Starting up in Berlin

Published September 30, 2013
Berlin has one of the most vibrant startup industries in Europe. — Reuters Photo
Berlin has one of the most vibrant startup industries in Europe. — Reuters Photo

Imagine this: you wake up at half past noon, get on your bike and leisurely ride past never-ending green belts and lakes, towards your workplace in the trendy area of Prenzaleur Berg. Half way there you realise you haven't brushed your hair, changed your holey tee-shirt or gotten out of your checkered shorts. You smile and think, "It’s all good!"

You arrive at your office - a loft in an eerie pre-WWII industrial building, every inch covered with griffiti. You wade through foosball tables, a vintage juke box and vending machines, and make your way towards the kitchen where your CTO is standing against the sink washing her dishes and eating out of a cereal box. She tells you all your colleagues are up on the rooftop working on a client's presentation. You climb the creaky staircase and find them all lying in the sun, working on their Macbooks, sharing ideas over Caramel Macchiatos while dipping their feet in the paddling pool overlooking Berlin's sprawling skyline.

This is how work is done at one of the many start-ups in Berlin - the atmosphere is… effortless, and yet, the energy is downright infectious.

Certainly, it’s almost everything that your normal 9-5 job isn't. Sure, it’s risky, you can say goodbye to retirement benefits and family health insurance packages, and say hello to unpaid internships that may or may not pan into full-time employment opportunities. Your company could become the next Twitter or Google, or it could end up being just another start-up road kill with nothing to remember about but a fancy webpage adrift in digital space. However, the incredible way your creativity could be nurtured and challenged, and the satisfaction of making something out of literally nothing - you'll never find that while wearing a designer noose on your neck and a coffin on your shoulders and working in the mind-sucking rinse, repeat cycle of the corporate world.

If you haven't heard already, San Francisco's Silicon Valley is so passé now - it's all about Berlin's Silicon Allee! Berlin has a start-up scene like none other. It’s teeming (to the point of spilling over) with creative-minded twenty and thirty-somethings from every corner of the world. It's a diverse mix of talented Ivy League Graduates who don't want to settle for typical executive jobs at multinationals, or hipsters, musicians, artists and writers who have spent years travelling and have now settled in the cheapest capital of Europe, or sometimes even bored spouses of expats.

But guess who is really running the show and dictating salaries at these creative shindigs? That would be whiz kids with the most annihilating programming skills in the world! If you can write awesome code or develop an equally awesome application - you're probably going to be more desired than Kate Moss in the 90s. Every day there are advertisements on Berlinstartupjobs.com of start-ups making an almost embarrassing play for Ruby, Java, Frontend or SQL Developers. If you're a techie - you're the Pope without a hat! But if you want to wear that hat - no one can or will stop you - you're a god damn techie after all! Here techies get to play the field, they tend to freelance, often offering services to many and refusing to commit to a single one.

Berlin's best start-ups are creating the kind of tech solutions that make overseas travel easier, online shopping more convenient than it already is, finding everyday transport faster and mobile games more fun. If you can think of a creative idea - you'll probably find enough people to not only seed it but to help you build it from scratch.

Take for instance Harvard-grad Naren Shaam who built GoEuro, "a travel search website for Europe that compares and combines air, rail, bus and car rental options." His startup has already garnered four million dollars financing from venture capitalists.

Besides the obvious "cool" factor of working in a start-up, another thing that makes Berlin's start-ups unique is that these 2,500+ tech companies are not fighting against each other - they are fighting together to build this collective tech empire by sharing ideas and resources. There are daily events where employees get to network with other start-ups’ employees, come up with solutions to industry problems and plan for the future.

While Amsterdam and London have great start-up scenes as well, the Berlin scene is surely the most intriguing. I'm not the only who thinks so - there are actual tours in Berlin that let you walk through the floors of multiple promising start-ups so you can see for yourself what "the Berlin ecosystem" has to offer.

All this hype about Berlin's start-up scene is for a reason - the standard of living in Berlin is high and the living expenses here are extremely low. With EU citizens running away from a deepening economic crisis, Berlin is still a cultural and economic haven offering plenty of cheap beer, food and rents. Racism is not a problem, English is spoken widely and parties and events all over the city are plenty.

But of course, working anywhere comes with its fair risks. Your tiny start-up could collapse the next minute or be bought out by a tech giant or become a tech giant itself - no one really knows! However, everyone, and I mean everyone, is at the brink of something miraculous, magical, life-changing, but no one knows when it will happen!

If you're a techie with exceptional skills, a love for the quirky, and don't mind if your life always sways back and forth from euphoric highs to depressing lows, maybe you too should program your life around Berlin.

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