There are several things that I've been positively surprised about:
* Cost of living is really cheap. Now when I travel to France or Finland I feel everything is expensive there
* Berlin is very well connected with rest of Europe (trains, flights)
* The hacker scene here is great (huge meetups, etc)
On the slightly negative side:
* bureaucracy is ten years behind Finland. You still need to visit an office to get anything done instead of doing things over the browser
* Rental agencies really try to fleece you
Since moving inside Europe is really simple, I'd urge anybody curious to take a shot and stay here for a while. For example a month in some co-working space.
I've also heard a lot of start-up people hang out in Sankt Oberholz (http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?lang=en), but I have no personal experience on that one.
>I've also heard a lot of start-up people hang out in Sankt Oberholz (http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?lang=en), but I have no personal experience on that one.
Coming from Tallinn to see Berlinale in February, I had a misfortune of not having a desk in my hotel room during my stay there. Thankfully, St. Oberholz was just around the corner. I spent most most of the days working there and met many great people from artists and art curators to programmers and entrepreneurs, and it seemed that about third of visitors came from Denmark/Sweden/Iceland and the US/Canada. As much I could gather, Oberholz was the place were tech people could work when they didn't have a office space for themselves or wanted some rest from their primary offices. The place is overcrowded most of the time so you don't have a luxury for your own private table, and more often than not, you'll have to ask for a place at someones table. They also provided almost decent wifi, which really isn't really the norm for the majority of places in Berlin.
On the broader perspective, Berlin is a great city with a good vibe attached to it, and I have been thinking of moving there for a while now.
There are also a number of other hacker-spaces and the Chaos Computer Club. There is one hacker space devoted entirely to the intersection between Textiles and Electronics. Just a warning, Berlin is not the valley. It is it's own unique and awesome thing. A huge proportion of the hacking community couldn't care less about start ups. But it is a large community, and I can't speak for everyone.
Do you have any links for the other hacker spaces in Berlin? I'll be travelling there in the very near future, and will likely need a space to work while I'm there.
I'll be there for a month, and don't mind paying a membership fee. I already checked out c-base, co.up, and Sankt Oberholz, linked above. They look promising, but more information can only help.
> bureaucracy is ten years behind Finland. You still need to visit an office to get anything done instead of doing things over the browser
I found this to be the case when moving to Finland; the amount of bureaucracy needed to get started as a foreigner, even one from the EU, is insane (from a British perspective).
- register with tax office
- register with KELA (you'd think registering as a taxpayer would be sufficent; but no)
- register with the Maistratti (um...)
- register with police station (hey, I've just given my address details to the tax office, KELA, and Maistratti, but let's waste another half a day in a police station in middle of nowhere, Espoo).
But whatever, glad to be doing my part to support the National Bureaucrat Jobs Program.
Never mind that even doing all that, most companies still don't think you exist because you don't appear on credit checks. Granted, most of these can be done via mail (someone should really introduce the British public service to the interwebs one of these days), the bureaucracy in Berlin is hardly uniquely bad from a British perspective :)
All good points - from a foreigner's perspective in either country.
I think the key here is not web/non-web but the government in question having an intelligent, joined-up registration system.
In the case of Finland, once I'd registered with the tax office my address and other details should have been registered in the system. KELA would be notified - along with all my income details - and the magistrate and police would have up-to-date records. Done, one visit to one office.
You can also spend too much time optimising a relatively rare use case. Each of those steps require that you fill out a form and mail it off. The exception is registering for an NI number where you actually have to book and show up for an interview. That's it. You'll be prompted to do each when necessary, there's no benefit/penalty for doing each too early/too late.
In contrast to Finland, where each of the cases above require me turning up in person. Had I just needed to mail off a form, it wouldn't be so much an issue.
There's a very frustrating mix of "concern for privacy" vs "being effective".
All these different agencies have their own databases (with slightly different fields making transfer of data between them a bit tricky) and they're not allowed to communicate apart from a few limited examples.
To get anything done I need to fill out a form, on paper. That same information needs to be filled out across many different forms, to different agencies. It's so bad that sometimes one form asks for the same information (address, date of birth) twice.
I'm not sure how governments could kludge all that data into one big database and protect people from hideous privacy violations that result.
Yeah, and getting hold of the HRMC or any of these bodies over the phone can be very difficult. Apologies for that. I once got hit by a HMRC error and it was impossible for me to reach them to correct it while they fined me. Of course, they didn't admit that it was their error and that I took too long to get back to them...
I moved to Berlin also from Helsinki last autumn to work in a start-up.
What I should add to your list is the open-mindedness of the people: it is one of the most liberal places I've ever been. People are nice, the police won't arrest you so easily for spending a splendid day in a local park and of course the nightlife.
When I visited Berkeley and New York this spring, it was really a joy to be back home.
Only they are not legal in NYC given the scenario described. NYC has open container laws (no open alchoholic containers in public), public smoking laws (particularly in public Parks) and weed is illegal under Federal law in th US.
> Since moving inside Europe is really simple, I'd urge anybody curious to take a shot and stay here for a while.
Not everywhere in the EU, I moved to Denmark almost two years ago, and I am completely sure that the Danish system was designed to keep people out of their border. Simple tasks like open a bank account are a troublesome for even EU citizens
To open bank account in Germany you must be a resident or have a work/student visa. The Czech Republic will let anyone open a bank account however, but double check. Just some things I learnt last time I was in Europe on a tourist visa.
So, there are EU regulations in place that are supposed to make money laundering harder. This raises the bar everywhere.
I suppose he's not referring directly to a bank account, but to our lovely home grown credit-masking-as-debit-card "Dankort" without which you might as well not have a bank account. Since they are in fact credit cards, banks are reluctant handing these out to people they might never see again.
I'm a foreigner with a bank account and no Dankort, and I haven't really found it a huge hassle. While it's hard to get a Dankort, it's easy to get a Visa Elektron, which most places accept without fees (unlike foreign credit/debit cards). And the only things I've found really necessary about a Danish bank account are: 1) having an account to designate as a NemKonto; and 2) being able to use the betalingsservice through netbanking, e.g. to pay my rent, utilities, and TV license fee. For smaller things, I haven't found just using cash to be problematic, even if most Danes don't pay in cash.
Fair enough. I'm happy Electron is gaining ground. Not too many years ago, an Electron basically limited you to withdraw cash (for a fee) from other bank's ATMs and pay in a few places - not including most supermarkets.
Even Parisians often flee Paris because of red tape and taxes, so if you add a foreign accent, or poor to no French, into the mix you are likely going to be going at a snail's pace. Berlin is cheaper, friendlier to business, friendlier to English and just friendlier in general on the street. The cheapness translates as a factor for employees (their home), and the international orientation of the city allows you to draw on a much broader potential labour force as tons more people from around Europe would consider a move to Berlin than to Paris.
I'd be fairly surprised if there was even a single metric on which Paris beats Berlin for anything business related, so unless you have a product specific to the French market or have a significant other in Paris who can't move it's Berlin every time. Even if you have a product specific to the French market it's probably be best to be outside France unless you need to be there in person to stroke the egos of bureaucrats who might regulate you out of existence.
just monday, I spent 4 wonderful hours to go from CDG into town because public transport in Paris is simply broken. Berlin isn't 100% but it's 100% better.
I'm not talking about connectivity inside the town. But yes, there are some problems (eventually)
Or you could just take a cab from CDG to Paris.
But Paris has the Eurostar and Thales this means 1h15 from Paris (city center) to Brussels (city center) and +/- 2h20 to London (St Pancras station). Without having to go to a far-away airport and get there 1h before the flight.
Berlin sure has lots of flights but it's not an Intl hub like LHR or CDG
That's an interesting read. I'd never heard of La Défense before, but the wiki page makes me wonder whether it's the largest business center in Europe because of some set of favorables or if it is because there are so many historic areas in Paris that businesses are relegated to that area.
La Defense is, and has been in the past, home to some of the largest European companies. In fashion, you have L'Oreal, LVMH (the company that owns Louis Vutton, among other notables), as well as some of France's more classic tech companies: Bull, SFR, Orange, Capgemini, etc.
I was in Berlin in December, with my fiance, to check it out as I was considering it as a potential place to work for a few a year or two.
It didn't resonate with me. But everyone has their own experiences. Below are some of the good and bad from my experiences:
1. Transportation is amazing. Not having a car is a non-issue. The most I waited for a train was 10 minutes.
Drinking and smoking are allowed in the underground stations. Personal freedom often trumped collective consciousness.
2. Rent is cheap. But I found the city rather ugly. When I asked a resident why they have so much "bad graffiti" she commented that it was to make it ugly. Further questioning and reasoning was that ugly correlates to cheaper rent.
3. So much dog shit. Perhaps because there are a lot of dogs. They are very well behaved. But the poo was everywhere.
4. We stayed in Kreuzburg. It's trendy. Which means that it's mostly occupied by unemployed artists. :P
5. I speak very poor German, but Berliners are incredibly friendly and mostly patient.
6. It doesn't really feel like a big city.
7. They had some nice galleries and museums. Architecturally I don't think I saw anything significant, or that sticks out in my mind.
I smoked once on the S-bahn station (wouldn't imagine it can be allowed on U-bahn), and the security politely informed me with a smile that it's not allowed. In my homecountry I'm not used to any form of security being polite.
This isn't a very well written article. Comparing Berlin to Paris isn't a fair comparison. Paris for example, is subject to some of the most startup-hostile laws in the EU. The adage of hire slowly and fire quickly just doesn't work there, yet somehow this doesn't make the article.
It seems like the crux of the article is based on Berlin being cheaper than Paris. Well, to be honest most of Europe is cheaper than most of central Paris. You could just as easily claim that Athens is cheaper than Paris, but I hardly see Athens as a startup hub for years to come.
The point about Berlin's geographical location given the ease of transport within the EU for EU member state citizens is laughable. What about the talent in Germany? There are some great universities in Germany that are overlooked in favour of what? Poland? If one of Berlin's best points is it's proximity to Poland, then Berlin is in serious trouble as a startup hub. I imagine that a lot of (but not all) Poles might not see Germany as a natural startup destination anymore than Russia. Besides, there's a heck of a lot of smart Polish people who work all around the world as well as shock in Poland.
Is Berlin better than Paris to launch a startup? Almost certainly. Almost anywhere outside of France is better than France to launch a startup right now (considering the red tape, taxis and uncertainty under Hollande) but it has a long way to go to displace London and for Germany the UK in general.
In conclusion, in the EU if you want cheap, go to Bucharest. If you want good, go to London.
As someone living in London i can see Berlin to become the seedstage city of Europe fairly quickly.
This might result into becoming the startup hub #1 on the long run. But for now London holds the crown with an better uplink to the US and in general to international media and investors.
Your thoughts on this?
Could berlin be the Seedstage City of Europe ? Basically the Garage of this continent.
What is the VC culture like in Berlin? Are there many VCs, and what kind of companies do they typically invest in?
To me, this is the difference between a good town for bootstrapping and a good town for creating a startup. As it stands, this article seems more like an argument for why Berlin is a great place to bootstrap a company. Which is also great, but different.
I'm sure Berlin is not very different to Paris in this regard, but being from Barcelona, Spain; my main concern regarding Berlin is the weather. I guess you can't have everything.
There are several things that I've been positively surprised about:
* Cost of living is really cheap. Now when I travel to France or Finland I feel everything is expensive there
* Berlin is very well connected with rest of Europe (trains, flights)
* The hacker scene here is great (huge meetups, etc)
On the slightly negative side:
* bureaucracy is ten years behind Finland. You still need to visit an office to get anything done instead of doing things over the browser
* Rental agencies really try to fleece you
Since moving inside Europe is really simple, I'd urge anybody curious to take a shot and stay here for a while. For example a month in some co-working space.