Less appetite for risk, less imagination, lack of critical mass for innovation, less cultural diversity, smaller language sphere. Much harder to go without income because of prevalence of longer termination periods for contracts, compulsory health insurance etc.
I actually heard an American say at a conference here in Germany recently, "you all get free health care, so it should be easier for you to quit your jobs and start a startup".
That doesn't seem realistic. We have to pay for compulsory health insurance. Lots of people get public which means it comes out of your wages or benefits (at around 13%!), or they go private and pay a fixed fee. Not having health insurance is not an option.
I went without income or benefit for one month here and people flipped out. It was not something that they had seen before, and freaked out mostly about health insurance. Turns out I was covered under my wife, but if I was not married I would have been in some existential black hole according to the authorities.
Do you really think this is something that affects things on a grand scale? I know, there's the whole "Ramen profitable" thing, but a) is your EUR 280 health insurance that much of an hindrance (compared with SF rents), and b) how many companies are actually built on months and months of founders working on a strict sabbatical?
Given that the average working hours in Germany are slightly lower than in the US and you get a lot more vacation time, there should be enough time to build something while working your day job. Never mind -- as you've mentioned -- the bigger opportunity to build something while you're on the dole – and starting your own business to get out of unemployment will even get you special funding from the state.
So I don't think that the "Because socialism!" argument is particularly poignant here.
I think the bigger factors why there are not big startups here are the same as for why there are no Hollywood-type movies from Germany:
a) risk-averse investors
b) smaller market*
c) no big incubator (cf. Hollywood / SV)
d) no "culture" (closely related to c)
Personally, I don't think all of this is really permanent or that related to the "nature" of a country's people. Note that there were some pretty big and well-made movies in the 20s and 30s (Lang, Murnau…), but not that much after WW2, especially in the Hollywood scope. Berlin (again…) seems to be collecting a lot of startup spirit, so I wonder how this will change in the near future.
*: Either "just" Germany, or you'll have to cope with all the legal and linguistic horrors that expanding to Europe does entail.
Less appetite for risk, less imagination, lack of critical mass for innovation, less cultural diversity, smaller language sphere. Much harder to go without income because of prevalence of longer termination periods for contracts, compulsory health insurance etc.
I actually heard an American say at a conference here in Germany recently, "you all get free health care, so it should be easier for you to quit your jobs and start a startup".
That doesn't seem realistic. We have to pay for compulsory health insurance. Lots of people get public which means it comes out of your wages or benefits (at around 13%!), or they go private and pay a fixed fee. Not having health insurance is not an option.
I went without income or benefit for one month here and people flipped out. It was not something that they had seen before, and freaked out mostly about health insurance. Turns out I was covered under my wife, but if I was not married I would have been in some existential black hole according to the authorities.