5 ms·

What's the international position on this? I am living/working in the UK startup scene and it seems to me Berlin could become europe early stage garage very soo

What's the international position on this? I am living/working in the UK startup scene and it seems to me Berlin could become europe early stage garage very soon. Personally i believe London might be still the place to be after P/M Fit (the place to be in europe…) What's the US take on this ? Do people actually care outside of the german speaking areas and maybe Uk?

danmaz74 14y ago
I don't know about an "international" position, but if I'll have to move from Italy for my startup (ie, to get funding) I would consider Berlin and London. Some time ago I would have only thought about London, but Berlin is much cheaper and I don't like UK's attitude towards Europe very much.
pimeys 14y ago
Berlin is for me truly the only place I would live. Although it's not for everybody. And I would prefer not driving an expensive car at least in Neukölln or Kreuzberg areas. There are lots of other subcultures here.
vellum 14y ago
The US still Silicon Valley centric, with a growing interest in New York. But there's still a segment that likes to travel abroad. It comes up a lot in the "Where should I bootstrap my business" threads. Cheap rents, broadband access, English-speaking population, and a lot of young people make Berlin attractive. If anyone's looking for a startup visa, I posted some information here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170466 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170466
bpyne 14y ago
I'm a US citizen. My take is that if I was still single and not a parent, I would be in Berlin immediately. In some ways, it sounds better than Silicon Valley or New York. Transportation around SV doesn't sound like it's based on public transportation and housing prices are crazy. New York has great public transportation, especially with the addition of water taxies on the East River, but housing is out of control. Learning German, if you're a native English speaker, is easy. Simple sentences in German can often sound like an oddly accented English. German is highly consistent, i.e. not a lot of exceptions to grammatical rules. You just have to get used to word order being different in some instances, e.g. verbs can appear at the end of sentence, and case endings. (Case endings are no big deal. Getting them wrong doesn't prevent the person listening from understanding you. Getting them right is the difference between a great speaker and a good one.) My experience in Germany around 1989 was that native Germans were more than happy to switch to English when I was stumped about how to say something in German. Learning the German language should not be a barrier. For anyone thinking far enough ahead about being a parent, situating in Germany has other benefits. Germany has a better health care system and better public education. They are large costs/worries for any parent.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  By the numbers, Germany's public education system is basically identical to that of the US (scoring 525 and 524, respectively). http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou... What makes you believe it's education system is better? Or it's health care system, for that matter?
  - neilk 14y ago
    Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. This post breaks results down by income segment and suggests that if you exclude poverty, the USA does indeed do great. Otherwise the USA as a whole is no better than average, maybe a little below average. http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3 http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3 I have to say this agrees with my anecdotal experience of the USA. If you went to high school in Palo Alto, you might be having enriching experiences that even students in rich European countries can only dream about. Or you could be like the students some friends of mine tutored in North Carolina, who were not aware of what the Duke University buildings in their city were for. I'm not actually knocking the USA. It faces social challenges that no other country faces, and often gets a bad rap from critics who've never even visited and think it's populated by sociopathic Randroids. But it is a country of enormous contrasts.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. It's trying to prove that US schools are just as good at educating European Americans as German schools are at educating Europeans. (Sanandaji also excluded immigrants from the German numbers.) I.e., any gaps in output between US and German schools are caused by gaps in the input, not the school system itself.
      - neilk 14y ago

danmaz74 14y ago

I don't know about an "international" position, but if I'll have to move from Italy for my startup (ie, to get funding) I would consider Berlin and London. Some time ago I would have only thought about London, but Berlin is much cheaper and I don't like UK's attitude towards Europe very much.

pimeys 14y ago

Berlin is for me truly the only place I would live. Although it's not for everybody. And I would prefer not driving an expensive car at least in Neukölln or Kreuzberg areas. There are lots of other subcultures here.

vellum 14y ago

The US still Silicon Valley centric, with a growing interest in New York. But there's still a segment that likes to travel abroad. It comes up a lot in the "Where should I bootstrap my business" threads. Cheap rents, broadband access, English-speaking population, and a lot of young people make Berlin attractive. If anyone's looking for a startup visa, I posted some information here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170466 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170466

bpyne 14y ago

I'm a US citizen. My take is that if I was still single and not a parent, I would be in Berlin immediately. In some ways, it sounds better than Silicon Valley or New York. Transportation around SV doesn't sound like it's based on public transportation and housing prices are crazy. New York has great public transportation, especially with the addition of water taxies on the East River, but housing is out of control. Learning German, if you're a native English speaker, is easy. Simple sentences in German can often sound like an oddly accented English. German is highly consistent, i.e. not a lot of exceptions to grammatical rules. You just have to get used to word order being different in some instances, e.g. verbs can appear at the end of sentence, and case endings. (Case endings are no big deal. Getting them wrong doesn't prevent the person listening from understanding you. Getting them right is the difference between a great speaker and a good one.) My experience in Germany around 1989 was that native Germans were more than happy to switch to English when I was stumped about how to say something in German. Learning the German language should not be a barrier. For anyone thinking far enough ahead about being a parent, situating in Germany has other benefits. Germany has a better health care system and better public education. They are large costs/worries for any parent.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
By the numbers, Germany's public education system is basically identical to that of the US (scoring 525 and 524, respectively). http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-scores-usa.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou... What makes you believe it's education system is better? Or it's health care system, for that matter?
- neilk 14y ago
  Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. This post breaks results down by income segment and suggests that if you exclude poverty, the USA does indeed do great. Otherwise the USA as a whole is no better than average, maybe a little below average. http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3 http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3 I have to say this agrees with my anecdotal experience of the USA. If you went to high school in Palo Alto, you might be having enriching experiences that even students in rich European countries can only dream about. Or you could be like the students some friends of mine tutored in North Carolina, who were not aware of what the Duke University buildings in their city were for. I'm not actually knocking the USA. It faces social challenges that no other country faces, and often gets a bad rap from critics who've never even visited and think it's populated by sociopathic Randroids. But it is a country of enormous contrasts.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Your source fiddled with the PISA numbers for the USA to exclude all students of non-European descent. I'm not sure what s/he was trying to prove. It's trying to prove that US schools are just as good at educating European Americans as German schools are at educating Europeans. (Sanandaji also excluded immigrants from the German numbers.) I.e., any gaps in output between US and German schools are caused by gaps in the input, not the school system itself.
    - neilk 14y ago