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My journey into the Berlin startup scene
- mkal_tsr 12y agoIIRC, you can apply for a 1-year self-employment/freelancer/artist visa in Germany if you're from the US.
- atroyn 12y agoThis does not necessarily limit you to just one year - you can get up to a 3 year visa issued on the spot, and this can be extended as each visa period elapses, just as long as you can demonstrate that you have income and business activity.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- twiecki 12y agoThere is also the blue card (http://www.bluecard-eu.de/ http://www.bluecard-eu.de/) which is pretty easy and quick to get if you have a university degree and a job-offer.
- walshemj 12y agoBit of a bummer if you are self taught and don't have a degree. I see the rigid stratification of German education is still in force.
- flatfilefan 12y agoIf you don't have a degree you can still get in (not on blue card) but the salary barrier is higher.
- holografix 12y agoWhat about Australians?
- atroyn 12y agoI'm an Aussie expat in Berlin since November 2012 - you can apply for a working holiday visa if you're under 30, follow up with a self-employment visa, or if you want to work for a start-up, the visa process is ridiculously easy. The U.S is the pathological case when it comes to visas.
- notjosh 12y agoI'm Australian, and on top of what atroyn said, you also have the option for a "blue card" (http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/ http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/) if you're a full-time employee somewhere. It's super easy to get, and it's quite liberal.
- holografix 12y agoWhat about Australians?
- brightsize 12y agoYou can apply, yes, and don't forget to present your formal portfolio and/or business plan, proof of funds to support yourself for the duration, proof of German-equivalent health insurance, and a rental contract on an apartment. I believe you might also need at least a letter from a German company expressing an interest in hiring you as a freelancer. Unfortunately you cannot just show up at the Foreigner's Office, declare yourself a freelancer, and be issued a visa. They're notorious for being sticklers for details but I've not (yet) dealt with them directly. That said, there's something in the Blue Card arrangement that allows one to come here for up to six months as a "job seeker". I believe that when doing that you need "only" provide evidence of self-support, a place to live, and insurance, that latter IIRC need not be conforming to German standards. Also IIRC this visa is non-renewable.
- mkal_tsr 12y agoYeah, there's a lot of hoops you have to go through, but that also opens up your Schengen Area travel opportunities considerably (for duration at least) if I remember the details correctly.
- brightsize 12y agoCitizens of states that are party to the Schengen agreement can travel to any Shengen country without a visa for three months at a time out of every six. I have implicit Schengen status (US citizen) and as far as I know may travel within (Schengen) Europe without any particular permissions, certainly not from the Germany authorities, whoever they might be. In fact, spy agencies aside, the German authorities don't even know that I'm here. I got an entry stamp on my passport in Paris, and did nothing on arrival in Germany (TXL) other than collect my baggage and get a taxi. I'll get an exit stamp in Copenhagen on the way out.
- cameldrv 12y agoIn theory the schengen visa-free rule of 90 out of 180 days still applies if you're not in Germany. However, since nothing is getting stamped when you cross a border, it would not normally be possible for them to prove that you stayed in a non-german country for more than 90 days.
- atroyn 12y agoClue is a great company with really mission-driven founders, and they're rightly held up as one of the shining stars of the Berlin community. There are quite a few worthy up-and-comers that Adam could throw his considerable experience and clout behind - I know Contentful are doing something very interesting and seem to be running a tight ship indeed, and Avuba is part of what seem to be a whole new generation of payments startups sprouting in Europe. Hy.co/Hy!Berlin on the other hand, represents some of the very silly self-aggrandizement and hype Berlin is prone to, which hasn't been helped with their acquisition by Axel-Springer.
- notjosh 12y agoHi! I'm an engineer at Clue, and it's weirdly touching that people have (good) things to say about us - thanks for the kind words! We are hiring, if anyone would like to be part of the team. Head over to http://www.helloclue.com/jobs.html http://www.helloclue.com/jobs.html if you're looking for something meaningful in a great environment :)
- atroyn 12y agoI've been following you guys since the first launch, and you've continued to impress. Keep it up!
- Myrmornis 12y agoI’m a pioneer and I want to be on the frontier. I just can't imagine having the self-belief to write like this about myself in public. (And I didn't really cherry-pick the sentence.)
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- dualogy 12y agoSounds pretty normal for someone from the Cali/SV/SF ego bubble.. and these types are flocking to Berlin now? Gonna have to shorten my annual Berlin summer break from 3 months to 1 then :D
- peterwiese 12y agolol those people only hang out in mitte and xberg, so no worries, easy to avoid them.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- shiz 12y agoYeah, the author seems to be really full of himself. More than the half of the article is about him and how awesome he is. All in all, I also even find the article to be very condecending.
- atroyn 12y agoThe author is writing about what experiences and goals motivated him to move to Berlin, and what he's doing here now. It's a personal article, of course it will have the author at its focus.
- shiz 12y agoActually, he doesn't even write that much about it. Apparently his decision to go to Berlin was made after asking 'his well-traveled friends' what they would suggest. The rest his him praising himself...
- EvaK_de 12y agoIs it just me, or does the article hardly tell anything about "the Berlin startup scene"?
- Kayou 12y agoYep, I was pretty disappointed. I expected to learn more on the startup scene in Berlin, but the introduction and first two paragraphs are about him. The title should be more "I'm an awesome startup entrepreneur and I'm gonna teach those foreigners how we do it in SF. Because they don't know how to startup. And I kick asses."
- grrowl 12y agoSame as the sibling poster, I'm also pretty disappointed. Working at SoundCloud or a similar product-focussed internet company has been a dream of mine, but the article comes from the mindset of someone who's obviously well recognised globally in tech going on his own adventure— it's really nothing to do with Berlin specifically. It would be great to hear about people's perspectives working from the ground up in the startup scene of an unfamiliar city, but this is not that article.
- doctorstupid 12y agoBringing Silicon Valley to Europe Please don't do this.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- logicallee 12y agoyeah heaven forbid if a European should have the idea for the next Facebook and skills to start coding it, he could see it through to reality.
- rglullis 12y agoFunny how for all the talk about diversity that goes here on HN and on the West Coast, you guys still don't get that it is perfectly okay to not want to be Silicon Valley. In my opinion, one of the best essays from PG is "Cities and Ambition"[1]. As much as I'm enjoying my time here in Berlin, I still have the feeling that Berlin still doesn't know what to do when it grows up. Much of the hype here is actually the Kreuzberg types who are suffering from some Peter Pan syndrome, and have absolute zero ambition. Yet, even that is better than "if we don't have a plan, let's just mimic San Francisco". There is no need to turn everywhere into San Francisco. If an European wants to assimilate SV culture, by all means let him/her go to damn Silicon Valley. But Berlin can and should do something else. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/cities.html http://paulgraham.com/cities.html
- gerbal 12y agoWell, Berlin is rare in that it's been a big city before, multiple times. It's got quite a bit of growing room before it has to answer hard questions. And there are a number of serious residents, not in the young, tech scene, who have pretty good ideas how to help it along and where Berlin should go.
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- lazyjones 12y agoThis article says nothing about the Berlin startup scene at all (except for a few vague, positive phrases). If you expect a description worthy of the word "journey", you'll be disappointed. It's mostly a self-congratulatory piece written by someone who apparently thinks that startups are some sort of hipster/fashion movement.
- opium_tea 12y agoThis is harsh. I read the comments here before reading the article and so found the article much less narcissistic than I was expecting. Fair enough, he does toot his own horn a bit but then it sounds like he's very much justified in doing so! Those who went in expecting an exposé of the Berlin startup scene have misinterpreted the title of the article. It's clearly a personal piece written about a personal experience.
- Malarkey73 12y ago"I’m Adam Wiggins, hacker and serial entrepreneur. You might know me as cofounder and former CTO of Heroku." Read it in the voice of Troy McClure?
- brightsize 12y agoMy experience with Berlin is 1) plenty of enthusiastic people and startups, 2) not enough funding to go around, 3) still some weird hiring practices in place. I have several decades of development+startup experience, and while interviewing for a CTO spot recently, I was asked in all seriousness what my GPA was. I could only guess, I hadn't thought about it in many years. The interviewer gravely informed me that most of their hires were in the "top 5%" of their graduating classes. This was a company that was allegedly, by their advertisements and verbal communications, looking for a tech cofounder/CTO. I read recently online that Berlin is welcoming superstar American techies with open arms, which, of course, would be true of pretty much any startup community. I'm not surprised that they rolled out the red carpet for the author, but I don't think that ordinary non-German devs should expect the same or even similar treatment. English-only speakers will find that one can get by just fine in Berlin without German. It's nice if you have a bit of it to facilitate communication with non-university-educated people, but it's just a nice-to-have. My experience is that people in the startup world here are incredibly fluent in English. I love Berlin and look forward to returning, but the hype is pretty over-the-top. It's a good scene, but I don't think it's a great scene. Certainly nothing like SV or NYC. My purely subjective impression is that it's something more along the lines of a Toronto or perhaps a Boulder or an Austin.
- raverbashing 12y agoCare to explain more about n.3? "I read recently online that Berlin is welcoming superstar American techies with open arms, which, of course, would be true of pretty much any startup community." That's probably an exaggeration, they have lots of superstars from other countries to hire, and are kind of "skeptic" about the American way of doing business
- brightsize 12y ago"The Germans are looking for leaders working for large-scale U.S. tech firms, typically companies that have 10 million or more users,” Hurtig says. “They want tech leaders who have experience in scaling, with products like mobile, apps, and websites.” http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/16/wanted-in-berlin-young-american-tech-execs-amenable-to-skinny-dipping/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/16/wanted-in-berlin-young-ame...
- callum85 12y agoThis article is a vacuous, patronising, self-aggrandising ego-wank.
- moe 12y agoThat guy is made for the Samwer brothers.
- thejdude 12y agoMaybe he can buy their shares. Just heard they want to go public with Rocket Internet.
- fs111 12y agoIn case anybody is interested in coming to Berlin, /r/berlin has a helpful FAQ: http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq
- lbotos 12y agoAs someone who just spent a month in Berlin, this was a great resource for me during my stay.
- idoco 12y agoYes, this article doesn't tell much about the Berlin startup scene, but it really did got me curious about it! Can some please link or post here a good review of the Berlin scene?
- markdown 12y agoI realise this is OT, but I'm genuinely curious... > On January 2, 2014, I boarded a one-way flight to Germany... > I’ve never lived outside the US Was this possible because: * Germany allows anyone entry without a return ticket? * He has a US passport? * He has loads of cash? I have travelled through 7 countries and never been allowed entry without a return ticket or proof of onward travel.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lbotos 12y agoNot the author: When I landed in Germany, they asked me how long I was saying, I told them a month, and they stamped by visa. I'd assume if you were going to stay for $some_larger_amount_of_time they have a resident visa (not sure if that's a thing) you apply for. My impression of the country was everyone was kind of private, but nice and surprisingly laid back. Coming from NYC it felt like a very "free" city.
- brightsize 12y agoMy last trip to Germany was on a 1-way ticket. But I'm a U.S. citizen and came here with Shengen status, so that might be different from what non-Shengen visitors face. I don't believe that loads of cash will help you unless perhaps you're willing to invest a huge hunk of it here.
- bergerjac 12y agoGermany offers a freelance visa which you apply for in Germany also possible: border official saw U.S. passport and maybe bank account balance
- e12e 12y ago> * Germany allows anyone entry without a return ticket? Well, you don't enter Germany (as such), you enter the Schengen Security Area. I am indeed a bit curious about that -- but remember that you can leave without flying (take a train far enough east, boat far enough south). In general, if you're from a "friendly" country you'd be handed a standard three month tourist visa, no questions asked (well, beyond, maybe: "How long are you staying?" Pro-tip: Don't answer "more than three months" ;-). It is kind of funny how Canada/US take a dim view of anyone entering on a one-way ticket -- after all you can leave through US/Canada and Mexico (and a couple of other jurisdictions by boat).
- onthedole 12y agoRead the article twice and quite a bit suprised that the author did not touch at all on the fact that his acceptance and welcoming into the Berlin scene could be to do with this success at Heroku. By all means, Adam is most certainly an exceptionally talented individual and his personality and drive must have contributed to his success in Berlin. However not even touching the subject that he had such a warm welcome might be related to Heroku and therefore not freely available to everyone seems quite an oversight.
- probablyfiction 12y agoAgreed. Who you are has a ton to do with how successful you are in whatever your endeavor is. He may believe he's just an average joe, but that is far from the case.
- adamwiggins 12y agoI'm the author of this article. If you want to know how things turned out, here's a follow-up / debrief from a few months after the first one: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2014/05/08/three-months-in-berlin-one-tech-entrepreneurs-journey/ http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2014/05/08/three-months... The second one is less about my personal experience and more about Berlin, including profiles of startups and investors I got the chance to meet or work with.
- czbond 12y agoHow was the process in moving from the US to Berlin to work? I'm very interested as after 2 startups it seems like the viable options are SanFran and NYC - neither of which are appealing.
- a3voices 12y agoArticle paraphrased: "I'm so great, Heroku, I'm so cool, I advise startups and dabble around, I float around life, everyone likes me, Berlin, I'm part of the scene"