Thoughts on travelling with your startup
I’ve always been a huge fan of the Buffer guys, Leo and Joel, and the way they blog about their experiences while building their great product. I especially like Joel’s thoughts on travelling with your startup, which is the reason I shamelessly use his title for getting out my own opinion on this topic.
We just moved the bigger part of Weavly (the founders team) from Vienna to Berlin for joining the current round of Startupbootcamp. And although it’s the first time we as a startup changed our location, it’s not the first time I personally moved for the sake of the project.
The first time happened a little less than a year ago when I made the jump from Linz, the town I grew up and studied in, to Vienna. Weavly was just a little more than an idea at that time, at least compared to our current state, but I had the strong feeling that connecting myself to an active startup scene was the thing to do for making the project grow. And I was right.
I first got my mind blown by the startup show & tell, a monthly event for early stage startups initiated by Christopher Clay (founder of soup.io andsoup.me), taking place at the famous Viennese hackerspace “metalab”. Experiencing the open and direct way people with different backgrounds but common goals talked about their projects, shared their lessons learned and gave valuable inputs to each other was simply amazing.
I got myself a desk at the co-working space Sektor5, birthplace of an already uncountable number of startups, and had a great time seeing the other teams in action and learning form their inputs. And enjoying the people of StartEurope making Vienna a big spot on the European startup map by organizing the pioneers festival was nothing than a remarkable experience.
Moving from Linz to Vienna basically got me into contact with an incredibly amount of great people, brought me more relevant insights than my last three years at university and allowed me to be part of a community I’m really proud of. And this is exactly the reason why I’m already thrilled what the next months of living in Berlin will get us, me and Weavly. If just half of the hype surrounding Berlin is true then there are some awesome weeks ahead.