My journey into the Berlin startup scene | Hacker News Reader

My journey into the Berlin startup scene

medium.com

112 pointsrcruzeiro80 comments

This 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.

This 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.

"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?

My 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.

Berlin is underfunded, top management has the "dominate everything" attitude in most start ups, no equity to employees, people are expected to be conforming to their bosses (German mentality), wage split into fixed (small) + variable part (which mostly doesn't materialize), low-ball offers are the name of the game in Berlin, selling a dream of a bright future with no equity.

> low-ball offers are the name of the game in Berlin, selling a dream of a bright future with no equity.

I was flown to Berlin to be interviewed twice. Once by a startup and another by a large organization that had the funds. I've got to agree with this. One of the big reasons that Berlin/Germany has the difficulty with getting talent that they do is that they actively try to undercut the market. They won't compete with the American IT/Dev market. The offer I got was 38k Euro/year while making $60k US. (Also.. remember German taxes for being "non-religious" and single are ~42%)

Another thing to note (from my experience)... They won't even consider you if you don't have a masters degree.

As a senior developer you can get 75k fixed + 10k variable even in some of Berlin's start-ups, however you might get that easily in Hamburg, Munich, Ingolstadt or Frankfurt. In Munich and Frankfurt you can get 110k + about the same variable if you work for one of the trading/ad companies (and have a stomach for it).

The housing prices in Berlin are skyrocketing, approaching the other big German cities fast, so basically with 38k you would be quite close to poverty level if you have a family (though "poverty" in Germany is much gentler than in the US due to a lot of social support and welfare from the government, paid by high taxes).

Mind if I ask where you can get, say, 75k in Germany?

I have >5 years experience, I'm consistently rated great by my bosses, but I have a hard time getting paid a good salary for it. Job offers are only by body-leasing companies, whereever I look (i.e. no "intern" positions).

Is it only the really big players that pay 75k, where you have to deal with rigid corporate politics, suit-up dress code, and meetings instead of developing/architecting stuff? (Basically what I've been doing for years, but with low pay, and I don't really want to keep doing that; it hurts productivity, and it wastes my talent.) West-german city we're talking about, so location shouldn't be the problem.

This was about 2011 when I got that offer. The housing prices were jumping up. The founder attempted to hedge my shock at the 38k e a year by claiming "housing is cheap." Nice try, I believe that he was talking about a wohingemeinung [sp], which I'm not doing if I'm relocating to Berlin.

Also, they wouldn't offer a relo either.

BTW My tax percentage was take home pay. [Mandatory health payment is included since it's mandatory]

38k€ is I'd say an entry-level wage in Germany (in cities; less in rural areas, more in places like Munich).

The maximum marginal tax rate is 42% in Germany. As a developer, you'll very like pay only 25% of your income as taxes (but add health "insurance" and mandatory payments into the pension fund etc., so you'll end up with half your salary gone).

The master's degree thing is pretty much true. While there are non-studied professionals and you can get a job with a non-college education, I think most interesting jobs are only available to graduates.

Foreign firms wouldn't even acknowledge my resume without the masters on it.

38k was from a well known startup that was backed by a well known FB related VC firm.

I know plenty of people that got in without a Masters in Berlin, so YMMV

38k€ is low, it's possible to get more (but then, with the taxes and everything this translates to maybe 3k€ per month tops - with a very high salary)

Um yes, but 3k is also a veery comfortable salary to live on in Germany. 90+% of the population don't even make 2k (net salary), IIRC. I think with 50k gross per year (or was it even 40k?) you're already "upper class" in a sense.

You are correct

I agree.

Berlin's inofficial motto is "Arm aber Sexy!" (Broke but sexy). And that's exactly what to expect from your quality-of-life-situation if you go there. In Berlin, all the bonusses the article mentions (berlin's bohemme flair, the tech scene & cool-hip startups, cheap housing) will be paid for by your lower income.

While it's a trade-off that could be worthwile for some, I thank god that the rest of Germany has enough old-money lying around, sucking up developers like there's no tomorrow.

Care 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

"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-ame...

It's a huge pain in the ass to hire an american (compared to an EU resident), so it's not worth it unless they bring something awesome to the table.

I've seen interns being hired from the USA. It's a hassle, but not really a "huge pain in the ass"

I’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.)

Sounds 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

Yeah, 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.

The 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.

Actually, 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...

You could say that about any article about one's own experiences. This one is different.

To be fair it's the guy behind Heroku which probably was the first company to really democratize the concept of PaaS and in addition to Engine Yard they were of big help in making ruby/rails more popular.

His statement is not wrong and I applaud his unbroken enthusiasm.

There are a large number of people in history with even greater achievements than heroku who have not succumbed to these extreme levels of narcissism.

This doesn't sound like "narcissistic" at all. Simply a statement. Maybe you're reading it with imposed self-belief which is causing a negative feeling? (Mumbo jumbo for - don't be jealous. It's not overstating at all)

I'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...

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.

How 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.

Read 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.

Agreed. 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.

Clue 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.

Hi! 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 if you're looking for something meaningful in a great environment :)

I've been following you guys since the first launch, and you've continued to impress. Keep it up!

Bringing Silicon Valley to Europe

Please don't do this.

Reduce buses 10x, remove subway and other urban infrastructure and you are almost there :-)

Please DO this. Venture capital invested by people who actually know a thing or two about tech startups is urgently needed here. Something like YC Berlin could untap a goldmine, IF done right and IF it takes the quite significant (business) cultural differences into account.

yeah 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.

Funny 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

Well, 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.

-4, really? Let me explain. Silicon Valley is good at taking an idea that could be useful to one billion people, and having one billion people be able to use it. Yes, there are intermediate steps you might not like. Yes, the result might be homogeneous. But at the end of the day, SV is good at that.

Mark Zukerberg was exactly the same same in every way except

Is it just me, or does the article hardly tell anything about "the Berlin startup scene"?

Yep, 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."

Same 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.

This article is a vacuous, patronising, self-aggrandising ego-wank.

Yeah dude, who could expect than in article titled "My journey blablabla" he talked about himself. The Internet police should fine this guy or something.

I've got no problem with people talking about themselves. My comment was a little more specific than that.

In case anybody is interested in coming to Berlin, /r/berlin has a helpful FAQ: http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq

As someone who just spent a month in Berlin, this was a great resource for me during my stay.

IIRC, you can apply for a 1-year self-employment/freelancer/artist visa in Germany if you're from the US.

You 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.

Yes, you should definitely have all of your ducks in a row before you go in, but they are willing to bend the rules on some things if you basically look like you're going to make it. Here's what you want to bring:

1. Proof of Health Insurance. 2. Rental Contract 3. As many contracts or letters of interest from businesses as possible. Particularly if these are in English, they don't scrutinize them too much. If you simply have an open engagement letter for some hourly rate, perhaps an estimated (but not guaranteed) number of hours, they will look kindly on this, even if it doesn't actually obligate the other party to ever pay you anything. 4. Business Plan. I would generally shade this on the low side. You will look better on your renewal if you exceed your projections. It does need to be at the very least about 18k EUR/yr. 5. Historical income, particularly from self-employment 6. Bank statements, any evidence of assets you can dig up. Print these out for a couple of years. 7. Any degrees and transcripts you have 8. Personal references. 9. Any professional awards, etc 10. If you're married, an official marriage certificate.

The main strategy here is to overwhelm them with paper. They love paper, particularly if it has some sort of official looking stamp on it. If you show up with 100-200 pages of documentation, you should be virtually guaranteed to get the visa.

If you are worried or want to increase your chances, hire a lawyer and have them show up with you. The immigration people seem to see you showing up with a lawyer as evidence of seriousness and professionalism.

I can say that I showed up with my wife, and unfortunately she didn't have any job offers when the appointment rolled around. Between our copious documentation and a lawyer present, they issued her visa without the (required) job offer.

I am German and I like to criticize the exact same issues when people talk about "targeted" immigration. The idea is that by putting all sorts of requirements on immigrants you can be more selective and get only the top people.

Turns out, we are already very good at attracting immigrants with an education and earning power above the national average, and every book and form you throw at immigrants only discourages the "wanted" immigrants. I also object to the discrimination between "wanted" and "unwanted" immigrants but that is another topic...

It seems to me that I've heard some complaints from within Germany that the Blue Card is not so much about getting the best talent, but in fact is about getting the cheapest talent. The salary requirements are quite low, and in my experience, startups in Berlin have their eyes on those requirements when they start talking to you about offers. I'm not sure about the source of the complaints, but I would imagine that native German talent is not too happy about having their compensation undercut by foreigners who might happily work for the Blue Card minimums in order to come here. Just my speculation. It would be not unlike the H1-B situation in the U.S.

The Blue Card has a salary minimum of 37.128€. That might not sound much, but I'd say this amount is far from "undercutting" entry-level salaries.

The problem with the theories about undercutting wages of "native talent" is that there is virtually no unemployed native talent.

Of course, all Germans believe they are paid too little. The only way wages would rise dramatically would be if employers went into a crazy competition mode, and they seem to know that this would be bad for every employer. Higher wages only serve to "steal" employees from another employer, they don't increase the work force per se.

There is no comprehensive way to tell if immigration lowers salaries, since you can't just add and subtract jobs in the complex system of a national economy. Also, I find it hard to justify any right for "native talent" to shut out "non-native talent". Both are human beings and there is no such thing as a birth-right to higher compensation.

Still, we NEED higher salaries in Germany. I've seen so many people waste away on stupid code that should never have been written. (Instead, how about using a framework that automates away 90% of grunt development?) Most of the time I'm working in projects that I could have written myself in months, and they have two-digits of developers working on it for years sometimes.

The incentives are exactly the opposite of what made Germany big in high-tech manufacturing. We treat developers as the mediocre, cheap code monkeys they often are (using the word "mediocre" so I don't have to swear on HN).

How would higher salaries make coding more productive? That seems to be an unwarranted assumption.

Developer productivity and project management is a large field. I sometimes feel that programmers, especially the idealistic ones, tend to overestimate their own performance, and underestimate the problems of project management.

It's definitely a large field, and management is hard in its own way.

The way to measure developer performance is easy though: you have to look back instead of forward, then you see what people get (or rather: got) done.

Sure, if you're an idealist and aren't used to estimation, you tend to underestimate the effort for a given feature or bug.

Yeah, 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.

Citizens 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.

In 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.

However if you get the self-employment visa, you have residency status in Germany and are no longer under those restrictions (and thus have nothing to worry about crossing borders) for the duration of the visa.

This 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.

There is also the blue card (http://www.bluecard-eu.de/) which is pretty easy and quick to get if you have a university degree and a job-offer.

Bit 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.

If you don't have a degree you can still get in (not on blue card) but the salary barrier is higher.

What about Australians?

I'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.

I'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/) if you're a full-time employee somewhere. It's super easy to get, and it's quite liberal.

I 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.

Not 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.

My 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.

> * 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).

Germany offers a freelance visa which you apply for in Germany

also possible: border official saw U.S. passport and maybe bank account balance

When I moved to Germany, they simply asked why I was here. I said I was coming for a job -- no further questions.

Yes, 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?

That guy is made for the Samwer brothers.

Maybe he can buy their shares. Just heard they want to go public with Rocket Internet.

Article 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"

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