
My journey into the Berlin startup scene - rcruzeiro
https://medium.com/wandering-cto/my-journey-into-the-berlin-startup-scene-4dc8faecd305
======
lazyjones
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.

~~~
opium_tea
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.

~~~
Malarkey73
"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?

------
brightsize
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.

~~~
bitL
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.

~~~
monksy
> 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.

~~~
bitL
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).

~~~
thejdude
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.

------
Myrmornis
_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.)

~~~
dualogy
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

------
adamwiggins
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...](http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2014/05/08/three-months-in-
berlin-one-tech-entrepreneurs-journey/)

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.

~~~
czbond
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.

------
onthedole
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.

~~~
probablyfiction
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.

------
atroyn
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.

~~~
notjosh
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](http://www.helloclue.com/jobs.html) if
you're looking for something meaningful in a great environment :)

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

------
doctorstupid
_Bringing Silicon Valley to Europe_

Please don't do this.

~~~
logicallee
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.

~~~
rglullis
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](http://paulgraham.com/cities.html)

~~~
gerbal
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.

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

~~~
Kayou
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."

------
callum85
This article is a vacuous, patronising, self-aggrandising ego-wank.

~~~
pepon
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.

~~~
callum85
I've got no problem with people talking about themselves. My comment was a
little more specific than that.

------
fs111
In case anybody is interested in coming to Berlin, /r/berlin has a helpful
FAQ:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq](http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq)

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

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

~~~
brightsize
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.

~~~
mkal_tsr
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.

~~~
cameldrv
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.

~~~
mkal_tsr
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.

------
markdown
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.

~~~
lbotos
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.

------
idoco
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?

------
moe
That guy is made for the Samwer brothers.

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

------
a3voices
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"

