It would be helpful if the initiators of Appsterdam worked on gathering information relevant for startups. What makes Amsterdam better than Berlin, Vienna... basically any other city.
What are the legal conditions in the Netherlands - especially in regard to founding a company and getting accepted as an immigrant, what other companies are already situated there (foremost what their experiences are), and how the living conditions and foremost prices are there for example. I'm from Europe, but that doesn't mean I have extensive knowledge on cross border work laws, just like Americans won't have that.
And of course what Appsterdam actually is...who is the driving force behind it right now, and what kind of force that is =
What do you want to do? Organize a few social meetings between founders of startup companies? Is that the extent of Appsterdam? I think it's awesome, I just also think you should be clearer about your intent. Just stating "I want to be the next Google / Silicon Valley / Ipod, doesn't really uniquely identify you :)
I'm one of the volunteers in Appsterdam and I can tell you we will do all of it, and more ;) A quick list:
- Creation of a community with meetings and drinks.
- Weekly lectures about technology that will also give speaker training.
- Provide legal and local information to people that will move here, like immigration policies and the like.
- Arranging of venues to work in and be around with other developer: we have the Appsterdam HQ; Igluu and Vodafone will offer a work space for a good price and with facilities like a lab with smartphones for testing; we will locate developer friendly cafes with free wifi.
- Family get togethers in the weekends, so our partners/spouses/children can create a network too.
- The university is interested in creating a course where developers are professors like in (if I'm correct) Berkeley.
- The government is interested in giving money for tech projects.
- At the party Mike announced that there will also be a fund for startups (called Appsterfund).
Maybe I'm forgetting something. Soon the video of the keynote will be online.
Check the site http://appsterdam.rs It is going to be much more than an information hub, the aim is to turn it into a movement. Given the enthusiasm of the crowd there yesterday I'm pretty sure it will turn into something big.
That's good feedback and we will have more of that sort of thing in the future, as well as direct help. A lot of this stuff is on my blog, http://mur.mu.rs.
One clarification though, we're not really in the business of stating we want to be the next anything. We just want to get App Makers together in one place, and we'd prefer that place be nice. What other people label us is their problem.
I've only visited for real once, about 5 years ago. We borrowed a friend's apartment near the center for about a week. I don't think I've seen anywhere else where people live so well.
How is it growing in a hub exactly? Where do all founders of successful startups hang out? There are some startups out there in Amsterdam, but there are many in other cities too (Utrecht, Delft, Enschede etc.). Amsterdam is definitely not a clear winner as location to found a startup among cities in Holland.
How is it growing as a hub exactly? Did you actually read the article? ;)
Luckily Appsterdam is not limited to Amsterdam. This isn't a pissing match between Dutch cities. It's about international branding. Appschede doesn't sound as good. Most people associate Delft with pottery. Americans have never heard of Utrecht.
As far as most people are concerned, these places are features of Amsterdam. But if you're in the Netherlands, we're a train ride away, and you're always welcome to come up for an event or a meeting.
One initiative doesn't make it a hub. If you found a startup in Holland, there are plenty of other cities which are suitable to found. The distances are sort of close, so the reasons why you HQ your startup in the valley are not exactly applicable to Amsterdam, you get the same benefits in most other big cities with talent.
You are right it is not a pissing contest, but you mention exactly what Americans (or other foreigners) would think. Most foreigners don't know much about Holland and see everything as a sub-urb of Amsterdam. They don't know where the local talent is, where the good universities are, where (local) people want to live. Don't forget that Dutch people think Amsterdam is as cool as foreigners do.
Don't take me wrong, Appsterdam is a cool initiative, but to me it sounds like something by foreigners, for foreigners.
It's not by foreigners for foreigners. Our attendees, and our volunteers, are about half expat, half local. Appsterdam will be a benefit to App Makers around the world, and also a tremendous boon to the Netherlands.
There's Stikk (stikk.nl), de Balie, Singel 146, Rokin75, TNW crowd (incl thenextweb.com, twittercounter, paydro), de Waag and Pakhuis de Zwijger and of course Sofa just getting bought (they leave but still... ;-), not to mention all the different places where startups are renting offices together (marvia, cardcloud). I've seen quite a few awesome things (products, people and deals) in A'dam and it's only getting better.
Wouldn't say that hiring is easier in Amsterdam... It's always hard to get real good developers and when pusing out a job vacancy, most responses are from non Dutch developers who want to work in Amsterdam (not that is a problem).
PG, say what: hook up with Rockstart.com in Amsterdam, help build the greatest startup machine ever and come visit your new friends as often as you like! :)
Thanks Paul, I think you hit it right on the mark.
The startup community there has been building up steam the past couple of years — and it has become more and more organized. I'll definitely miss hanging out with all the talented people back there.
Worth another visit imho. ;)
- Dirk (one of the Sofa founders who's now moving to Palo Alto)
Less expensive? not by much is my bet: Amsterdam is the most expensive city in Holland and one of the more expensive ones in Europe (Scandinavian countries + London may be worse is my estimate). It's also impossible to find housing.
As far as immigration is concerned, one can fall under the category "kennis-migranten" (loosely translated as knowledge-workers) pretty easily, as long as the company sponsoring you is willing to pay the money, around 50K (Pay is not like the Valley, but I'm guessing this is doable).
I moved here one year ago from Italy. Got an apartment from my first company for 2 months, then rented a shared apartment with other two people.
After a few months I got a mortgage with no money down and moved in my own house not far away from the center, and the government reimburses me part of that every month.
If we speak about renting prices, I can agree they are high, but from what I heard they are still less expensive than in the valley. Places to rent also go really quickly, but impossible is another thing.
The rent is very high in Amsterdam, and it is really difficult to find good housing in Amsterdam in a decent neighborhood. The rent might be lower than the valley, but don't forget that Dutch salaries can easily be half of what you can get in the valley too.
Rent is high. It's also difficult to find housing because most places use "Makelaars" (rental agents), and they tend to only want to show the apartments during office hours on weekdays.
Appsterdam also has an amazing housing agent who specializes in expats.
I have a ground level apartment with a courtyard on the canal at Groenburgwal, which is in my opinion the nicest neighborhood in Amsterdam, right smack in the middle of everything, but quiet, and beautiful.
Furnished, all inclusive: €1300/mo.
I lived in San Francisco. An apartment this nice in a neighborhood this nice was well out of my price range, and I made six figures at Apple.
This is typically unaffordable for most developers (single). If you earn 50.000 euro per year, this would be 50% of your net-income. Most rental agencies have requirements on your income before you are eligible to rent an apartment. This could be 4 or 4.5 times your pretax income so you would require a 60-70k salary (or income) per year. That is 85k-100k USD. That is a high end salary, which only the most senior people would get.
This represents about the nicest apartment in Amsterdam. Things get cheaper the further you move from the center. And what "most rental agencies" require doesn't affect us. We have our own agency.
Mind to share that agency with the rest of us or give a ballpark price for an apartment a typical developer can afford (30-40k pre-tax salary)? I know lots of people who have been searching for places in Amsterdam to live for a decent price.
On immigration: the article says that it's easier to immigrate to Amsterdam than Silicon Valley, but from what you say and what the embassy site says, it's not any easier (unless you're from EU of course). If you need a company sponsorship then your options are limited.
People keep bashing US's immigration system, but the only country I know that it's easier on immigration for skilled workers is Canada. If you have the requirements then you can move without a company sponsorship, and then look for a job.
Good to know about that treaty. It could make it easier for Dutch startups to attract talented employees from the US. If they eventually want to start their own company they have the option to stay in the Netherlands.
I'm writing the follow-up on this for VentureBeat. Should be out tomorrow and will answer a lot of these questions. But there are several things I liked about Appsterdam. It's a bottom-up, developer-led movement rather than a top-down, government program. It's about creating a haven for indie developers who want to live in a place that is in line with hacker values and have a life as well as a job.
Legally speaking, the larger problem is probably immigration law. The anti-foreigner sentiment here is driving a set of ever more annoying laws and processes.
To digress a bit:
For the non-EU crowd, the easiest way into the country is probably with a kennismigrant (knowledge worker) visa. This entitles you to a faster, easier process but there's a few problems: You must work for a company with (or willing to apply for) a special license to have a knowledge worker, you must make over a certain salary, and you're not allowed to do any other sort of work while living here (yes, that probably means your side startup).
Supposedly, you can also set up your own business here and work for yourself directly but I've never met anyone who's successfully done it. I expect you'll probably need to hire a decent lawyer to help sort it out.
Immigration aside, the Netherlands is a nice place to work and there's more to Amsterdam itself then pot and prostitutes. Something interesting is always going on and there's plenty of smart folks bouncing around. Personally, I hope this whole Appsterdam concept (mobile-centric name aside) turns into a huge hit.
The Kennismigrant visa is indeed an advantage and quick to get, but not an advantage over other EU countries for long. Most EU countries are about to start implementing the EU Blue Card visa (supposedly starting July).
However, more important than ease of visa processing is that as a Kennismigrant, you can usually get the "30% rule" tax break -- first 30% of your income is tax-free, AND the first euro after the 30% is taxed at the lowest tax bracket (i.e. the other 70% is adjusted down in tax bracket). You don't even need to be non-EU to get the 30% rule -- e.g. if you're a Danish or German or Spaniard, and get recruited to the Netherlands specifically for "knowledge work," you can qualify for this tax break too. It's good for 10 years. If you're married, try to see if your spouse can also get a job with this tax break BEFORE you accept your job offer and move to NL.
Make sure you don't go to university or grad school in NL tho, because you have to have been recruited to NL specifically as a highly skilled worker to qualify for this tax break. If you were already in NL for school, you tend to get disqualified for this 30% rule.
That cookie law, for those just scanning the comments, is EU in origin. All member-states have to implement. Nothing's really being done about it, enforcement-wise, from what I can tell.
The UK has just recently given all businesses an extra year to get their stuff together. The law, by the way, is only restrictive to analytics cookies, basically, if that analytics service is from a third-party.
You have to get express permission from the user if cookies are being used to monitor their activities in ways that are not essential to the site i.e. you don't need to ask for permission if you're using cookies to implement an online shopping basket, as that's essential fairly essential to all online businesses. A blog monitoring user activity, however, would need to get express user permission.
EU in origin but Netherlands have added to it by requiring companies to be able to retain proof that every user had been asked for their permission. My understanding is that the base version, the EU-wide model, would require companies to show that yes, here's the code, before sending a cookie we request permission; but there's a higher level of proof required in NL.
OTOH: the same article also states: "... the Dutch parliament made a bit of history by passing the first net neutrality legislation in the EU. ...". Also i've heard the cookie law isn't as strict as everybody thinks it is, but i'm still searching for a good source explicitly stating what the cookie law includes.
True enough. I can see how the cookie law has the intention of making the internet a better place for users, I just suspect that it's highly unlikely to do so, if what I understand about it is correct.
My understanding is that it requires not only an affirmative acceptance from users of cookies, but requires that the site placing the cookie be able to prove that the user did, in fact, provide said acceptance.
Was able to find the "Dutch American Friendship Treaty". This means it is relatively straightforward for americans to set up a business in the netherlands.
But not cheap. For a three person business, it looks like it would cost $15,000 in "capital" and around $7,500 in lawyers and other services to prepare the necessary paperwork (based on Mike Lee's estimates and the fact that our business has more than one person, so would need to incorporate.)
It seems wrong to me to put about $15k in the bank to do nothing when there's far more than that already invested in the business (Which is existing already) and the value of the business is more than that.
Will wait for the appsterdamers to get more details out. Maybe the situation is different for relocating an existing business.
Amsterdam is somewhat of a creative hub here in the Netherlands, with a lot of designers, photographers, advertising people and other creative types. There are also a number of good, but relatively expensive, data centers where you can host your servers. It has never really been a technical hub, though. Most technically focussed businesses (including startups) in the Netherlands seem to be in places like Eindhoven (with the technical university and Philips campus at its core) and other towns with technical universities, like Delft and Twente. Amsterdam is a bit of a hipster town, like people who work in advertising or make iOS applications, not a nirvana for nerds. One of the exceptions seems to be the CWI at the Amsterdam Science Center, which is were Guido van Rossum started working on Python.
That being said, there is some technical talent in the Netherlands and distances are small enough that you can attract people from towns like Eindhoven to work at a startup in Amsterdam. Most people also speak English, allowing easier cooperation with foreign co-workers and customers.
Downsides of the Netherlands are bad conditions for immigrants, high taxes (expect to pay over 50% on income tax alone), high cost of labour due to all kinds of government enforced perks like daycare and a lot of free time, business-unfriendly labour law, bureaucracy and the lack of an entrepreneurial culture. Technical and scientific education is also declining in both popularity and quality, despite the half hearted efforts of our government to position the country as a "knowledge economy". Getting a visum is relatively easy for immigrants from the EU and US (there is a special treaty with the US to enable easier immigration), but immigrants may be forced by the government to participate in expensive language and integration courses due to a streak of xenophobic politics in the last ~10 years.
Amsterdam has a reputation as a liberal city and a "gay capital". There seems to be some correlation between a vibrant gay culture and tech hubs, if you look at Tel Aviv and San Francisco. I hope that Amsterdam can turn the current decline around in that respect, because the city isn't as gay-friendly as it used to be anymore (according to the homosexual community; I can't report from first hand experience here). Homosexual couples are apparently harassed and beaten by groups of second and third generation immigrants from muslim countries (whom are quite prevalent here). A homosexual couple (or visually distinguishable Jew for that matter) will get harassed, bullied out of immigrant neighborhoods and in some cases physically threatened or worse. This development is accompanied with a rather ugly, xenophobic and isolationist political movement rooted in the lower middle classes that feel left behind in the current economy. Their main political hero, Geert Wilders, gained popularity by constantly picking on muslim immigrants in the rudest possible manner and is currently heading the second biggest party in Dutch parliament. The other parties have silently adopted a similar tough stance on non-Western immigrants to retain or win back voters, but usually without the ugly rhetoric. The tolerant atmosphere that brought intellectuals from Descartes, to John Adams to Einstein to our country seems to be in peril.
I think Amsterdam has potential for startups. Particularly in the creative and mobile apps industry. That being said, the current entrepreneurial atmosphere in the Netherlands isn't great and I doubt that we will be able to compete with places like Silicon Valley. I think it won't attract many foreign founders before some of the cultural problems are solved (I'm pessimistic and distrust any government initiatives in that respect because politicians won't be able to create a startup culture) and the town becomes a local tech hub in its own right (competing with towns like Eindhoven). But this is a cool initiative. I'm sure it will do at least some good and will be valuable to the participants. I'm not in Amsterdam, but as a Dutch hacker I might drop by one of the meetings at some point.
Thanks for the clarification. Granted, I oversimplified. The 52% is for everything over ~50K. As a business owner, however, you pay this income tax on top of 20%/25% corporate taxes.
If you make a 100.000 euro profit and extract it from your business the company pays 20% corporate tax (that is the rate below 200.000 euro profit), leaving you with 80,000. That remainder is taxed as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_Netherlands. This leaves you with 46.408 euro from your original 100.000 (using the rates that include mandatory pension, social security and State funded medical care payments).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm far from a tax specialist.
Of course, you also have to pay all sorts of other taxes with the remainder, including municipal taxes, a hefty value added tax on most things you buy and property taxes. In return you get the ability to subtract part of your mortgage from your taxes, as well as a government that takes care of you (if you want it or not) when it comes to social security or affordable health care.
EDIT: If you sell a company as a resident of the Netherlands you also get taxed quite heavily, but there are ways to mitigate part of that (e.g. using a holding company, so you don't have to pay income tax directly over the money you get for your shares). If you're moving here to start a business, I would suggest consulting a tax advisor or lawyer before you make any decisions or file paperwork.
Actually the Netherlands has amazing tax incentives for technology companies. It's quite common for tech companies here to pay essentially no payroll taxes. Things like VAT passthrough are also a huge tax break.
You are not a tax expert. I understand that. We actually do have tax experts, who are available to Appsterdammers, and are working on a nice write up of this information for publication in the near future.
"The 52% is for everything over ~50K. As a business owner, however, you pay this income tax on top of 20%/25% corporate taxes."
No you don't. You pay 52% wage tax in the upper bracket, but in that case it's not taxed for corporate tax since it's an expense. The companies profit is taxed at 23%, and if you pay dividend to the shareholder(s), then they pay another 22 or so percent dividend tax, making the total tax pressure roughly equal to the top income tax bracket, leaving aside special arrangements like starter deductions, WBSO subsidies etc.
No worries. I still roughly agree with your point that it's too expensive to do business here. That said, compared to the rest of Europe .nl is quite ok for technology companies (especially software) but only for people who actively go out and search for lawyers and accountants who know about the many special situations for IP creation deductions, R&D subsidies etc. Plus one needs to take advantage of EU freedom of establishment rules to move profits abroad for maximum tax optimization. A software company can optimize to only pay a fraction of the taxes what a plumber or widget manufacturer would pay. (and still legal)
Your pessimism seems endemic in European culture. It's actually a bigger problem, to my mind, than anything else you've mentioned here. As I like to say, Americans need to calm the hell down, and Europeans need a kick in the ass. Hopefully the Appsterdam movement will help us help each other, and we can find cultural bliss in the middle.
I will say this though, every gay person I know is a lot less worried about being beaten up by a cultural stereotype and a lot more worried about when they are going to be able to get married. That's something Amsterdam has that even San Francisco doesn't.
And hey, if you're right and the government (AKA the people) manage to turn the Netherlands into an intolerant police state, we'll move the whole thing to Germany.
I don't really disagree with anything you said, but I have to laugh at the idea of moving to germany to escape some future police state in the Netherlands. I am part german, love germany and germans, but that idea is funny. Maybe you were making a joke.
When last in berlin, I remember reading something that said "If germans were going to storm a subway station in protest, they'd all be sure to buy tickets first."
You can also get a significant discount on taxes (30% of your wage will be tax-free) by coming to the country as knowledge migrant. You have to get hired from abroad, be a specialist and earn high enough salary.
Coming from Eindhoven I'am a bit jealous of the Startup community in Amsterdam. But still I would not really consider working in Amsterdam. The 1:20 hour single trip commute by train would take the best of me.
Seems like we should do a local HN meetup, because all of a sudden lots of Dutch hackers are coming out of the woodworks, with you and Skrebbel from Eindhoven and me in Tilburg (~25 minutes by train). Anyway, the environment for startups in Eindhoven is great. There is the Technical University, Philips and a number of technical spinoffs from these two places, including a lot of startups. Although I'm highly skeptical of this ranking, the fact that the region around Eindhoven is ranked as the "smartest region in the world" is a good indicator[1].
Then do a startup in Eindoven. On the international scale of things, Eindhoven is a suburb of Amsterdam. Or the other way around.
People don't live in SF and work in San Jose much, either.
That said, my underbelly feeling is that Eindhoven is getting a nice startup scene, slowly swelling, though mostly focused on devices and not so much on software. But in all honesty I don't think there's much of a difference. Whether my startup buddies make html5 apps or the next revolution in fitness machinery, we face much of the same kinds of problems.
Addendum: I think Eindhoven might have near virgin hiring grounds. Thousands of brilliant people currently work at a small number of high-tech BigCo's, spending a week on fixing two bugs in 30M lines of unmaintainable C code (I'm talking to you, ASML). Some of these must know, deep inside, that things can be better.
I think that a startup that grows a fair bit past ramen profitability has a lot to offer to these kinds of people. The biggest problem is how to get the word out.
Contrary to your assumption I've done a reasonable amount of traveling. This summer, for example, I'm working from Paris for a month. I've done an internship in the US and visited four continents and around fourteen countries. I'm not done traveling, because there is so much left to see and experience, but I do have a little international perspective.
I tried to give some perspective with my post, but didn't intend to be overly pessimistic. In fact, I applaud your initiative (in hindsight, I could've been more clear about that). That being said, I still think that we lack an entrepreneurial culture here in the Netherlands[1] and that the image of intellectual and cultural freedom that might attract foreign startups has lost part of its shine in the last decade of isolationism[2], high-profile political murders and racial tension.
I do wish to concede on my point that Amsterdam isn't really a local technical startup hub in the first place, apart from the creative industry and mobile applications. From the Dutch perspective this might be true, as we have more advanced hubs in Enschede/Twente and Eindhoven, but from an international perspective distances are so small that this isn't really a factor and your initiative seems to be broader than just Amsterdam anyway. Amsterdam definitely has more allure to foreigners than provincial towns like Eindhoven and Enchede. E.g. Utrecht is one of the universities on the forefront of the Haskell community and this city is 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam. Groningen is a bit further, but their university has some great hackers working on cool stuff too (like two NLP specialists that are also on HN: http://nlpwp.org/book/).
Other than the "inappropriately pessimistic" tone, is there anything in my post you disagree with on a factual basis? I do consider myself an optimist, by the way, because you almost have to be as a startup guy. So what you might consider "inappropriate pessimism" is realistic optimism to me. I do wish your initiative to succeed and it is a lot more promising than the government-funded campaigns we've seen. I'm highly skeptical about government intervention because it rarely (if ever) works. Private initiatives like Appsterdam do have potential, though. In fact, I'm hoping to attend one of your meetings to see what all the fuzz is about.
[1] The Dutch people aren't very much inclined towards risk taking and entrepreneurialism, to say the least. Also, high taxes and business-unfriendly labour laws aren't helpful either. Contrary to the American Dream, we have a culture of applauding the average and consensus. We're keen on making money and sometimes prone to mass hysteria when speculating (e.g. the famous 17th century Tulip Mania and the more recent WorldOnline debacle), but the average Dutchman frowns on people that want to excel. A typical Dutch saying is "Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg" (lose translation: "Just be normal and average, that is sufficiently special and crazy").
[2] E.g. the majority of the country is very negative about the EU and the Euro, famously voting against the very reasonable referendum on the European 'constitution' a few years back out of spite towards the political elite. These people live in a world where they think everything got more expensive since the introduction of the Euro, while in fact the opposite is true.
> a location that’s far less expensive, and easier to immigrate to, than Silicon Valley.
4 years ago I travelled (mostly-) western Europe by train, staying in some of the big cities. Compared to the likes of Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Munich, I felt Amsterdam was a lot more expensive.
Of course times may have changed, and the comparison was to Silicon Valley, which I have no experience of, but it struck me as a strange point to pick out when I would have considered there to be more compelling arguments specifically about Amsterdam.
Paris, Barcelona, Rome (maybe Munich too):
You'd have to learn French, Spanish or Italian in order to live a normal life there. In Amsterdam, all the locals speak English, so it's pretty easy to stay here for several years without having to learn Dutch.
I have several foreign friends who've been living here in Amsterdam for years without having learnt Dutch. Of course it's always better to know the local language wherever you live, but in Amsterdam you really don't have to.
According those links, San Francisco or San Jose aren't even in the top 50 most expensive.
Every time I read one of these "the Valley is moving to X" articles, I'm reminded of the last 15 years of "the Valley is moving to X" articles that haven't come true. Tech is a huge industry, and growth allows for jobs everywhere. I don't know why all of these articles have to be phrased as if jobs need to leave the Valley to make it happen.
About the "the Valley is moving to X" I can tell you our objective is not to move the Valley here. What we want to really accomplish is to build the some sort of evolution of it. We want to build a great community and make Amsterdam the technology and innovation center in Europe. The outcome looks bright and we are very optimistic about it.
We definitely do not need to move the Valley here for Appsterdam to be successful, Europe is full of great talent.
But of course people from the Valley are welcome as well and can make our community richer.
Interesting. Of course I based my statements on my travelling through those places for a few days - I guess that's significantly more different to actually living somewhere in cost terms than I had considered.
There was recently an article in de Volkskrant (a major Dutch newspaper) describing Twente (an area in the east of the Netherlands) as the European "valley" for high-tech, with quite a few world-leaders in niche technology's. I will go through my pile of old newspapers to see if I can find it, but it was from quite a while ago. If someone else has it or knows where people can read it, I'd appreciate it if you'd share it.
As I live about 30km (~18 miles) from Amsterdam, I will try to attend a meeting.
having worked in Amsterdam for quite a while, i can highly recommend this place. It is one of the prettiest and most liveable cities I experienced. People are down to earth, speak excellent English and love to party. Everything is accessible by bike (no need for car/public transport). Finding an affordable place to live is hard, but that's the case with every city/area worth living. I didn't find it particularly expensive, my feeling is that it's in the middle range of Europe. Downsides are bad weather, long winter, and if you're short then 180cm you feel quite insignificant.
Rain doesn't bother me. Smog bothers me. Tasers bother me. Not being able to afford healthcare bothers me. My family has been in California for six generations, and I love it, but you can have it. I'll take the Netherlands.
In the summer it definitely rains more than in the winter, but not that much. Sometimes the weather turns bad for some days as you experienced (and as it happened last week). Overall I don't think it rains that much, I can count on one hand the times I had to wear the raincoat on my bike during the last months (I bike every day). Drizzle is bearable in my opinion, but of course does not compare to an always sunny weather.
I prefer much more a changing weather and changing seasons to constant weather, but that's definitely very personal.
US-dates coupled with "Americans can visit for three months without a visa. Pack up the family for a summer vacation in Europe." make me wonder how much this thing is targeting Americans over, you know, us Europeans who don't already have a Silicon Valley.
Don't worry, it's for Europeans and Americans equally. But Europeans (as me) do not need a visa and can come here anytime without any problem. This is the only reason for that sentence.
We had around 150 people at the launch keynote. There were some Americans, but the majority were people from around all Europe.
Edit: BTW, thank you for the report, I notified the person responsible for the website about the error.
Appsterdam events are in English. Other tech events in the city are usually some mixture of English and Dutch, depending on whether the audience is international.
> Now that Sofa has been acquired by Facebook, the company’s team (ironically enough) will be moving to Palo Alto. But Lee said he doesn’t expect that to affect on Appsterdam’s future...
If the founders don't believe in their own product enough to use it, it's going to fail.
Sofa contributed, but they are not "the founders" and this is not a "product" at all. Moreover they are moving because they have been acquired, so it has nothing to do with Appsterdam (apart of telling that this city is a fertile ground for good companies).
I don't think what you said had any sort of truth. Sofa has been purchased by another company, they are moving because they were bought not because they don't believe in Appsterdam.
The blog post linked in your grandparent showed that one developer left the company to stay, because they believed in Appsterdam. The implication is that other developers did not. Everyone made a choice here, including the owners of Sofa when they sold.
No, your logic is wrong, the implication is not that. It simply means that they chose Facebook offer because it made more sense for them, even though they totally believed in the initiative.
There is no logic implication that says otherwise and definitely is not in Mike's article, that is just an opinion of yours you are trying to support.
You are, if you will pardon the expression, talking out of your ass.
I brought Appsterdam to Sofa. I kept Appsterdam when Sofa left. Even if I died tomorrow, Appsterdam would continue. This isn't a product. It's a movement. Its power doesn't come from its founders, it comes from its people, and our people are amazing.
ElDragonRojo had technical difficulties replying here, so he posted his reply on his blog instead. With his permission, here's what he wanted to tell you here:
---
Sorry if I came across as impolite. Like I said, pardon the expression. It may have been inappropriately colorful. All I meant was that you’re talking about things you don’t know anything about.
I had the idea for Appsterdam and got things rolling. Sofa wanted to help out, but then they got offered a lot of money to move to the Valley. That’s great for them, and great for us, because that means we’ll have that many more Appsterdammers with Valley experience and investment money.
To suggest that their move in anyway represents a lack of faith in Appsterdam is just wrong. They don’t think that. I don’t think that. Nobody thinks that, except for you.
It’s also meaningless. Sofa did not found Appsterdam. I did. Sofa did not build Appsterdam, our army of volunteers did. Sofa designed our logo and website, but we get to keep those when they leave.
So even if they hated Appsterdam with the fire of a thousand suns, it wouldn’t doom us to failure. It wouldn’t even slow us down. We didn’t get to work together long enough for their leaving to impact us at all.
So your premise is wrong, and your conclusion is wrong, because you are working on no knowledge. You made a venomous statement that misrepresents things for no other reason than to be a naysayer.
Then, when you got caught by the people whose lives you are actually talking about, you tried to pass it off as a metaphor, even though that makes no sense at all, unless we accept the unlikely conclusion that you don’t actually know what a metaphor is or how to construct one.
That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean to be rude. Sorry if I offended.
What do you want to do? Organize a few social meetings between founders of startup companies? Is that the extent of Appsterdam? I think it's awesome, I just also think you should be clearer about your intent. Just stating "I want to be the next Google / Silicon Valley / Ipod, doesn't really uniquely identify you :)