Taking Soundcloud aside, the German scene simply lacks technology-driven innovation and technology insights. As an insight example - how does one expect to produce a productivity platform called Wunderkit that is intended to be stable enough to be used and paid for by companies on the base of Titanium Appcelerator? Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying 'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago - it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results.

"the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates"

Best sentence I read about that. So true.

I second that!

I think many people in the germany hacker community don't want to be associated with "those startup guys" because many of "those guys" lack technical understanding. Like you said, many business guys hire developers to build yet another ecommerce site.

We're a small Company (https://futurevps.de/) that offers custom Servers fully based in Germany (for data privacy reasons) and get much less media coverage than "ecommerce" companies. I think that nearly 99.9% of the german startup newssites cover ecommerce-ish businesses.

Berlin has a lot of the right incredients (e.g. an engineering culture, cheap rent and a "hip" reputation). And that last thing along with a Samwer-influenced culture when it comes to start-ups are huge obstacles. And hordes of clueless managment graduates are doing it for the lifestyle and with delussions of a multi-million exit doesn't help neither.

But what I miss in Germany is innovation (not just in start-ups but in general), we have grown lazy over here... ;-)

Not to mention all the clones... who usually are run by the kind of people you mentioned...

"Germany has a great tradition of a hardcore hacking culture and engineering culture, yet the startups of Berlin seem to be driven purely by generic management graduates and it shows. Not sure why this is - maybe saying 'I work on my startup' is the same as saying 'I work in Media' five years ago - it's a lot more about the lifestyle, than the substance and results." +1

I worked for gate5 (Now Nokia gate5 GmbH) in 1999 and it was surely a technology driven company in Berlin.

Maybe most companies anywhere are not so much technical driven? The company I founded myself was only technical and that was the reason it didn't last long.

I think it is easier to find money for these more hip startups than for a more innovative kind of company, where still some research time is involved. Maybe that is also one reason for the lack of innovation.

As a native Berliner and ex-Bostonian, I have to unfortunately concur with the article. There is quite a lot of talk. While I love Berlin as a city, and even love the generally positive and helpful atmosphere of the startup scene in Berlin, there is no denial that doing a startup is the hip thing to do, and it wouldn't hurt some people to get to work.

"I'm CEO of a startup" is a phrase I have heard way more than in the Valley or in Boston. For me a bit surprising as a native, was the aforementioned influx of consultants and management grads. It has become so sexy to do a startup. Or asking for technical co-founders.

However, as much as we can criticize this development, I believe it's generally positive that more people are trying to question the status quo, trying to find alternatives to the coorperate route. As far as I remember, that hasn't been the case a couple years ago. So sure, we should be vary of the hype, but we can go back to the roots and steer all this energy into the right direction.

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I wonder if the typical German necessity of a title (Germans LOVE titles) has any input on the "I'm a CEO" bit.

Then it is more like "I am an MBA and CEO of a startup"

or its the consultants and management grads who LOVE to be CEO of something! :-)

Good on Joel for pointing out what many have been thinking and saying. Doing it as one of the few relevant startup bloggers in Germany makes it even more important. Overall, I think there are a few rough patches in the post, but I agree with the sentiment.

I do think that e.g. 6WK are doing the right thing, so it's kind of counter intuitive to point them out. They have scaled back the hype, focused on their well growing product WL again, and have made some tough decisions.

Yes, but I suspect it will be a "Wunder" if they can monetize their TODO-List app..

What about Sociomantic, a Berlin Startup which is focused on innovation and just got an ex-googler. allthingsd.com/20120910/ad-tech-startup-sociomantic-labs-grabs-google

Focused on innovation? It's focused on selling advertising.