Throwback: Danke, Berlin!

The iLEAD team from Singapore, at Houzz in Berlin, Germany.

At the end of our school programme we spent two weeks in Berlin, Germany last year, visiting startups and finding out more about the tech ecosystem in the city and country (and of course, took the chance to travel around).

Read “Danke, Berlin!“, and here’s a short excerpt:

“To the uninitiated, heading to Berlin, Germany – a country famed instead for its manufacturing and engineering prowess as well as its many multi-national corporations – for an overseas study mission (OSM) on entrepreneurship may seem odd. After all in the footsteps of Silicon Valley, cities around the world have also been modelling their own tech and startup ecosystems, but Berlin is not often in the conversation.

And because we – as students on the iLEAD programme, fresh from six-month internships in Singaporean companies – were uninitiated, the prospect of exploring and learning in the city was exciting. Across the ten days, we gained insights and built networks in Berlin.

The first visit to the German Tech Entrepreneurship Centre (GTEC) – Germany’s first open campus which unites technology entrepreneurship organisations, resources, and expertise – laid the groundwork for the subsequent days. Co-founder Benjamin Rohé described the landscape in Berlin as “one hundred per cent organic and home-grown, and ever-growing without massive funds from the government”, ranking it with London and Stockholm as three of the top European cities in this regard. While the availability of capital is a challenge, this weakness is compensated by the diverse talents in the city, and this influx is further accelerated by internationalisation and the lower costs of living at the moment.”