California has a silicon valley; London even has a silicon roundabout. Germany’s Berlin is a thriving silicon city.
Berlin, the bohemian city of reinvention, has become the go to destination across Europe for tech startups, venture capitalists and privacy advocates. To be exact, there are already 2,500 startups that call Berlin home, and the city has attracted huge investment from some of the big tech players, as well as ‘bleeding-edge’ venture capitalists keen to identify the next tech success story.
There are a few key reasons why Berlin has proved to be so successful a breeding ground for innovation. It has always long been an international cultural hub for artists, musicians and writers, driving creativity and inspiration. Klaus Kinski made his name in the Berlin theatre scene in the late ‘40s before moving into cinema and becoming Werner Herzog’s inspired and erratic muse. David Bowie and Iggy Pop famously decamped to the city during the 70s, a move which inspired them to produce arguably their finest albums.
There’s a very simple and practical reason for why Berlin has attracted creative types: the rent is cheap.
The freedom this allows means that entrepreneurs can take more risks, without always having to worry where the next paycheck is coming from. This has in turn fostered an incredibly strong and pioneering spirit of innovation.
Berlin has also drawn forward thinkers from all over Europe. Effectively a bridging point for where East meets West, it has acted as a melting pot for different cultures and ideologies for centuries.Increasingly there is another important and often overlooked factor in why Berlin has experienced such a boost: Germany’s privacy laws. In the wake of PRISM and the NSA, security and privacy has been at the forefront of the international conscience. Both Facebook and Google have clashed with Germany’s data protection laws and understanding why is crucial to understanding Berlin’s success.
Germany has some of the world’s most stringent data protection laws, and personal privacy has been a primary concern for Berliners given the turmoil the city has experienced in the past. The actions of the NSA have haunting echoes of the Stasi, and there is a pronounced sense of reluctance to allow history to repeat itself amongst the people of the city. With Berlin also being the headquarters of the German government, cafés are chalked full of debate–both political and cultural—around the ramifications of the NSA revelations.
As a result, by adhering to local laws, startups operating in Berlin are by default exceeding almost all international data compliance laws. To investors this presents a hugely attractive proposition as the companies are effectively born ready to play on the global stage. Berlin has always been an incubator of leftfield thinking, and now this outsider approach is paying dividends for tech savvy entrepreneurs.