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My two cents: * Health insurance: When you're employed, your employer pays roughly half of your insurance premium. As a freelancer, you have to pay 100 % yours

My two cents: * Health insurance: When you're employed, your employer pays roughly half of your insurance premium. As a freelancer, you have to pay 100 % yourself. Currently, the minimum rate for a freelancer is about 350 € / month, which is still very reasonable in my opinion. Also, as a freelancer you can deduce a portion of this from your taxes. * Venture capital: From my experience this is mostly true, as there are many people that try to appear as if they have very good connections and money, but in the end they offer pre-seed level investments for double-digit equity. A few of the international VCs have offices in Berlin now though, so my advice would be to stay away from the impostors and go to firms that have actual credibility and a history of funding successful startups. * Public funding: There are some programs to help people start companies that can provide you with up to 100 T€ in capital (most notably EXIST), and there are various federal programs that provide money as well (e.g. the IBB). * Visa: In my experience, Berlin has a very liberal visa policy for foreigners, so it's not very difficult to get a freelancer / business founder visa for three years without many strings attached (I have several friends that got one immediately when going to the Ausländerbehörde). So, compared to e.g. the US the process is still infinitely easier I'd say and the cost is near zero (60 € in fees I think). * Loans to companies: As everywhere in the world, banks won't give you a credit without securing it appropriately. In Germany you can start a Limited (UG) with a risk capital as low as 1 €, so of course your bank will ask for additional security as otherwise you could just use the money and let the company go bankrupt afterwards. I'd be surprised if US banks were any different in this respect. * Letters arriving in your mailbox: This is a scam that relies on your company being publicly listed in the company register (Handelsregister). Currently the register court already warns you about this when you register a new company. There is a legal effort to stop these people as well, but it's difficult since most of them just use an officially looking letterhead with an eagle on it, which is not per se illegal though it is misleading of course. Again, some common sense will help to not fall for this. * Meeting investors at meetups / events: Forget about those, as they attract many impostors and people that will just waste your time. Probably not much different in SF or elsewhere. Knowing the right people will help here, but this of course takes time. * Success: I agree that it's very hard to succeed with a startup in Germany, and there are very few big success stories in the startup scene here so far. * Job market: Mostly true, although there are more and more well-paying jobs available as more established startups and companies come to Berlin. Six-digit salaries for good senior developers are not unheard of, though most people probably make much less. That said, the income distribution in Germany is not as steep as e.g. in the US, and the war for talent isn't as fierce, which means that salaries are lower as well.

pluma 10y ago
> which is not per se illegal though it is misleading of course Actually most of these scam letters ARE illegal and you CAN and SHOULD report them to the police. The bigger problem is that most of them aren't based in Germany and vanish as quickly as they pop up. We actually fell for one of these scams because our bookkeeping was of course extremely messy when we just started out (and we bootstrapped, so we didn't have any mentoring other than the worthless IHK). However we lucked out: although there was no way to reverse the transaction (manually wiring money is not easily reversible) the scammer's account had already been frozen by that time, so the transfer bounced and we got to keep the money. I have to admit the IBAN number even started with the country code "ES" because the bank was in Spain but we didn't notice it because the bank's part of the code started with "DE", so it was just close enough to trick an idiot in a hurry. This actually changed my perspective on why phishing works: you don't have to be legitimately stupid -- they just have to catch you in a situation in which you're likely to be careless and distracted enough to be that stupid. EDIT: To clarify: the reason people often believe they're not illegal is that they're not actual forgeries -- they use carefully crafted wording and official-looking seals that aren't actually official. But they're still obviously trying to trick people, which is illegal of its own right.
Kequc 10y ago
> Venture capital: From my experience this is mostly true, as there are many people that try to appear as if they have very good connections and money, but in the end they offer pre-seed level investments for double-digit equity. A few of the international VCs have offices in Berlin now though, so my advice would be to stay away from the impostors and go to firms that have actual credibility and a history of funding successful startups. If you suggested a VC I might be able to tell you what my experience was with them in Berlin. It's entirely possible my startup just was bad. But I'd tell you what their problem was with us and it might help to flush out a bigger picture. Might be interesting. Kind of a delicate subject possibly though. So, on the other hand maybe I should just speak generally. All of them wanted to see sales before they would invest. That means they wanted to see market impact, we could show them all the imaginary projections and potential market impacts we wanted and it didn't make any difference. They wanted to see real world income. That is hard to do if you don't have any capital. You can tell them all day what you'll spend the money on and what you predict will happen and they don't care. Meanwhile your product idea is being copied by the large company down the street who saw you pitch pitifully begging for a VC to pay attention to you. That large company will make the same thing, worse but with capital. Then they'll sell it to the same people you are trying to convince to jump on board for a equity stake with you. That is by far the largest hurdle. Before you have income they aren't interested, and if the other company never has income because the idea is too good or too unique or too hard to do. Then they'll pay attention to something easier. There is no attention being paid to innovation. I've seen for example business loans in Germany which are given out to Flower shops. There are a million flower shops and kebab shops. But those are proven businesses. Real business loans, which means if the business fails the owners can just claim business bankruptcy. That doesn't exist for tech startups in Germany you do not qualify. They want a tiny bit of income and no risks. Which to me says it isn't a startup hub.

pluma 10y ago

> which is not per se illegal though it is misleading of course Actually most of these scam letters ARE illegal and you CAN and SHOULD report them to the police. The bigger problem is that most of them aren't based in Germany and vanish as quickly as they pop up. We actually fell for one of these scams because our bookkeeping was of course extremely messy when we just started out (and we bootstrapped, so we didn't have any mentoring other than the worthless IHK). However we lucked out: although there was no way to reverse the transaction (manually wiring money is not easily reversible) the scammer's account had already been frozen by that time, so the transfer bounced and we got to keep the money. I have to admit the IBAN number even started with the country code "ES" because the bank was in Spain but we didn't notice it because the bank's part of the code started with "DE", so it was just close enough to trick an idiot in a hurry. This actually changed my perspective on why phishing works: you don't have to be legitimately stupid -- they just have to catch you in a situation in which you're likely to be careless and distracted enough to be that stupid. EDIT: To clarify: the reason people often believe they're not illegal is that they're not actual forgeries -- they use carefully crafted wording and official-looking seals that aren't actually official. But they're still obviously trying to trick people, which is illegal of its own right.

Kequc 10y ago

> Venture capital: From my experience this is mostly true, as there are many people that try to appear as if they have very good connections and money, but in the end they offer pre-seed level investments for double-digit equity. A few of the international VCs have offices in Berlin now though, so my advice would be to stay away from the impostors and go to firms that have actual credibility and a history of funding successful startups. If you suggested a VC I might be able to tell you what my experience was with them in Berlin. It's entirely possible my startup just was bad. But I'd tell you what their problem was with us and it might help to flush out a bigger picture. Might be interesting. Kind of a delicate subject possibly though. So, on the other hand maybe I should just speak generally. All of them wanted to see sales before they would invest. That means they wanted to see market impact, we could show them all the imaginary projections and potential market impacts we wanted and it didn't make any difference. They wanted to see real world income. That is hard to do if you don't have any capital. You can tell them all day what you'll spend the money on and what you predict will happen and they don't care. Meanwhile your product idea is being copied by the large company down the street who saw you pitch pitifully begging for a VC to pay attention to you. That large company will make the same thing, worse but with capital. Then they'll sell it to the same people you are trying to convince to jump on board for a equity stake with you. That is by far the largest hurdle. Before you have income they aren't interested, and if the other company never has income because the idea is too good or too unique or too hard to do. Then they'll pay attention to something easier. There is no attention being paid to innovation. I've seen for example business loans in Germany which are given out to Flower shops. There are a million flower shops and kebab shops. But those are proven businesses. Real business loans, which means if the business fails the owners can just claim business bankruptcy. That doesn't exist for tech startups in Germany you do not qualify. They want a tiny bit of income and no risks. Which to me says it isn't a startup hub.