A Look Back: The Vision of Berlin as Germany's Silicon Valley

Image: Sony Center Berlin, Fabian Sandner, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Carsten talks about his visit to Potsdamer Platz:

“I was at Potsdamer Platz recently and I was thrilled. The Sony Center, the big premiere cinema, the bars and restaurants, the Blue Man Group and the new casino. It almost feels like New York or Las Vegas. Berlin is becoming more modern and more attractive.

Maybe we'll even manage to overtake Munich in terms of coolness soon. If more and more companies come to Berlin, the city might someday become the new Silicon Valley.”

Jörgi sees it differently

Jörgi disagrees. For him, Potsdamer Platz is merely a modern, commercial island in an otherwise economically weak Berlin. The restaurants and entertainment are primarily meant for tourists. In his opinion, Berlin is far from being a leading hub for media and technology. Munich is much further along in that regard.

There, computer technology is more deeply rooted in people's everyday lives. Cookie is skeptical too. Cookie agrees with Jörgi. He thinks Munich comes across as much more tech-savvy. As an example, he mentions the subway: there you see lots of businesspeople with notebooks, talking about computer technology and the latest processors. Berlin, on the other hand, he experiences as less safe and less enthusiastic about technology. He therefore doesn't believe that anyone could work on a notebook in the subway there without any problems.

Scheibe partly agrees with his friends. He himself has already experienced a dangerous situation on the Berlin subway.

Nevertheless, he tries to make the discussion a bit more positive:

“Of course, the probability of meeting someone from the media or technology industry is higher in Munich. But Berlin also has interesting companies. We have eBay and Jamba, for example. Magix and Telekom are here too. Maybe many more companies will come to Berlin soon.”

2008 I was there myself

And maybe that's exactly the most interesting part of this old story.

At the time, the question of whether Berlin could someday become something like a German Silicon Valley was something I was pondering myself. I was 2008 still a young founder of Langmeier Backup and actually believed in Berlin.

So much so that I even considered moving from Zurich to Berlin.

I found a coworking office on Berlin's Ku'damm and wanted to take the next step with my company there.

Then came the rude awakening

In the kitchen of my coworking office, I increasingly observed how founders and employees of other startups were already rolling their hemp joints at lunchtime.

And by 16 o'clock, the offices were completely deserted.

For me, who at the time was in the middle of building up Langmeier Backup, that didn't fit with my idea of how to build a company.

After just one month, I pulled the emergency brake.

I got on the train in Berlin, traveled back to Zurich via Basel and continued with Langmeier Backup there.

While Berlin did indeed develop into a significant startup and technology hub in the following years, I stayed in Zurich and continued building my own software company there.

In hindsight, that wasn't a defeat. Neither for me nor for the city of Berlin as a tech hub.

Instead, it was an entrepreneurial decision: As a founder, you don't have to be where everyone wants to go right now.

You have to be where you can build your company.