r/berlinstartups

Hi everyone,

I have a question about VAT as a Kleinunternehmer in Germany.

I registered a sole proprietorship alongside my full-time job and opted for the Kleinunternehmerregelung, so I don’t charge or collect German VAT.

My app generates revenue, but the payment processing fees are charged by a Canadian company (they invoice me for their service).

Do I still need to account for reverse charge VAT in Germany on those fees, even though I’m a Kleinunternehmer?

Has anyone been in a similar situation or knows how this works?

Thanks!

Hi all, greetings. Wondering if anyone can advise me on cold email reality in Germany. I'm from Australia and launching a business globally with cold email one of our launch channels.

In Australia as in USA, cold emailing is totally acceptable and fine. But my trusty friend Claude tells me cold emailing goes against GDPR and other rules in Germany.

In practice is it frowned upon or outright illegal?

Hey everyone,

I’m a Senior Product Designer currently based in Berlin. I was recently laid off and am now available to start immediately.

I have 5+ years of experience working on B2B2C SaaS products, with a strong focus on UX research, product thinking, and end-to-end design delivery.

Open to full-time, part-time, or freelance opportunities.

Happy to chat if anyone’s hiring or knows of relevant roles.

Thanks

I'm not native German, nor have I worked here. So I feel pretty out of touch with the local talent picture - which companies have a good engineering culture, what engineers look for when evaluating roles, equity comp etc. The couple of referrals I've got were not a fit at all - more at home in a large stable company.

Any advice for me? Would love to hear your experiences in hiring your first few people in Berlin.

The SAAS is in the alpha testing phase with 20+ users, the responses I have received are great.

For proper marketing I am thinking of a small VC round as seed funding.

Do let me know if you have any idea.

Been building websites for small businesses here in Berlin as a CS student, learned a lot about what they actually need online.

Biggest lesson: most people don't need anything fancy. A clean one-pager with contact form and fast loading time converts better than a complicated site every time.

Still taking on a few projects if anyone needs something simple and professional. €200 for a fully deployed one-page site. Happy to show examples with zero obligation.

DM if interested 😊

Mir fällt in letzter Zeit immer öfter auf. dass viele erfolgreiche Unternehmen gar keine komplett neuen Ideen haben

Stattdessen nehmen sie etwas, das es bereits gibt, und machen es einfach besser- sei es durch besseren Service, bessere Prozesse oder eine bessere

Kundenerfahrung.

Das hat mich zum Nachdenken gebracht: Ist eine wirklich neue Idee heutzutage überhaupt noch so wichtig, oder kommt es am Ende vor allem auf die Umsetzung an?

Wenn ihr heute ein Unternehmen gründen würdet, würdet ihr lieber etwas vollig Neues aufbauen oder ein bestehendes Konzept verbessern?

Bin gespannt, wie ihr das seht.

I was talking with a friend who wanted to launch a startup, but after looking at the costs and risks, he started looking at franchise businesses instead.

That got me thinking.

A few years ago, most people around me seemed interested in building something completely new. Now I keep seeing more discussions about buying into an existing business model and growing that instead.

I even noticed this trend while reading Franchisereport News and some other German business sites. There seems to be a lot more interest in practical business models compared to the typical ""next big startup"" idea.

Do you think this is happening more often in Germany right now?

If you were starting today, would you rather build a startup from zero or join a proven business model and focus on growth?