Berlin’s rising tech start-up scene: a new hub for Europe
By Chelsea Yuipco
BERLIN — Nestled between two cafés on Chausseestraße in Berlin’s Mitte district, a small, yellow flag waves the words “Silicon Allee” near glass doors that serve as the gateway to a hi-tech community of six resident companies and over 300 employees.
Every first Tuesday of the month, Silicon Allee hosts a meet-up to bring tech start-up companies together. At the meet-up inside the courtyard, members of tech start-ups from around the world sit at picnic tables with their coffees to talk about their companies and pitch ideas to each other.
Silicon Allee is just one of several tech communities in Berlin that strives to facilitate the tech start-up scene in a way Silicon Valley in the US does it— brainstorming ideas and connecting the community. “The reason we started Silicon Allee [is because] there’s this reluctance to share ideas and we wanted to push the Germans out of their comfort zone,” said Travis Todd, an American who co-founded Silicon Allee in 2011.
“We wanted to have them realize that the best thing they could do was get out of their network and share their ideas with other people because there was a much better chance that someone would help them with their idea rather than like, steal it, which was a big concern back then,” he said. “That’s something we knew as Americans and something we experienced in the US, and that’s kind of the culture we wanted to bring over to Berlin.”
In the last 10 years, Berlin has seen a rapidly growing tech start-up scene alongside its more commonly known arts and culture scene. Berlin’s art and culture, its reputation for tolerance, and the availability of affordable office space are just some of the many factors that have drawn people to the city from all over the world.
There have been tech start-ups in Berlin as long as there has been tech innovation, but what’s new is how attractive Berlin is for young people, which also means young people in tech. “Berlin is attractive particularly for young people by being affordable, tolerant, open, liberal,” said Jan Kratzer, a professor from the Technical University of Berlin.
Berlin’s nightlife adds to the appeal, says Dominik Ortner, a 32-year old teacher. “[They] go to Berlin because of the club scene, lifestyle, and because other people do this and they are just exchanging ideas,” Ortner said about his computer programmer friends from eastern Europe.
After Silicon Allee co-founders Travis Todd and Schuyler Deerman spent just a few months in San Francisco in 2010 with their own respective companies, they moved to Berlin with the goal of building the kind of startup culture that existed in the US.
“As non-German founders, and with 50% of the tech scene being non-German, it was always our mission to help those people like us,” Todd said. “So we want people to come to us first and then for us to help connect them to the people to make their dreams a reality in the city.”
On a Tuesday in early July, Silicon Allee’s courtyard and cafe were bustling with people. Start-up founders from countries like Slovenia, China, and Japan were pitching ideas to each other and to the investors that had stopped by, while curious students and other passersby milled around discussing tech. More people attended than usual because this meet-up happened to land during Berlin’s annual Tech Open Air event.
This year, from July 2nd to July 4th, Berlin hosted a technology festival conference that featured meet-ups, interactive panels, and workshops. Most events required a ticket, which can be expensive, so Luka Smajila, the 25-year- old founder of the start-up energy company from Slovenia called KayInnovations, made his way into the conference as a volunteer. KayInnovations is still small and was founded just three to four months ago and focuses on producing more sustainable batteries.
“Here in Berlin, I think conferences like this are a great way to learn new stuff, to connect with new people, and to see what good pitching looks like,” said Smajila. “I’m learning as much as I can.”
Innovation hubs are popping up in other parts of Europe as well, said Smajila. But Germany has always been strong when it comes to innovation, especially in Berlin and Munich, which he describes as bigger capitals of Europe. “There’s always a lot going on here,” said Smajila. “A lot of people coming through, and because of the progress and the openness, it’s a very good place to start.”
Zhao Renxiu says she was drawn to Berlin for its arts and culture scene. Renxiu founded a start-up called Subtropical Asia around a year ago, a media and news platform that showcases creative artists from Asia. She wanted to get to know more artists, entrepreneurs, and creative people. As an art and media company at a tech meet-up, she typifies how Berlin’s two thriving youth scenes have connected and grown together. She now plans to add a tech component to her platform.
“I plan to make an app because right now we’re more based on YouTube and Facebook. It’s more like social media,” Renxiu said. “What we need to do is promote this app and once people open this app, they can see what’s going on in Asia,” said Renxiu.
Todd, one of Silicon Allee’s co-founder, encourages this co-evolution between arts and tech. “Berlin has always been a creative and cultural hotspot, and I think the next phase is: how do we express ourselves through technology?” said Todd.
Other start-up companies that are part of the tech community do not feel the need to participate in these networking gatherings. One such firm is Peat, which was founded in Hanover, Germany in late 2014, but later moved to Berlin in Prenzlauer Berg in 2017. Peat created the app Plantix, which allows small scale farmers to take a picture of their ailing crops and send it to the Plantix database. It then uses facial recognition and artificial intelligence to diagnose whatever disease the crop has and try to help cure it.
The exchange between entrepreneurs is important for a company in its early beginning, but Peat is no longer in that stage, said Pierre Munzel, co-founder and CFO of Peat. “There are a lot of communities around. We all are a part of this community,” said Munzel. “But when you have to run an operation or business you don’t have that much time to enter all these events.”
It may be too soon to tell whether Berlin will rival tech hubs in the rest of the world such as those in Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Tel Aviv, and London. But, Technical University’s Kratzer says the key lies in whether the city continues to evolve as a world-class city, which is finally happening, 30 years after unification. “To keep it successful Berlin needs to propel internationalization,” he said.
Chelsea Yuipco is a 4th year English major at UC Santa Barbara. She is pursuing the Journalism Certificate.
