IMAGE AND ATTITUDE So what is it about the city that has attracted this 50,000-strong force of pioneers? “Berlin has a counterculture image and attitude that sits well with entrepreneurship,” says Eric Wahlforss, chief technology officer and co-founder of Sound Cloud, an audio-sharing platform and one of the city’s success stories, with an online community of 10 million. “It’s an atmosphere of recognising how things are done, then looking to do them in a different way. There’s a certain infectious atmosphere here of collaboration and innovation – in arts, design, fashion and so many other fields, including tech – that spurs us on.” For Johannes Reck, co-founder of online tour booking engine Get Your Guide, which saw its sales increase by 600 per cent within a year of moving here, the city’s international flavour sealed the deal. “We need so many different languages, and Berlin is one of the few cities in Europe where it’s possible to hire skilled people with [a particular] language the next day.”
BETTER BY DESIGN Look around and you’ll see the city’s creative streak reflected in its architecture. At the Neues Museum, in the fashionable Mitte district east of the centre, Nefertiti’s bust sits proudly inside David Chipperfield’s beautiful 2003 renovation of the 19th-century building. Not far from here, across the Spree, the Baroque Royal Palace is due to be resurrected in 2014 in a controversial E552 million state- funded project.
Over at Brandenburg Gate, inside nearby DZ Bank, Frank Gehry’s undulating design makes for a spectacular meetings venue, while north to the Reichstag, visitors can
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
stand in Norman Foster’s glass dome and inspect democracy in action below in the Bundestag. The imposing pre-reunification steel and glass edifice of the Neue
“There’s an infectious atmosphere here – in arts, design, fashion and so many other fields, including tech – that spurs us on”
Nationalgalerie, near the Tiergarten, houses striking Cubist, Expressionist, Bauhaus and Surrealist works. “Berlin doesn’t look like old, communist, kaput East Berlin anymore,” says Alexander Kolpin, co-founder of Berlin Partner, a public- private partnership which works to attract new business. “But it’s still cheap compared with Munich or London. You can still try to live your dreams, found a start-up and live with little money.”
NETWORKING Work hubs, such as Sankt Oberholz in the north and Betahaus in Moritzplatz in the south, are popular for networking. Young companies and freelancers rent workspace or chill out in the lounges or eateries – Betahaus calls itself a “Vienna-
style coffee house, a library or university campus”. Those new to the city can log on to Venture Village for news and jobs, or head to Web Week, a series of conferences and events that take place every May. Venture capitalists and aspirational developers come here to meet and form new businesses over coffee – some 6,000 participants were expected this year. This may all sound rather laid- back, but the city is changing, and gentrification abounds. Kolpin tells of Club Commission, a group of entrepreneurs that have joined forces to protect its club culture from property developers. “There has to be a compromise to keep Berlin alive, as an active, 24/7 city,” he says. Reck calls it a “classic maturation process”, and only worries that the city needs to do more to protect its creative edge. Visit Berlin’s Kieker sees the positive – vast quantities of destitute land are being bought up by hotels.
“Berlin is the last developing city in the old world because it was out of business for 60 years, being bombed to rubble and then divided. Now it’s a great comeback story, so everybody is putting money into it,” he says. ■