7 ms·
I live in Berlin. It's a pretty good place to work on a startup - great transportation, excellent & cheap infrastructure and cheap apartments/office space. Also
by maxklein 15y ago
I live in Berlin. It's a pretty good place to work on a startup - great transportation, excellent & cheap infrastructure and cheap apartments/office space. Also, a lot of universities with cheap students to work.
Another advantage is that a lot of european young people go to berlin, for example from france, U.K, holland, poland and so on. It's a city that draws the young upwardly mobile crowd, rather than the working class. So there is the sense of a diversity of ideas, and many different people doing different things. It's a city that does not feel very "german", it feels very european.
Berlin is not so great for people looking to work in the tech industry because there is no concentration of tech companies. But for self-starters, it's quite conducive.
I doubt that Berlin will really become the mecca for technology though, because I do not think it's easy to learn the german language, and in the end, Berlin is in Germany, and Germany is not very multi-cultural. London feels much free-er, English laws are much more conducive to small companies, and people already speak english.
Berlin imposes berlin on you, you have to kind of be the berlin type to like berlin, but I get the feeling, you can just be yourself in London.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- DavidMcLaughlin 15y ago> Berlin imposes berlin on you, you have to kind of be the berlin type to like berlin, but I get the feeling, you can just be yourself in London. I was with you up until here. I've lived in Berlin for nearly two years and the number one thing I like about Berlin is that it's hard to stand out because there is no one culture or "thing" that defines what Berlin is. My girlfriend and I live very different lives here and enjoy it both the same.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- patrickg 15y agoAgree. Also the thing I am missing in Berlin (and mostly eastern Germany) is industry. There is no significant concentration of industry around here, which makes it harder for those startups that need this. All my customers are > 300 km away and in "West Germany". I know that is not a "all or nothing" choice, but that's the tendency.
- jerguismi 15y agoGreat to hear, I'm moving to Berlin in Autumn. Does anyone know where to find startup/programming/tech events in the berlin area? Which mailing lists to follow etc?
- rmoriz 15y agoI would probably start here: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22berlin%20user%20group%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22berlin%20user%20group%22 and: http://lanyrd.com/places/2345496/ http://lanyrd.com/places/2345496/
- maxklein 15y agoBerlin StartupDigest
- biafra 15y agoThe c-base (http://c-base.org http://c-base.org) has several programming related events: - Android round table every last Wednesday - Lisp round table on Thursday - Wifi hackers every Wednesday You can "follow" their calendar: http://www.c-base.org/calender/termine.ics http://www.c-base.org/calender/termine.ics
- FrojoS 15y agoAnd even if you can't attend any of those events. Dont visit Berlin without the c-base. Its a really awesome place to hang out. Same goes for the Tacheles. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthaus_Tacheles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthaus_Tacheles
- FrojoS 15y agoAnd even if you can't attend any of those events. Dont visit Berlin without the c-base. Its a really awesome place to hang out. Same goes for the Tacheles. [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthaus_Tacheles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthaus_Tacheles
- balu 15y agoTacheles will be closed by end of july as far as I know. Last time I was in that area there were a hell lot of cops. The artists living in the building try to fight for their space, but I don't think they'll make it. It's a shame that a lot of these alternative spaces are closed down without thinking to make room for yet another useless shop.
- __rkaup__ 15y agoWhat is the Berlin type?
- TillE 15y agoA little punk, a little gritty. Berlin is not particularly welcoming to posh types, or the kind of people who enjoy high-class exclusive nightlife. You really don't want to park your luxury car on the street. For everyone else, I'd say Berlin is extremely free and tolerant and generally welcoming.
- DavidMcLaughlin 15y agoIn the east maybe. In the west there are plenty of flash cars in districts like Savignyplatz and in the outskirts of the city.
- TillE 15y agoYeah, you can get away with being old, boring, settled, and moderately wealthy in Charlottenburg. But if you're moving to Berlin for Berlin, it's probably not where you want to go. (Judging from the Toytown crowd, it seems to be full of people who are forced to be in Germany for their jobs and hate it.) The outskirts are really suburban more than anything, and completely different.
- jk4930 15y agoIn the Western city you have more the established businesses, in the Eastern city you have more the experimental and new ones. Both have their (dis)advantages, it depends on your industry / business model and who your customers are. I wouldn't dismiss one half of the city so easily.
- wastedholidays 15y agoat the risk of sounding a little snarky, i wouldnt put too much stock into what the toytown people are saying. the two main stereotypes who use toytown are probably not the best for networking and startup related interests. but the disparate nautre of east/west berlin is one of the best things going for it. especially in the crossover areas like kreuzberg (not kreuzkoelln) and bits of mitte (that haven't been gentrified yet)
- Locke1689 15y agobecause I do not think it's easy to learn the german language I'd actually disagree with you there. Given that English is a Germanic language, the little German I know was far easier to learn as a native English speaker than French or Japanese (the two other languages I studied for a short while).
- maxklein 15y agoIt's easy to pickup basic german, but it's difficult to speak german properly. Also, there are few variations on german like there are on English or French, so you need to speak it correctly. There is no "African German" or "Canadian German" or "Australian German". So the language is not tolerant of many variations like english or french is.
- lucasjung 15y agoYou're flat wrong about the variations. German dialects are almost like completely different languages. I grew up in Berlin, and we vacationed in Austria and Switzerland on a few occasions. I spoke fluent German (I attended German public schools) but when the natives were speaking their dialects to each other I didn't have a clue what they were saying. They would switch to "Hochdeutsch" when speaking to non-locals. The Austrian and Swiss dialects are probably the most extreme cases. Other regions have "dialects" that are really closer to accents with a few local phrases thrown in (kind of like New England).
- maxklein 15y agoGerman dialects are not as grossly different as let's say Nigerian English vs British English. Most people who speak dialectical german can speak normal german, but a british english speaker cannot switch to nigerian english or jamaican english. German is diverse are as many languages, but English and French are far more diverse.
- darklajid 15y agoI'm torn here. I mostly agree with you (both the Berlin presentation and the language topic). I tend to believe that I speak very high level, accent free German (heck - I'm German. But 'accent free' is key..). I had to do business in Switzerland for roughly two years. My takeaway: * Lots of people there (no offense intended if any CH people read this) referred to the language I know as 'written German' * Lots of people (TV news guys are kind of the only counter examples) have a _heavy_ accent if they speak what they consider de_DE (Time for an anecdote: A good local CH friend of mine told me once that he talked with a DE guy for quite a while, on his best official German level, and was told all of a sudden if he can talk German (probably considered as 'accent-free') as well). After fighting the 'everybody speaks German in CH/AT' a bit I'd like to point to the fact that there are lots of accents and dialects that just sound like gibberish if you're not used to them. Let's leave AT/CH out of this for a moment: If I visit the northern part of Germany/the shore, if I visit the most southern places, if I go to the southwest (Platt/Bayrisch/Hessisch) and people speak 'normally' I end up understanding 50%-70%. And I didn't even mention some dialects from the east of Germany. Actually - if people from Berlin talk fast and use the local dialect, I'm lost..
- bobo888 15y agoThe city might be great, but how about the German bureaucracy? I kid you not, but a friend of mine didn't need a permit anymore because of some new regulations for EU citizens, so the German authorities asked him to obtain another permit, which states that he doesn't need the first permit anymore.
- jk4930 15y agoYou have this kind of insanity practically in every place with a bureaucrazy. It's not unique for Germany. You shouldn't worry too much, there's always a way around or through.
- Kliment 15y agoI have that same no-permit permit. It was a rather amusing runaround to obtain, but every place that "needed" it was extremely lenient with timing. I found for every circular dependency, you could satisfy it by getting one element in the circle to accept a promise that the dependency that depends on them will be filled "later". Later can be months. It seems everyone dealing with the bureaucracy is used to it, and workarounds like these for seemingly impossible circular stuff are common.
- fedd 15y agoGerman isn't that spread in the world as English or French, so you can count on that if you speak English, you will be understood as Germans all speak English (as the opposite to France)
- DasIch 15y agoStudents will all be able to talk to you but people who went to school in East Germany before the '90s will most likely not have learned English. Due to the fact that most adults never used English outside of school and have never used it afterwards they, too, will be unable to speak English.
- fedd 15y agoah, and the legal issues is interesting to discuss. as far as i am wrong, continental legal system neglects the shareholder agreements -> you'll need to give up more that 25% to VCs so they would not be afraid you dilute their share somehow. (until the ecosystem becomes more mature and even closed) --ps i am an amateur in legal field
- ig1 15y agoI lived in Berlin for three months and it's definitely possible to get by without speaking German, it helps, but English is widely enough spoken that you can survive without it (assuming you're working for an English speaking company)
- sneak 15y agoI have lived in Berlin for over 36 months and German is not required at all, ESPECIALLY in the tech community. Everyone uses English.
- kahawe 15y ago> Berlin imposes berlin on you, you have to kind of be the berlin type to like berlin, but I get the feeling, you can just be yourself in London. Funny you should say this, I have the same feeling for the rest of Germany (that I have seen so far) as well... Germany and Germans tend to impose Germany and the German way on you.