This article says nothing about the Berlin startup scene at all (except for a few vague, positive phrases). If you expect a description worthy of the word "journey", you'll be disappointed. It's mostly a self-congratulatory piece written by someone who apparently thinks that startups are some sort of hipster/fashion movement.

My experience with Berlin is 1) plenty of enthusiastic people and startups, 2) not enough funding to go around, 3) still some weird hiring practices in place. I have several decades of development+startup experience, and while interviewing for a CTO spot recently, I was asked in all seriousness what my GPA was. I could only guess, I hadn't thought about it in many years. The interviewer gravely informed me that most of their hires were in the "top 5%" of their graduating classes. This was a company that was allegedly, by their advertisements and verbal communications, looking for a tech cofounder/CTO.

I read recently online that Berlin is welcoming superstar American techies with open arms, which, of course, would be true of pretty much any startup community. I'm not surprised that they rolled out the red carpet for the author, but I don't think that ordinary non-German devs should expect the same or even similar treatment.

English-only speakers will find that one can get by just fine in Berlin without German. It's nice if you have a bit of it to facilitate communication with non-university-educated people, but it's just a nice-to-have. My experience is that people in the startup world here are incredibly fluent in English.

I love Berlin and look forward to returning, but the hype is pretty over-the-top. It's a good scene, but I don't think it's a great scene. Certainly nothing like SV or NYC. My purely subjective impression is that it's something more along the lines of a Toronto or perhaps a Boulder or an Austin.

I’m a pioneer and I want to be on the frontier.

I just can't imagine having the self-belief to write like this about myself in public. (And I didn't really cherry-pick the sentence.)

I'm the author of this article. If you want to know how things turned out, here's a follow-up / debrief from a few months after the first one:

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2014/05/08/three-months...

The second one is less about my personal experience and more about Berlin, including profiles of startups and investors I got the chance to meet or work with.

Read the article twice and quite a bit suprised that the author did not touch at all on the fact that his acceptance and welcoming into the Berlin scene could be to do with this success at Heroku.

By all means, Adam is most certainly an exceptionally talented individual and his personality and drive must have contributed to his success in Berlin.

However not even touching the subject that he had such a warm welcome might be related to Heroku and therefore not freely available to everyone seems quite an oversight.

Clue is a great company with really mission-driven founders, and they're rightly held up as one of the shining stars of the Berlin community. There are quite a few worthy up-and-comers that Adam could throw his considerable experience and clout behind - I know Contentful are doing something very interesting and seem to be running a tight ship indeed, and Avuba is part of what seem to be a whole new generation of payments startups sprouting in Europe.

Hy.co/Hy!Berlin on the other hand, represents some of the very silly self-aggrandizement and hype Berlin is prone to, which hasn't been helped with their acquisition by Axel-Springer.

Bringing Silicon Valley to Europe

Please don't do this.

Is it just me, or does the article hardly tell anything about "the Berlin startup scene"?

This article is a vacuous, patronising, self-aggrandising ego-wank.

In case anybody is interested in coming to Berlin, /r/berlin has a helpful FAQ: http://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/wiki/faq

IIRC, you can apply for a 1-year self-employment/freelancer/artist visa in Germany if you're from the US.

I realise this is OT, but I'm genuinely curious...

> On January 2, 2014, I boarded a one-way flight to Germany... > I’ve never lived outside the US

Was this possible because:

* Germany allows anyone entry without a return ticket?

* He has a US passport?

* He has loads of cash?

I have travelled through 7 countries and never been allowed entry without a return ticket or proof of onward travel.

Yes, this article doesn't tell much about the Berlin startup scene, but it really did got me curious about it! Can some please link or post here a good review of the Berlin scene?

That guy is made for the Samwer brothers.

Article paraphrased:

"I'm so great, Heroku, I'm so cool, I advise startups and dabble around, I float around life, everyone likes me, Berlin, I'm part of the scene"