I re-visit Berlin several times per year and I wouldn't be surprised if the real number is higher, there are a lot of very quiet hardworking people there that are plugging away without any fuss on their projects and some of those have more promise and are better thought out than quite a few of the ones that are hyped.
Spot on. We're at a 8 digit dollar valuation here after just 2 years of hard work and nobody knows yet - as we don't hang out on shiny conferences or court "prestigious" VCs but simply put the pedal to the metal from day one with a kick-ass team.
Zero financing rounds and not a single name in our Crunchbase entry to date, and we'll come in with a bang one day.
VCs were simply too slow to follow our pace so far (by now we grew out of their typical round size & target multiple) and we'll probably grow profitable without them.
Sociomantic did the very same thing by the way and nobody was any wiser when they did a huge exit from nowhere. Thanks to the environment, it's still pretty easy to bootstrap in Berlin and go after alternative financing sources (it's starting to change though, starting at the rents).
There's still the usual Rocket copycats and some interesting SV-style overhyped BS startups too by now that won't survive - but by and large Berlin has a lot of humble, technically excellent and hard working startups to offer. It's definitely going to survive the down-market to come.
>We're at a 8 digit dollar valuation here after just 2 years of hard work
and
>Zero financing rounds
Are a contradiction. Valuation isn't something you come up with your executive team or your accountant, it's the number that is deduced from an investmenet or an acquisition.
Also, valuation is by no way a measure a success, the real measure of success for a company is the amount of profit.
There's no rule to how to calculate valuation. You can take your profit numbers and run them against a multiplier based on industry. Ex. using an average of the profit to valuation ratio of the next 3 competitors.
That would be a generally fair assessment of valuation, and shows how one can calculate valuation without direct investment by an outside party.
You are right to doubt the valuation - in fact, you would be right to question any valuation, since all parties involved benefit from inflated valuations (to a point).
> How does an investor benefit from overpaying for equity?
It's not overpaying if they know exactly what they are doing and why: they can afford to pay for an inflated valuation. Also, value is subjective. If you go down Sandy Hill doing valuations, you're bound to get wildly different values - which one would you consider "correct" or "overpaying"?
Possible benefits, in no particular order:
* Increases chances of startup accepting their investment.
* Halo-effect on their investment. If $STARTUP is worth $X billion, then surely "they are onto something big". This in turn increases the chance of the startup succeeding
* Prestige/profit. If you were publicly buying a painting for ap speculation/resale, surely you can afford to pay 10% extra if it increases the painting's percieved value by 30%. Now you own a painting that's worth 30% more than it's "real" value (had you not paid more)
> I humbly suggest that the wildly varying values you get on Sand Hill is from varying beliefs, not a conspiracy or a scam.
I wasn't suggesting conspiracy, my point is there is no "one true valuation" so answering the original question "valuation according to whom?" doesn't provide useful information.
Although we have a rather nonstandard business area (not the usual ecommerce/saas/social/gaming stuff) and have no direct competitors, we could get a good grip at it by going down several routes: talking to industry experts, comparing indirect competitors' valuations and also by extrapolating from usual relevant business metrics such as current and projected revenue, traffic, margins, growth rates, and market size.
We also talked to quite some VCs who confirmed our range to be pretty spot on in initial negotiations.
Can't disclose for obvious reasons, but the potential isn't that hard to understand actually.
Still, the first big unexpected hurdle was that VCs were totally "blinded" by their previous expertise. They tried to apply numbers from their well-known business areas (social / saas / ecommerce) to our model, which simply didn't fit our business case. So we went out and built the product and sold it to large clients anyway.
Thing is: Our product by now outperforms the next best option for our clients by 100% with no alternatives or competitors in sight (it's a little niche-y, but still a multiple billion dollar market).
With a product like that, the second thing that we didn't expect was that we tripped the "too good to be true" sensor everywhere, raising doubts.
And when we were over it, VCs seemed to have an ego problem with being "too late", us not wanting to do a particularly large round, them not reaching their target multiple to save the fund, us being "too expensive already" or them always wanting to "advise" a team of industry veterans and second-time entrepreneurs that demonstrably knew better than them - instead of simply putting in their money and help with PR and their networks instead.
Thing is: All investors say they want a great team, stellar culture, demonstrated product-market fit, fast execution, great technology and hockeystick growth.
We brought it all to them and found out that if you know you have it and are asking a fair price for it, 99% of them are too scared to jump on board of a train that's already full steam ahead. They'd rather be the one discovering it.
What I took from it is that awesome VCs are just as hard to find as awesome start-ups.
"We brought it all to them and found out that if you know you have it and are asking a fair price for it, 99% of them are too scared to jump on board of a train that's already full steam ahead. They'd rather be the one discovering it." --
Interesting. Have you tried to reach out to non-German VCs as well?
you've given a lot of hard data but fail to draw the obvious correct conclusions, that the reason you haven't raised financing is because you're not located in Silicon Valley and don't have an office there.
>We're at a 8 digit dollar valuation here
What do you mean by this, given your next sentence that there are 0 financing rounds - then how do you have a valuation? I'd like to know what you meant by 'we're at an 8 digit dollar valuation'.
>Zero financing rounds and not a single name in our Crunchbase entry to date
>VCs were simply too slow to follow our pace so far (by now we grew out of their typical round size & target multiple) and we'll probably grow profitable without them.
>Still, the first big unexpected hurdle was that VCs were totally "blinded" by their previous expertise.
all of this is completely standard. you wouldn't have experienced it if you had been in silicon valley.
your story kind of proves that VC funding is not an option in Europe.
>Our product by now outperforms the next best option for our clients by 100% with no alternatives or competitors in sight
this is a typical case in which a European company can't raise money at a normal valuation.
Another typical case is if its product outperforms the next best option by 500%. Yet another case is if it has no competition and 100% monthly growth. None of these things would let a European company close a normal round, nor would cash flow do the same.
>With a product like that, the second thing that we didn't expect was that we tripped the "too good to be true" sensor everywhere, raising doubts.
I do expect that. No European company will get an investment at a reasonable valuation for this.
>We brought it all to them and found out that if you know you have it and are asking a fair price for it, 99% of them are too scared to jump on board of a train that's already full steam ahead. They'd rather be the one discovering it.
Slight correction: 100%, not 99%. If it were 99% you'd just need to talk to a hundred investors, which you could do in about 2 weeks (10 workdays * 10 investor relationsihps per day = 100 investors.) So it's not 99%, it's 100%.
>What I took from it is that awesome VCs are just as hard to find as awesome start-ups.
Awesome VC's don't exist in Europe. Awesome startups do.
I've never heard of an even acceptable European VC.
The next time one of them wastes your time, ask them this:
"I'm afraid I don't talk with European VC's until they've proven that they're qualified buyers, since it is a waste of my time. So, I'd like to ask you a hypothetical qualifying question. Suppose you were wanting to invest in a company that had the following statistics: firstly, it received $600K in European Union funds as a grant to develop a technology, this was free money and did not need to be repaid. Second, suppose they were successful in developing their technology using this money and applied for and were granted strong international patents on their fundamental innovation, including a U.S. and EU patent. Third, suppose they've sold 1,000 products in the first 9 months, generating $1 million in sales from their first run, which they did not book a profit from. Due to strong international patents, suppose that at this stage they have a protected market and are targeting 70% margin (30% of the sales price is their cost of goods + other fixed amortized costs). Having sat down and done the calculation, you give them a discounted future earnings of $10M, based on your most conservative (lowest) targets of the number of orders that they ship, and based on nothing more than multiplying the number they have already shipped with slow single-digit growth for 5 years and then a drop to 0 because you do not model farther ahead than that. The basis for the growth is the products they've shipped in the past 9 months, and their lack of competition, their protection, and so on. For a company that had all of these assumptions, what might be a fair valuation (or range) for a $400K investment?"
Watch them not answer that question, at which point you terminate the conversation and stop wasting your time.
I came up with this example because it's the closest thing I could think of to validated, free money.
I would never talk to a European investor. If they gave me an acceptable answer to the above, I would ask for a reference. If the reference were to a successful European startup they've funded, I would send them a pitch deck and ask for a non-refundable earnest money deposit if they want to talk to me about it (something small, like a few k $.)
if they wanted to talk and did so, I would answer all their questions and tell them what terms I would accept and ask for a term sheet if they are interested.
if they offered terms I would sign it and get their money. if they didn't i'd stop giving them my time.
There is zero chance any European VC will get to the stage where they are giving you money under reasonable terms, though. what happens is you just cut them out.
Next time, just spend 3 days opening an office in silicon valley. you can fly out and have your money in a few weeks, rather than waste months on unqualified European VC"s.
would you talk to a mcdonald's cashier about selling your ferrari to him? Maybe for a minute.
A former boss of mine had Strong Opinions on this subject, risk aversion. His opinion was that the UK, and Europe generally, is still somewhere where you have to know the right people to get ahead. Success or failure is too much dependent on social position, not hard work or the quality of your ideas. Indeed, having good ideas as an "outsider" is likely to count against you due to being a disruptive threat to the social order.
Part of this affects the banking culture; it doesn't matter so much whether you lose or gain money as whether you did so following the conventional wisdom. If you lose money doing something unconventional, it's social and career death. If you lose it in something conventional like real estate speculation, that's fine, and you can keep drinking with the Right People who've also lost money in real estate.
they don't know what they're doing. For example, why would anyone filter out things that are too good to be true? that's what due dilligence is for.
If I'm a VC and someone sends me, "hey, I pitched you xyz two years ago, you didn't invest. but I remember you know materials science and had worked as a trader. I'm introducing my friend, he's a chemist at MIT and he has just come up with a way to make a material that sells for $87,000/kg in any quantity for $1/kg + his proprietary sauce. he also doesn't want to destroy the market for it. I know it's a stretch but if you still have that materials science interest I think you would find after DD that he really does have the goods. I'm attaching his pitch deck which doesn't contain a lot of information. I've known him since grade school, when he was 9 he did the blades for the first wireless quad copter that streamed HD video, I don't remember the details but the alloys had a bunch of constraints and he ended up using a special plastic normally used in medical applications. Anyway he then concentrated heavily into materials science, would need some measure of coaching but is very coachable, and we talked about his project at an alumni dinner a few days ago. he casually dropped that he's doing 100k in trading sales without revealing to his buyers that he's making the stuff in his kitchen rather than trading it. I don't believe he ran a business and is a sole founder. let me know if you would like an introduction."
so what do you do?
you get that introduction, you read the pitch deck, and if it's too good to be true you fucking do due dilligence.
what does a european vc do, "oh no, this seems like free money to me. That's not what we're really about here."
Well, start-up means a new company that is after ultra fast growth.
I had so much interviews at plain old small to middle sized companies in Germany which called themself start-ups just because it was cool. But most of them were just generic consulting shops.
Pedantry around the definition of something as vague as "startup" is itself a form of social signaling which I find both tiresome and also the type of thing which people who hope to succeed in "real startups" need to really not be spending any time thinking about.
A startup is usually understood to be a company which is formed to test a new market or disrupt an existing one. The fast growth thing is not necessarily true since new markets are often not there. But to describe just any new company as a startup is very misleading both in terms of describing risk, but especially to potential employees.
This isn't to knock the value of entrepreneurship: there is quite a bit of virtue in starting a company that wants to tap an existing market. All things considered, these companies will likely do much better over the long run than most startup companies which end up failing.
I find the fact that many people who run companies that don't even think about building a product, let alone one that enables fast growth, call them startups rather tiresome.
A "product" is when someone identifies that a repeatable solution exists for many customers. This is not as common as one-off solutions for a particular customer.
>>Well, start-up means a new company that is after ultra fast growth.
I don't think many people will agree on this definition.
A new restaurant that is after ultra fast growth is not a startup. It's a small business. A new software company that attempts to innovate in a small niche is unlikely to achieve ultra fast growth but it is a startup.
To me, the difference between a startup and a small business is that a startup's goal is to innovate and its success depends on that innovation sticking. Quick growth is just one (possible) characteristic of this territory.
That's why most startups tend to be in the tech sector: most innovations use technology.
> A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.
Sure you can. Subway keeps showing up on lists of fastest growing franchises by $/year. Boston Market explosively grew on a percentage basis, for awhile. I'm not saying those have startup culture or startup financing or startup working conditions or startup salaries, but at least in theory there's no reason a "startup burger joint" couldn't be engineered, the marketplace is very friendly toward carpet bombing the planet with franchises (for a real world example consider a starbucks on every corner and every corner has a starbucks). VC funded franchised restaurant is not unheard of per google.
That's before you get into fads. Remember frozen yogurt? On a percentage basis that growth rate was incredible, and there were attempts to franchise, although that food fad went nowhere in the long run.
A new company with slow growth is a start-up. An old company with fast growth is not a start-up.
There's nothing about the growth rate that qualifies a company as a start-up. Though I suppose it could seem that due to a new company having "nowhere to go but up [or fail]".
Yes, there is the dictionary definition (I would say the proper one) and then there is Paul Grahams definition, which includes the fast growth part. Being on this site, the second one is often assumed to be the proper definition.
> If I open a hot dog stand, I may have incorporated only a month ago, but I haven't founded a startup.
No. For that, you'll have to provide a narrative of how you will revolutionize the global fast food market and secure the fate of humanity by providing billions of people real-time access to the very best of bovine and porcine by-product nutrition (optional: include heart-warming story about Denise, a mother of 7 from Decatur, IL, who was enabled to escape a hell of drug abuse and prostitution by opening a franchise, highlighting the world changing nature f your business and elegantly glossing over the fact that the franchise owner effectively earns less than a toddler searching landfills for sources of lithium).
I miss one thing in that post: a discussion of people abusing words to manipulate. This is typically done by taking a word with the desired emotional charge, and misapply it to piggyback on those emotions.
Allowed to fester, the spin-terrorists will rape a language to its death.
The author's glorification of the middle management and how it adds "efficient communication" makes me a little skeptical. But the rest sounds accurate.
What he means by "no middle management" probably is that people are left to their own devices with little oversight and direction. That sounds good - until you work in an environment where direction is missing. The worst job I ever had was getting paid to do whatever the hell I felt like. Everybody working on the same goal, in the same direction, is next to impossible to achieve, when it happens it's pure luck. It has nothing to do with the qualities of the individuals. Of course, this starts at the top - adding middle managers when the top doesn't direct adequately sure won't help.
I worked for a startup in the dot com era that everybody knows, which was eventually sold for a large sum (not a website, infrastructure/OS). I saw it a lot - and I myself was guilty of doing it - hiring people with great qualifications but we (and I) had no idea what to do with them! We just hired them. We (and I) gave them no directions. I'm somewhat ashamed of how I myself failed back then, but on the other hand not really - at 20-something the experience just isn't there.
Slightly related, I recommend this video for a perspective on "innovation": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (The true history of Silicon Valley. TL;DR: Gigantic government funding for R&D during WWII made it possible, only then came private capital.)
The part about Stockholm being 10 years ahead of Berlin sounds very delusional to me.
Salaries in Stockholm are lower on average, CoL are higher, and it's next to impossible to find an apartment there. Not exactly the best environment to attract talent.
I could very well see how Stockholm is 10 years ahead of Berlin in many areas, but maybe not that many were Berlin is ahead of Stockholm. It's just that it doesn't matter. Because Berlin is somewhere you can actually move to, while Stockholm would at least have to be compared to other unaffordable cities.
Many, even mundane, things. Berlin apartments are a varying standard, many don't have district heating. Grocery stores closes early, aren't open on Sundays, have limited selection and don't accept credit cards (which I've heard is changing). It's fairly normal that the staff is 40+ and don't speak English. Mobile internet is expensive, you'll have to register and charging can take hours. Still uses paper tickets for most things.
Overall Germany is more traditional, conservative and religious than Sweden and while Berlin might be an anomaly in Germany it's also the capital. Note that I don't think being ahead is necessarily a good thing and that much of the greatness of Berlin comes from being slightly crappy.
Wait, what are you comparing Stockholm to Berlin or Stockholm to Germany? You seem to be doing both and that seems odd.
Stockholm is far more conservative than Berlin.
So housing, it's next to impossible to find housing in central Stockholm, even for Swedish citizens let alone, ex-pats. Berlin while seemingly becoming more difficult, it does not take years like it might in Stockholm.
A pint of beer in the Stockholm is around $10-12 US and its probably not locally brewed. A wonderful local Pilsner in Berlin will cost you about $3 US.
Central Stockholm is very segregated, Berlin not so much.
How many late night places are there in central Stockholm 4 or 5?
Galleries, museums, clubs and music venues, the arts in general? Berlin, hands down.
Berlin seems to let you just have your fun as long as you aren't hurting anyone, Stockholm feels very regulated.
That's a very selective reading then, because I also listed housing, culture and transportation. The reason for bringing it up at all is because like or not after work beer culture is likely to be of interest to 20 or 30 something tech workers. A key demographic of start ups.
I don't think that is a very selective reading. That's the story of any Swede I know moving to Berlin. Don't get me wrong I think it's great, especially if you're bootstrapping. But it definitely speaks to the maturity of the startup scene. If you're really trying to run a business the value of drinking cheap beer and being up all night will quickly diminish. And finding a good selection of alcohol is far easier in Stockholm.
This has to do with the Ladenschlussgesetz (there is no proper English term for this) which usually forbids that. In particular the German FDP (a German party that is somewhere between liberal and libertarian) wants to abolish this law but the churches lobby for upholding it. I personally would abolish it as soon as possible.
> Grocery stores [...] don't accept credit cards
This is because merchants have to pay some amount for any credit card transaction. So they have good reasons not to accept them. In Europe there exists a much better system: EC cards. Use them instead if you really don't want to use cash (which is much more anonymous and thus should be prefered).
> Still uses paper tickets for most things.
If you imagine the data trail that non-paper tickets leave behind you, I would rather suggest to start using paper tickets wherever you live (Germans are much more concerned about protection of privacy (Datenschutzgesetz) because of having two dictatorships on German ground in the 20th century of which one was only abolished about 25 years ago).
While I am also against the Ladenschlussgesetzt, poor people in Germany have freetime and do not have to have three jobs to survive. It is a different culture.
While I appreciate the backstory, I don't really see how this is an argument for not being 10 years behind Stockholm. I mean EC cards are a good idea, but they aren't internationally viable nor even everywhere in Germany. Now when EU has regulated the fees other cards will start showing up. Mastercard/Visa is everywhere in Sweden (many stores have their own cards too of course), you really don't need cash. Privacy is of course laudable, but this seems more to be conservatism towards technology than actually implementing something different. If you would have said "we have this anonymous electronic payment system that works everywhere" I would have believed you. I've still had DB tickets in an app, so it's not like it doesn't exist.
It's a cost thing & a culture thing. Japan likes it's cash too. Sweden loves it's credit cards to a point where you can't use cash in some situations easily.
i was born in Germnay and currently live in Berlin and share the frustration about credit cards or the fixation on cash. Adding to that is the fact that to get cash out of a machine that does not belong to your home bank usually costs you 2-5 EUR...imo it's a ridiculous scam scheme.
Although I would still argue about the credit cards. Most stores / restaurants don't accept EC ( Maestro ) ... They usually put a huge sign - "Cash only".
> Although I would still argue about the credit cards. Most stores / restaurants don't accept EC ( Maestro ) ... They usually put a huge sign - "Cash only".
But if they don't accept EC cards, they surely won't accept credit cards. :-)
Every second Späti around Mitte is cash only. Not to mention the face of a cashier, when you ask if you can pay with a card. One time they asked me to buy more than 10E products in order to do that.
I live near Kaisers on Warschauer Straße, which closes on Saturday 11:30pm and opens on Monday 8am. Otherwise it's always open. Spätis are 24/7 and some have basic groceries in addition to booze. If I really want to, I can go to a 24/7 Real in Ostbahnhof.
I don't remember the last time I couldn't pay with credit card in a grocery store. It still happens elsewhere and annoys the crap out of me. It's also super annoying that many require PIN or signature instead of the contactless payment method which is faster than cash.
Mobile internet is truly shit. Not just expensive, but coverage and bandwidth are pathetic. When I was in Taipei, I don't think the "LTE" icon on my phone ever went away (including the subway).
Getting internet hooked up in a new apartment is always a complete disaster. In theory it should be sufficient to hook up the router they sent you. But at least in my (3) cases they always had to send a technician and I waited for ages.
Which mobile ISP are you using ? Telekom has LTE pretty much everywhere outside and i frequently get >50Mbps when doing a speedtest around the city, all reception is usually strong. Vodafone should also be decent, but anything based on O2/Eplus can be shitty (but cheaper).
Not saying mobile internet is great, imo it's too expensive to get a decent amount of mobile data and speed, but it's not shit.
At home, if you get cable it should be set up in a couple of days, DSL can take weeks though.
I've switched from O2 to Congstar (D1/Telekom) in 2013. Just to find out that I barely had any signal in my flat in Prenzlauer Berg (where O2 worked fine, at least for calls).
Overall D1 is much better than O2. I have to try doing speedtests, but gut feeling when e.g. searching for stuff in Google Maps is that it is much slower than what I had in Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong or major US cities. If Berlin wants to be all high tech and startuppy, they have to match that.
Oh and if you take the train out of Berlin, hoping to get some work done... don't bother trying.
Currently sitting in my apartment on the couch and get 27/12Mbps with a ping of 33ms on Telekom LTE, that should be enough for anything you can do on a mobile device. Not sure what other major cities are getting and i don't doubt the average could be higher, but it's not that bad. Congstar is also a lower cost ISP, so even if its D1, it's not the same quality of service. For example it's limited to 20Mbps in most cases vs Telekom which goes up to 300Mbps in the center of Berlin.
i kind of love/hate it because i only go there on sundays when i need some stuff and of course a lot of other people have the same problem and so it's usually super crowded to the point that you have to wait in line to actually get into the store.
I disagree with some points. The hate for "no middle management" is laughable HOWEVER the "too many cooks" situation can definitely happen
The German management style is built on many people agreeing at the same time and doing things as good as possible which is great when you're building a train network but not so much with software
You could also call it a Volkswagen approach towards innovation. Never first to market, never anything rushed out, and do not stray away from the beaten path until the new thing has been implemented perfectly.
Buying up every brand under the sun and cutting costs by putting the same window openers into their cars sounds reasonable to me. Tesla is innovative and all, so was Porsche. VW does not care and just buys you. I mean, they are running out of car companies to buy so they have to buy motorcycle manufacturers.
I know I'm not supposed to mention The War, but according to John Boyd, there was a similar phenomenon in the German army which aided the success of Blitzkrieg tactics:
'According to General Gunther Blumentritt, such a scheme presupposes a common outlook based upon “a body of professional officers who have received exactly the same training during the long years of peace and with the same tactical education, the same way of thinking, identical speech, hence a body of officers to whom all tactical conceptions were fully clear.”
Furthermore, a la General Blumentritt, it presupposes “an officers training institution which allows the subordinate a very great measure of freedom of action and freedom in the manner of executing orders and which primarily calls for independent daring, initiative and sense of responsibility.”'
It means that instead of giving concrete orders how to do something, the leader gives order to achieve a certain goal, and it is in the autonomy of the next level of leadership to decide about how to do it. This is directly related to Clausewitz' understanding of war as something that is very much up to chance and unpredictable outcomes, rather than something that can be planned completely beforehand.
That's interesting. Two quotes from the Wikipedia page that I think are relevant to this discussion of management styles:
"[There is the following] implicit requirement imposed on superior commanders:
* to give their subordinates no more orders than are essential (every order given is regarded as an additional constraint upon its recipient), and:
* to be extremely rigorous, absolutely clear, and very succinct in the expression of their commands."
"Few armies seem to have mastered the approach. The Wehrmacht are perhaps the premier example—a degree of competence achieved only after rigorous training under Hans von Seeckt between 1919 and 1935." So Boyd's observations about WWII are corroborated by that account.
I guess the big mental requirement there is the ability (on all command levels) to understand strategy and translate it into tactics, and to change from one tactic to another in order to achieve the same strategic goal. This was what Helmuth von Moltke (Chief of Staff of the Prussian Military) coined as "No plan survives contact with the enemy" (paraphrased).
The battle between top-down and bottom-up management styles is still pretty alive in most companies, I guess.
Indeed and I missed this in his byline at the end. However my observation is still relevant here for someone so enthralled by the Swedish startup scene, complaining about Berlin's management culture strikes me as hypocritical.
Indeed. That post was awful, partial, shortsighted and badly written by someone who doesn't get complexity and thinks berlin should just be a silicon valley or London copycat. Therefore no, let's not link it anymore.
Remarkably, average income in Berlin is actually growing slower than the rest of Germany. Berlin's economy is growing faster than the rest of Germany, but people keep arriving almost as fast as the economy grows.
Also while salaries are relatively low, an experienced engineer and still earn 60k+ which is decent money because the city is still quite cheap. Many other startup jobs are paid pretty poorly though.
Just to put a hard number, if you're paying 1000EUR per month on an apartment you're probably paying too much (and it's going to be a big place in Mitte for example)
I just checked Immoscout24 and though the average is higher it seems you still can find stuff around 1000EUR (of course there's pricier options if you want)
Good luck getting those though, the competition is fierce (all the good apartments get 30+ applicants showing, sometimes 50+).
For a 3 room (2 bedroom) apartment of around 90m^2 (hardly what I would call big for a family) you will pay around 1000 net (kaltmiete) for a place outside the Ringbahn in Tempelhof/Stieglitz/Schöneberg/etc.
In Mitte prices will be a higher (although there are still shittier areas near Wedding where prices might actually be lower in Mitte).
You could also try a shared flat (WG). I'm paying 320€ per month (Warmmiete) in Wedding. It might not be the coolest place in town, but it has certainly more bars and nightlife than Mitte.
Also its about 10-15min into Mitte by bike or public transport.
It's not. 1000-1100 is still the sweet spot for leveling up the kind of place you're renting. From that price up the raise hasn't been as steep as for lower rents in the last few years.
I don't think car costs would be hugely relevant for Berlin, every time I've visited Berlin the U-Bahn / S-Bahn has got me everywhere I wanted to go. Though I can't imagine using a car in SF either - perhaps a BART/Uber vs U-Bahn comparison would be appropriate.
Well I would say that there is huge lack of talent because the salaries are ~ 60k. Funny how everything is "average" and you can negotiate ~10% more but that's usually it.
Btw, if you google "senior developer salary berlin", you will get `Berlin earns an average salary of €57,355 per year`. [1]
That's actually not _that_ bad, if true. Depending on how generous the pension is, that might actually be quite low. I was expecting the tax rate to be much higher.
That's only the direct tax on income. Don't forget VAT, high petrol taxes, high electricity taxes. I'd say your total tax rate is somewhere around 70% if you take all that into account.
Also the pensions aren't something to write home about really. (There's already politicians starting to talk that everyone should get a standard pension - no matter how much they paid into the system. Give it a few decades and we might arrive there).
This - if you're 20s or early 30s the chances you'll get to use the pension are slim to none, considering how the pension funds are structured, current state of work force/pension system and future trends, etc. there's going to be huge restructuring down the road and the chances of you getting out proportional to what you paid in are ~0 if you're above average income.
You would do much better to invest that money either in your education/career/life standard or doing proper investing.
> Also the pensions aren't something to write home about really
State pensions are around 50% of your work income. Even if that is only €50k per year in the end, that would be equivalent to the annuity from a €1 million private pension pot.
And it is backed not by a company which will go bankrupt twice over in the next forty years, but the taxation powers of the German government, which is famously good at balancing its books.
TLDR: The pensions are better than most anywhere in the world - though you also pay the price for it.
Yes, now they are planned to be 50%. But in 30 or 40 years?
I'd rather put the money in a private saving plan than to hand it over to the government for a vague promise of "no worry, we'll pay you somehow back".
Much higher? Most of Europe has income tax in this range (generally lower on the lower end of the earning scale) AFAIK.
Eg. I'm currently paying around 30% income tax in Norway (but that'll probably ease up towards 40% as I move into a more reasonable income bracket - and one needs to remember 25% VAT here - I'm guessing it amounts to another 5%-10% points added on top of the income tax).
This includes free health care, free education from primary school through college, subsidized pre-school etc.
Even in states like Texas, AFAIK one doesn't typically come out much ahead in terms of taxes in the US - and in general get very little in return.
Sometimes I wonder how much long-term damage the Samwer[0] brothers have done to Berlin startups' being taken seriously. Not just from outside Berlin -- it's pretty common to run into someone working on "PetFoodScout24" or the "German Snapchat" or whatever.
As has been noted elsewhere here, one of the cool things about Berlin is that there is a "scene" if you want it but if, say, Soho House[1] isn't your idea of cool then there's also a lot of alternative things going on. And plenty of people who freelance while working on side projects that might grow into startups.
The low cost of living and (AFAICT, since I'm a regular employee) the viability of tech freelancing creates a lot of space for exploring non-obvious ideas.
For instance, while the gentrified and hipsterfied neighborhoods have quite high rents compared to incomes, it's still eminently possible to live for cheap in a safe and quiet neighborhood just a few subway stops from the urban hustle & bustle. This buys you a lot of creative freedom.
The Samwers's companies and their awful approach to company structures and culture continue to do a lot of damage. Let's hope it's just not that long term, and it can be flushed away with their eventual and inevitable demise.
One good thing, though, is that most of the people of the tech scene won't consider Rocket companies as a good example of what you shouldn't do if you want to have a thriving company culture.
On the other hand, though, the idea that one's in it for the quick money grab that may come from a nice exit is very much ingrained in most of the "cool startuppers" here.
I am non-German living and working for a startup in Berlin and so far my biggest struggle is the language barrier. If you don't know German you will be fine in your work but outside you will feel as a stranger. You usually feel it when you go to a doctor, you shop for something more complex, you use services where you need to communicate or you go to government offices or when you look for a flat.
It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.
Bah. I came here with about ten words. The only verb I could conjugate on the day I arrived was erschrecken, a couple of months later I did well already.
The key, and I think this applies to any language, is not NOT BACK DOWN. Some things will be hugely painful, if you back down you just defer the pain. The Germans will want to be polite and helpful (and practise their own English), don't let them.
Some HNers will know about the Israeli language courses after the war, when Israel had a seven-digit number of immigrants, hardly any of which spoke modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is an invented language, BTW, so "hardly any" is not an exaggeration. The model that worked was three-week full-time courses where ONLY modern Hebrew was spoken. They didn't let anyone back down: Students went without food until they were able to order in a restaurant where the waiters were helpful but spoke no foreign languages (usually late on the first day).
> The key, and I think this applies to any language, is not NOT BACK DOWN. Some things will be hugely painful, if you back down you just defer the pain [...] don't let them
This is very stressful. Forcing an interlocutor to speak to you in their tongue when they know your language much better than you know theirs, is basically rude, and persistence with impoliteness is stress inducing for many people. I have personal experience of this in France where people would insist on speaking to me, stutteringly, in my native English when I speak perfect, fluent, French. Thus the OPs point about the language barrier being an issue, IMO is very valid.
I am not saying it is not possible and definitely total immersion helps and at some point you will learn the language but it is not easy to spend 9 hours at work where you speak English and after that go outside and immerse yourself to German for a few hours and do that every single day for at least a year.
> I am not saying it is not possible and definitely total immersion helps and at some point you will learn the language but it is not easy to spend 9 hours at work where you speak English
I'm pretty sure at work they understand German, too.
Yeah, that's the key. I studied in a Max Planck Institute in Germany. 80% of the students were international and spoke English, but I could always speak German to the remaining 20% and to faculty. Of course, we'd switch to English for technical discussion, but chit-chatting in German makes a difference.
Also, you can think in German at any time of the day.
When I moved to Germany I got one native advice: "Speak English. If you speak broken German, everyone assumes you are an idiot and behave that way towards you. When you talk English, everybody tries to impress you." While I were in Germany it held...
> "Speak English. If you speak broken German, everyone assumes you are an idiot and behave that way towards you. When you talk English, everybody tries to impress you."
While there is some small element of truth in it, this only holds if you are new in Germany (and mostly because of politeness). If you live there for a longer time and don't work on your German, it will turn the other way round.
Yes, this passive-aggressive approach from Germans is pretty common. Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely (and don't even try to read legal documents, even Germans can't themselves). If Mark Twain couldn't learn it properly (read his story about the Museum of Curiosities in Heidelberg), how much chance do you stand? When you start studying German in depth, you are going to soon realize that it's an extremely illogical language despite initial appearances. There are so many idiomatic non-sensical ad-hoc rules, you'd have to learn an awful amount of exceptions that are used daily, you simply have little chance to catch up with the natives that consider them normal... Tja
My advice - if you really want to move abroad, move to the US, much less issues overall and English is way simpler up to C2 level (which gets super hard) and you can get a recognition and make a bank way easier.
> Tolerating for a while and then forcing you to switch, and then putting you back into "idiot mode" as you both sound funny and can't express anything precisely
That's not true. The typical German mentality is rather: They are/were willing to learn English to be able to communicate with you when you came. But now that you want to stay here for a longer time, you are expected you to learn German, too. So in other words: Some English speakers rather tend to confuse politeness (speaking English at the beginning to native English speakers when they are new to Germany) with acceptance (of having to speak in English to people that stay there for a longer time and are not willing to learn German).
Obviously I was talking about people that achieved B2/C1 level of German but still couldn't "discuss Wittgenstein" with the natives, locking them out of proper interaction at their intelligence level, not about migrants that don't care about learning German at all.
I think the primary challenge to learning a new language in the early stages is confronting this self-consciousness.
It's good training in not worrying too much about what other people think of you. What's the harm really in someone thinking you're an idiot? You know it's not the case.
Swallowing your pride speeds up learning immensely. You can even have fun with it--people will see you as funny and non-threatening, which can actually translate to likability quite easily if you don't get a chip on your shoulder about it.
Generally good advice when getting to know someone new that you want to like you. That said, you can always speak German to people you know or people whose opinion don't matter.
My issue is having basically no accent (raised with German spoken around me), but the grammar and vocabulary of a ~2 year old. Makes for some really weird cognitive dissonance whenever I open my mouth to a German. I feel you on the "think you're an idiot" thing, definitely jives with my experience.
The faculty were all rather nice to the students, and since it wasn't in a university, the 50 or so international students were a pretty tightly-knit group of people. They pushed a lot to finish the Ph.D. in 3/3.5 years, which is nice. Having so many experts in a specific scientific discipline concentrated in one place is pretty impressive, too.
My heart was elsewhere the whole time, so I'm not the best person to ask :P Germany itself was enjoyable, and I've met some fairly friendly Germans in WGs. It rains a lot in some places. YMMV, good luck!
At least a year? You sound like the kind of person who couldn't diet to lose a few kilos.
My wife needed a few weeks to be able to speak Norwegian on a conversational level, I didn't need much more than that for German (difficult to count exactly due to travelblah). Once you reach conversational level the rest of the way has a different quality — you'll need to learn more but you've conquered the cliff, the rest is a modest incline.
A lot of individuals just don't feel comfortable speaking a language before they know it well enough. I definitely have a lot of respect for people that can just pick up a few basics and manage to always get their point across. But I just couldn't do it. I'm the kind of person that rehearses what they'll say in the most mundane situations. I'm uncomfortable when the plan doesn't work out.
Recently I even got complimented by a McD employee for telling them my rather lengthy order flawlessly without any need for interruption, made my day ;-D
At some point I accepted that my English is terrible (I'm German) and I decided to not waste any more energy on being embarrassed. Lo and behold, that was were my English really started to improve because I used it much more and also more intuitively. Previously, I first constructed every sentence in my head before uttering it. That works to some extent but it prevents you from developing an intuitive understanding of the language. So my advice is: don't make your life harder than necessary, speak without thinking, you will make plenty of mistakes, but people will think you are cute. More generally, If you show your weakness in life, people usually react very positively.
So I'll risk the downvotes the parent got - massively, and say that he's got a point. You feel uncomfortable speaking the language at an early level? How.. horrible! Please do think about what you have written. Really. I don't even know what to say, it's just so silly.
Of course it's silly. As silly as being, say, shy is. Knowing that it doesn't stem from some rational evaluation or even realizing it hinders you is only the first step.
And btw I didn't downvote the parent. My point was mostly tangential rather than a counter argument.
> My wife needed a few weeks to be able to speak Norwegian on a conversational level, I didn't need much more than that for German (difficult to count exactly due to travelblah).
You guys must be both geniuses. Either that or those "learn X language in 14 days!" books actually work.
Just to add to that, "invented" might give the wrong idea. "Revival" is more accurate. It wasn't used in the day to day, and making it useful that way took some work. But it wasn't invented from nothing.
In particular, if you know modern Hebrew, you can mostly read the ancient Hebrew in the bible, which shows it is not truly a new language.
"The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French."
I'm British and I've been in Germany on and off since 2007. The first few years of learning the language were hard. I spent most of my time with German speakers, and after a few months they got tired of all speaking English for my benefit.
At first spending time in a foreign language environment is immensely tiring. I'd be ready for bed every night at 9:30 just from the mental exhaustion, but after a while things start to click.
To start with you start to get the gist of the conversations going around you. Then you'd start to participate, and finally you'd have a pretty good idea of what everyone is talking about and would be able to converse with everyone in a social environment.
My German is still full of mistakes, and my 5 year old speaks better grammatical German than I do, but people understand me, and that's enough for me.
That's very interesting! I don't think I've read about this process of learning a new language in such a specific way. It makes sense though.
I do have a question, if you don't mind my asking. When I arrived in the US from India, I learned very quickly that accent and voice intonation are very important for first impressions and learning an American accent with good intonation has greatly helped me both personally and professionally. So my question is: is it similar in Germany? I was curios to know whether this was just an American cultural thing or whether it was more universal.
I have a fairly good accent, but I also have a good ear for copying other people and impressions. My accent certainly isn't a typical British/American accent speaking German. The common mistakes are in pronouncing letters in an English way, rather than a German way.
That being said, intonation is relatively easy in German once you understand that all letters in German are always spoken in the same way, and always pronounced (no hidden letters), so once you have the grasp of the alphabet you can pretty much pronounce anything. In other words "Hochdeutsch" (high German) is fairly easy to get to grips with.
The hardest thing is German is the grammar. You simply have to learn the articles and tenses. Even Germans sometimes make mistakes with the articles (der, die, das, etc), which can change based on the tense, verb and base article.
For many English first language speakers, the lack of English grammar knowledge is a stumbling block to learning another language (it was in my case anyway).
One point to mention is that Germans seem to be particularly accommodating to my German language failures, impressed simply that I can converse in German. I am however white Caucasian and British. I'm not sure that same would apply if I was from Tunisia and black. In other words, I'm not sure if I have an observational bias. Other nationalities and cultures may have a vastly different experience to me.
I can't say anything about German culture, but I have an alternative hypothesis to your suggestion about American culture.
My experience, as a native speaker of US English, is that English speakers from India often fall into the category of "speak English fast and fluently, but with a strong accent that is hard for my US-trained ears to parse".
If someone with a strong accent speaks English slowly, I have time to adapt to the accent and figure out what they are saying; not so with someone who speaks quickly.
When talking with certain people from India (and Scotland), I am very tempted to just nod along instead of confessing, "I realize that you are speaking perfect English, but I have absolutely no idea what you are saying".
> I learned very quickly that accent and voice intonation are very important for first impressions and learning an American accent with good intonation has greatly helped me both personally and professionally. So my question is: is it similar in Germany?
First: There aren't many varieties of German (and you will probably want to learn "Hochdeutsch" (high German) which is the variation that is spoken in Hannover in its purest form) - yes there are varieties, but this is not a concern for most people learning German as a foreign language. So there simply isn't such an analogue to Indian English accent vs. American English accent in German for making first impression etc., since there is "mostly only Hochdeutsch".
As long as you have a correct pronounciation it is much more important to be really certain in the grammar (the German grammar has its ugly parts which even some low-educated Germans do wrong; so if you want to make an educated impression it is important to be very certain in the grammar) and have good vocabulary. If you really are able reach this level of German as a foreign speaker, I believe there will be hardly anyone who doubts your willingness to learn. :-)
Guess one could get help and exchange info there. But I'm speaking without experience here.
Could you (and others here) give some experiences with the issues you mentioned? Doctor, shopping for something more complex etc.
I can imagine it's difficult with governmental stuff, but for the others I assume there should be solutions. E.g. going to doctors in expat-heavy boroughs, going shopping in tourist-oriented areas etc. But I could be completely wrong. So please tell me about your (negative) experiences and the barriers /showstoppers.
You find solutions to these problems and you survive. You ask your HR to help you, you ask your acquaintances or friends to go somewhere with you or call somewhere for you and you start limiting your options only to places where they speak English based on sites where they gather English speaking places.
But at end of the day you limit your options because of your handicap and it decreases quality of your life.
Isn't that kind of expected? I mean, if you move to Shanghai I wouldn't expect you to live only speaking English. Or, if you apply to startup Chile, and decide to stay there, at some point I would expect you to learn Spanish. Learning any language takes time and effort and it's integral part of adapting to your host country culture and people. I would even say it's key for a successful relocation.
Indeed, but what I wanted to say this kind of article creates an impression Berlin is cool place with a startup scene where anyone can move and work there and a lot of people ignore their quality of life will decrease because they don't know the language.
I still don't get your point. I would expect someone moving to some other country to at least read about that place. If I was moving to China, because the startup scene was so good over there, I take for granted that at some point I will have to learn Chinese. It would be very, very naive to move to a country because you read somewhere that the startup scene is so cool somewhere and then realize they don't speak English at the grocery store where you get your croissants.
>
It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.
I'm a little bit surprised: Relocating for a job in a completely different country (with a different language, culture etc.) also requires huge effort and dedication in my opinion. Why were you capable of doing this step but claim that learning German is so hard? Yes, it takes a little bit more time, but I can't see the orders of magnitude difference in required effort and dedication.
I know a few Greeks who went to German language schools for a few months, when they arrived at Germany and they speak German really well. Yes not perfect, but fluent.
You cannot compare these. You relocate once and after that it is done. Learning a language is on going process that has a lot of phases and you need to do it continuously every single day.
I don't want complain how learning German is hard. I only wanted to mention something that nobody says when they talk about Berling being tech hub.
You don't have this issue in Silicon Valley. Your working language is also your life language.
> You cannot compare these. You relocate once and after that it is done. Learning a language is on going process that has a lot of phases and you need to do it continuously every single day.
Living and working in a foreign country with foreign language/culture is an ongoing process continuing every single day, too.
Netherlands should be better. But you still need to learn the language to get really integrated. Though there are people that've lived for 10+ years and don't know it there.
Sorry, you are really deluding yourself here. Not even in Scandinavia or in the Netherlands - where literally everybody speaks good english - english alone is enough.
You will always feel alienated without the local language.
> "You will always feel alienated without the local language."
My experience throughout Europe is that people generally have enough knowledge of English that you can get through a 2 week holiday without knowing the language. But even during those two weeks you start to learn little things to make life a bit easier. I don't understand people who go to a foreign country and expect to live without learning the local language. It's hard work but not impossible and just seems arrogant.
You cannot compare holidays with actually living there. In your everyday life you have problems that you don't experience as a tourist or did you order a plumber to fix your pipes? Or did you buy a television that you had to return because it was not working correctly? Try to figure out these problems with your A1 German.
Unless I'm misreading the parent comment, he is saying that it is not as important in countries were English is the primary language, because most people moving there already know it as a second language and don't have to start from scratch?
I can't imagine not learning the local language quickly if I lived in another country. To me it's part of the fun but it als shows respect. English speaking countries expect immigrants to speak English. So why would things be different anywhere else?
this. I think many German startups perceive it as hip to speak English (while 95℅ of the team speaks fluent if not natively German), and completely neglect the real world negative consequences this policy creates. IMHO the benefits are in most startup cases near none. First, for most German startups your market is German speaking, second almost any super English only speaking talent is going to be even more exited to work for you if you can offer them assimilation, valuable German language work experience, and give them access to all German society has to offer. This is especially true for any immigrant. Finally, in the long term some people might not care about participating in society, watching news, speaking to people without a stilted veil of a foreign accent, or bugging a friend to get a repairman to come to their house, but the vast majority will prefer to be treated as other Germans not as outsiders and be able to fully function in society.
I read somewhere (can't find the reference right now) that many German companies require everyone to speak English in the workplace because of pan-EU work policies. It's an interchange language that also allows citizens from Sweden & Italy etc to work with German speakers, since they all share solid English-as-a-second-language speaking skills. It isn't just limited to startups.
[That said, I absolutely believe immigrants should make every effort to learn the native language, it's why I've spent so long trying to learn German before attempting to move there.]
This is true - externally i.e. outside the 100 million+ people German speaking market. If you need to do business with Swedes, you will do this is English, same for most other EU member states. My point was specific to startups though, once you are a large established company with offices across Europe, English becomes much more beneficial.
isn't it normal?
most of the world does not speak english as first language, especially in Europe, where each country, even the smallest, use its own language.
Yes, it is normal. I am just saying what is the biggest struggle of non-German worker of Berlin startup from my point of view that almost nobody takes into consideration when they talk about the Berlin startup scene.
An hour a week with a tutor can make a marked difference.
While living in Switzerland, I found that High German was not useful and so I would have to learn Swiss German to be able to order a coffee, understand commands in exercise class, &c. Swiss German is not in practice mutually intelligible with German and is for the most part an oral language, lacking online resources or even a standard orthography. Trying to learn from papers and linguistic studies was not working...so I got a tutor.
The combination of appropriate source material and targeted corrections made a huge difference in my progress and for a long time after returning to the states I was much more comfortable with Swiss German than High German.
>It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.
Interesting. Wondering whether your native language is English. While mine is not, I'm pretty fluent in it. Why I am saying this, is because I've been learning German slowly for a few months now via the Duolingo app on mobile, and I did not find it (so far, anyway) to be very difficult. And that - not finding it difficult - surprised me a bit, because I had heard from friends in high school that they though German, for instance, was harder to learn than French (anecdote only, not data). I thought about the possible reasons for this (my not finding it too hard), and came up with one: since I know English, and German and English have some words and historical and cultural background in common, I could make educated guesses in many cases about the meanings of German words, before learning what they meant (because they were similar to English words meaning the same thing), and also in some other cases, after learning what the words meant, I could, with hindsight, relate them to English words meaning the same thing, just spelled a bit differently. This trick does not work for all words, of course, but does for enough of them, that it eases my learning. Also, I've developed a memory trick to associate new German words with known English words. It's not really anything new, just a form of association of the new word with a memorable (to me) English word or phrase, using what I think is called the memory palace method or something like that (I need to look up if that is the right one I mean).
> And that - not finding it difficult - surprised me a bit, because I had heard from friends in high school that they though German, for instance, was harder to learn than French (anecdote only, not data).
In my opinion (native German speaker) German is at the beginning harder than French for English native speakers. After you got to some level both languages are about equally hard.
For the reason: To become fluent in German you have to know inside out how to conjugate a verb (there are some ugly verbs and tenses) and declinate a noun/adjective (in all three grammatical genders, singular and plural) in all tenses/cases, which is really ugly at the beginning for people who aren't used to it. The best way to learn this is in my opinion brute training until you can do it blindfolded.
The reason why I emphasize this is that you will not be speaking fluently if you have to think for seconds each time what the correct conjugation/declination is for the verb that you want to speak now.
As soon you got over this ugly part (which, because it is ugly you better should be learning it directly at the beginning, so that you have it in you reflexes), German and French are in my opinion about equally hard.
>For the reason: To become fluent in German you have to know inside out how to conjugate a verb (there are some ugly verbs and tenses) and declinate a noun/adjective (in all three grammatical genders, singular and plural) in all tenses/cases, which is really ugly at the beginning for people who aren't used to it. The best way to learn this is in my opinion brute training until you can do it blindfolded.
Like learning multiplication tables by repeating them out loud and/or writing them out, multiple (heh) times :)
I guess that makes sense, particularly if there are not very systematic rules that define those things, i.e. you just have to memorize it (and is that what you mean by 'ugly' - that it does not follow logical rules by which one can figure out, say, verb conjugations of verb B after knowing it for verb A?)
E.g. I realized a bit after starting the Duolingo course, that it was not clear (without knowing it already) when to use Der vs. Die vs. Das, and some other things like that; even Sie means both She and They (in different contexts) - at least it was not explained in the app, AFAIK - could be I missed some part of it and need to re-check.
I think I need to now get some proper learning books for it. Duolingo can take you only so far, I guess.
> I guess that makes sense, particularly if there are not very systematic rules that define those things
There are systematic rules for this, but you don't want to derive the result each time you want to express something. Compare it to applying a formalized multiplication algorithm each time you want to compute something from your multiplication table (up to 100) vs. memorizing the table. You have to understand the rules (just as you have to understand how multiplication works) for conjugating/declinating, but to apply them in practise you have to rote train them as often as you don't have to think about the rules anymore (because you really don't want hesitate for seconds what the correct, say, declination is).
Thanks again for the elaboration. I'm getting what you say, and that was sort of why I referred to learning multiplication tables by rote, above.
It's pretty late for me, so I will read and reply to your and @lorenzhs's (thanks to you too) comments again tomorrow, if I have anything further to say or ask. Good stuff.
"Sie" has multiple meanings: in addition to the two you mentioned it's also the form of "you" used for strangers/official stuff/... it's usually capitalized in that meaning, and always plural even when talking to only one person. Prepare for lots of confusing moments with the Sie-vs-Du question.
>"Sie" has multiple meanings: in addition to the two you mentioned it's also the form of "you" used for strangers/official stuff/
Ah, thanks. I remember now that a few days ago I subconsciously noticed this - or rather, had a doubt - because I thought I had seen "Sie" used for all the three meanings, but wasn't sure (they did not all occur in the same session of using the app). Thought I had got it wrong between the meanings She/You or She/They. Good to have it cleared up.
Interesting. Hindi has 3 words for "you": tu, tum and aap.
The first is for informal usage with familiar people, such as friends or relatives, the second for more formal usage, such as in business or with people you don't know from before, and the third is the more respectful one, such as for elders or superiors in business or people of official rank, such as a judge, priest, etc.
Not everyone does it, though. I mean technically yes, it's required grammatically, but it's one of those rules that isn't always obeyed. It's a mistake but common enough to be aware of it.
In my opinion there is a cultural difference here: While in English, as I see it as a foreigner, if many people spell something wrong, it becomes an accepted spelling, in German if lots of people spell something wrong, it is still considered as wrong. There are even websites for common spelling errors and wrongly used words which you can link to in internet discussions to convince someone that/how their spelling was wrong, such as
>The reason why I emphasize this is that you will not be speaking fluently if you have to think for seconds each time what the correct conjugation/declination is for the verb that you want to speak now.
Learning is easy if you're interested. Einstein's advice to his daughter was something along the lines that you should pursue your curiosities because that way you can learn anything effortlessly.
For me, learning English was effortless, and Mandarin is no longer difficult as I now have a goal and an interest in learning. On the other hand, I never properly learnt to program though I started with QBasic at the age of ten, because I had no clear goal for it. Likewise with French and Japanese, and German while I lived in Berlin - I never saw myself living in any of the three countries for a long time.
I think Duolingo helps a lot in learning because you don't need to plan out times to sit down with books to study, making it less of a chore and more a natural part of life. Learning in school is really no way to learn. For me its always been books, movies, and the internet.
Duolingo is good, but I'm not sure it's a great measure of understanding the language. I've been teaching myself German over the last 5 years using Duolingo (and LingQ) and I've completed all the German lessons (Level 23) - and while I can read German reasonably well now, I would still struggle to write or speak fluently in German. Thinking of what you want to say quickly is a skill that Duolingo doesn't really teach - but maybe that's where iTalki or LingQ Skype classes come in. [Native English speaker here, for what it's worth.]
>Duolingo is good, but I'm not sure it's a great measure of understanding the language.
On further thought, I agree. When I wrote what I wrote above, it was in the back of my mind, to also add that I don't think the rate of progress that Duolingo shows for me, can be even near correct. E.g. after these few months (which also had gaps of a few days now and then during which I did not use the app), it now tells me I am 14 or 15% fluent in German - which I don't think can be the case at all, even without knowing much about the structure of the language, the number and kinds of grammar rules, tenses, the number of words in the German vocabulary, etc.
(I'm probably much lower, maybe 1 or 2% is my guess, if such a thing can even be measured.)
Also, some of my school friends who said German was hard to learn - for others, were Germans (who also spoke good English), so they likely knew what they were saying.
>and while I can read German reasonably well now, I would still struggle to write or speak fluently in German.
Interesting. Will have to see what my experience is as time goes by.
>Thinking of what you want to say quickly is a skill that Duolingo doesn't really teach
Will check that as time goes by. Maybe immersion is more useful for that skill.
The 15% fluency could be accurate - another way to interpret that number is that you struggle to understand 85% of the language. (Even after completing the German lessons, Duolingo says I'm only 49% fluent.) Duolingo is still great though, because it keeps you practicing every day. I'm amazed at how much more I understand now compared to when I started. It's worth persevering!
I've lived in Germany before, and my advice is to try to speak and listen to the language as much as you possibly can.
Don't know the word for something in German? Just throw in the English word and say the rest in German. Will the person you are talking to understand what you are saying? Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't. The point is to try to speak as much German as you possibly can.
I found it helpful to make a list of words I needed to say, but couldn't. Then I'd look them up and put them on flash cards until I learned them.
Pay attention to the words other people are using when they speak to you. Sometimes you'll catch on to what the word mean without having to look them up and other time you'll need to look them up. I learned so much just from listening to other people.
When you're speaking German (or any other language you're learning), you will make mistakes and you will feel like a fool. The most important part is to not let that stop you. Keep making mistakes and keep making stupid blunders, and learn from those mistakes. Anyone who isn't afraid to make mistakes and look stupid will learn a lot faster than someone who is.
I was talking to some German students who were recounting some particularly embarrassing language mistakes an American exchange student had made. They did think it was pretty funny, but they also really liked and respected him for trying really hard to speak German, even if he did make mistakes. This same student eventually ended up speaking very good German, and I'm pretty sure it was because he was willing to continue trying despite making lots of mistakes.
> It is possible to learn German but it requires huge effort and dedication and not many people are capable of that.
Actually I'm german and I think to learn every bits of our language takes a huge effort. I mean we maybe don't have so many Characters like the Chinese ones. But our huge rules of grammar and special word cases makes it ridicoulus.
And then there is the "Neue deutsche Rechtschreibung", which of course some things were reversed in the last years.
Basically when just ignoring all those stuff you are probably understood by the most people here even if they will likely try to correct you but I guess except a few there aren't much people that really know how to correctly use the language as a whole.
> But our huge rules of grammar and special word cases makes it ridicoulus
I'm German but living in the US for the last few years.
I've had American friends in Germany and from what I understand, most things are pretty "regular" compared to other languages. Not that many exceptions. People tell me that pronunciation is usually pretty straight forward compared to e.g. English.
There are also some weird rules that I don't recall ever hearing before.
e.g. everything ending in "-chen" or "-lein" uses "das" as an article.
Not sure if German learners can confirm/deny the learning complexity compared to other languages.
Neue Rechtschreibung makes things simpler when learning the language. It's only hard to internalize the changes, but esier when learning from scratch. It brings spelling and pronunciation in line. For example, daß doesn't make any sense if you know that "ß" is preceded by a long vowel whereas "ss" (as n the new spelling, dass) is preceded by a short one.
Others have already noted that the other things you mentioned may not be as bad as they seem to you.
I was thinking how useful it would be to have some "bilingual districts" in at least the top EU cities - areas where you could expect everything to also work in English (including doctors, shops, schools, etc.).
For example, I'm considering relocating with my family from Rome and would prefer to stay in the EU, but the UK isn't an option anymore. I'm not planning to move permanently, so, being sure to be able to do everything (not just work) in a comfortable enough way without having to learn the local language would be great.
> I was thinking how useful it would be to have some "bilingual districts" in at least the top EU cities
There are many people who (in my opinion rightfully) complain that when English speaking people talk of "bilingual"/"multilingual" they nearly always mean "native language + English" instead of "native language + another common language". For example in the southwest of Germany many people will understand French, too. But you stated clearly that this is exactly not what you mean.
> I'm considering relocating with my family from Rome
Here also Italian + French or Italian + German would be a very natural combinations for a bilingual district in Rome or Italy (Austria, Switzerland and France border to Italy - thus these combinations would be very natural).
Yes we could also create N! districts, where N is the number of languages spoken in the EU...
On a more practical level, I and my wife already speak English fluently, I have two remote teams composed with people from three different nations with whom I speak English, and having to learn eg German would make me need to use 3 different languages (4 for my wife, who is Russian). Seriously, the only shot we have at a European lingua franca at the moment is English.
Well, maybe I'll just have to move to Ireland or Canada if I actually move.
51% knowledge for English is far from a lingua franca in Europe. At least German (32%) and French (26%) are also very common to know. In this sense you shouldn't think that there is some European lingua franca, but rather a small set of languages which has the property that if you know them, the probability is high that you will be understood.
As a matter of fact I wrote that English is our only shot (= hope) to have a lingua franca. If it has to be two separate languages... that means you just don't want a lingua franca. Which of course is perfectly legitimate, but I look forward to a future where my daughter will be able to work and live in any EU country without having to learn dozens of languages.
Can I ask where you are from and how long you have been there? Are language classes not an option with the amount of work involved with the with working at a start up there?
That is crazy, I like in SEA and I've never felt not knowing the local language is an issue. Especially for the things you mention: doctor, flat and government stuff.
Germany have always been a stickler for dubbing things though, maybe they don't put as much effort into it.
> Germany have always been a stickler for dubbing things though, maybe they don't put as much effort into it.
There are hardly any countries that put more effort into dubbing foreign movies than Germany, but in this points Germans are perfectionists: If a dubbing doesn't use all the possible nuances that the German language allows for the best possible translation, people will complain. I've read (can't give source, it was many years ago) that among computer translations for pairs of "popular" Western language pairs, the pair "English -> German" is among the most difficult to handle. In my humble opinion this is because German is very exact in its wordings and allows to express lots of subtleties by its very free ordering of clauses. This makes it necessary to read additional things into the original text, which computers have difficulties with.
There are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original.
A bit of a digression, but...I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.
First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue.
Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production).
To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors).
There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English.
> I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.
The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.
In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.
To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.
Also, the combination "hammerhart" is a colloquial word, maybe comparable to "smashing" (as in, great) in English. Those two names are just a great pun.
I have only ever seen animated films/series where things like that occurred (which isn't dubbing as someone else pointed out).
When it comes to live action movies, I stopped watching dubbed versions a long time ago, at least in situations where I'm not watching together with people who don't understand English that well.
I cannot enjoy dubbed films as much as originals for a number of reasons. First of all the voice actors rarely match the tone/behaviour of the original actor very well, which detracts from the experience.
Then there's the problem that there actually aren't all that many voice actors in major productions so I tend to instantly recognize the voice actors (or at least recognize that I have heard that voice many time before) within seconds. Finally I just don't think most dubs are very good - they feel forced, cold, detached, often times like the voice actor was bored; you just notice that they were recorded in a studio and not on the actual set.
It bothers me enough that if say, Amazon Prime Video only has the dubbed version and not the original of a movie I was going to watch, I'll just watch something else instead.
Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, German native speaker here
I have a strong dislike towards dubbed versions where I'm capable of understanding the original. I've only seen the dubbed (German) version of The Bridge and it was excellent. Very captivating and I thin the voice actress did a great job. Obviously I can't compare to the original.
Some English -> German dubs which are said to be very good include most of the Monty Python stuff (believe it or not) and The Big Lebowksy.
I'm not exactly recommending this, but there are communities in Berlin whose main language is English, Turkish, Polish, Russian, whatever. It will probably hurt you in the long run, but you could always "live" in one of these.
Been feeling the same since Im living here in Berlin (about 3 months), I know I need to learn the language otherwise I'll never stop feeling like a stranger, but its hard to find time after work, I tried the German course for a month but it was so tiring, now I'm just trying to learn at my own pace with Babel and some audio courses.
Even if you don't have an EU passport or a degree it's not hard. There are programs that target entrepreneurs especially and at least one HN'er made it into Germany for several years running now working on his start-up. The start-up even got some German government funding.
Learning German is useful on many levels, it will make it easier to get through everyday life (though Germans in general will speak English quite well official stuff tends to be in German only), it will also allow you better access to the German market.
In addition, the Blue Card (in Germany at least) can fast-track you towards permanent residency. If you can prove German language skills at B1 level, then you can apply for permanent residency after just 21 months (see the section on "level of language skills):
AFAIK it's only a work permit if you apply for a job. You have 6 months to find one and then go with the work contract and get the extension, renewable almost forever (or you get a permanent residency permit). I works great if you are looking for a job in the areas they consider strategic.
The thing is that it doesn't cover people wanting to come here to found their own startups.
Also if I understand it correctly the "high skilled" part means having a degree in Germany, that's why I mentioned the "have an Engineering degree" in my other comment.
would love to get more experiences from others, all my friends that used the blue card were for Engineer jobs and they had degrees.
From my point of view not bad, I'm over forty and took me 2 weeks to get a job here, also it's really hard to find good seniors I guess due to salaries being lower than other start ups hubs.
A 52yo friend just got hired by a famous fintech startup 1 year ago. He's quite a granpa but there's no problem with that. Age hasn't been an issue.
Just one example, I know, but ageism is generally a non issue. Being female, on the other hand...
Living in Berlin since 1 year. I am coming here from Barcelona and everybody asked me if I was crazy because I was living a "super cool beach and sun" city and going into storms.
First of all, Barcelona might seem to be cool for vacations but once you live there, you will see that in winters it's pretty boring, people are not happy with their lifes due to policital and economical issues. Maybe you can build your circle with expats and isolate yourself from daily problems but I was surrounded by local people, also knowing the language I could not isolate. It was unbearable listening peoples' complaints about how big fucked they are etc. Barcelona pissed me off finally. After Berlin,
- I liked Berlin two times more than I expected. I am originally Turkish, so the community here helps me in my day-to-day business. No, I am not living ghetto life and avoiding that, but it's cool to be able to communicate when I go for shopping. Now I can also communicate in German more or less, so I need less my Turkish skills but still it helps me to feel like at home. You never know who is Turkish there, the doctor, the police officer, the hipster hamburger boy. So it's cool.
- Of course economically it is much better. In Berlin you make not so less than other parts of Germany but definitely you spend less. This is the cheapest capital of developed EU countries. Many people already mentioned that.
- I like using cars. Maybe for Americans it is unbelievable but in almost all European capitals you are punished because you have a car: Expensive parking, so strict rules etc. Berlin is not one of them, you can use a cheap and good car and you will need it. You can go shopping (and then you can go to the cheapest and best one, not the nearest one to your home), you can go out of the city etc. Having car won't hurt you here.
- There is one thing that many people in Berlin did not discover: Poland is one hour away. I know that country because my GF is from there. Very occasionally we are going there to do our shopping, repair the car etc. So it is possible to lower your spending even more exploiting this possibility. If you have a car you should definitely do that. Also supermarkets there have fancier stuff and very good food.
- Well about work culture everyone already said what it should be said. Briefly I am happy here, I think Berlin will my home for the next decades and I recommend to everybody to give a chance. This is a city where you can live easily.
No, but we have several similar things. Betahaus (http://www.betahaus.com/berlin/) might be the closest. There's a new one called Ahoy! (http://ahoyberlin.com/) which is getting off the ground. And there are tons of coworking facilities with their own cultures and work feelings. Avoid the Factory, it's full of the SV brogrammer types, or (worse) German transplants from Munich and Frankfurt playing SV dress-up.
I couldn't help but smile reading your description of factory because it is mostly true. We stay there as it is extremely cheap - membership fee only barely covers my coffee consumption :-) and because the environment is modern and nice. Ping me if you come by again anytime soon.
Extremely cheap?! Last I saw, a flex desk is about 350 Eur/mon, fixed 470. That's the most expensive coworking rate in the city as far as I know. But maybe you got a different deal.
In addition to the other comments, note that both the Chaos Computer Club and Freifunk are based in Berlin. The CCC has a space in Mitte though I am note sure that compares to Hacker Dojo.
If you're looking for something more grassroots, check out c-base. I've been to Betahaus and the vibe there is more commerce-driven rather than for the love of technology alone.
There must be something like Hacker Dojo somewhere, but St Oberholz [1] and Betahaus [2] and Factory [3] (mentioned in the article) are the names that spring to mind:
Are there any gay startups or gay people in startups in here? I've been living in Berlin for the past two years and cowork every Thursday - so if you are keen to make some new friends, shoot me an email at hi@(myusername).com
I worked 3 years in a Berlin startup. Here's some things I observed over that time.
First the city itself. Berlin changed drastically and is still changing. Cost of living, especially housing sky-rocketed over that time (1). The city has become hipster central with many ghettos forming (Neuköln) (2), which isn't necessarily a new problem but I saw it expand over those 3 years. If you love hipster culture its great, if not there's little escaping it unless you can get into a calm Viertel of which there are increasingly fewer. Also Berlin is increasingly poorer (3) and crime is steadily on the rise (4), and this is a palpable increase in comparison to just 4 years ago when I moved to Berlin.
But to qualify my statements, Berlin is a multicultural city like just about every other major city in Europe - you can find and do whatever you want or imagine. But the above are generally the things neglected by those trying to sell Berlin as an amazing place to live your life.
Secondly, the funding and general startup environment. Here Berlin is number one in Europe and was so even before the Brexit as the article mentions. There is definitely a huge startup network and hub of activity, so in terms of numbers and access to investors, cofounders, talent, there is a lot going on, but what I think is still lacking, and this article does a good job of mentioning it, are break-out homegrown successes - at least in terms of notoriety, i.e. Spotify. There are indeed moderate successes, companies that get bought out by US expanders or develop a moderately profitable business which are homegrown.
I think there are many reasons for this, one could be we haven't had enough time in Berlin, another one of the biggest factors I think, is that the European market is very hard to penetrate at such a high level, there are so many different cultures/languages, EU laws and country specific laws that expanding is more difficult than homogenous markets like the US or China (obviously), especially when you are a small team.
Anyways, the experience was amazing and if I could go back I wouldn't change anything. Still Berlin is not all a bed of roses, just as its not all work and no ecstatic elation and amazing exitement when you're building a new company.
Sorry, bit of an off-topic question, but I've been wondering for a while: what do people meen when they talk about there being a hipster culture somewhere? Young couples obsessed with lifestyle? Just curious
I mean if you're trying to get a job at some big corporation/old industry that just needs a programmer for their IT department then probably.
But my programmer peers all got their jobs without jumping through CV hoops, etc. here in Germany. They all work for more "modern" companies than European old money though.
I hired for a German startup, and got hired a couple of times. I've never seen a Europass CV, and I think most people here would find that weird/funny.
I'm recruiting at one of Germany's largest companies. I didn't use the standard format when applying and nobody cared, neither do I care when I see an application.
The latest person I hired didn't follow any standard at all :)
But to be honest - best way to get hired is still through your network.
Why is not going home even considered a possible scenario?
There is no way that it's a good thing, unless you wanna live a myth that Silicon Valley developed and has been portrayed as cool and "the right way to really innovate" by too many movies.
Showers also make it easy to get exercise in. Heading out for a quick run at lunch completely resets my day but without showers I have to head home or to a gym afterwards to freshen up.
This last answer makes much more sense.
Making crunch-time a normal thing to be sought after totally does not. Not seeing how this culture is problematic really baffles me.
Have you worked for a startup or in a situation with tight engineering or software deadlines? I ask that because for those of us that have had to work that situation, it is not so baffling.
Well, glad to hear it has a shower, but why close at 9 PM? In NYC we have a 24 Apple store open every day of the year (so is a 24 electronic store Best Buy).
The reason I bring this up is that coders are in "the zone" and I remember frequently working overnight until 5, 6 or 9 AM.
Axel Springer Plug & Play (ASPnP) is a corporate funded accelerator just as Hub:Raum is funded by Telekom. A large portion of the accelerator here are structured like that.
What counts as one of those startups? Any new business - then its not impressive at all. New tech companies - then it's something to notice. Or venture backed - then the figure is really something, especially if they are no more than 2-3 years old and have employees.
Good point, but you probably didn't read the article. Here is something even more impressive than the title:
Berlin’s startups collected €2.4 billion in venture capital last year, according to Ernst & Young. That’s more than the total haul among startups in London, Paris, or Stockholm, though it’s about 9 percent of Silicon Valley’s take.
Salaries in Berlin are much lower than London. London is still the tech place of Europe, i don't live in London, but I get contacted by UK recruiters nearly every day, very infrequently by Germans.
Since when are high taxes a problem for startups? Most of them don't generate any profits to be taxed. :)
I run a "normal" profitable software business in Germany and taxes + compulsory levies are really a burden here. But some VC funded startup that won't generate one penny for the next 5 years? They don't care about taxes.
If taxes were something to consider startups would keep far away from Berlin.
Actually I'm European but no matter. Geneva is more well suited for startups than Berlin. At least Switzerland is not part of the EU and has not ceded control over its currency/laws/borders to some superstatal entity which reminds me of the Soviet Union.
This is grossly irrelevant, but now that you’ve posted this link here, let me quote from the article:
"[...] sex crimes accounted for 1.1 percent"
"The report stated that the vast majority of migrants did not commit any crimes."
"Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis - the three biggest groups of asylum seekers in Germany - were high but given the proportion of migrants that they account for, their involvement in crimes was "clearly disproportionately low", the report said."
"The number of crimes committed by migrants declined by more than 18 percent between January and March"
Stop censuring messages just because you don't like what they say. The refugee crisis is way out of hand, hence Brexit, hence maybe Donald for you. 1000 sexual assaults would not exist on new years if not for migrants. They have a completely different culture that does not respect ours.
This report is mixing issue. First it includes petty crimes such as traveling on the public transport without a ticket (according to the report about 10% of the cases). migrants are often not allowed to travel from their allocated home, violations are tracked as a crime, which are included in the official reports. Illegally crossing the border to apply for asylum is a crime - which gets listed in the official reports (it's not prosecuted for asylum seekers). All of these are crimes I am not at all concerned about.
Most victims of violent crimes among migrants are migrants. That's concerning me more, but does not directly affect me either.
The primary issue I have with this report however is that is lumps separate groups together: registered asylum seekers from active war zones and migrants from the Balkan and Maghreb zones that basically stand no chance of ever getting asylum. These groups differ significantly in the number of crimes committed - but who'd expect the writers for a right-wing think tank to make such a minor distinction.
