
Rocket Internet: Waiting for lift-off - lleims
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/28a2a164-7645-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html#axzz3pBstUywG
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sagichmal
> In Germany, Mr Samwer is a hero and a role model.

Not at all -- entirely the opposite.

Samwer is a high-pressure boss, well known for treating his reports and
employees with belligerence and hostility. That attitude trickles down to the
leaders he places in his shell companies. Rocket-family companies demand the
long hours commensurate with typical SV startups, but pay developers below-
market salaries, and provide negligible to no equity. They're notorious for
shoveling a lot of core business work onto a huge, rotating cast of
systemically-underpaid interns. I won't get started on the state of their
(universal, mandatory) tech stack.

It's actually an adage among devs in Berlin: to studiously avoid anything in
the Rocket universe.

~~~
FlyingSnake
This guy speaks the truth.

I chuckled at that line too. Rocket Internet is toxic and their culture is
poisonous. They tend to copy the hilariously worst ideas from Silicon Valley
and believe that only hustle and posing will lead you to success.

People outside Germany should stop glamorizing them.

~~~
adventured
What are some examples of the worst ideas from Silicon Valley that they've
copied?

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FlyingSnake
From top of my head:

* Noisy Open Offices.

* The notion that real devs stay in office at least till 19:00

* Clueless technical staff. Hodgepodge of Scala, Java, Clojure, Groovy running on microservices/Docker/Hadoop/WhatsThatCurrentFad

* Below market salaries. There was an uproar in Zalando open house that some Sr. Devs are paid less than Jr. Devs.

* Interns as underpaid minions. One Rocket company even had the interns do the dirty dishes, clean kitchen and check on toilets.

~~~
adventured
I'm confused. Are you claiming that they copied paying below market salaries
and having clueless technical staff from Silicon Valley?

I honestly wasn't aware that clueless technical staff was a common plight in
SV (such that someone like Rocket would emulate it). That some developers or
companies get caught up in fads, certainly wouldn't inherently indicate that
they're clueless.

Maybe I'm behind the times on this. Is Silicon Valley now regarded as being
filled full of low quality / clueless engineers? And what location has
replaced SV as the best in the world?

~~~
FlyingSnake
What I meant is that they try to copy latest technological fad from SV and try
to implement it half-assedly. They see Microservices/Golang/React trending on
HN and try to do it by using underpaid engineers.

SV is and will be a leader in technology for a foreseeable future.

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andy_ppp
I worked at Rocket Internet and the main problem they have is like any big
company; a few very good people and a lot of useless people. Any proper
startup worth their salt, competing with rocket directly, will absolutely
slaughter them.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Interesting. I just thought, that Rocket was in a business, that seldom any
other startup is ... As much I know, Rocket is about starting new startups. I
guess, there are not so many startups working in this particular business ...?

~~~
andy_ppp
Rocket Internet is renowned for being a Fast follower - they see an idea they
like and build a copy of it; for example they started Wimdu which has had
moderate success competing with AirBnB in some European countries. Obviously
I'd probably bet AirBnB is bigger than Wimdu even in Germany.

I really enjoyed working in Berlin for a few months though, it was excellent
fun and I had an enormous apartment all to myself for about a third of the
cost for the same thing in London.

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rsp1984
> _With a €5bn market capitalisation, Rocket is Europe’s most valuable
> technology company._

Seriously? I have no idea why they would say such a thing. I guess they have a
rather odd definition of "technology company".

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adventured
That is a very bogus claim.

Even using a narrow definition of technology company, SAP has consistently
been Europe's most valuable tech company. They're worth $91 billion, with $21b
in sales and $4b in profit - they make Rocket Internet look like a piker.

Even smaller companies like ARM are far beyond the size of Rocket. ARM is
worth $22 billion, with $400m in profit.

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abhi3
This article will give you a good idea about how a typical rocket company
operates
[http://www.livemint.com/Companies/rYKC6HjnShogjE62jO5lpK/The...](http://www.livemint.com/Companies/rYKC6HjnShogjE62jO5lpK/The-
trouble-with-Foodpanda.html)

------
degenerate
nice paywall.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Rocket+Internet%3A+Waiting+f...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Rocket+Internet%3A+Waiting+for+lift-
off+\(ft.com\))

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ThomPete
Rocket does one thing extremely well and I believe it's fundamental to both
their success and something other European startups should seriously consider
getting better at.

They localize their products and services extremely well, even outside of the
EU[1].

This IMO is paramount to their success.

With regards to them copying other companies.

People need to understand just how hard it is to get a company up and running
successfully in Europe.

I find it ironic that for all the talk about how ideas are useless and only
execution matters, people surely do seem to be very sensitive about them. Most
Italian restaurants copy each other, do we complain about that?

[1] [http://tropicalconsiderations.com/2013/04/04/why-rocket-
inte...](http://tropicalconsiderations.com/2013/04/04/why-rocket-internet-is-
good-for-emerging-markets/)

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Sealy
Behind a paywall for me. Can someone post a TLDR or summary?

Thanks!

~~~
waliurjs
Rocket Internet in bad but making money.

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viahartdotcom
rocket is interesting. this article is not.

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karka91
It would be great if HN had a rule against paywalled sites. Seems weird to
have this on first page

~~~
DanBC
I politely direct you to this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

