Tuesday, nine o’clock, Sankt Oberholz. The café is half empty at this hour in the morning. The few guests could easily spread out its two floors and many tables. But they prefer not to. They squeeze into one corner instead. The January Meetup hosted by the platform Silicon Allee” is all about networking. And that seems to be easier if you’re jammed in.
It’s a phenomenon of the start-up scene. Despite the fact that most of them are techies, personal contact still is the heart of it all. This morning in the Oberholz, young people are buzzing around, trying to make new friends. Some speak English with a Spanish accent, some with a German accent, but a lot of them with a North American accent. Almost everybody was home for Christmas, now the ex-pats cannot wait to share the news about what’s going on. "Did you hear about this business angle?" - "Did you pitch for that?"
Silicon Allee was started by a couple of expatriates who used to work in Silicon Valley. When they came to Berlin, they thought the city lacked a platform for start-ups to meet and network. They also thought the dynamic scene limited itself if it communicated only in German. How would the rest of the world find out about what was going on? Today Silicon Allee is part of the factory. A gigantic co-working space, just taking shape at Brunnenstraße.
Despite the fact that the scene comes across as young and rather casual, contacts are treated with great care. If you think you know somebody, who could be of use to somebody else, you would never just give away his website or email address. Oh, no. You propose to make the contact. Then you write an email to the one, and put the other in cc. You have to show that you are somebody who knows people. That way your network grows stronger.
Most of Berlin’s start-ups are still preoccupied with surviving. In that phase they rely even more on networking. Newcomers are advised to build their network before they start. That might be difficult in any other German city, but in Berlin it’s harder not to network. Wherever you go on any given time of the day in the districts of Prenzlauer Berg or Mitte somebody is surely hosting a meet up. There are lunchdates and Pizza meet ups, there are conferences and bootcamps and start up awards. To keep track you can find calendars on the net, like startupdigest.com for example.
Today Silicon Allee is based in the Factory, an enormous campus for startups, which is currently being created on Brunnenstraße. The blog is run by David Knight, originally from London, who first learned about networking working as a local journalist in the UK. Knight had originally come to Berlin to report on the nascent founders scene but quickly became infected by the mood and has been involved himself ever since.
“Silicon Allee is itself a startup,” says David Knight. “We have the same problems and issues; the same roller coaster of highs and lows.” And that is part of what makes networking so attractive in this industry – entrepreneurs can exchange information on the hurdles they all face like funding and recruitment and help each other navigate the difficulties of German bureaucracy, a particularly daunting task for English-speaking founders. When you hear Knight talk, you get the impression that the whole sector is one big circle of friends.
“The tech scene in Berlin functions around social contact more than anywhere else,” says Knight. Of course, it can be easier to have a conversation with a famous founder or other noted startup figure in casual surroundings than it is to secure an individual meeting with them. But is there not the fear that someone will steal an idea if you start talking about it in public?
“No,” shrugs Knight. “In this industry it's much less about the idea you have and much more about the kind of person you are. And if you're good, you'll get there one way or the other.”
That seems to be Knight's startup ethos. He is adamant that the benefits you can extract from networking outweigh the danger that a so-called Copy Cat will imitate your idea. Investors or mentors, like Business Angels, don't invest their money and expertise in the project, but rather in the team behind it. “Startups are all about the people.”
One very interesting project is Berlingeekettes, an organization facilitating relationships between female entrepreneurs in the technology sector. “I created Geekettes as it became increasingly clear that female technology professionals required their own grassroots structure to share wisdom and experience”, Jess Erickson, the founder, writes in her blog.
Networking is an important factor for start-ups
NThe Geekettes feature interesting personalities of the tech scene and develop a mentorship program. A date not to miss is „Fridays at six“ hosted by Derk Marseille, the self-declared “backstage pass to Berlin’s greatest start up minds. Fridays at six is a talk show that tours around the most interesting offices of the scene, connecting CEOs and beginners.
Networking is also an important factor in the business concept of a lot of start-ups. Fraisr, for example, the online marketplace for a good cause. A percentage of every item that is sold via Fraisr is donated to a charity organization, NGO or even the good cause of an individual.
Fraisr founders make use of the fact that people love to connect. When they started brainstorming, everyone was saying that the next big thing on the internet would be to buy goods based on a recommendation by a friend. So Alex Schwaderer, Oskar Volkland and Lukas C. Fischer mused over what could be their contribution. "Social networks are all about communication", explains Schwaderer. "But there is limited informational value in the fact that someone just bought shoes, so nobody communicates that."
They needed to make commerce relevant, so people would talk about it. That is how they came up with the idea to connect buying to giving donations. "The overall willingness to donate to a charity is quite low in Germany", says Lukas-C. Fischer. "We want to trivialise giving as a concept and win more people over to make it a habit."
But one step was still missing: the "Friendraising" alluded to in the company name. "We looked at what NGOs are doing", explains Fischer. Many people click the Like-button whenever they tell of their activities." But donations are hardly made on the Internet. Mostly NGOs make people aware of their causes through the old fashioned way of letters. But if you would communicate your donation via social networks, more people would become ware. And new donators would be mobilized. „We consider ourselves a crowdfounding tool“, Schwaderer explains.
For example, if Alex wants to sell a picture to support an NGO project, he can list it in Fraisr and then share it via facebook, Twitter or pinterest. He gets more potential buyers involved. Oskar can see it and support Alex’s cause by ‚liking‘ it. That is how Lukas first hears about it. He buys the picture, because he knows Oskar and he likes the cause that Alex wants to support - and hopefully the picture as well. A new network has been created.
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