5 ms·

Groupon moves headquarters to Berlin (German, English summary)

21 points by hendrik-xdest 14y ago

kintamanimatt 14y ago
Why is Belin becoming so popular? I could be very wrong, but Germany seems to be relatively harder jurisdiction within which to operate a business (especially a start-up), with the extra bureaucracy and harsher privacy laws. I'm surprised more American businesses aren't picking somewhere like Amsterdam if they're wanting to set up shop in continental Europe, especially with its lower immigration barriers for non-European entrepreneurs.
- fab1an 14y ago
  Having hired two North Americans in Berlin (one from the US, one from Canada) I can say that the process is surprisingly streamlined and straightforward. Canada and Germany have a Youth Mobility Agreement that allows young Canadians to get their work permit within a week in Canada - for US-citizens you need to outline the reasons for hiring them over Germans and EU-citizens in writing. It suffices to state that you're looking for a native English speaker that would potentially be able to run an office in the US at some point. Done. The whole process took us less than 4 weeks and doesn't involve an attorney or any other significant legal fees. Applicants need to be able to present a bachelor's degree as a minimum though, so you wouldn't be able to hire the next Steve Jobs. Also, Berlin offers significant bang for the buck - the cost of living is (still) comparatively low and the city itself is simply amazing.
- _ak 14y ago
  Berlin is dead cheap. Cheap flats, cheap office space, several universities with CS programs, a laid-back life style, good living quality in many of the inner districts.
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    + excellent filter coffee culture :-)
  - patrickg 14y ago
    dead cheap is getting more and more to "starting to get expensive". Prices are rising so much the last years, especially in Kreuzberg and other cool places. Offices are also getting more expensive and harder to get. Currently looking for a nice and affordable office in Schöneberg... :( I think it's time for killing the "Berlin is dead cheap" myth
    - _ak 14y ago
      Even though Berlin is not as cheap as it was a few years ago, it's still much cheaper than other big cities with a comparable tech/startup scene. Ever tried to rent in London? New York? Silicon Valley? Even Munich or Hamburg (and I'm not claiming those two have even remotely comparable tech scenes)? Compared to these places, Berlin is still cheap.
      - patrickg 14y ago
        Cheap is not "dead cheap".
- speedracr 14y ago
  tl;dr: Esp. for standard positions, Berlin combines low salaries & rents with a growing (young & international) population and trustworthy German processes; bureaucracy is the same hassle all over Europe. -- Germany is no(t much) better or worse than other EU countries in terms of bureaucracy or immigration barriers. To deal with legal/ tax/ privacy stuff, you would mostly set up a formal HQ in Ireland, Luxemburg or Switzerland (the latter being home to Groupon EU's legal HQ). The comparatively low salaries across the board in Berlin coupled with the potential for subsidies from the state make it a good proposition to have a working office. (If you're looking for engineers and highly skilled staff, Zurich and Munich still have an edge but are much more expensive.) Berlin is also large enough to have a talent pool for most positions/ departments and is growing due to perceived and/ or real attractiveness. And with the influx of young people from all over the world, informal immigration barriers like language are vanishing, too.
  - davidw 14y ago
    > bureaucracy is the same hassle all over Europe. This would indicate that that is not entirely true: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings My more subjective impression during two years in Austria was that it's just about as bureaucratic as Italy, just that they tackle it with more efficiency. I imagine Germany being similar. Opening a company in Germany, for instance, is not as cheap/simple as an LLC in many US states or an Ltd in the UK.
    - Xylakant 14y ago
      > Opening a company in Germany, for instance, is not as cheap/simple as an LLC in many US states or an Ltd in the UK. That really depends on what kind of LLC you want to open. There the so-called "UG Haftungsbeschränkt" which was created as response to the British Ltd. and costs somewhat less than 200 Euros + whatever capital you want to invest. For larger enterprises, you'd probably found a GmbH which usually costs somewhere between 1000 - 2000 Euros in Legal Fees [1] and needs a minimum capital of 25.000 Euros (which you can use to pay the legal fees, so you don't need those extra). The costs of creating a business in germany are probably not higher than anywhere else in Europe. [1] as always, legal fees can be significantly higher than that depending on how complicated the case is.
- Gmo 14y ago
  Where do you get that Dutch immigration barriers are lower ? In my experience, that is not particularly the case.
- egor83 14y ago
  A Dutch guy I know moved to Berlin to work on his startup there. We didn't discuss the reasons, but it seems Berlin has something better to offer. If I start guessing - probably a better startup community. Amsterdam and Netherlands are corporation-friendly, with quite some big companies having headquarters there; but startups and corporations have different needs and make different communities. UPDATE: Another point I can think of is the size of local market. Maybe not too important for web startups that go global right away, but if you start locally (and thus use Dutch), you have 16M people in the Netherlands (+maybe 5 in the Dutch part of Belgium), while in Germany you get 82M, five times as much; plus another 8M in Austria and some more German speakers from Switzerland.
antonioevans 14y ago
Friends of mine who are planning on open up a business incubator in Continental Europe rave about the Berlin Tech scene.
ry0ohki 14y ago
Title should read: Groupon moves INTERNATIONAL headquarters to Berlin
- hendrik-xdest 14y ago
  I really didn't want to put caps into a headline ;) You are right of course. But it seems I am not able to edit it anymore.
patrickg 14y ago
There has been a lot of noise about the working conditions at groupon (Germany). I am not sure if this is good news or not.

21 points by hendrik-xdest 14y ago

Why is Belin becoming so popular? I could be very wrong, but Germany seems to be relatively harder jurisdiction within which to operate a business (especially a start-up), with the extra bureaucracy and harsher privacy laws. I'm surprised more American businesses aren't picking somewhere like Amsterdam if they're wanting to set up shop in continental Europe, especially with its lower immigration barriers for non-European entrepreneurs.

fab1an 14y ago
Having hired two North Americans in Berlin (one from the US, one from Canada) I can say that the process is surprisingly streamlined and straightforward. Canada and Germany have a Youth Mobility Agreement that allows young Canadians to get their work permit within a week in Canada - for US-citizens you need to outline the reasons for hiring them over Germans and EU-citizens in writing. It suffices to state that you're looking for a native English speaker that would potentially be able to run an office in the US at some point. Done. The whole process took us less than 4 weeks and doesn't involve an attorney or any other significant legal fees. Applicants need to be able to present a bachelor's degree as a minimum though, so you wouldn't be able to hire the next Steve Jobs. Also, Berlin offers significant bang for the buck - the cost of living is (still) comparatively low and the city itself is simply amazing.
_ak 14y ago
Berlin is dead cheap. Cheap flats, cheap office space, several universities with CS programs, a laid-back life style, good living quality in many of the inner districts.
- Uchikoma 14y ago
  + excellent filter coffee culture :-)
- patrickg 14y ago
  dead cheap is getting more and more to "starting to get expensive". Prices are rising so much the last years, especially in Kreuzberg and other cool places. Offices are also getting more expensive and harder to get. Currently looking for a nice and affordable office in Schöneberg... :( I think it's time for killing the "Berlin is dead cheap" myth
  - _ak 14y ago
    Even though Berlin is not as cheap as it was a few years ago, it's still much cheaper than other big cities with a comparable tech/startup scene. Ever tried to rent in London? New York? Silicon Valley? Even Munich or Hamburg (and I'm not claiming those two have even remotely comparable tech scenes)? Compared to these places, Berlin is still cheap.
    - patrickg 14y ago
      Cheap is not "dead cheap".
speedracr 14y ago
tl;dr: Esp. for standard positions, Berlin combines low salaries & rents with a growing (young & international) population and trustworthy German processes; bureaucracy is the same hassle all over Europe. -- Germany is no(t much) better or worse than other EU countries in terms of bureaucracy or immigration barriers. To deal with legal/ tax/ privacy stuff, you would mostly set up a formal HQ in Ireland, Luxemburg or Switzerland (the latter being home to Groupon EU's legal HQ). The comparatively low salaries across the board in Berlin coupled with the potential for subsidies from the state make it a good proposition to have a working office. (If you're looking for engineers and highly skilled staff, Zurich and Munich still have an edge but are much more expensive.) Berlin is also large enough to have a talent pool for most positions/ departments and is growing due to perceived and/ or real attractiveness. And with the influx of young people from all over the world, informal immigration barriers like language are vanishing, too.
- davidw 14y ago
  > bureaucracy is the same hassle all over Europe. This would indicate that that is not entirely true: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings My more subjective impression during two years in Austria was that it's just about as bureaucratic as Italy, just that they tackle it with more efficiency. I imagine Germany being similar. Opening a company in Germany, for instance, is not as cheap/simple as an LLC in many US states or an Ltd in the UK.
  - Xylakant 14y ago
    > Opening a company in Germany, for instance, is not as cheap/simple as an LLC in many US states or an Ltd in the UK. That really depends on what kind of LLC you want to open. There the so-called "UG Haftungsbeschränkt" which was created as response to the British Ltd. and costs somewhat less than 200 Euros + whatever capital you want to invest. For larger enterprises, you'd probably found a GmbH which usually costs somewhere between 1000 - 2000 Euros in Legal Fees [1] and needs a minimum capital of 25.000 Euros (which you can use to pay the legal fees, so you don't need those extra). The costs of creating a business in germany are probably not higher than anywhere else in Europe. [1] as always, legal fees can be significantly higher than that depending on how complicated the case is.
Gmo 14y ago
Where do you get that Dutch immigration barriers are lower ? In my experience, that is not particularly the case.
egor83 14y ago
A Dutch guy I know moved to Berlin to work on his startup there. We didn't discuss the reasons, but it seems Berlin has something better to offer. If I start guessing - probably a better startup community. Amsterdam and Netherlands are corporation-friendly, with quite some big companies having headquarters there; but startups and corporations have different needs and make different communities. UPDATE: Another point I can think of is the size of local market. Maybe not too important for web startups that go global right away, but if you start locally (and thus use Dutch), you have 16M people in the Netherlands (+maybe 5 in the Dutch part of Belgium), while in Germany you get 82M, five times as much; plus another 8M in Austria and some more German speakers from Switzerland.

antonioevans 14y ago

Friends of mine who are planning on open up a business incubator in Continental Europe rave about the Berlin Tech scene.

ry0ohki 14y ago

Title should read: Groupon moves INTERNATIONAL headquarters to Berlin

hendrik-xdest 14y ago
I really didn't want to put caps into a headline ;) You are right of course. But it seems I am not able to edit it anymore.

patrickg 14y ago

There has been a lot of noise about the working conditions at groupon (Germany). I am not sure if this is good news or not.