The startup scene here in Germany is pretty healthy and vibrant. All startups together collected $1 Billion venture capital last year. But the scene here is small compared to the $15 Billion VC of California alone ;-)

After almost ten years of working for a big company, I joined a startup some months ago to design and develop a new generation infotainment platform for the Volkswagen group. I enjoy the flat hierarchies, lightweight processes, direct communication, friendly environment, and free time planning.

The German startup scene is very crowded around the three cities Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich. It seems harder for startups to collect venture capital when their residency is somewhere else located. A new trend here in Germany is crowdfunding for startups and blockchain based currencies - let's see how it will change the venture capital scenery. I'm very excited!

Well in Austria we have a "booming" Startup scene, but let's be honest startup is just a new term we use here to re-market new companies. This is like the 4th wording I've seen so far. it's like "emerging markets" instead of "3rd world countries" but I guess we're well aware of re-branding ....

Anyhow I see a culture change, usually companies were founded to be kept. So the founder would not sell the company but try to run it till he's like 50 or older and than move on to the board. This has changed and with the some bigger exits like runtastic and mysugar a whole new attitude seams to emerge that is more common in israel or america, other places. Sell outs so to speak short term intense investment with the target of big money.

That's for the money wise culture and the partial change of attitude.

Speaking of innovations. Since the "digital"-age finally reach the old "giant" companies/banks there are a lot of startups evolving around banking but we also have nano technologies, electronics so actually we're quite versatile here.

Also the production culture / cycles have changed we tend to be more international now but still the mindset often evolves around Austria and not about the world. I personally don't like this, I prefer 0,01 % of the world over Austria any time ....

Oh an the shared office spaces with "synergies" are booming everywhere as well which have been re-branded as "incubators". So well let's just say the marketing for startups is booming here. :)

Jan Vladimir Mostert,

Bangalore has been pretty big on the start-up scene in India (FinTech, Food Delivery, Logistics, MedCare, Education - pretty much everything). There are other cities like Hyderabad, Bombay and Delhi which aren't lagging behind either. One thing India has however failed to do is to invite skilled talent from all around the world. We work with what we have and haven't really been able to sort of be the immigrant friendly place we want to be.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1. How does South Africa perform in terms of attracting talent from abroad?
2. This one is very non technical. :-) I am a huge fan of the game cricket. I know cricket is big in South Africa too. Are you a fan as well?