
Germans don’t do tech startups – more access to capital might change that - ryan_j_naughton
https://qz.com/1404647/germans-dont-do-tech-startups-more-access-to-capital-might-change-that/
======
_petronius
We _do_ have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just
that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation-
speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context
of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier
to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally!
Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve
your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.

There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to
furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to
build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate
the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same,
and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting
to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup
incubators I know in Berlin.

~~~
baxtr
I have to disagree. We _don’t_ do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes,
we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this
questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that’s easy
to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany?
Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while
working on really interesting topics at a large scale? That’s one reason the
big US companies have offices here, to attract the talent.

~~~
jashmatthews
> Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the
> opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting
> topics at a large scale?

Global companies have massively increased their presence here.

Google has a huge presence in Munich, notably including a chunk of the V8
developers. Apple has a large hardware team in Munich. Amazon Berlin is
aggressively hiring for developers to work on AWS. If you're after SF style
salaries go work for Google Zürich and take home €200k.

~~~
s3nnyy
I still don't get why Germany is underpaying engineers. After taxes, a
cleaning lady in Switzerland can earn more than an engineer in Germany. Net
salaries in Zürich are the only ones in Europe that match Bay Area level.
(Living costs are lower than you think, see my blogpost titled "Nine reasons
why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech", which I wrote after I emigrated
from Germany: [https://bit.ly/2GNlJcA](https://bit.ly/2GNlJcA)) So why should
top notch talent move to Germany, if they can move to Norway, the Netherlands
or Switzerland where they earn double or triple?

What I hear from recruitment firms is that "mediocre engineers move to Berlin
and great ones to Zurich". Also, GetYourGuide has their core backend
engineering staff still in Zurich, but marketing and sales in Berlin. One of
the founders writes that in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and
complex data analysis, there are more talents in Switzerland than in Berlin:
[https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/getyourguide-
chef-...](https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/getyourguide-chef-reck-
direkter-draht-zum-vatikan)

Switzerland is even more founder/investor-friendly than the US. Example:
Capital gain tax is 0%, that means, if you start a company, and sell it
(=shares usually surgue in value), you don't pay taxes on this gain. Also, no
capital gain taxes need to be paid, if you buy a publicly listed stock/ETF and
hold it for more than 6 months. (More in another thing I wrote: "Switzerland:
How buying real-estate can kill you financially and reasons to go for stocks
instead" \- [https://bit.ly/2xIe8ri](https://bit.ly/2xIe8ri)). Despite the
legal infrastructure, we still lack the "American" mentality to become a
startup place, but for small businesses it's much better here than in Germany:

A friend of me once said: "Germany is a rich country of poor people". The
system in Germany hates small businesses / freelancers and is optimized for
conglomerates like Siemens or BMW. If you open a company, you immediately
drown in red-tape and upfront taxes. As a comparison, in Switzerland you can
just start issuing invoices without a tax-code or anything. Only after you
reach a certain threshold, you need to have to inform the authorities during
the same tax-year. Also after that, things are very reasonable and easy. My
tech recruitment firm generates "normal revenue" and I still haven't gotten a
tax-consultant because I can do taxes myself. If I have a question, I call the
tax authorities and they help me / give "free advice", which shocks my German
entrepreneur friends. There, the tax-authorities treat them as criminals, no
support is given and one is triple-checked thoroughly that no taxes are
evaded, which, of course, happens anyway especially because taxes are damn
high. If you make median wage, it's 45%. In Switzerland median wage is taxed
at ~17%. Also, tax-authorities treat taxpayers like clients, whom one is
grateful to. That reflects in the simplicity of the tax code: In Germany, if
you go for dinner with clients, you need to subtract and can't deduct the part
from the bill which you consumed; in Switzerland, you just deduct the whole
bill.

(Content marketing from here: If you are European and you want to move here,
shoot me an email to iwan@coderfit.com. I am well-connected in the local tech
scene because I match programmers with jobs for a living.)

~~~
baxtr
I’m not sure your comment adds any value to the discussion. It seems to be
intended purely as advertisement

EDIT: it seems as if you edited your post heavily to add the notion of
“content”

~~~
s3nnyy
I am sorry that you see it in this way. I am just trying to be helpful by
explaining what I experience here and also pointing to my small business,
which is tech recruitment related. I added a few points and marked the end as
"content marketing" to make things more clear.

------
destartupop
I've been trying to build deep tech startups in Germany for 6 years. I managed
to sell the first one I built to a US company (for a very small amount of
money) and started afresh after taking a break as an employee.

Right now I'm at the point of giving up again because it's so damn hard to
find customers here. In my opinion, for deep tech startups the problem is not
primarily access to capital but access to customers, as the corporate culture
is extremely hostile towards startups. Large corporations are very risk-averse
and most of them won't ever consider buying a product from an unproven
startup. The ones that want to work with startups often have started their own
incubators where they try out ideas by hiring teams and building startups that
they fully control (50 % shares belong to the parent company from the
beginning).

Also, from my experience getting seed funding becomes harder the more
experienced you are here: If you just finished university it's easy to get a
so-called EXIST grant, which will pay a little more than 100.000 € to fund a
team of three people for a year. That's how most (or at least many) of the
successful startups get funded here. The thing is, if you have been working
for 5 years or more you will be ineligible for that program, and your options
for getting seed money are very restricted. This is weird as people with
industry experience usually have a much better chance at building something
relevant and successful than a recent university graduate with no business
experience. They have a much harder time finding money though.

There are counterexamples and very successful deep tech startups of course, I
just think we could have many more of those if we had a system that actually
encouraged and helped people to build these companies.

I can understand that many people decide against it, especially when you're a
good technician / engineer you can earn much more in industry and there's very
little to gain by leaving your position.

~~~
Jdam
I‘d have been eligible for EXIST, but that program is a bad joke. 100k for 3
persons for one year before tax? C‘mon. That is financial sucide, if you’re in
tech these days.

~~~
hef19898
Yeah, and than you have to pass a panel deciding whether your "idea" is
innovative enough. It reminded me more of a game of buzzword bingo than a
viable investment procedure. As your not allowed to incorporate before enter
EXIST it is just a waste of time. Not to mention that it all depends on how
well you are connected at your university, and if government funds are
available.

~~~
destartupop
I'd say the chances of getting a grant are very good, back in the day the
success rate was around 50 % and you could apply up to three times (to my
knowledge), which made it highly likely that you'd get the money if you were
persevering. It's true that you have to choose a good university as the
quality of the provided coaching and mentorship varies wildly. I can recommend
LMU & TU Munich as well as TU Berlin or one of the other well-known technical
universities (e.g. RWTH Aachen), to my knowledge they have very good programs.
You don't need connections at your university either, you just need to
convince a professor to support your application, which they are often happy
to do as it counts towards the amount of funding they raised, which is a
relevant metric to them.

If you can get that money it's really an excellent opportunity and will help
you to get further funding, as I said before I just find it sad that nothing
comparable exists for experienced people from industry.

~~~
hef19898
I tried a while back. Not being at one of the universities you mentioned ,I
would have been an extension from TU Munich. Funds where hard to come by at
that time (right after the elections, so no governmant, no government budget,
no EXIST funds). In the end, I talked to all relevant profs at my university,
they talked to the giys at TUM, and the feed-back was "no need to tey, your
idea is not innovative enough. Try a bank or bet your house."

Also the expected time line was around 6 months to get into the program, so
for me it would have just been a colosal waste of time.

EDIT: While coaching is anive thing, it is access to follow-up funding that
matters. At let's be honest in that regard YC is different league all
together. And if you don't need funding beyond 100k you really could have used
bank in the first place.

------
eksemplar
Germans absolutely do tech startups, in fact they’ve been on the forefront of
building tech companies that mirror Silicon Valley, but in German.

There’s been a German eBay, PayPal and Facebook.

Europe doesn’t really do major companies though, and part of that is certainly
a lack of demand to go global from capital investors, but there are other
parts as well. Like language and regulation.

I went to harzen for holiday this summer, very retro I know, and almost no one
spoke English. In fact I had bigger luck with Danish than I had with English
because they see so many Danish tourists. I’m not sure Americans can really
understand how big the language and cultural barriers are from creating global
companies when you’re de-attached from the Anglo-Saxon world.

I think the reason that a lot of European startups that made it to the global
scence came from Scandinavia, is exactly because we’re so attached to American
culture that’s it’s almost second nature to us. Sure we don’t understand
American individualism, not really, but we’re all brought up watching American
tv-shows and movies, hell American politics and economics sometimes take up
more news space than our own national news...

The rest of Europe isn’t like that, so while Germany had its own eBay, that
made its founders billionaires, no one outside of Germany has ever heard about
it. Except for maybe eBay who couldn’t enter the market.

~~~
pjmlp
Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to
speak German than English.

And in southern Europe I am lucky to be able to speak most languages, as
anyone beyond a certain age hardly speaks any word of English, specially
outside the major cities.

Which is indeed a challenge, on the other side is also something quite rich,
as most traveling Europeans tend to speak fluently three languages on average.

~~~
antt
>Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to
speak German than English.

Everyone who knows English has already left. I'm not sure how much it's worth
to other people but for me knowing English has been a ~x50 income multiplier.

------
zenovision
Germany has a lot of drawbacks to be the next silicon valley:

* the most difficult tax system in the world. even freelancers have to use accountant services, because most people will not be able to pay taxes properly without it.

* high taxes - 42% income tax + Solidaritätszuschlag 5.5% = 47.5%; for corporations it's ~30%.

* A LOT of buerocracy. I can't even send an email to tax authorities in my area, because they only accept paper letters but nothing else.

* highly qualified foreigners have to learn German and it's quite difficult language.

* the market in Germany is much smaller comparing to USA. If you want to target EU, then you have to support a lot of different languages, date/time formats, regulations and laws etc.

* recently the EU introduced a lot of additional regulations for internet companies (GDPR, new copyright directives that require checking uploaded files, etc...).

* weather is not that appealing as in the valley.

* the difference in salaries between regular developers and rockstars is very low. So there is zero motivation to become one.

* low salaries for software engineers. The most of senior software developers will earn 50.000 - 60.000 EURO anually and after paying taxes it's only ~2.600 EURO per month (3.000 USD)

* poor internet connection in a lot of places / poor connection speed - almost any country is better in this regard

~~~
raverbashing
> the most difficult tax system in the world.

I love how hyperbolic statements like this get bought and sold like truth.
It's not _even close_ to being the most difficult tax system in the world.

Source:
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.TAX.DURS?year_high_d...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.TAX.DURS?year_high_desc=false)

> highly qualified foreigners have to learn German

For startups or tech positions? No, they don't.

Also, learning German at a conversational level is not impossible. (But it
seems a lot of people in Berlin coast by without even knowing basic German)

~~~
zenovision
Your link just proves how horrible German tax system is:

* A german needs 2x more time for taxes than a UK citizen

* needs 3x more time than a Norway citizen

* needs 4x more time than a Swiss citizen

* 20x more time than a UAE citizen

~~~
raverbashing
"Horrible"

United States: 175h Germany: 218h

Governments are not very easy dealing, but to call it "horrible" when some
countries require 10x the time is unfair.

------
mk89
The mindset in SV is to fail fast - yes, with all the consequences for the
investors. That's why investing in startups is a high risk investment. And
that's also why the cautious way of doing business in Europe doesn't help with
the startup economy. Being too cautious prevents from taking high risks.

I interviewed several times with startups proud of not having any funding
behind. Very nice. Still, my question is... Who cares? The main difference is
that in the USA money is constantly being invested, there is a lot of debt but
that's the way to innovate. In Europe on the other hand, if you fail, or if
you make debts you better hide yourself.

~~~
andor
Failing fast is done to _reduce_ risk. The quicker a company fails with an
idea, i.e. discovers that there is no market fit, the fewer money was wasted
on it. The remaining budget can be used to try other ideas.

The big company model, where something unproven is developed for a long time
by a large team, is substantially more risky. Only when they go live after
"finishing" their product they might discover that nobody wants it.

Anybody trying to innovate will fail at one point or another, because not all
bets play out. So the key is to make the bets as small as possible and
therefore "fail" as quickly as possible.

~~~
mk89
You are right!

I only saw this from the perspective of the investor that gives money and
"hopes" it will work.

This doesn't contradict the fact, though, that in Europe the "big plan" tends
to work for a simple reason: there are already deals (if it's a b2b) or the
product doesn't innovate and it's based on something already working
elsewhere.

Obviously this prevents innovation.

------
roadbeats
I moved to Berlin recently and started making a list of “cool” startups and
venture capital firms in my public notebook. It can be a reference for people
who are curious about the ecosystem here:

cool startups:
[https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#cool-...](https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#cool-
startups)

venture capital firms:
[https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#ventu...](https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#venture-
capital)

PRs are welcome.

~~~
jacquesm
Endeit Capital and Capnamic should be on your list, as well as Project-A
ventures and Partech.

~~~
roadbeats
Could you send a PR?

~~~
jacquesm
No. I don't see why I should log in to another website or make an account
there when you already have all the info you need right here.

~~~
roadbeats
Gotcha. I’ll add it then.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you. I'll see if I can dig up some more active German VCs for you, I
should have a list somewhere.

------
kvz
“Germans don’t do tech startups” is obviously clickbait but it’s equally
obvious that Germany can’t compete with SF when it comes to startups. As a
Dutch founder of Germany based scaleup Transloadit.com I’d say taxes and
workforce-legislation are more prohibitive than a lack of funding (tho it may
also be a problem for others as clearly there’s less going around). I realize
why taxes and protection of the workforce are necessary and am happy to live
in a country that sands down some sharper edges of capitalism, but when you
are just starting out, it’s overwhelming the amount of money you can’t
allocate for more growth, and the commitment/risk that comes with having
people on the payroll. Even though we have work, and money to spend on having
that done, going that route is like the last resort because it’s so scary
(maybe there isn’t money/work next year, what if they become sick, it could
just ruin the company). Not even talking about resources needed to get
acquainted and comply with the rules. So currently we try to work with
freelance/invoicing as much as possible, but that comes with its own set of
legal constraints and high costs. Feels a bit like driving with the emergency
brake on. If somehow the government could have a special set of lightweight
rules for folks just starting out, I think you’d see more startups flourish.

------
dschuetz
In Germany most start-ups are self-funded with maximum personal risk. That
means that you only fail once, after that you'll never be able to recover from
bankruptcy only to do your next thing. As Germans are not known to be risk
taking folks it's understandable why there are slim chances for the next
Silicon Valley in Germany. It's all about _risk_ and _risk taking_. Tweak
those parameters economy-wise, then we talk about bold entrepreneurship.

~~~
beberlei
I doubt that is true, do you have numbers for this claim? I see many companies
founding limited structures (UG or GmbH) to have avoid maximum personal risk.
It can be done with just 1€ of capital.

~~~
dschuetz
You still need liability capital for a GmbH (e.g. LLC) which most _start-ups_
just don't have. They start off single or as a GbR with a second or more
partners, and then eventually change the company liability type to GmbH, when
they generated the capital needed. A _real_ start-up doesn't have to be a GmbH
at all. In fact about 2/3 are single start-ups in Germany with maximum
personal risk, not even GbR which is only 8%. The rest are GmbH with 30% which
also counts start-ups with a bigger company as backer.

That paper is a bit dated, and in German, but still the general assumption
that most start-ups are poor remains true for Europe, not only Germany.
[https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/WirtschaftStatistik...](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/WirtschaftStatistik/UnternehmenGewerbeanzeigen/Unternehmensdemografie_62013.pdf)

What is true though, a UG (e.g. Ltd), is an alternative to GmbH in terms of
liability and capital. The 1 euro capital is a joke, imho. Because no sane
credit institute would lend you money when they see your tiny liability
investment. However, it _is_ possible to make your business legal and
profitable, and then borrow some money. But, honestly, starting with literally
nothing is like starting a new game at maximum difficulty and perma-death, and
who does that in RL?

------
tjungblut
More money alone won't solve this particular issue. The link that is
referenced at the bottom of the article [1] highlights more of these
challenges:

\- Government Policies: Taxes and Bureaucracy

\- Governmental Policies: Support and Relevance

\- Entrepreneurial Education at School Stage

The first is a much bigger issue than missing capital.

[1] [https://www.gemconsortium.org/country-
profile/64](https://www.gemconsortium.org/country-profile/64)

~~~
raverbashing
Everybody complains about taxes but I don't think that's the most important
factor tbh

Whenever someone discusses corp. taxes in the US and incorporation it seems
it's full of gotchas, corner cases and traps. Not to mention every state
having its own legislation as well.

Taxes might be higher outside of the US (but then again, they're taxes: no
profit, no taxes) but they're not necessarily more complex (though Germany
ones are probably not the easiest tbh).

Startups exist in more tax complex countries. You can't buy culture, customers
and financing, the rest is doable.

~~~
thatsaguy
I don't know the exact situation in Germany or US, but in Italy, the "no
profit, no taxes" is definitely not true. Depending on the company type you
registered, there's a significant cost to just keep the ability to run the
company to _do_ business in the first place.

By experience, the dead cost of the smallest company you can run is between
5-15k per year. It might not seem much, but I've heard here on HN over and
over how to grow a side/passive income, and there's basically no way to do
this here. The moment you want to start a side business, the fixed minimal
cost is sunk, so unless you start making a significant sum from the start
you're just losing money that eats into your primary income. And there's no
_legal_ way to do the business below that. That's not how I understood people
in the US do this sort of passive income. It _sounds_ like "no money = no
tax", but this is not true here. You often have to pay taxes in advance on the
_projected_ income of the next year, even if you never had a business first:
the projection is based on god-knows-what market estimates you have no control
over.

The market segmentation, language barrier and tax situation in EU is a huge
burden. If you're working on a niche product you want to start with a wide
basin of users, at least as large as the EU block. Sounds stupid to start in a
single country. It's doable, but don't expect to start with a small capital,
and typically not with the wannabe-VC we have here in the EU. The 100k for
3ppl/year is not a joke.. a "100k-300k" ballpark is very common for startups
here. I'd consider that just for marketing, or even then. With this money you
basically cannot do anything serious, just considering how hard is to
penetrate the market.

I've yet to see something in the likes of Stripe in the EU. And a decent
replacement for Paypal for smaller setups. I'd love to have candidates here.
Accepting money is cumbersome if you're small. This is _sad_.

Workforce is a problem. But not because of talent. The extra regulation here
implies a _strong_ commitment when hiring. This forces companies to grow very
cautiously. You cannot resize the workforce to match the load. If you grow too
much, you may doom the company at the first financial difficulty. This causes
a lot of sub-contractual work to be done, with a significant decrease in
quality and cohesion. Not to mention, this line of working is being limited
more and more over time - I was working as an entrepreneur in the beginning of
my career but I cannot do that anymore and have to be regularly employed. I
could have started something from scratch much more easily 15 years ago
compared to now just due to regulations.

I could go on for pages...

~~~
jashmatthews
> And there's no legal way to do the business below that.

Actually, there is. Register an Irish company. All the paperwork is in
English, costs are low, and you can operate across the EU.

~~~
Keats
If you are based in Italy and operate the company from there, you will still
have to pay the Italian taxes. But yeah at least you should have easier
accounting and no running costs.

~~~
jashmatthews
> you will still have to pay the Italian taxes.

Yup. The company is clearly subject to Italian taxes. This all hinges on
whether registering a branch is less hassle and cheaper than opening an Srl.

Lots of smaller German startups use either a UK limited or an Irish limited +
a German branch.

------
mprev
Has the author not heard of Rocket Internet? Hello Fresh? Zalando? Contentful?
SumUp? Wooga? Deepstreamhub? Delivery Hero? N26?

~~~
jayalpha
Rocket Internet were just the scumbags that ripped off every US based idea and
tried to implement it in Germany. A few "me-too" businesses. Okay.

There are very few big ideas that investors in Germany would pour money into.

~~~
yorwba
Their big idea was to copy every idea in markets where the original company
hadn't expanded yet.

It might not be the greatest technical achievement, but it certainly paid off
for them, demonstrating that execution is more important than being the first
to have an idea.

~~~
expertentipp
By "execution" you mean a wasp nest of POs, PMs, MBAs, friends'-friends and
lawyers standing over and yelling at engineers and developers imported from
Eastern Europe and India?

------
stesch
The difference is: We have labor laws.

~~~
NotCamelCase
Why is not there a middle ground between hire-and-fire-quick vs very
strong/rigid labor laws that would give more optimized/successful end results
for _most involved_ than either of the two extreme points would generate? On
one hand, I certainly would not want what's happened to e.g. Telltale
employees who recently got laid off abruptly with no severance packages to
happen to any of my friends/family. On the other hand, if you want a pool of
opportunities of strong growth to co-exist within your economy, you gotta
relax and give some room for those of us who are or want to be innovative.

Come to think of it, with the safety net that is provided in most developed
European countries (e.g. Sweden, Norway) one would think that there'd be more
innovations (normalized by metrics like population, etc.) generated there than
say, the USA but I doubt that is the case here without having any numbers or
proof. Is it the scale that matters most or what am I missing?

Overall, I for one wouldn't still trade strong labor laws with being the most
innovative place but I do still hope for a better middle ground for everyone.

~~~
jashmatthews
Germany has trial periods for employees. If you put in the contract you can
terminate the contract without reason for up to 6 months. It goes both ways.
Employees can leave with almost no notice during the same period.

------
kensai
I read this article a few days ago with three different ways of funding a
startup in Germany, namely (1) crowdfunding/crowdinvesting, (2) business
angels, and (3) wealth families (family offices).

[http://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/online-
magazine/invent-a...](http://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/online-
magazine/invent-and-establish/strategies-for-the-piggy-bank?set_language=en)

------
yayana
Not mentioned in the article is that the EU is made up of many smaller markets
that each demand a lot of customization. The Bay Area has instant access to
300 million consumers before anyone is dealing languages, currencies, etc.

B2C is more successful in the EU because barriers relating to foreign vendors
are less significant to businesses as consumers.

------
bogomipz
I have a question. Are there any German laws or regulations that prohibit
using startups from using stock options as part of total compensation? I
thought I remembered hearing something about this once, namely that it wasn't
possible in the same way it was possible in the US. Is there any truth to
that?

~~~
wink
I think the mentality in general is a lot more conservative, financially
speaking.

So also a lot of employees won't take stock options over a bigger pay.

I also think most developers are not in the mood to live like people in SF do
- just barely scraping by after accomodation and food. Most people here want
to live a good life on their "developer salary" which is already pretty good
for Germany in the most cases.

------
mrhackerpoland
The largest German startup is Wirecard.

If you received a prepaid card from online service like Payoneer, highly
likely you've consumed services of this startup indirectly.

There is also Dr. Bentz, creator of Bentz Bone which many people in Silicion
Valley have used.

------
mrhackerpoland
Startups need immigrants. Germany only accept immigrants from EU, not from
China or India which produce cheapest empoyees offering max value.

One key difference is that Startups lack fund.

So either:

1\. Funding be made more generous by offering tax advantages to invesitors

2\. Or, biggest expense are employees, so we need employees accepting a dream
stock unit and very low wage, so we can hire more of them.

But I've talked with German employees, literally, none of them will accept
more money for more work. There is very strong emphasis on work life balance
unlike US. So only way to overcome this issue is to get larger funding and
that's smth government needs to fix.

That way startup can become more competitive.

~~~
jlangenauer
This is not true.

I'm Australian, and it was _easy_ to get my Blue Card, and more recently my
permanent residency in Germany. Compared to the nightmare of dealing with the
UK Home Office, moving to Germany was a breeze.

(For those who don't know: if you have a 4-year degree, and can get a job-
offer that pays €48K or above, you can easily get a Blue Card, which lets you
work in Germany. Keep that job, and after 21 months, you can get a
Niederlassungserlaubnis (permanent residency) with B2-level German, or after
33-months with rudimentary German. It's an amazing deal.)

------
mrhackerpoland
It's because they don't need to. Startups often include difficult and intense
work environment. For exactly what? Better than average compensation
discussion is frowned upon in Germany. There is ramphant latent descrimination
against people from other countries. Which German company has a foreign born
CEO?

In US, Google and Microsoft have foreign born CEOs.

This is my own experience, so downvoting is only silencing a voice.

~~~
chobeat
> Startups often include difficult and intense work environment

Compared to the USA? Lol, you have no clue. The standard for a software
engineer in SV is to take drugs to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week, pay a
fucking high rent living with 4 other people and if he's foreigner and freshly
arrived, he has to suck his boss' cock everyday because they might take away
his visa sponsorship and put him into troubles.

In Berlin most people I know work less than 8 hours a day, can afford to have
their own apartment at their first or second job and save enough money and
energy to go travel somewhere every 3 months. Because you know, we have 30
days of holidays per year.

~~~
dang
In addition to being uncivil, this is wildly wrong ("The standard for a
software engineer in SV") and you misread the parent comment.

Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

