We've been traveling with our startup for about 4 years. Berlin is by far the best city of all the ones we've visited, though Amsterdam is very close in terms of being a nice place to live.
Living on the eastern side of the wall, rents are cheap.
The main thing that keeps us from relocating there more permanently is the immigration issue, but it looks like this may be resolved, at least partially.
One thing though, you probably do want to learn German. While many germans speak english (even more so in the startup scene) a lot of germans don't, and day to day life involves a fair bit of basic german.
We've been traveling with our startup for about 4 years. Berlin is by far the best city of all the ones we've visited, though Amsterdam is very close in terms of being a nice place to live.
Living on the eastern side of the wall, rents are cheap.
The main thing that keeps us from relocating there more permanently is the immigration issue, but it looks like this may be resolved, at least partially.
One thing though, you probably do want to learn German. While many germans speak english (even more so in the startup scene) a lot of germans don't, and day to day life involves a fair bit of basic german.
1. Lowest livings costs with highest standard of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets make biking fun + we have Car2Go and Drive-Now (these are world's best smartphone-supported car sharing systems with brand new cars at every corner, cheaper than owning a car or riding a cab). In addition, Germany has an amazing social health care system including health, unemployment and pension (when working as an employee).
2. A vibrant and fast growing ecosystem of smart people. A vast number of new software talents, founders, software companies and VCs are moving to Berlin, every day (Twitter, Google, Soundcloud, Early Bird, Mozilla and many more).
3. People here are open-minded, outgoing, mix well and international—no need to learn German, everyone speaks English! Making new friends is a matter of days. Visit tons of networking and startup events, every week.
4. Easy work permissions—Europeans do not need any and can work from day one.
5. Berlin's night life is unmatched, huge and changing every day (plus ridiculously cheap). Berlin has got some of the most dazzling, naughty, and original clubs on the face of the Earth.
Berlin is calling and getting the new tech hub of Europe. If you are passionate about building great software, we’d love to talk with you. If you don't live in Berlin yet, we could help to fix that.
If outside the US would be an option, Berlin (Germany)
Public transportation is great (24/7), a lot of cultural activities, quite a view of web startups there and in contrast to other big cities in Europe and the US, it very cheap.
Care to recommend somewhere better? I'm a US based person, but travel to Berlin fairly often and have interacted with several tech friends there in the local scene. It is a surprisingly vibrant and friendly community. Coworking also seems to be a really big thing there.
So, price aside, it is still cheaper than any major US city (especially with the current USD <--> EUR exchange rate), London, and anything else I personally am aware of.
I think Berlin is a great choice - better than London. Berlin is developing and changing quickly and seems to be setting the scene for a perfect startup hub: lots of bright young people and cheap offices (cheap everything relative to the rest of europe) meanwhile London is primarily a financial district, not engineering.
The US isn't the only place to start something, try Berlin and say goodbye to any visa problems.
Top 5 reasons why you should move to Berlin, now:
1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets make biking fun.
2. A vibrant and fast growing ecosystem of smart people. A vast number of new software talents, founders, software companies and VCs are moving to Berlin, every day (Twitter, Google, Soundcloud, Early Bird and many more).
3. People here are open-minded, outgoing, mix well and international—no need to learn German, everyone speaks English! Making new friends is a matter of days. Visit tons of networking and startup events, every week.
4. Easy work permissions—Europeans do not need any and can work from day one and the rest applies for the hassle-free Blue Card.
5. Berlin's night life is unmatched, huge and changing every day (plus ridiculously cheap). Berlin has got some of the most dazzling, naughty, and original clubs on the face of the Earth.
Berlin is calling and getting the new tech hub of Europe. If you are passionate about building great software, we’d love to talk with you. If you don't live in Berlin yet, we could help to fix that.
Berlin has been talked a lot about on HN, but what is the situation like now? I know for awhile it was relatively cheap which was one of the big perks, but housing costs have gone up due to people moving there. What level of experience would you need as an American programmer to move to Berlin and find work? Is it a realistic option?
We actually just got back from a vacation in Sweden. We found everyone there super nice. But we weren’t there long enough to really check out the job prospects. Honestly as much as I love Berlin if I were to do it again I’d probably target Amsterdam. They’re very friendly to expats especially Americans it seems (at least from my experience) and the city is awesome and you really could get by never learning the language as so much English is spoken there. And it seems the tech scene is really good too.
Years before our move to Hamburg we visited Munich and had the same experience. It was such a nice city. For our income at the time we thought it was expensive but still I remember thinking that if we ever moved abroad Munich would be a dope place to settle.
I've been living in Berlin since 3 years ( doing freelance web-development & my own "entrepreneurship" adventures ).
IMHO Berlin might sound cool as a startup hub, but there is a huge lack of talent. Companies are struggling to find a decent dev/design team, probably because the payment is way too low than average. It's true that Berlin is cheaper than London ( and overall Germany ), but definitely is not so cheap to attract good IT people to join your journey with those numbers.
On top of that, giving stock-options here is a bit hard ( legally ), so companies are struggling to offer some "virtual shares" of an employee pool as a compensation, which will never make you as rich as if you are one of the first employees of a unicorn.
Everything else from offices, meet ups, parties, nice food, international city is here and I think is much better than overcrowded and expensive London ( That's why I'm still here :) ).
1. Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital). No need for a car—Berlin has one of the densest subway nets and wide streets make biking fun. In addition, Germany has an amazing social health care system including health, unemployment and pension (when working as an employee).
2. A vibrant and fast growing ecosystem of smart people. A vast number of new software talents, founders, software companies and VCs are moving to Berlin, every day (Twitter, Google, Soundcloud, Early Bird and many more).
3. People here are open-minded, outgoing, mix well and international—no need to learn German, everyone speaks English! Making new friends is a matter of days. Visit tons of networking and startup events, every week.
4. Easy work permissions—Europeans do not need any and can work from day one and the rest applies for the hassle-free Blue Card.
5. Berlin's night life is unmatched, huge and changing every day (plus ridiculously cheap). Berlin has got some of the most dazzling, naughty, and original clubs on the face of the Earth.
Berlin is calling and getting the new tech hub of Europe. If you are passionate about building great software, we’d love to talk with you. If you don't live in Berlin yet, we could help to fix that.
I'm really surprised that Berlin isn't mentioned. Admittedly, I haven't spent much time in other German cities, but Berlin should be the best in cost of living and also in startups.
Even though Berlin is not as cheap as it was a few years ago, it's still much cheaper than other big cities with a comparable tech/startup scene. Ever tried to rent in London? New York? Silicon Valley? Even Munich or Hamburg (and I'm not claiming those two have even remotely comparable tech scenes)? Compared to these places, Berlin is still cheap.
Amsterdam would be a very nice choice in many ways, and living in the country to save on costs would be a reasonable compromise.
Their residency permit requirements are reasonable as well.
I didn't think of Berlin as being cheap. Will have to look into that. Berlin is very appealing for a number of reasons as well.
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