The Startup Shrink Will See You Now

Julia Derndinger is Berlin’s startup therapist. Each week, she sees a dozen company founders at her apartment on Oranienburger Street, where €200 ($224) an hour buys advice on spending, expansion, and hiring, plus hot tea and, occasionally, relationship counseling. Derndinger also helps clients navigate the extra layers of danger and anxiety that come with running a fledgling business in Germany. The local financial press has dubbed her die Gründertrainerin, “the founder trainer.”

As many as 1,000 startups have begun life in Berlin in the past year, and the local tech industry employs about 60,000 laptop jockeys in conventional offices or huddled at cafes and co-working spaces with Fritz-Kola and craft beer. But the “fail fast, fail often” ethos of Silicon Valley is at odds with the notoriously cautious German business culture. Germany ranks 25th out of 29 high-income countries in new-business formation, according to the World Bank. Among other factors, shuttering the local equivalent of a limited liability company takes a year or more and lands directors on a banking blacklist.