8 ms·

Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to prod

Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying 'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago - it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results.

seivan 14y ago
Not to mention all the clones... who usually are run by the kind of people you mentioned... "Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying 'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago - it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results." +1
webjunkie 14y ago
"the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates" Best sentence I read about that. So true.
- axx 14y ago
  I second that! I think many people in the germany hacker community don't want to be associated with "those startup guys" because many of "those guys" lack technical understanding. Like you said, many business guys hire developers to build yet another ecommerce site. We're a small Company (https://futurevps.de/ https://futurevps.de/) that offers custom Servers fully based in Germany (for data privacy reasons) and get much less media coverage than "ecommerce" companies. I think that nearly 99.9% of the german startup newssites cover ecommerce-ish businesses.
hef19898 14y ago
Berlin has a lot of the right incredients (e.g. an engineering culture, cheap rent and a "hip" reputation). And that last thing along with a Samwer-influenced culture when it comes to start-ups are huge obstacles. And hordes of clueless managment graduates are doing it for the lifestyle and with delussions of a multi-million exit doesn't help neither. But what I miss in Germany is innovation (not just in start-ups but in general), we have grown lazy over here... ;-)
biafra 14y ago
I worked for gate5 (Now Nokia gate5 GmbH) in 1999 and it was surely a technology driven company in Berlin. Maybe most companies anywhere are not so much technical driven? The company I founded myself was only technical and that was the reason it didn't last long.
schoash 14y ago
I think it is easier to find money for these more hip startups than for a more innovative kind of company, where still some research time is involved. Maybe that is also one reason for the lack of innovation.

seivan 14y ago

Not to mention all the clones... who usually are run by the kind of people you mentioned... "Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying 'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago - it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results." +1

webjunkie 14y ago

"the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates" Best sentence I read about that. So true.

axx 14y ago
I second that! I think many people in the germany hacker community don't want to be associated with "those startup guys" because many of "those guys" lack technical understanding. Like you said, many business guys hire developers to build yet another ecommerce site. We're a small Company (https://futurevps.de/ https://futurevps.de/) that offers custom Servers fully based in Germany (for data privacy reasons) and get much less media coverage than "ecommerce" companies. I think that nearly 99.9% of the german startup newssites cover ecommerce-ish businesses.

hef19898 14y ago

Berlin has a lot of the right incredients (e.g. an engineering culture, cheap rent and a "hip" reputation). And that last thing along with a Samwer-influenced culture when it comes to start-ups are huge obstacles. And hordes of clueless managment graduates are doing it for the lifestyle and with delussions of a multi-million exit doesn't help neither. But what I miss in Germany is innovation (not just in start-ups but in general), we have grown lazy over here... ;-)

biafra 14y ago

I worked for gate5 (Now Nokia gate5 GmbH) in 1999 and it was surely a technology driven company in Berlin. Maybe most companies anywhere are not so much technical driven? The company I founded myself was only technical and that was the reason it didn't last long.

schoash 14y ago

I think it is easier to find money for these more hip startups than for a more innovative kind of company, where still some research time is involved. Maybe that is also one reason for the lack of innovation.