

German as a natural barrier to entry - NiklasR
http://www.blagspot.net/2012/04/german-as-a-natural-barrier-to-entry/

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mhd
I don't buy that argument. Sure, German isn't the easiest language, and most
Germans aren't willing to use a English-only service.

Still, there's enough translators and copywriters available, never mind that
anything big enough will probably have a local support team anyway. And the
market seems big enough to justify that investment. If that argument would
fly, is France any better off? About 4 times as many high school students
learning it, roughly comparable market…

And I'd need to see actual evidence for the "attention to detail" argument.
Germans are prone to be portrayed as perfectionists, now apparently for
consumption, too. Little of that is true (well, at least more true than for
Americans). After all, Germans are buying MS Windows, too…

So in my opinion, the added localization effort and the fictitious "cultural
divide" aren't the true reasons for the copycats gaining ground. It's mostly a
lack of focus on foreign markets in the first place. The US is a huge market,
and by the time most companies try to expand their horizon in a serious
manner, a ripoff has its chance and will make some money. Still, their staying
power is pretty limited, especially if the original has a certain "brand". I
remember everyon inviting me to "StudiVZ", the blatant Facebook clone.
Nowadays I'm not even sure if that's still around…

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NiklasR
The article was intentionally simplified and while I think you raise valid
points it is interesting how few US firms have actually entered the market. If
they did, it usually took quite a long time or happened through an
acquisition, which incentivises start-ups to use existing concepts. I think US
firms should enter Germany earlier and leverage the talent that is already
available. At the same time I would like to see more investors seed-fund
German entrepreneurs to foster true innovation (after all for example mp3
comes from Germany).

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mhd
Don't most of the big companies have German offerings? It's mostly the
startups in their initial stages that don't move abroad (at all, not just
Germany). And a lot of that is due to legal and financial issues. We probably
need a few startups in the internationalization sector to alleviate that.

I don't see anything specific against moving business into Germany, it's just
that right now Germany has some pretty bad copycats, which makes this an
issue.

Following the blog post, I'd expect to see companies moving to Spain or France
before Germany, and I didn't really notice this as a pattern. It's not moving
out of the US at all that's the problem (any Canadians want to chime in?).

And yes, a more lively startup community in Germany (and Europe in general)
would be great.

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mech4bg
How is German a particularly difficult language? It's relatively simple and
very similar to English - some things are more complicated, some are simpler,
but as mhd says it's a moot point due to local translation skills, etc.

I think he's on the right track actually - in Australia it's a similar scene,
whereby local 'copycats' get in first and steal the market share, simply
because the US companies are focusing on their local market first.

In some cases they have consolidated their position and are still the market
leader despite the US originator moving into the Australian market (e.g.
Scoopon vs Groupon) but in other cases the US company destroyed the local one
(e.g. eBay, which had quite a battle on their hands to win the auction market
here, but eventually prevailed - I can't even remember who the other people
were now!)

Also I'm not even sure there's really a significant 'cultural divide' between
Germany and the US anyway. US culture flourishes there.

