewpoints, Berlin won't challenge you anymore than London did. It's just another global city where inside your group of people you are likely to meet (given what you work in) they will more than likely be liberal and metroplitan.
Hmmm I kind of disagree there. I'm having to make new friends and get out of my comfort zone. In time I'm going to start exploring other areas. I'm really keen to get collaborators on board for instance.
Nothing is perfect - this was just the best move for me at the time :)
I'm planning on moving from London to Berlin within 6 months (I'm British), and mostly for the same reasons (RIP fabric). I have a couple of German citizens as friends who are also seriously considering doing the same. My main concern is how to avoid joining the English-speaking bubble. Although nothing has charged my motivation for learning German more than the recent government responses to Brexit. It does feel a bit ironic that I'm fleeing to Germany from a fascist government.
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 easier time finding employees, especially non-technical staff like art/marketing/sales/customer support.
How do you define "very good tax rates" though? Is it the same thing as "low taxes"? Are high taxes in Northern Europe "bad taxes"?
Taxes are not theft you know, they're supposed to buy you and your fellow citizens things (health care, infrastructure, cheap education, services, etc), some of them highly beneficial to a startup.
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.
While the author makes good points about the relative affordability of Berlin, one does have to wonder what the general plan for newsletter profitability is.
Hey! I'm the author! This is pretty cool to be number one on Hacker News. The idea behind the newsletter is to build a brand which makes liberal metropolitans comfortable with hearing viewpoints outside their own. Then I can monetise it! :)
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.
From what I could quickly find [1] there is nothing more expensive than London in Europe. And there is not a lot that is significantly cheaper than Berlin. At least in case of office space rent in major cities.
It's also very overpriced. I just moved into a new apartment and I am paying 9€/sqm cold in a very central location. This is very cheap. 11-14€ is more realistic, but even with utilities included you would never have to pay 24€/sqm.
That's extremely expensive for Berlin. 24 per Meter. 8 to 12 is considered expensive. 6 was the old standard. I pay 15 but I have top floor with balcony and skylights
Prices are obviously catching up. My 6-year old lease is about as much for 60m^2 (turn-of-the-century building in the center). But I fear the day when I need more space for children...
Dresden is even better. I moved from Houston, TX to Dresden and I'm very happy with my choice. Technically it's more interesting, as the University and high tech companies here are much more advanced (i.e the l4 microkernel is from here), prices are the same, and Dresden is a much more beautiful town than ugly Berlin. Lots of English speaking foreigners, and people are more friendly. For startup's there's only one or two meetup points and helpers/investors but still better than Houston or Austin.
If going for cheap, Wroclaw or Prague would be better.
> 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.
Genuine question, Whats the business model for The Echo Chamber Club? I've always seen newsletters as a marketing tool for a business, rather than a business itself. Very interested to how you'd make money with it as a standalone business.
Hey Tam - thanks for your question. So my target market don't generally want to hear the topics I'm posting. They have to trust that I'm as liberal as they are before they start taking me seriously.
So it became clear that the most important part of the ECC was to create a trusted brand.
Otherwise, I spent about a year trying to figure out a solution to the filter bubble. I was looking at RSS feeds, new types of algorithms, and it was all very complicated. The idea of a newsletter MVP made sense.
After I get to about 5k subscribers I'll be putting on events - with the aim of creating a B2B qualitative research firm. But that's a long way off - who knows where the journey will take me.
Feel free to add me on twitter so we can discuss more - would love your thoughts! @alicelthwaite
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 English speaker but you must learn the local language for the day to day things.
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...
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 prefer to hang in Berlin, the money is in the south.
[+] [-] woodcut|9 years ago|reply
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 - you could say they washed up here as tourists and stayed. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but these people are being replaced with people coming here for startup jobs that pay real salaries. It used to be that ~500 euros a month was a good startup job, now it's more like 4-5k.
All of this change is happening while Berlins administration is still the bureaucratic and slow machine that it always has been, they haven't built affordable housing in 25 years, there's no plan on how to reduce congestion or prevent gentrification from wiping out existing communities. 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.
It's nice that people still see a future here, but i take an issue with such a rosy picture of what it's like to live here, because it really isn't the case.
[+] [-] wheels|9 years ago|reply
Also, it's horseshit that €500/month was a good salary 5 years ago. More like €3500/month. Rent is also still far cheaper in Berlin than virtually any other western European major city.
[+] [-] hawski|9 years ago|reply
My first registration was in Bürgeramt Wedding - appointment was scheduled one month before via Internet. There were lots of people waiting. Later on when I moved and had to register again, I tried to make an appointment, but it was impossible. My co-worker went to the Bürgeramt without appointment one hour before opening. Then he had to wait 3-4 hours. I went to Bürgeramt Pankow on Friday around 10:00 and there in 30 minutes it was done. It was not crowded. Later on when I asked around at work how is that, they told me that people seem to prefer to go to the nearest office (with hope that it will be quick enough) and wait several hours, than take 20-40 minutes of journey more and wait 0.5 an hour.
[+] [-] GunboatDiplomat|9 years ago|reply
Your bureaucracy makes American bureaucracy seem amazingly efficient in comparison. I did not know such a thing was possible outside defunct communist states.
[+] [-] jfaucett|9 years ago|reply
So it really boils down to this for her: Berlin is affordable and it has a good meetup scene. Affordable is relative, salaries are lower in Berlin than in many other cities and the cost of living has been on a rise as more people move in, but at the moment she is absolutely right about this much: cost of living is still significantly lower in Berlin than in London (https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...) [1]
Depending on your product Berlin can be good or bad. I think its almost always a great fit if your product targets the German market initially and you want to eventually expand out from there. The other way around will be much more difficult, mainly because you're sitting in Germany and you're whole business side of operations must be run in German, under German law, rules, and regulations.
Having said this, as far as her specific product idea goes, I could see Berlin being a good fit for her. The super young hipster culture is pervasive throughout Berlin, and it seems like an idea that would work well in that market.
1. I worked on a German startup for 3 years in Berlin
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doc_holliday|9 years ago|reply
With regards to "liberal metropolitan" viewpoints, Berlin won't challenge you anymore than London did. It's just another global city where inside your group of people you are likely to meet (given what you work in) they will more than likely be liberal and metroplitan.
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
Nothing is perfect - this was just the best move for me at the time :)
[+] [-] enqk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkxyz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flukus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubber_duck|9 years ago|reply
If you're using your own money to fund it and have customers who don't care about your location you'll have much easier time finding employees, especially non-technical staff like art/marketing/sales/customer support.
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|9 years ago|reply
Taxes are not theft you know, they're supposed to buy you and your fellow citizens things (health care, infrastructure, cheap education, services, etc), some of them highly beneficial to a startup.
[+] [-] Normal_gaussian|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] akanet|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellofunk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorgemf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrollaway|9 years ago|reply
(Good luck getting decent internet, though.)
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawski|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/431672/commercial-proper...
[+] [-] neukoelln|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crucialfelix|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt4077|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurban|9 years ago|reply
If going for cheap, Wroclaw or Prague would be better.
[+] [-] hellofunk|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DasIch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheriot|9 years ago|reply
1. There's a huge tech scene in Berlin and it's easy to meet bright people.
2. People want to live in Berlin. The art and music scene attract people.
Affordable alone can be found in many places. Combined with 1 and 2 is a pretty unique proposition.
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TamDenholm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
So it became clear that the most important part of the ECC was to create a trusted brand.
Otherwise, I spent about a year trying to figure out a solution to the filter bubble. I was looking at RSS feeds, new types of algorithms, and it was all very complicated. The idea of a newsletter MVP made sense.
After I get to about 5k subscribers I'll be putting on events - with the aim of creating a B2B qualitative research firm. But that's a long way off - who knows where the journey will take me.
Feel free to add me on twitter so we can discuss more - would love your thoughts! @alicelthwaite
[+] [-] drumhead|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorgemf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] martiuk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aibottle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branchless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k__|9 years ago|reply
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 prefer to hang in Berlin, the money is in the south.
[+] [-] 500and4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rms_returns|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alicelthwaite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smegel|9 years ago|reply