Articles and essays on entrepreneurship and innovation.
It’s photos like this – images of the venus’ surface – which make me realize that we live in a super pessimistic time.
Without money, you cannot save the rain forests in Brasil. You may protest and try to prevent illegal foresting, or start a blog and write about how severe the unlawful deforestation is. Now imagine what you could achieve with 100 million dollars in your bank account. Your chances to save the Brasilian rainforests are higher, much higher.
If you look at Germany’s startup landscape as an outsider from the U.S. or the UK, you might ask yourself: “What’s wrong here in Germany?” While Germany has the talents to build great things – as you can see in the automotive and aviation industry – there is no real tech startup lifting off the ground.
Yesterday a paying customer has been physically assaulted and literally with dragged by force of his United Airlines flight. The video has been recorded by several passengers. And it is shocking enough itself. The worst part was yet to come.
Artificial Intelligence? That’s evil might be your first thought. Artificial intelligence has been demonized by many Hollywood movies. From evil robots which are going to destroy humanity and surveillance states who will collect everything about their citizens.
Two days ago I received several calls during the day. My phone was on mute for a few hours while I was attending a course in university. Usually, I try to call back every call but two days ago I thought: “If it was important they would’ve left a voice mail”. Yes, you are right, they didn’t leave a voice mail. So I forgot about calling these numbers back.
Every single day I meet very nice and friendly people. The problem is being nice and friendly doesn’t change their situation. When I am talking about their situation I am talking about their financial, professional, and personal situation. I meet them everywhere and every day. They work in jobs they hate and managers who treat them like a slave. There are also people who completely accept all
Today I came up with a strange comparison. Having a training partner in the gym and having a business partner in a company. I thought about it for a while and I came to the conclusion that in the end, it’s both the same.
Today we finally received our bank account details. In other words: we opened our company bank account. It was a weird experience. While we had our notary appointment in very late November 2016 we somehow were not able to open a bank account before early February. Here are some lessons I learned as a first-time founder in Germany.
Our initial plans were to open our bank account within hours or maximum 3 days after our notary appointment. We chose an online bank called Fidor. We uploaded every document they needed except for a small mistake from our side. My co-founder left Germany just 3 days after our bank appointment and so it came that we only uploaded a black-white copy of his passport. They requested a high-quality photo and we did so a few weeks later. Finally, on January 11th we uploaded all necessary documents to their online platform. Since that day I tried to contact their (business) customer service a few times but the only response I got was unfriendly: “You need to wait, you are in a queue”.
My wish and patience to open a free bank account at Fidor bank were finally over. We made an appointment at Commerzbank and within less than 2 weeks we opened the account.
When it comes to service it is true: you get what you pay for. Instead of saving a few unspectacular Euros on the bank account I would now always go to a premium bank (like the Commerzbank) first. The idea of applying for a free bank account at Fidor stretched our nerves and did cost us a lot of time.
At least now we are ready to go.
Germany is ranked by the World Bank Group on the 17th rank overall when it comes to doing business and on rank 114 when it comes to starting a business. With this post, I would like to introduce the different Germany company forms to you.
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