Berlin’s Startup Hub Wants to Prove It’s More Than Just a Scene

-- http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

A startup is usually understood to be a company which is formed to test a new market or disrupt an existing one. The fast growth thing is not necessarily true since new markets are often not there. But to describe just any new company as a startup is very misleading both in terms of describing risk, but especially to potential employees.

This isn't to knock the value of entrepreneurship: there is quite a bit of virtue in starting a company that wants to tap an existing market. All things considered, these companies will likely do much better over the long run than most startup companies which end up failing.

Although we have a rather nonstandard business area (not the usual ecommerce/saas/social/gaming stuff) and have no direct competitors, we could get a good grip at it by going down several routes: talking to industry experts, comparing indirect competitors' valuations and also by extrapolating from usual relevant business metrics such as current and projected revenue, traffic, margins, growth rates, and market size.

We also talked to quite some VCs who confirmed our range to be pretty spot on in initial negotiations.

Still, the first big unexpected hurdle was that VCs were totally "blinded" by their previous expertise. They tried to apply numbers from their well-known business areas (social / saas / ecommerce) to our model, which simply didn't fit our business case. So we went out and built the product and sold it to large clients anyway.

Thing is: Our product by now outperforms the next best option for our clients by 100% with no alternatives or competitors in sight (it's a little niche-y, but still a multiple billion dollar market).

With a product like that, the second thing that we didn't expect was that we tripped the "too good to be true" sensor everywhere, raising doubts.

And when we were over it, VCs seemed to have an ego problem with being "too late", us not wanting to do a particularly large round, them not reaching their target multiple to save the fund, us being "too expensive already" or them always wanting to "advise" a team of industry veterans and second-time entrepreneurs that demonstrably knew better than them - instead of simply putting in their money and help with PR and their networks instead.

Thing is: All investors say they want a great team, stellar culture, demonstrated product-market fit, fast execution, great technology and hockeystick growth.

We brought it all to them and found out that if you know you have it and are asking a fair price for it, 99% of them are too scared to jump on board of a train that's already full steam ahead. They'd rather be the one discovering it.

What I took from it is that awesome VCs are just as hard to find as awesome start-ups.

You are right to doubt the valuation - in fact, you would be right to question any valuation, since all parties involved benefit from inflated valuations (to a point).

That would be a generally fair assessment of valuation, and shows how one can calculate valuation without direct investment by an outside party.

It means that instead of giving concrete orders how to do something, the leader gives order to achieve a certain goal, and it is in the autonomy of the next level of leadership to decide about how to do it. This is directly related to Clausewitz' understanding of war as something that is very much up to chance and unpredictable outcomes, rather than something that can be planned completely beforehand.

You will always feel alienated without the local language.

I'm pretty sure at work they understand German, too.

My wife needed a few weeks to be able to speak Norwegian on a conversational level, I didn't need much more than that for German (difficult to count exactly due to travelblah). Once you reach conversational level the rest of the way has a different quality — you'll need to learn more but you've conquered the cliff, the rest is a modest incline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language

First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue.

Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production).

To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors).

There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English.

Living and working in a foreign country with foreign language/culture is an ongoing process continuing every single day, too.

On a more practical level, I and my wife already speak English fluently, I have two remote teams composed with people from three different nations with whom I speak English, and having to learn eg German would make me need to use 3 different languages (4 for my wife, who is Russian). Seriously, the only shot we have at a European lingua franca at the moment is English.

Well, maybe I'll just have to move to Ireland or Canada if I actually move.

On further thought, I agree. When I wrote what I wrote above, it was in the back of my mind, to also add that I don't think the rate of progress that Duolingo shows for me, can be even near correct. E.g. after these few months (which also had gaps of a few days now and then during which I did not use the app), it now tells me I am 14 or 15% fluent in German - which I don't think can be the case at all, even without knowing much about the structure of the language, the number and kinds of grammar rules, tenses, the number of words in the German vocabulary, etc.

(I'm probably much lower, maybe 1 or 2% is my guess, if such a thing can even be measured.)

Also, some of my school friends who said German was hard to learn - for others, were Germans (who also spoke good English), so they likely knew what they were saying.

>and while I can read German reasonably well now, I would still struggle to write or speak fluently in German.

Interesting. Will have to see what my experience is as time goes by.

>Thinking of what you want to say quickly is a skill that Duolingo doesn't really teach

Will check that as time goes by. Maybe immersion is more useful for that skill.

>For the reason: To become fluent in German you have to know inside out how to conjugate a verb (there are some ugly verbs and tenses) and declinate a noun/adjective (in all three grammatical genders, singular and plural) in all tenses/cases, which is really ugly at the beginning for people who aren't used to it. The best way to learn this is in my opinion brute training until you can do it blindfolded.

Like learning multiplication tables by repeating them out loud and/or writing them out, multiple (heh) times :)

I guess that makes sense, particularly if there are not very systematic rules that define those things, i.e. you just have to memorize it (and is that what you mean by 'ugly' - that it does not follow logical rules by which one can figure out, say, verb conjugations of verb B after knowing it for verb A?)

E.g. I realized a bit after starting the Duolingo course, that it was not clear (without knowing it already) when to use Der vs. Die vs. Das, and some other things like that; even Sie means both She and They (in different contexts) - at least it was not explained in the app, AFAIK - could be I missed some part of it and need to re-check.

I think I need to now get some proper learning books for it. Duolingo can take you only so far, I guess.

Yes, makes sense.

First: There aren't many varieties of German (and you will probably want to learn "Hochdeutsch" (high German) which is the variation that is spoken in Hannover in its purest form) - yes there are varieties, but this is not a concern for most people learning German as a foreign language. So there simply isn't such an analogue to Indian English accent vs. American English accent in German for making first impression etc., since there is "mostly only Hochdeutsch".

As long as you have a correct pronounciation it is much more important to be really certain in the grammar (the German grammar has its ugly parts which even some low-educated Germans do wrong; so if you want to make an educated impression it is important to be very certain in the grammar) and have good vocabulary. If you really are able reach this level of German as a foreign speaker, I believe there will be hardly anyone who doubts your willingness to learn. :-)

My experience, as a native speaker of US English, is that English speakers from India often fall into the category of "speak English fast and fluently, but with a strong accent that is hard for my US-trained ears to parse".

If someone with a strong accent speaks English slowly, I have time to adapt to the accent and figure out what they are saying; not so with someone who speaks quickly.

When talking with certain people from India (and Scotland), I am very tempted to just nod along instead of confessing, "I realize that you are speaking perfect English, but I have absolutely no idea what you are saying".

That being said, intonation is relatively easy in German once you understand that all letters in German are always spoken in the same way, and always pronounced (no hidden letters), so once you have the grasp of the alphabet you can pretty much pronounce anything. In other words "Hochdeutsch" (high German) is fairly easy to get to grips with.

The hardest thing is German is the grammar. You simply have to learn the articles and tenses. Even Germans sometimes make mistakes with the articles (der, die, das, etc), which can change based on the tense, verb and base article.

For many English first language speakers, the lack of English grammar knowledge is a stumbling block to learning another language (it was in my case anyway).

One point to mention is that Germans seem to be particularly accommodating to my German language failures, impressed simply that I can converse in German. I am however white Caucasian and British. I'm not sure that same would apply if I was from Tunisia and black. In other words, I'm not sure if I have an observational bias. Other nationalities and cultures may have a vastly different experience to me.

Could you point me to the programs for entrepreneurs? I run a meetup for international entrepreneurs in Germany and that question comes a lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)