FINDING MY CITY: WHAT LED ME TO BUILD IN LONDON, NOT BERLIN

Navigating Europe’s startup map to find the best city for me to build in health.

After 10.5 formative and unforgettable years in Berlin, I’ve packed my bags and am beginning my next entrepreneurial chapter in London!

My first photo in Berlin (2014) and London (2025)

Where to build something big while staying close to what matters?

Naturally the decision where to live and what city to call home is a multi-faceted decision.

Through the professional lens as an entrepreneur starting out in the Health space, the key considerations were: 1) talent and peer group, 2) market, and 3) regulatory landscape.

Through the personal lens, my main criteria was to remain close to my family and dearest friends and as a result any place outside of Europe was not on the table. I can highly recommend this article, essentially making the point that life is too short to be far from the people you love while tackling your goals: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html.

Why Berlin was the right place for my last chapter

At the start of my journey, I moved to Berlin because it clearly was the startup capital of Europe back in 2014. I joined a hugely interesting and fast growing start-up. I had an unbelievable peer group who I learned a lot from. I had many of my best friends living in Berlin as well - including many who had studied with me in Vienna. Lots of interesting new people came to Berlin and it very clearly was the place to be for me!

Fast forward ten years, most of my friends had left Berlin - mostly because their priorities became starting a family. They wanted to be closer to the roots / a support network for that purpose, and frankly because most people who were not from Berlin originally did not see themselves in Berlin for the very long-term. Professionally, after my time at N26, returning from my travels in mid 2024, I struggled to find my peer group in Berlin that had the ambition to truly think big and build something very hard, solving some of the biggest challenges of our time.

Berlin’s waning start up pull

Admittedly Germany, and Berlin specifically, lost a lot of its reasons for attracting entrepreneurial talent in the last years. A few of the key reasons on how I make sense of that are that Berlin was not able to capitalize on the rise of AI in the same way that other places did. Besides lack of significant investment and slow policy implementation in Germany as a whole, Berlin’s challenge comes mainly due to the fact that there are not really any top notch technical universities close by. Furthermore, proximity to the German industry became more important for AI companies.

In 2024, Bavaria overtook Berlin in total venture capital investment for the first time (TUM and ETH Zurich being closer in that region). Besides Munich, I also saw lots of great talent from Berlin moving either to Paris, London or also frequently the US.

Subjectively, I would also say that while in the past Berlin’s start up vibe definitely was “work hard, play hard”, the “work hard” part is less prominent these days. As always, exceptions confirm the rule and I know a handful of great founders building ambitious startups in Berlin also today!!

Finding London

Last year, I spent three months in London during my interim Chief of Staff role at Gousto. I didn’t expect it to shift my thinking as much as it did.

But week after week, I met founders and operators who were thinking globally, moving fast, and building with conviction. There was a kind of ambition and energy I’d been missing in Berlin. For the first time, I saw a real alternative.

Given my personal decision of wanting to stay close to loved ones, moving to the US was off the table. Within Europe, cities like Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Munich all have a start-up ecosystem. However, given I have no real professional or personal ties to any of those cities, my decision was essentially between Berlin and London.

Making the call as a founding team

During my time in London last year, I was also on the co-founder hunt and naturally the decision where to build would be one that had to work for all co-founders.

Hence, once Reinest, Ben and I decided to work together, we looked at the above mentioned criteria more deeply:

• Talent and Peer Group: besides the point already made on the peer group, London has great talent on the intersection of AI and healthcare because of its world-class academic and research institutions, a strong healthtech and biotech ecosystem and its generally high density of experienced operators from around the world. Prominent examples include Palantir having a big hub there doing work with the NHS; or Deepmind being founded there and Alphafold being a massive breakthrough in biotech. When thinking about where to build and scale a team, density of world-class talent is a central consideration.

• Market: from a consumer perspective, there is a stronger attitude of health ownership in the UK, especially following the pandemic; there is also a larger private health market and as a result a higher willingness to pay for health among UK consumers than in Germany; lastly consumers in the UK, especially in urban areas, have a more progressive attitude towards digital therapeutics and personalised care. This has already been quite evident in our first rounds of user research when comparing participants from Germany or the UK.

• Regulatory Landscape: the one recurring thing I heard from HealthTech entrepreneurs in Germany was “don’t build in Germany!” pointing to the very outdated and technology averse regulations within Health in Germany. Examples include how hard it is to prescribe medication through a digital journey; how hard it is for a customer to learn about their genetic risks; or also restrictions on companies that are not owned only by doctors to serve customers who are publicly insured. The UK, on the other hand, has a more risk-based and digital approach. Health data infrastructure is considered to be one of the best in the world; the government provides sandbox environments for AI-driven health solutions and generally is taking an AI-friendly stance.

And just like that…

Once we had that clear, there was no looking back. I packed up my life and am now fully based in London. After 10.5 years, it naturally was not easy to leave Berlin, my home and my dear friends behind. I didn’t envision the transition to happen so quickly and also so definitively, but I am grateful that it did and that ultimately the process and project of moving countries now lies behind me. We incorporated the company in London, are deeply focused on the exciting 0 to 1 phase and are excited as a team to take the next steps together!