Ask HN: How friendly is Berlin for startups?

The complexity of German taxes and all the other red tape seems to be the main reason why people change their mind about starting up in Berlin but, personally, it was the rudeness that wore me down.<p>Berliners can be very nice in certain situations, such as the people you work with, but they have a hostile service culture. Not every time, or in every service situation, but you will have enough bad experiences in shops, restaurants and trains to find it annoying, especially if you are accustomed to the more positive service culture in the US, UK and Ireland.<p>The other problem is that many Berliners regard young foreign workers as being the reason why rents are increasing and this became a political issue a few years ago. I&#x27;m not sure what the current situation is but, at that time, you would see graffiti around town, letting you know that you were not welcome, and you would frequently hear the same sentiment expressed in social situations. Ironically, the people who were quickest to let you know that the foreign tech workers were not welcome were the same &quot;anti-fascist&quot; trendies who call everyone else racist.<p>This hostility wasn&#x27;t something I experienced when living in other German cities, it seems to be a Berlin-specific phenomenon.

I lived in Berlin for 3 years, but I didn&#x27;t found or form a company. I do have a friend who has just done it. I wouldn&#x27;t want to comment on the specifics but the basics are this.<p>1. Very easy to form a company in Germany as a foreigner 2. You will need a native german speaker, it&#x27;s beauracratic and you need to speak solid German to deal with it. 3. Taxes are higher than the US, but they are fair. You pay more as you earn more. 4. There are many taxes as an individual you can claim back, such as clothes, travel to work, space in your house etc. If you get a good accountant they can really help. 5. Berlin itself is very cheap to get a great location, good tech talent but not overflowing, incredibly decent lifestyle, lots of space, lovely place to live a chilled out vibe.<p>I&#x27;d say if you&#x27;ve lived in Germany and Berlin and like it, you can do it. If you have never lived there you should move their first and see if you like the German way of life first, it&#x27;s not like US or UK.

There was enough said about taxes.<p>The procedures to open a startup in Germany are complex. This is the cheapest way: Go to the notary and create a &quot;UG&quot; after &quot;Musterprotokoll&quot;. Create a company bank account, transfer the minimum amount of 1€ (plus the costs for founding, so you better transfer ~500€). This the fastest way and costs you together with an entry the commercial register (150€) around 500€ (300€ for the notary, depending on how many founders). This is followed up by stuff like &quot;Körperschafts Anmeldung @Finanzamt&quot;, &quot;Gewerbeamtanmeldung&quot; (25€) and &quot;IHK Gebühren&quot; (80€&#x2F;yr) and &quot;VBG Anmeldung&quot; (costs vary by the amount of employed persons). Don&#x27;t forget the contract for the CEO as employed person.<p>As already told by others: You need to have a native speaker on your side to deal with the bureaucracy. Is this a startup friendly environment? Does it sound like? Hell no.<p>On the other hand: You can live in Berlin really cheap if you want to. Infrastructure is great and you don&#x27;t need a car. There are a lot of meetups and startup events to get around people like yourself. Programmers aren&#x27;t payed that well. Fundraising is a matter of network and traction like, i&#x27;d say, everywhere else.

When I worked at a cleantech startup in the summer of 2010, the culture was less favorable to employees than in the bay area. For example, it seemed that the cultural norm was to give none, or very little equity, thus reducing the upside for any early employee.<p>In recent years I have interviewed as a Software Engineer and Senior Product Manager at a couple startups in Germany. However, after receiving a couple offers, I found that the costs of living in Germany as an American (US Taxes, Visa, USD -&gt; Euro exchange rate) were not sufficiently covered by the salaries, even on the high end.<p>For American companies looking to hire talent in Germany, I have heard that it is was less competitive, lower cost per engineer and the talent top notch.

I&#x27;m moving to the Berlin in the fall myself. Planning to use it as our home base for work&#x2F; exploring Europe from early Oct &#x27;17 to late Aug &#x27;18. I freelance as a software dev (primarily Python, JS and PHP work) in the US now and would love to hear if anyone has tips on picking up clients as an foreigner. I&#x27;ve been studying German daily (15-30 mins) for the past 1.5 months, hoping to be near fluent by the time we arrive, so hopefully I can minimize the language barrier.<p>Are there any good resources people have used for finding freelance work internationally or that are even specific to Berlin&#x2F; Germany?

I&#x27;m German, moved around quite a bit and spend two years in Silicon Valley. After moving back, I worked for a startup in Berlin and eventually founded (with two other guys) my own startup beginning of 2016, which we sold one year later.<p>Berlin is certainly the best place to found in startup in Germany. The ecosystem is huge and a large portion of people are from other countries, thus it is very international (and english speaking).<p>Of course there is a lot bureaucracy in getting the company started, but you are not the first one to do that and there are people helping you. German tax law is complicated, thus it is definitely worth hiring an accountant to do all the paper work for you (if you run a proper business with customers, not just a stealth startup). We did some price comparison, in particular for lawyers to draft some contracts, which revealed a huge difference (range between 100 - 350 euros&#x2F;h) and helped us save a lot of money (we even got a fixed price). Same for tax accountants. I strongly suggest picking small offices, not the ones with fancy offices in expensive locations. You&#x27;ll pay for that and the service is almost identical.<p>Depending on the legal entity you choose (UG, GmbH, ...) the costs vary. GmbH are most common and have a good reputation, but are expensive if you have multiple owners. Also you need to invest at least 25k upfront (therefore the good reputation). UGs are cheap and you can do business as well, it just looks cheaper on your business card. Of course there is more to take into account, but that would lead too much into details.<p>To get more information about founding in Berlin, there are plenty of meetups for all kinds of topics and the state Berlin as well as the board of trade (IHK) are very interested in helping founders (they are their future members). There you&#x27;ll find even more fairs and events for founders.

I&#x27;m not based in Germany &#x2F; Berlin (great city though!) but I wouldn&#x27;t exactly call German taxes simple or low. Germany has one of the most complicated tax codes in the world, obviously written in german.<p>If taxes are mostly what matter to you, then there are probably better places to relocate to.

Some more meta-questions: are there some HN-esque sites that are more popular in Europe&#x2F; Germany? Even between major cities in the US I&#x27;ve observed a lot of variability in job postings&#x2F; language usage trends, services used, etc. Has anyone found that to be the case in international work? How have you dealt?