Ask HN: Is Berlin (or Germany) a good place to start a startup in Europe? - mgliwka
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BjoernKW
Usually, I'd have said yes.

The local startup community is great. There's certainly not as much venture
capital available as in Silicon Valley but first not every startup needs
extensive funding and secondly the availability of VC has been improving in
recent years, too.

There's more red tape involved in setting up a company than there is in other
countries but you only have to go through that once.

However, GDPR currently creates a lot of uncertainty. Unfortunately, we'll
have to wait how that works out in the end. Maybe, everyone involved will act
reasonably and it'll prove to have been a storm in a teacup but it's really
too soon to tell.

So, on that grounds I can't really recommend Europe and Germany in particular
right now.

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dirktheman
GDPR isn't new, these laws have been in place since May 2016. Overall, they're
pretty common sense, actually: don't share people's personal details without
their permission, make sure your infrastructure is secure, have a plan that
lists all parties that you share data with and have a protocol in case of a
data breach.

If you have an ethically sound company and comply with these rules you have
nothing to worry about.

Berlin is awesome, I'd choose it over Amsterdam (I'm Dutch) because of the
insane rents. I've also heard good stories about Krakow and Bucharest.

~~~
BjoernKW
I agree that the intent behind that regulation is good and yes, as an
ethically sound company you shouldn't have to worry about it.

However, the implementation of these laws so far has been less than stellar,
to say the least. There's a lot of room for interpretation and some rules are
left vague - sometimes intentionally in order to avoid having to constantly
update the regulation. Given the huge, potentially ruinous fines associated
with GDPR you'd want laws to be as explicit and as specific as possible in
order to avoid ambiguity and profiteering.

What's more, different European countries have implemented GDPR differently -
or not at all. Privacy (or the lack thereof) - in the EU of all places -
shouldn't be a competitive advantage or a bargaining chip.

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nik736
No. Germany sucks for tech startups, because we have Merkel, she doesn't know
anything about tech or even "the Internet". That means you can expect the
government to put a lot of hurdles into anything you are trying to do.

~~~
thorin
Ha ha, at least she has a scientific/maths background rather than the majority
of politicians in UK/US who are lawyers, "economists", social scientists or in
some cases celebrities.

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xstartup
Yea, it's great. We run adtech entirely out of Germany, we've found lots of
talented folks but we operate in a village, not Berlin.

But then also, we just need AWS, payment processing (stripe) and a bank
account.

24/7 power, high-speed internet, hardware.

Every service is dirt cheap compared to the US.

Hookers are beautiful.

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summermix
Go where your customers are. Tax is comparable to most of western europe,
salaries are higher than Poland, but way lower than SV.

