The Berlin Startup Bubble Redux

Is Berlin the heart of a startup bubble - or an inspiring place to build new businesses?

A while back, we linked to a post suggesting that the Berlin startup scene was something of a bubble.

Just before Christmas, Kalie Moore, the self-styled Berlin Startup Girl, did a point-by-point response to that original post that’s worth looking at:

Berlin is young. We are ten years behind London, thirty years behind San Francisco, but big things are starting to happen. Issues that once held Berlin back are changing. The German VC’s are too conservative? No prob, the Americans are coming. 6Wunderkinder recently announced $19m in Series B funding round led by US-based firm Sequoia Capital. No talented developers? They will get here, especially when the money does. There are now firms like Expaway (disclosure – I do write for them) whose sole purpose is to bring talented international developers to Berlin.

It’s worth staying on for the comments, too, as some of them are pretty useful:

If I wrote my own version of this, it would be more about the basics of living – tricks for finding a good (and cheap) language school, what’s with the 5 or so insurances you should have here, what to expect when finding a flat (where to search, documentation required, the casting calls of shared flats, etc), and what to expect culterally (ie. if you come from North America, don’t be surprised that people don’t make eye contact in the streets, that you say hello when you go into a waiting room at the doctor’s, that you’d better hurry your ass up in the checkout at the grocery store, etc)

Photo by Deskmag from Wikipedia Commons