Following up to this discussion we had a few weeks ago, over an article that was making the rounds with locals and other people interested in Berlin.
So while working on a promising startup which is not in Berlin, I was forced by the contrast to realise how necrotic the whole thing is now. I don’t think it’s wasting its potential — I think it’s pushing up the daisies, an ex-scene, it’s no more.
And it has a lot to do with the points in the article.
This may seem obvious, but the energy in a startup scene is directly proportional to its success rate. No, really, stick with me here. I have a point.
As the article says, there aren’t actually many success stories. Soundcloud is imported, most of the other stuff we point to is more hype than reality, and Ableton and Native were ages ago, when arguably there was a scene. I’m not quite prepared to agree there are no success stories — there’s Rocket, Wooga, and yes, Ableton and Native if you don’t mind the timeframe. I might be missing one. But there aren’t stories of people getting rich right and left from founding startups.
And here’s the critical bit. It eats at the motivation. The vast majority of people I know in Berlin who are serious, motivated, and capable, want to work for startups — and that is funded startups, with a salary — not really found one.
Chances of finding people interested in joining early and working for equity are slim, and then the majority of the ones willing aren’t really qualified enough. And, you know, that’s perfectly reasonable. We’re not paid well enough to build savings, and if we have them, we won’t risk them on someone else’s crazy idea which will pretty much certainly never return your investment.
And speaking of investment, there’s also no funding. For pretty much the same reasons. The popular meme is to point the finger at the supposed conservative stance of German investors. Frankly, it’s an excuse. It’s not the investor who is conservative, it’s a combination of your idea being half-baked, your “scene” inspiring no confidence, and your investor-seeking founder being bad at it.
You could conceivably have a “conservative” scene, as I’m told they have/had in London; where ideas are boring, but funded fast, and then go directly to hiring people. That’s still a possibility, but honestly, if people have viable, boring ideas, I can’t imagine Berlin is where they’ll go to found.
(None of these are the reasons why the startups don’t thrive. I’m talking about the scene. If you want a reasonably probable take on why startups don’t make it, go read the linked article.)
And no, I don’t have any solutions to propose. I’m not sure there are any, other than, you know, companies who do have the money paying people decent salaries instead of buying yet another ping-pong table. Honestly though, I don’t even care anymore. If anything, maybe the healthy thing to do is to stop pretending there is a scene, and appreciate the startups that do get by for what they are.
A healthy startup scene would have had to form hot on the trails of Rocket and Wooga (that is, incidentally, around the time I moved there). It didn’t. Now the window has passed.
It was fun while it lasted.
