Berlin, a mecca of culture and creativity

[Ulpia-Serdica]

Google pledges €1M to Berlin startub hub The Factory



Google is the latest to jump on board with new Berlin tech hub The Factory. The company has pledged €1 million ($1.27M) over three years through its “Google for Entrepreneurs” program.

The yet-to-be-completed Factory is a 12,000 square meter property development in central Berlin, which aims to bring established companies and new startups together in a unique (to Berlin) work-play environment.

Confirmed tenants include Berliners SoundCloud, 6Wunderkinder, Versus IO and Toast, as well as global web non-profit Mozilla.

The funds Google has pledged will be allocated through The Factory and are earmarked for training, mentoring, events, and other programs to support startup development.

The Factory is backed by JMES Investments, an investor in several Berlin startups, in partnership with s+p Real Estate.

“Compared to London, we’ll still in kindergarten in Berlin.”

In terms of contacts, reputation, and funds, Google’s support is a significant boost in The Factory’s bid to help local startups grow to compete internationally. “Compared to London, we’ll still in kindergarten in Berlin,” JMES partner Simon Schafer said today, pointing to the tendency for Berlin Internet companies to exit at lower valuations to those in London. “We’re just at the beginning of the innovation process.”

He added that Berlin companies are also less likely to be in it for the money than some of their international peers.

For Google, the deal is more about goodwill than a direct bid to capitalize on talent in Berlin. The Factory will be enforcing a “no recruitment” policy on campus, and Google will not be directly investing in startups supported by its funds.

While Google’s pledge to The Factory is far behind its commitment to Google Campus in London, it’s a sign of growing interest in Berlin. Other recent Google initiatives for German startups include Grunder Garage in partnership with Indiegogo.

Read more at http://venturevillage.eu/google-pled...TEZPFYsmrPi.99

[Dr_Cosmo]

Miam Miam made in Berlin....
Sehr gut! Michelin Guide dishes out stars to Germany - The Guardian

Michelin says Germany is now ranked only behind France in Europe in terms of top restaurants, with its top chefs producing extraordinarily varied and experimental food that is "very open to the cuisines of the world". It has some catching up to do France has 26 three-star restaurants compared with 10 in Germany.

Food critics say a more telling sign of Germany's culinary rise was the number of restaurants in the very respectable two-star category, which has doubled to 36 since 2010. Germany now has 255 restaurants listed in the Guide Rouge.

Berlin's Tim Raue was upheld as the chef with the most international outlook, having wowed inspectors with his dim sum. "The best I've ever tasted anywhere between Hong Kong and Berlin," said Michael Ellis, the Michelin Guide's international director.

[Ulpia-Serdica]

A 300 Million Euro Boost for Biomedicine in Berlin

Two of Berlin’s largest biomedical research centers are merging to form the Berlin Institute of Health (BHI), a joint venture that will receive at least 300 million euros in new funding over the next five years. This makes Berlin an even more significant and attractive research site, not only in the field of biomedicine. This is happening at the right time, for an aging demographic means that there is an increasing demand for health care products and services. Germany Trade & Invest will have experts at this year’s MEDICA, the world’s largest health fair, from November 14 to 17 to inform visitors about
the industry’s latest business opportunities.

“The BHI will make Berlin one of the world’s top sites for medical excellence and will attract the world’s best scientists and junior doctors. The partnership between the Berlin state and federal government has created an exemplary model of cooperation between university and non-university research. Germany has a globally recognized biomedical sector, and it will only improve due to the Institute’s innovative models to train medical talent,” said Dr. Sandra Buetow, chemical and health expert at Germany Trade & Invest.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/...ine-in-berlin/

[Suburbanist]

I was reading some reports. Apparently, after lagging other European capitals and even other big German city for years, the real estate market of Berlin is FINALLY catching up. Prices have been increasing steadily. Prices are still less than half of those in Paris and Madrid, and almost 2/3 less than those in London, but despite the ongoing financial crisis it appears the market is getting hotter there, and cheap flats will soon become a faded memory like the wall.

For those unfamiliar with the scenario there, except on the very most hyped areas housing is insanely cheap in Berlin (for being an European capital). You can live in prime areas with easy transportation (public or private) paying prices well below trends in the rest of Germany. That was caused mainly by an oversupply of flats and housing following the demise of DDR, when a sudden and huge out-migration from Berlin and the rest of East Germany, coupled with rapidly changing demographics, brought over 280.000 empty flats and residential units to the market, many of which were latter subdivided in smaller units given the high number of single-person households living there.

It is estimated at its peak there was an oversupply of bedrooms in Berlin (the Lander) close to 1,1 million bedrooms, before large-scale demolition of crappy flats began (though not all socialist construction was all crap).

This much-needed real estate boost will give revenue the city needs to finance itself better on leaner times. Moreover, as a related effect, it might help stem the flow of people whose main reason to move to Berlin (within Germany) is because the city is cheap and they can live on a penny or with a handful of sporadic mini-jobs, while keep attracting a more wealthier crowd to live there.

So good news for Berlin that the city will have a healthier (and hopefully wealthier as well) tax base to finance services and pay its massive debt.

[Dr_Cosmo]

BBC NEWS BUSINESS

Berlin is the home of choice for many new hi-tech entrepreneurs from around the world.

Berlin has always been fashionable, edgy, artistic and in search of a role for itself. Sliced in two by communism and then re-united when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it is now re-inventing itself as one of Europe's leading hi-tech hubs. Cheap property plus a young, talented workforce are attracting entrepreneurs from all over Europe and even the US.

"Berlin is a fantastic city. It's an old city, it's culturally and historically really rich, but it's also very young," says David Noel, head of community at SoundCloud, an audio sharing website.

Berlin became one of coolest places in the world to live and that attracted an entirely different crowd, creative people, people who were willing to try something new and most of these people were also from other countries,"” - Ciaran O'Leary Earlybird Venture Capital

GlobalBiz: Start Up City: 17 Nov 12 - BBC Podcast (27 min.)

Every city wants to become a high technology business hub, but ambitious entrepreneurs from all over Europe are rushing to set up shop in Berlin.

image hosted on flickr

Berlin Skyline (Dusty) by claudecastor, on Flickr

[Ulpia-Serdica]

Berlin won the 2013 Access City award



The 2013 Access City award for disabled-friendly cities goes to Berlin. The award ceremony was held on 3 December, in Brussels on the occasion of the annual European Day of People with Disabilities conference. The award is organised by the Commission together with the European Disability Forum. Vice-President of the European Commission Viviane Reding attended to the event.

“People with disabilities still face too many barriers in everyday life, but cities like Berlin are leading the way in making life more accessible for all. Accessibility offers new business opportunities and can be a real stimulus for innovation and economic growth. That is why accessibility is at the heart of the European disability strategy and why we are preparing our proposals for a European Accessibility Act, which I intend to present next year” said Vice-President Reding, the EU’s Justice Commissioner.

The Access City Award recognises and celebrates cities with over 50.000 inhabitants which take exemplary initiatives and measures to improve accessibility in the urban environment. 99 European cities have participated to the competition. A European Jury composed of experts in accessibility and representatives of the European Commission and the European Disability Forum after a pre-selection selects one winner, two finalist "runners-up" and four special mentions.

Berlin was proclaimed as a winner for its strategic and inclusive disability policy, which has invested heavily in turning the formerly divided city into an accessible, barrier-free environment. The two finalist "runners-up" are Nantes and Stockholm. Special mentions were attributed to Pamplona, Gdynia, Bilbao and Tallaght. The aim of the prize is to encourage accessibility in cities. People with disabilities have the have equal rights and are entitled to dignity, equal treatment, independent living and full participation in society. Enabling people’s mobility is at the center of the long-term EU strategy.

http://www.neurope.eu/article/berlin...ess-city-award

[Ulpia-Serdica]

How poor but sexy Berlin has tapped talent to be Europe's startup capital



Jens Begemann, founder and CEO of online gaming company Wooga, in the company's office in Berlin. The German capital's low costs are attracting young 'creatives' from all over the world, he says.

Startups are springing up all over Berlin, as the once 'poor but sexy' German capital expands into a creative technology hub

Berlin is poor, but sexy – Mayor Klaus Wowereit's decade-old slogan still describes Germany's capital very well. Unemployment is high compared with other German cities and businessmen in proper suits and ties are a rare sight. But something in Berlin's attitude towards business is changing. Startups are sprouting all over the capital.

Some people are already speaking of Berlin as the Silicon Valley of Europe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...silicon-valley

[Dr_Cosmo]

[Dr_Cosmo]

Happy New Year !

[Ulpia-Serdica]

Sharing Music in Berlin's Thriving Startup Scene - Bloomberg Video

[Ulpia-Serdica]

A quarter century after fall of Berlin Wall, a startup hub arises

Last time I was in Berlin, there was a revolution going on. Now another has started, only this time it has nothing to do with politics.

When I was Berlin in the Autumn of 1989, change was in the air. A wave of democracy had already started to sweep through the Soviet Bloc, and by November of that year, the Berlin Wall would come down, only two years after Ronald Reagan had made his famous request of Gorbachev. It wasn’t long before the fall of the Cold War icon became the symbol of communism’s end.

Unfortunately for me, I had left Berlin by the time the Wall started to crumble, but within a few days I had hopped aboard a train in France back to the city. By the time I arrived, I was amazed to see a city transformed, as Trabants drove through open checkpoints and East Germans lined up to buy their first Big Macs.

The party lasted for a while, but the reunification of Germany was a long and painful process. What started on that cold November day took decades to finish and, even in 2004 – fifteen years after the fall - one in five Germans were still having second thoughts about the whole thing.

But now, there’s no second thoughts, and after nearly a quarter century the scars of the Cold War have been healed in part by the optimism of a new generation, many of them entrepreneurs, who are choosing to look toward the future rather than dwell on the past.

And nothing is more representative of the city’s optimism than its thriving startup scene. This past weekend saw another of the city’s many startup events, Hy Berlin 2013, where more than 200 entrepreneurs got together to compare notes and pitch to investors. But it’s not just an event here and there. The broader tech world has taken notice, and the foundation for Berlin’s startup scene is now being built with the help of the world’s tech giants.

In November, Google announced it would put one million Euros over three years into Berlin’s startup scene, and while research firm the Startup Genome ranks Berlin fifteenth as a startup hub, no one doubts that the city is moving up the rankings fast.

When I asked Henrik Berggren, who’d chosen Berlin as the headquarters for his own startup, Readmill, what characterized a Berlin startup, the transplanted Swede pointed to an ethos of quality design.

“The one thing that stands out is product and design,” said Berggren. “People are building social and consumer centric apps that have a really great product vision.”

And while many of the city’s startups have been focused – like much of Silicon Valley – on the consumer and social web over the past few years, it’s this product vision and a striving towards differentiation from those products coming from the Valley that fueled some of the success of the city’s biggest stars.

Take Soundcloud. From the beginning, the founders of the social music hosting service felt they could differentiate the company’s product by focusing on creators rather than just passive consumers.

“We were inspired by everything on social side of web,” said Alexander Ljung, CEO of Soundcloud, told me back in 2011. “What we saw was missing was social tools for the creators of music. Everything that was web was always focused on consumers.”

It’s this focus that has fueled the company’s fast growth (the company has announced 180 million people listen to a track on Soundcloud each month) and helped it become a leading light for the city’s growing startup community.

According to Readmill’s Berggren, it’s this innovation and growth shown by Soundcloud and others that is fueling interest from entrepreneurs all over Europe.

“It’s just continuing with new and great companies moving over all the time. People coming from all around the world. It seems to be an ever-growing community of founders, technologists and futurists in the city. We were really luck because we picked Berlin one and a half years ago.”

And while Silicon Valley companies like Google are now taking an interest in Berlin, the growth thus far has been fueled almost entirely by native European entrepreneurs. According to the same Startup Genome study, only 7% of Berlin startup entrepreneurs spent some time in Silicon Valley.

So yes, another revolution is happening in Berlin, but this time it’s all business, and I can’t wait what unfolds in the city over the next 25 years.

My conversations with Henrik Berggren of Readmill and Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud are from the NextMarket podcast. You can subscribe to the NextMarket podcast in iTunes, RSS and, of course, Soundcloud.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelw...up-hub-arises/

[Dr_Cosmo]

Creative invasion takes Berlin by storm - Sydney Morning Herald

Australians are receiving rave reviews for their work in the German capital

[Dr_Cosmo]

Why Berlin's startup scene is growing - San Francisco Chronicle

Alexander Ljung, chief executive of SoundCloud, was starting the audio-sharing service in 2008, he needed to decide where he'd set up his company's headquarters. He considered Stockholm, where he was living at the time, but after touring many European cities, decided on Berlin.

"It's this great intersection of art and technology," he says over a cup of coffee in SoMa, praising the German capital's counterculture vibe. "The mainstream is to do things differently."

[rural101]

Originally Posted by Dr_Cosmo

Happy New Year !

I just can't believe that Tokyo topped Paris. Hipsters over a pool of the avant-garde?

On one hand, DW-TV made me believe that Berlin is indeed the heart and soul of anything artistic--I mean, it's way over Paris (at least to my knowledge) and it's making a name and a role for itself as one of the rich and colorful artistic hubs in Europe.

[Dr_Cosmo]

Charlize Theron at the Berlin Film Festival ....

[Tiaren]

Are you now going to post every single starlette that visits the film festival as a seperate news in this thread, Dr. Cosmo? That must mean, there isn't going on much else in this Mecca of culture and creativity...

[Dr_Cosmo]

You dream about knowing more about Berlin ?
Well, there is a great SSC subforum with all new Berlin related projects.....

[charlottetonne]

berlin WAS a cultural colorful artistic meccha

TODAY IS ANOTHER GENTRIFIED STERYLE AMERICAN LIKE CITY FILLED WITH AMERICAN LIKE HIPSTERS... like NYC

[alexandru.mircea]

Here is the spiritual home of the kebab, so we can consider the issue settled. /thread

[Dr_Cosmo]

The European Film Market (EFM) is booming

Berlin fest's big bang theory - Variety

Deals that did go down underscore how radically Berlin has evolved, though its roots are intact.

"It's only really been in the last three or four years that Berlin became an event at which big movies are sold," said Focus Films Intl.'s topper Alison Thompson.

"People are getting used to Berlin being a key market," agreed FilmNation head Glen Basner.

spiegel.de