So I am an expat in Germany for the past 3 years, worked in 3 companies startup, corporate and other big company who started outside of Germany. These are my 2 cents.
The digital innovation is being killed by
1) the people who hold the money.
Venture capital in Germany and in Europe (excluding London) is totally different that in the US. In Germany for your seed round they want you to show them MRR, churn, thousands of users, forget it if you are 1 founder etc. The barrier is way higher than in US.
Furthermore, only recently (2-3 years) have we seen been seed rounds in Germany but these being lead by non-german funds or by global funds that base in Germany.
The limit of funds also limits how much companies can pay.
2) the obsession with titles PhD, MD, Lead etc.
3) do things that dont scale, is literally translated into, keep getting interns till the university doesnt have any more students to copy data from excel1 to excel2.
4) the still monolithic approach of hierarchies. (The MD (CEO) of one of the companies I worked for literally said that you should listen to X person because he has been in the company longer, even though that was for 2 months.
Sorry but there is no shortage of talent. really big names in their field have grown and live in Germany but there is no way that Deutsche telekom would hire them, as their contracts are low paying, have restrictions in terms of employment and most people know that when you go in there its kind of the public sector, you wont get out.
There is a little bit of truth around the "tools" part but this is not due to law. Noone cares about the law when you are 5 man team with 10 users. The problem is that they insist on using shitty tools just because they are from another Germany company. Personio is one of them.
I hope everything I said is clear enough and doesnt cause any missconceptions.
I agree on many points. Wanted to add that in my view using "shitty tools" is not "just" because they are from another German company. In my experience in two DAX companies as well as startups, European and often times German providers especially of SaaS are picked due to not wanting to send customer, employee and company secret data off to jurisdictions which have been shown to be weak on data privacy, as well as the general feeling that there are fewer data leaks especially from U.S.-American companies.
One can certainly debate whether that feeling is based on solid ground, given the larger amount of SaaS companies in the US, and the fact that larger companies may attract more attention.
I guess I should clarify, by no means did I want to offend german software engineering. Ofcourse there are great products made from german software company or any companies (cars duh.)
Further that, I understand your point but I do not believe it is an issue in new companies. Yes Deutsche telekom might have such issue, but if you dont use Slack you can use HipChat you can use Microsoft Teams, you can use Google hangouts chat.
All with different policies, data centers etc. Hell you can even roll your own with open source projects.
There is always a way out and hiding behind the law for not adapting is bad for them.
BTW I believe DAX companies are more sensitive in terms of data than most companies, lets say soundcloud.
The digital innovation is being killed by 1) the people who hold the money. Venture capital in Germany and in Europe (excluding London) is totally different that in the US. In Germany for your seed round they want you to show them MRR, churn, thousands of users, forget it if you are 1 founder etc. The barrier is way higher than in US. Furthermore, only recently (2-3 years) have we seen been seed rounds in Germany but these being lead by non-german funds or by global funds that base in Germany. The limit of funds also limits how much companies can pay. 2) the obsession with titles PhD, MD, Lead etc. 3) do things that dont scale, is literally translated into, keep getting interns till the university doesnt have any more students to copy data from excel1 to excel2. 4) the still monolithic approach of hierarchies. (The MD (CEO) of one of the companies I worked for literally said that you should listen to X person because he has been in the company longer, even though that was for 2 months.
Sorry but there is no shortage of talent. really big names in their field have grown and live in Germany but there is no way that Deutsche telekom would hire them, as their contracts are low paying, have restrictions in terms of employment and most people know that when you go in there its kind of the public sector, you wont get out.
There is a little bit of truth around the "tools" part but this is not due to law. Noone cares about the law when you are 5 man team with 10 users. The problem is that they insist on using shitty tools just because they are from another Germany company. Personio is one of them.
I hope everything I said is clear enough and doesnt cause any missconceptions.