Berlin Lures Technology Start Up Funding and Talent

柏林新創科技公司展現魅力

By Mark Scott

BERLIN – Near the Rosenthaler Platz subway station, signs of a high-tech future blend seamlessly with this city’s communist past.
在柏林的羅森塔勒廣場地鐵站附近，高科技未來的徵象與這個城市的共黨歷史完美結合。

Decrepit breweries and stables have been converted to communal offices with colorful Ikea furniture. Achingly cool coffee shops with names like Betahaus and St. Oberholz are packed with programmers in their 20s and 30s hunched over laptops.
破舊的啤酒廠及馬廄已改建為有彩色宜家家居家具的共用辦公空間。店名包括貝塔豪斯與聖奧伯赫爾茲的極酷咖啡店坐滿二、三十歲的程式設計師，個個埋首於筆電。

“I got sucked into Berlin,” said Henrik Berggren, a Swedish college dropout who moved here in 2011 to work on his e-book venture, ReadMill. “It became clear that this was the place to be.”
柏格倫是瑞典的大學輟學生，前年來到柏林為他的電子書事業ReadMill打拚。他說：「柏林深深吸引我。我顯然來對了地方。」

More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, engineers and designers have flooded into the city, attracted by the underground music scene, stylish bars and low rent.
柏林圍牆倒塌的20多年後，在地下音樂盛行、酒吧時髦與租金低等因素吸引下，許多工程師與設計師湧向柏林。

Hours after landing at Tegel airport, Mr. Berggren, a 33-year-old computer programmer, found an apartment with two 20-something Germans in one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods for just 300 euros a month.
33歲的程式設計師柏格倫抵達泰格爾機場才幾個小時，就與兩個20來歲的德國人共同在當地一時髦社區找到一間合適的公寓，月租只要300歐元。

“The cheap rent Berlin buys you time, and time is everything,” said Lorenz Aschoff, a co-founder of EyeEm, a mobile photo app similar to Instagram.
EyeEm是類似Instagram的行動照片應用程式，共同創辦人艾秀夫說：「柏林房租便宜為你省下時間，而時間就是一切。」

In March, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, toured several local technology firms in a show of support. The city’s politicians are trying to make it easier for international workers to get visas.
今年三月德國總理梅克爾參訪柏林幾家科技公司以示支持。柏林政治人物正設法使外國來的人才更易取得簽證。

By Silicon Valley standards, Berlin is still a backwater. “The scene is very young,” said Alex Ljung, the co-founder of SoundCloud, a music Web site. “Berlin isn’t proven yet. It’s much like a start-up in that way.”
與矽谷相比柏林仍顯落後。音樂網站SoundCloud共同創辦人勒容說：「整體面貌非常年輕。柏林還沒有證明它的潛力。它本身就像個新創公司。」

Entrepreneurs say high-quality programmers and engineers are hard to find, and there is a lack of early-stage funding from venture capital firms. After getting hurt in the dot-com bust, German venture capitalists have shied from making big investments, preferring to finance early-stage companies with checks of less than $2 million.
創業家說，高水準的程式設計師與工程師很難找，而且缺少來自創投公司的初步資金。德國創投資本家因為曾在達康泡沫中受傷而不願大手筆投資，資助新創企業金額往往不超過200萬美元。

Ijad Madisch, a Harvard-educated medical doctor who started Research Gate, a social networking site that allows scientists to share work and collaborate on projects, had to leave Germany to secure early-stage fund-raising. He moved Research Gate from Boston to Berlin in 2011, and has expanded his staff tenfold in less than two years, to 120 employees. His site now connects more than 2.6 million scientists worldwide.
哈佛畢業的馬迪希醫師開辦社群網站「研究門」，供科學家得以在各種計畫上分工合作。他曾被迫到德國以外地區去籌措初期資金。2011年他把「研究門」從波士頓搬到柏林，不到兩年人力就增加10倍，目前有120人。如今，這個網站連結全球各地逾260萬名科學家。

“I had to leave Germany to get back to Germany,” Mr. Madisch said. “German venture capitalists had this idea in front of them, and they didn’t do anything about it.”
他說：「我曾經為了回到柏林而離開柏林。這個點子擺在德國創投資本家眼前，他們卻一動也不動。」

The city also is trying to overcome its reputation for copying American business models rather than developing innovative ideas.
另外，柏林也在設法洗刷只知抄襲美國商業模式，不思開發創新的惡名。

“Previous generations of Berlin start-ups were copycats,” said Matt Cohler, a partner at the venture firm Benchmark Capital.
美國創投公司「基準資本」合夥人柯勒說：「前面那些世代的柏林新創企業只知抄襲。」

More important, there have been few successful exits – sales to larger companies or lucrative initial public offerings – that could cement Berlin’s place in the global start-up community. Few deals break the $1 billion mark.
更重要的是，成功找到最後出路（賣給大公司或藉由首次公開發行股票海撈一票）的實例不多，未能確立柏林在全球新創企業界的地位。交易額超過10億美元的很少。

But as local start-ups gain global audiences – and international backing – entrepreneurs and investors are betting on Berlin. While venture capital investment in the rest of Europe has remained flat since the financial crisis began, the city attracted 173 million euros in venture funding last year, a 164 percent increase compared with 2009.
然而隨著在地新創公司獲得全球閱聽大眾的注意與國際支持，創業家與投資人已經開始押寶柏林。金融危機出現後歐洲其他地區創業投資大致持平，柏林去年則吸引了1.73億歐元的創投資金，比2009年增加164%。

Big technology companies are showing interest, too. Google has invested in a local start-up hub called the Factory.
大型科技公司也開始感興趣了。谷歌已經投資一處名為「工廠」的在地新創企業中心。

“There are billion-dollar companies just waiting to happen,” said Ciaran O’Leary, a partner in the local venture firm Early Bird. “Something big is going to happen. It’s just a question of time.”
柏林創投公司「早鳥」合夥人歐雷里說：「資本額達到10億歐元的新公司即將出現。大事就要發生了，只是時間早晚的問題。」

Many eyes have focused on Wooga, an online game start-up founded in 2009 that competes with Zynga for users on mobile phones and social networking sites like Facebook.
線上遊戲公司Wooga創立於2009年，正與Zynga公司競爭手機及臉書等社群網站的用戶，如今是眾所矚目的焦點。

After raising money from both European and American venture firms, Jens Begemann, Wooga’s co-founder and chief executive, said investors are slowly reconsidering untested ideas. He is focused on beefing up its games for smartphones in an effort to diversify away from sites like Facebook.
Wooga共同創辦人兼執行長貝格曼表示，Wooga向歐美創投公司籌得資金後，投資人正逐漸重新考慮從未試過的點子。他目前專注於為智慧手機推廣這些遊戲，以與臉書等網站有所區隔。

“Gaming involves combining skilled engineering with a creative atmosphere,” said Mr. Begemann, 36, in the start-up’s five-story office where programmers share ideas in an open-plan kitchen that has been designed to look like a leafy forest. “Wooga couldn’t exist in any city other than Berlin.”
在Wooga的五層樓辦公室，程式設計師在一間設計得有如綠色森林的開放式廚房交換心得。36歲的貝格曼說：「遊戲牽涉到結合純熟的工程技術與創意氣氛。柏林是唯一適合Wooga生存的城市。」

原文參照：
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/technology-start-ups-take-root-in-berlin/

2013-05-21聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報八版上