Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
What do you want to do? Organize a few social meetings between founders of startup companies? Is that the extent of Appsterdam? I think it's awesome, I just also think you should be clearer about your intent. Just stating "I want to be the next Google / Silicon Valley / Ipod, doesn't really uniquely identify you :)
- Creation of a community with meetings and drinks.
- Weekly lectures about technology that will also give speaker training.
- Provide legal and local information to people that will move here, like immigration policies and the like.
- Arranging of venues to work in and be around with other developer: we have the Appsterdam HQ; Igluu and Vodafone will offer a work space for a good price and with facilities like a lab with smartphones for testing; we will locate developer friendly cafes with free wifi.
- Family get togethers in the weekends, so our partners/spouses/children can create a network too.
- The university is interested in creating a course where developers are professors like in (if I'm correct) Berkeley.
- The government is interested in giving money for tech projects.
- At the party Mike announced that there will also be a fund for startups (called Appsterfund).
Maybe I'm forgetting something. Soon the video of the keynote will be online.
Edit: formatting
One clarification though, we're not really in the business of stating we want to be the next anything. We just want to get App Makers together in one place, and we'd prefer that place be nice. What other people label us is their problem.
That feels like an honor coming from you, thanks. Have you been in Amsterdam often?
Luckily Appsterdam is not limited to Amsterdam. This isn't a pissing match between Dutch cities. It's about international branding. Appschede doesn't sound as good. Most people associate Delft with pottery. Americans have never heard of Utrecht.
As far as most people are concerned, these places are features of Amsterdam. But if you're in the Netherlands, we're a train ride away, and you're always welcome to come up for an event or a meeting.
You are right it is not a pissing contest, but you mention exactly what Americans (or other foreigners) would think. Most foreigners don't know much about Holland and see everything as a sub-urb of Amsterdam. They don't know where the local talent is, where the good universities are, where (local) people want to live. Don't forget that Dutch people think Amsterdam is as cool as foreigners do.
Don't take me wrong, Appsterdam is a cool initiative, but to me it sounds like something by foreigners, for foreigners.
The startup community there has been building up steam the past couple of years — and it has become more and more organized. I'll definitely miss hanging out with all the talented people back there.
Worth another visit imho. ;)
- Dirk (one of the Sofa founders who's now moving to Palo Alto)
As far as immigration is concerned, one can fall under the category "kennis-migranten" (loosely translated as knowledge-workers) pretty easily, as long as the company sponsoring you is willing to pay the money, around 50K (Pay is not like the Valley, but I'm guessing this is doable).
There is the possibility of starting a company as an American citizen due to a WW2-era Dutch-American Friendship treaty (see http://www.expatlaw.nl/dutch_american_friendship_treaty.htm)
As far as startups I know of in Amsterdam, there is Fashiolista, and Sofa used to be there...
I moved here one year ago from Italy. Got an apartment from my first company for 2 months, then rented a shared apartment with other two people.
After a few months I got a mortgage with no money down and moved in my own house not far away from the center, and the government reimburses me part of that every month.
If we speak about renting prices, I can agree they are high, but from what I heard they are still less expensive than in the valley. Places to rent also go really quickly, but impossible is another thing.
I have a ground level apartment with a courtyard on the canal at Groenburgwal, which is in my opinion the nicest neighborhood in Amsterdam, right smack in the middle of everything, but quiet, and beautiful.
Furnished, all inclusive: €1300/mo.
I lived in San Francisco. An apartment this nice in a neighborhood this nice was well out of my price range, and I made six figures at Apple.
People keep bashing US's immigration system, but the only country I know that it's easier on immigration for skilled workers is Canada. If you have the requirements then you can move without a company sponsorship, and then look for a job.
To digress a bit: For the non-EU crowd, the easiest way into the country is probably with a kennismigrant (knowledge worker) visa. This entitles you to a faster, easier process but there's a few problems: You must work for a company with (or willing to apply for) a special license to have a knowledge worker, you must make over a certain salary, and you're not allowed to do any other sort of work while living here (yes, that probably means your side startup).
Supposedly, you can also set up your own business here and work for yourself directly but I've never met anyone who's successfully done it. I expect you'll probably need to hire a decent lawyer to help sort it out.
Immigration aside, the Netherlands is a nice place to work and there's more to Amsterdam itself then pot and prostitutes. Something interesting is always going on and there's plenty of smart folks bouncing around. Personally, I hope this whole Appsterdam concept (mobile-centric name aside) turns into a huge hit.
However, more important than ease of visa processing is that as a Kennismigrant, you can usually get the "30% rule" tax break -- first 30% of your income is tax-free, AND the first euro after the 30% is taxed at the lowest tax bracket (i.e. the other 70% is adjusted down in tax bracket). You don't even need to be non-EU to get the 30% rule -- e.g. if you're a Danish or German or Spaniard, and get recruited to the Netherlands specifically for "knowledge work," you can qualify for this tax break too. It's good for 10 years. If you're married, try to see if your spouse can also get a job with this tax break BEFORE you accept your job offer and move to NL.
Make sure you don't go to university or grad school in NL tho, because you have to have been recruited to NL specifically as a highly skilled worker to qualify for this tax break. If you were already in NL for school, you tend to get disqualified for this 30% rule.
The UK has just recently given all businesses an extra year to get their stuff together. The law, by the way, is only restrictive to analytics cookies, basically, if that analytics service is from a third-party.
You have to get express permission from the user if cookies are being used to monitor their activities in ways that are not essential to the site i.e. you don't need to ask for permission if you're using cookies to implement an online shopping basket, as that's essential fairly essential to all online businesses. A blog monitoring user activity, however, would need to get express user permission.
My understanding is that it requires not only an affirmative acceptance from users of cookies, but requires that the site placing the cookie be able to prove that the user did, in fact, provide said acceptance.
That's why I'm moving THERE and not Amsterdam ...
But not cheap. For a three person business, it looks like it would cost $15,000 in "capital" and around $7,500 in lawyers and other services to prepare the necessary paperwork (based on Mike Lee's estimates and the fact that our business has more than one person, so would need to incorporate.)
It seems wrong to me to put about $15k in the bank to do nothing when there's far more than that already invested in the business (Which is existing already) and the value of the business is more than that.
Will wait for the appsterdamers to get more details out. Maybe the situation is different for relocating an existing business.
That being said, there is some technical talent in the Netherlands and distances are small enough that you can attract people from towns like Eindhoven to work at a startup in Amsterdam. Most people also speak English, allowing easier cooperation with foreign co-workers and customers.
Downsides of the Netherlands are bad conditions for immigrants, high taxes (expect to pay over 50% on income tax alone), high cost of labour due to all kinds of government enforced perks like daycare and a lot of free time, business-unfriendly labour law, bureaucracy and the lack of an entrepreneurial culture. Technical and scientific education is also declining in both popularity and quality, despite the half hearted efforts of our government to position the country as a "knowledge economy". Getting a visum is relatively easy for immigrants from the EU and US (there is a special treaty with the US to enable easier immigration), but immigrants may be forced by the government to participate in expensive language and integration courses due to a streak of xenophobic politics in the last ~10 years.
Amsterdam has a reputation as a liberal city and a "gay capital". There seems to be some correlation between a vibrant gay culture and tech hubs, if you look at Tel Aviv and San Francisco. I hope that Amsterdam can turn the current decline around in that respect, because the city isn't as gay-friendly as it used to be anymore (according to the homosexual community; I can't report from first hand experience here). Homosexual couples are apparently harassed and beaten by groups of second and third generation immigrants from muslim countries (whom are quite prevalent here). A homosexual couple (or visually distinguishable Jew for that matter) will get harassed, bullied out of immigrant neighborhoods and in some cases physically threatened or worse. This development is accompanied with a rather ugly, xenophobic and isolationist political movement rooted in the lower middle classes that feel left behind in the current economy. Their main political hero, Geert Wilders, gained popularity by constantly picking on muslim immigrants in the rudest possible manner and is currently heading the second biggest party in Dutch parliament. The other parties have silently adopted a similar tough stance on non-Western immigrants to retain or win back voters, but usually without the ugly rhetoric. The tolerant atmosphere that brought intellectuals from Descartes, to John Adams to Einstein to our country seems to be in peril.
I think Amsterdam has potential for startups. Particularly in the creative and mobile apps industry. That being said, the current entrepreneurial atmosphere in the Netherlands isn't great and I doubt that we will be able to compete with places like Silicon Valley. I think it won't attract many foreign founders before some of the cultural problems are solved (I'm pessimistic and distrust any government initiatives in that respect because politicians won't be able to create a startup culture) and the town becomes a local tech hub in its own right (competing with towns like Eindhoven). But this is a cool initiative. I'm sure it will do at least some good and will be valuable to the participants. I'm not in Amsterdam, but as a Dutch hacker I might drop by one of the meetings at some point.
No. If you earn 50K you pay about 16K in income taxes; if you earn 100K you pay about 43K.
(For tax percentages and discounts see http://financieel.infonu.nl/belasting/60892-inkomstenbelasti... . I ignored all special cases.)
If you make a 100.000 euro profit and extract it from your business the company pays 20% corporate tax (that is the rate below 200.000 euro profit), leaving you with 80,000. That remainder is taxed as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands. This leaves you with 46.408 euro from your original 100.000 (using the rates that include mandatory pension, social security and State funded medical care payments).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm far from a tax specialist.
Of course, you also have to pay all sorts of other taxes with the remainder, including municipal taxes, a hefty value added tax on most things you buy and property taxes. In return you get the ability to subtract part of your mortgage from your taxes, as well as a government that takes care of you (if you want it or not) when it comes to social security or affordable health care.
Note that there seems to be a tax reduction for certain foreign workers (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands#T...). Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Tax_in_the_Netherland... for corporate tax rates.
EDIT: If you sell a company as a resident of the Netherlands you also get taxed quite heavily, but there are ways to mitigate part of that (e.g. using a holding company, so you don't have to pay income tax directly over the money you get for your shares). If you're moving here to start a business, I would suggest consulting a tax advisor or lawyer before you make any decisions or file paperwork.
You are not a tax expert. I understand that. We actually do have tax experts, who are available to Appsterdammers, and are working on a nice write up of this information for publication in the near future.
No you don't. You pay 52% wage tax in the upper bracket, but in that case it's not taxed for corporate tax since it's an expense. The companies profit is taxed at 23%, and if you pay dividend to the shareholder(s), then they pay another 22 or so percent dividend tax, making the total tax pressure roughly equal to the top income tax bracket, leaving aside special arrangements like starter deductions, WBSO subsidies etc.
I will say this though, every gay person I know is a lot less worried about being beaten up by a cultural stereotype and a lot more worried about when they are going to be able to get married. That's something Amsterdam has that even San Francisco doesn't.
And hey, if you're right and the government (AKA the people) manage to turn the Netherlands into an intolerant police state, we'll move the whole thing to Germany.
When last in berlin, I remember reading something that said "If germans were going to storm a subway station in protest, they'd all be sure to buy tickets first."
[1] See http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/index.php?src=news&r... and http://www.brainportdevelopment.nl/en/news/brainport-eindhov..., although I tend to take this "studies" and competitions with a healthy grain of salt.
People don't live in SF and work in San Jose much, either.
That said, my underbelly feeling is that Eindhoven is getting a nice startup scene, slowly swelling, though mostly focused on devices and not so much on software. But in all honesty I don't think there's much of a difference. Whether my startup buddies make html5 apps or the next revolution in fitness machinery, we face much of the same kinds of problems.
I think that a startup that grows a fair bit past ramen profitability has a lot to offer to these kinds of people. The biggest problem is how to get the word out.
-- an Amsterdam hub member.
I tried to give some perspective with my post, but didn't intend to be overly pessimistic. In fact, I applaud your initiative (in hindsight, I could've been more clear about that). That being said, I still think that we lack an entrepreneurial culture here in the Netherlands[1] and that the image of intellectual and cultural freedom that might attract foreign startups has lost part of its shine in the last decade of isolationism[2], high-profile political murders and racial tension.
I do wish to concede on my point that Amsterdam isn't really a local technical startup hub in the first place, apart from the creative industry and mobile applications. From the Dutch perspective this might be true, as we have more advanced hubs in Enschede/Twente and Eindhoven, but from an international perspective distances are so small that this isn't really a factor and your initiative seems to be broader than just Amsterdam anyway. Amsterdam definitely has more allure to foreigners than provincial towns like Eindhoven and Enchede. E.g. Utrecht is one of the universities on the forefront of the Haskell community and this city is 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. Groningen is a bit further, but their university has some great hackers working on cool stuff too (like two NLP specialists that are also on HN: http://nlpwp.org/book/).
Other than the "inappropriately pessimistic" tone, is there anything in my post you disagree with on a factual basis? I do consider myself an optimist, by the way, because you almost have to be as a startup guy. So what you might consider "inappropriate pessimism" is realistic optimism to me. I do wish your initiative to succeed and it is a lot more promising than the government-funded campaigns we've seen. I'm highly skeptical about government intervention because it rarely (if ever) works. Private initiatives like Appsterdam do have potential, though. In fact, I'm hoping to attend one of your meetings to see what all the fuzz is about.
[1] The Dutch people aren't very much inclined towards risk taking and entrepreneurialism, to say the least. Also, high taxes and business-unfriendly labour laws aren't helpful either. Contrary to the American Dream, we have a culture of applauding the average and consensus. We're keen on making money and sometimes prone to mass hysteria when speculating (e.g. the famous 17th century Tulip Mania and the more recent WorldOnline debacle), but the average Dutchman frowns on people that want to excel. A typical Dutch saying is "Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg" (lose translation: "Just be normal and average, that is sufficiently special and crazy").
[2] E.g. the majority of the country is very negative about the EU and the Euro, famously voting against the very reasonable referendum on the European 'constitution' a few years back out of spite towards the political elite. These people live in a world where they think everything got more expensive since the introduction of the Euro, while in fact the opposite is true.
4 years ago I travelled (mostly-) western Europe by train, staying in some of the big cities. Compared to the likes of Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Munich, I felt Amsterdam was a lot more expensive.
Of course times may have changed, and the comparison was to Silicon Valley, which I have no experience of, but it struck me as a strange point to pick out when I would have considered there to be more compelling arguments specifically about Amsterdam.
First two links:
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/expensive-cities-europe... http://www.finfacts.ie/costofliving.htm
Every time I read one of these "the Valley is moving to X" articles, I'm reminded of the last 15 years of "the Valley is moving to X" articles that haven't come true. Tech is a huge industry, and growth allows for jobs everywhere. I don't know why all of these articles have to be phrased as if jobs need to leave the Valley to make it happen.
About the "the Valley is moving to X" I can tell you our objective is not to move the Valley here. What we want to really accomplish is to build the some sort of evolution of it. We want to build a great community and make Amsterdam the technology and innovation center in Europe. The outcome looks bright and we are very optimistic about it.
We definitely do not need to move the Valley here for Appsterdam to be successful, Europe is full of great talent. But of course people from the Valley are welcome as well and can make our community richer.
And yet the subject of the OP is: "Say hello to Appsterdam: developers aim to move the Valley to Amsterdam"
Of course, if it was a less clickworthy title like "Amsterdam trying to increase number of tech jobs", we wouldn't have seen it upvoted.
As I live about 30km (~18 miles) from Amsterdam, I will try to attend a meeting.
Of course there are trade-offs, and you have to go through the winter which in California does not exist.
I prefer much more a changing weather and changing seasons to constant weather, but that's definitely very personal.
http://appsterdam.rs/events Starts: Wednesday 06/29/2011 - 19:00 Ends: Wednesday 06/29/2011 - 19:00
US-dates coupled with "Americans can visit for three months without a visa. Pack up the family for a summer vacation in Europe." make me wonder how much this thing is targeting Americans over, you know, us Europeans who don't already have a Silicon Valley.
We had around 150 people at the launch keynote. There were some Americans, but the majority were people from around all Europe.
Edit: BTW, thank you for the report, I notified the person responsible for the website about the error.
If the founders don't believe in their own product enough to use it, it's going to fail.
More on the subject on this post: http://mur.mu.rs/?p=156
There is no logic implication that says otherwise and definitely is not in Mike's article, that is just an opinion of yours you are trying to support.
I brought Appsterdam to Sofa. I kept Appsterdam when Sofa left. Even if I died tomorrow, Appsterdam would continue. This isn't a product. It's a movement. Its power doesn't come from its founders, it comes from its people, and our people are amazing.
I wish you all the best, even if you do choose to be impolite.
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Sorry if I came across as impolite. Like I said, pardon the expression. It may have been inappropriately colorful. All I meant was that you’re talking about things you don’t know anything about.
I had the idea for Appsterdam and got things rolling. Sofa wanted to help out, but then they got offered a lot of money to move to the Valley. That’s great for them, and great for us, because that means we’ll have that many more Appsterdammers with Valley experience and investment money.
To suggest that their move in anyway represents a lack of faith in Appsterdam is just wrong. They don’t think that. I don’t think that. Nobody thinks that, except for you.
It’s also meaningless. Sofa did not found Appsterdam. I did. Sofa did not build Appsterdam, our army of volunteers did. Sofa designed our logo and website, but we get to keep those when they leave.
So even if they hated Appsterdam with the fire of a thousand suns, it wouldn’t doom us to failure. It wouldn’t even slow us down. We didn’t get to work together long enough for their leaving to impact us at all.
So your premise is wrong, and your conclusion is wrong, because you are working on no knowledge. You made a venomous statement that misrepresents things for no other reason than to be a naysayer.
Then, when you got caught by the people whose lives you are actually talking about, you tried to pass it off as a metaphor, even though that makes no sense at all, unless we accept the unlikely conclusion that you don’t actually know what a metaphor is or how to construct one.
That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to be rude. Sorry if I offended.