

Why the Berlin startup scene is still in a bubble of hype - ch0wn
http://venturevillage.eu/berlin-startup-hype

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julianpye
Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven
innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one
expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to
be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium
Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and
engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by
generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying
'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago
- it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results.

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webjunkie
"the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management
graduates"

Best sentence I read about that. So true.

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axx
I second that!

I think many people in the germany hacker community don't want to be
associated with "those startup guys" because many of "those guys" lack
technical understanding. Like you said, many business guys hire developers to
build yet another ecommerce site.

We're a small Company (<https://futurevps.de/>) that offers custom Servers
fully based in Germany (for data privacy reasons) and get much less media
coverage than "ecommerce" companies. I think that nearly 99.9% of the german
startup newssites cover ecommerce-ish businesses.

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nchuhoai
As a native Berliner and ex-Bostonian, I have to unfortunately concur with the
article. There is quite a lot of talk. While I love Berlin as a city, and even
love the generally positive and helpful atmosphere of the startup scene in
Berlin, there is no denial that doing a startup is the hip thing to do, and it
wouldn't hurt some people to get to work.

"I'm CEO of a startup" is a phrase I have heard way more than in the Valley or
in Boston. For me a bit surprising as a native, was the aforementioned influx
of consultants and management grads. It has become so sexy to do a startup. Or
asking for technical co-founders.

However, as much as we can criticize this development, I believe it's
generally positive that more people are trying to question the status quo,
trying to find alternatives to the coorperate route. As far as I remember,
that hasn't been the case a couple years ago. So sure, we should be vary of
the hype, but we can go back to the roots and steer all this energy into the
right direction.

On that note, here comes a shameless plug: We are a Boston-started, Berlin-
relocated startup that wants more people to use p2p-marketplaces such as
Airbnb etc. We do so by helping marketplaces battle the largest friction for a
transaction: trust. Our mission is the belief that a world in which we can
trust each other is a better world, a world worth building. If you think so
too, we'd love to talk to you. (nam@webcred.co)

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pmoehring
I wonder if the typical German necessity of a title (Germans LOVE titles) has
any input on the "I'm a CEO" bit.

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schoash
Then it is more like "I am an MBA and CEO of a startup"

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pmoehring
Good on Joel for pointing out what many have been thinking and saying. Doing
it as one of the few relevant startup bloggers in Germany makes it even more
important. Overall, I think there are a few rough patches in the post, but I
agree with the sentiment.

I do think that e.g. 6WK are doing the right thing, so it's kind of counter
intuitive to point them out. They have scaled back the hype, focused on their
well growing product WL again, and have made some tough decisions.

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scrrr
Yes, but I suspect it will be a "Wunder" if they can monetize their TODO-List
app..

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2color
What about Sociomantic, a Berlin Startup which is focused on innovation and
just got an ex-googler. allthingsd.com/20120910/ad-tech-startup-sociomantic-
labs-grabs-google

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ctrlaltesc
Focused on innovation? It's focused on selling advertising.

