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Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

> ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs

Germany has over three millions SMEs (small and medium enterprises, called 'Mittelstand'). I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. Exactly the opposite. You find world-market leaders in small towns all across rural Germany. You can guess that people are extremely proud to work for these companies.

99% of all companies are in the Mittelstand. "Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."

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" I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. "

quite often this is believed to be true: start-up == entrepreneurship

Well, I disagree here and it looks like you are mixing up 'entrepreneurs' and the "Mittelstand" you mentioned. I don't know if this is generally true, but i'm under the impression that there is some negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected with "making money fast" on the internet and/or "just" doing things to make money. That is in contrast to the "Mittelstand" which is seen as creating actual sustainable business aka Old-Economy.

This is obviously NOT true for all 'entrepreneurs' and all "Mittlerstand" businesses.

Sometimes the concepts of start-up, entrepreneurship and "Mittlerstand" get mixed up. I don't think many ppl bother to differentiate those in as much detail as paul graham does ;)

Germany does not want anything more than create new successful start-ups. We are just not focused on 'Internet start-ups'. There is a huge infrastructure in Germany to support it.

> negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected with "making money fast" on the internet and/or "just" doing things to make money.

In Germany? I have never heard that.

It is just that we don't focus on 'Internet startups'. Start-ups can be in logistics, chemical products, machine tools, ...

Are you sure you really mean start-ups as in: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html (in short: companies bound to grow really fast and bound to generate extraordinary profits fast)

Look, we all get that you can't call every new company a startup, but Paul Graham does not have the ultimate authority to decide on the definition of the word "startup" either.

Why, do you think startups are valued and created only in the US? Where do you think German multi-nationals come from? Slow-growth companies?

http://www.manager-magazin.de/magazin/artikel/0,2828,838699,...

People are afraid of changes or just don't get it. I'm from micro mid/east country in Europe and i can tell you that most people here think that computers are used only as support for other businesses. When you tell them that web/internet/... is also great business you'll get blank looks all over the place. Btw they're all using google/fb/... but only as consumers. Hmmm, thank god on that :-)

...my experience (originally from Germany, in the US since 2005) as well. It's a question of mentality. While in the US a vast number of people want to create their own business or already did when they are quite young, running a business or starting one is a herculian task in Germany. And you get punished when you fail. And you get taxed to death when you don't. Running a company can easily become a social stigma too. Even if starting your company happens to be easier now then it was 10 years ago, still the majority of people are rather focused on finding a secure position in a larger company with lots of benefits then "creating" something "new". Numerous reasons I guess for why that came to be (I don't think it was like that in the 50s/60s) - maybe as society ages there is less of a "drive" for radical innovation and a risk-averse mentality becomes mainstream. Either way, before I came to the US I had heard about "the difference in mentality" but I could not believe how "different" it really was and how much of an impact that meant on a daily basis: the biggest eye-opener was the completely different attitude towards things that needed to be changed and people just "did it".

Please note that Silicon Valley is not normal for the USA. Boston, for example, has a disturbingly "German-sounding" attitude towards computing, "Oh, yes, we have tech companies here, but the Real Deal of Boston is the universities and biomedical firms."

There is negative sentiment towards making money fast or just in it for the money everywhere, but that's not the definition of a startup.

Many (most?) startups do aim towards (or at least pretend to be) creating sustainable, fast-growing businesses, aiming for an exit from the start is very specific to SV/US. I don't see resistance to accept the crazy financial speculation that comes with your model of 'entrepreneurship' as something so negative.

>"Roughly 95% of all German firms are family-owned. Of these, approx. 85% are managed by their owner."

Lol?! ;)

Eh?! ;)

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