Not sure how visible by the people in the US but a lot of companies and governments in Europe are working on many projects to decouple from the American companies for the critical infrastructure.
Visa and Mastercard were mentioned in the article but I would also add PayPal into the list.
Everyday more and more articles like this appearing on HN. For some reason Germany is still exporting around €130 billions of products every month. Unlike the US, it doesn’t include natural gas or oil.
Also in this article, they talk about how VW can’t compete with the Chinese cars companies. Can the US car companies compete? Why the US doesn’t even allow those cars to be sold? The same thing happened with Huawei. They simply ban the companies they can’t compete but everybody talks about Germany :)
I’ve known Hendrik for years, and he is one of the most talented developers I’ve ever met. I’m confident this project will become successful very quickly. Beyond the project itself, what fascinates me most is how he single-handedly developed it by leveraging agentic coding.
The thing about ARR numbers is that in most cases they didn't really recur, especially for an 8-month-old company. Also, I don't really care about these numbers anymore unless they share how much they spent on marketing.
Germany doesn’t compete in cheap manufacturing, they compete in highly precise manufacturing. There are bunch of things that are only manufactured in Germany. You don’t hear those companies that much because they are not public but they are well known by the people who work in specific industries. When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
For some reason, every time Europe is mentioned, there is always a comment about how Europe is struggling but when you look at the quality of life, happiness or life expectancy, all those numbers are higher than the US. People should stop obsessing with GDP.
Why do you think that Europe has to race with the US in number of startups? Shouldn’t we focus on the quality of life instead?
The rich people in the US have lower life expectancy than the poor people in Europe. People in Europe are also happier than the ones in the US. What those startups will bring?
Another part of the American mindset. Not all the companies are trying to win here in Europe. Some believe that companies can co-exist. They can serve different groups of people. Not all of them are pushing for getting more market share or jumping into different industries like Airbnb is doing now.
Many people attempt to apply the American mindset to the European market, then act surprised when it doesn't work. This is yet another example.
European culture operates differently, and the startup model doesn't translate seamlessly to this continent for a variety of reasons. I've explored this in depth on my blog, with a particular focus on Germany: https://mertbulan.com/2025/02/24/we-dont-need-startups-we-ne...
I work 32 hours per week and I can't imagine myself working 40 hours per week anymore. I should have reduced earlier. Together with starting to work at 8AM, I have so much time in the afternoon for myself.
For some reason, I struggle to see Berlin as a deep-tech hub. Most startups there seem to focus on consumer-facing products—like Zalando, Flink, and HelloFresh. In contrast, Munich is clearly leading the way in deep-tech within Germany. The investments raised by companies like Helsing and Isar likely surpass the combined funding of all the startups listed on that page. Munich also benefits from strong technical universities and the presence of major R&D offices from companies like Apple and NVIDIA.
If people are paying a significant portion of their salaries, one-third or even half, towards rent, does it truly make sense to implement UBI? In my opinion, the answer is no. Instead, we should focus on establishing a Universal Basic Land: https://mertbulan.com/2025/03/02/we-need-universal-basic-lan...