mertbio

Paypal is quite popular in Germany but with Wero that popularity will decrease significantly. I expect that all around the Europe.

I’m working on improving the apps I developed for iOS by adding new features and fixing the bugs: https://fruitfulapps.com/

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.

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.

Where does the German government get money? From German industry.

This is not true. Two biggest income source for the government is sales tax and income tax.

https://www.bundeshaushalt.de/DE/Bundeshaushalt-digital/bund...

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.

Yet.

"Morgan Stanley Research estimates the U.S. currency could lose another 10% by the end of 2026.": https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de...

The US dollar lost ~10% of its value this year. It is expected to lose another 10%. Which stability are we talking about?

Also, here you can see the change in the foreign exchange reserves by currency: https://en.macromicro.me/charts/116488/global-official-forei...

US Dollars: 71% -> 58% Chinese Yuan: 0 -> 2%

who would actually trust China in any way shape or form as an alternative?

Most of the Asian countries (except South Korea, Japan and Taiwan) and African countries. They’re already getting tons of investments and loans from China.

https://archive.ph/FH0hL

https://archive.ph/iUAOa

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?

It is so funny that the cookie banner of heise.de doesn't have that option too!

the American product literally won

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...

By just looking at the video, you can see that they cut the engines after the rocket starts tilting. I guess that’s the flight termination system. Also, it didn't fall into the ground, but into the water.

CEO and Co-founder Daniel Metzler: “Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success. We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System. With this result, we feel confident to approach our second flight.”

See: https://isaraerospace.com/newsroom-first-test-flight

Could you be more specific? As far as I know, they have bunch of features like funnels, goals, revenue attributions etc.: https://plausible.io/docs/top-referrers

If you are advocating for European products, I would expect you to use Plausible or similar products instead of Google Analytics. This would allow you to avoid displaying the cookie banner.

Apps without trader status will be removed from the App Store in the EU: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=einwn76m

we decided to test a sharp pivot just before shutting it down: rename the app, change the concept from a photo vault to a converter disguise, and sell encryption as a feature.

I’m not really convinced that by just changing those you can suddenly get a lot of downloads.

Germany has no history in building such robots

Germany was leading in the industrial robots with KUKA until they sold the company to China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUKA

The issue in Germany is that most companies don't take software seriously. They often outsource their software to freelancers or establish offshore offices in EU countries that pay less for software engineers compared to Germany or simply hire agencies. For instance, consider Volkswagen’s struggles with its EV transition. Despite this, they ultimately decided to invest in Rivian to leverage their software.

To create all-purpose robots, we must prioritize both mechanical expertise and software development. However, this mindset problem exists at the top level of management, where senior executives fail to recognize the significance of software, despite the presence of highly skilled software engineers in the country.

Notably, SAP stands out as the only German company that takes software seriously, and it holds the distinction as the largest public company in Germany.

But fast-forward to today, and browsers can do all that.

Browsers can't access all the APIs in iOS.

Developers pay hefty app store fees

You pay 99$ per year and 15% for each sale. Apple handles VAT, refunds, distribution and so on.

They’re faster, more flexible, and work seamlessly across devices. Native apps? Not so much.

Enabling iCloud sync for your app is just a single click on Xcode.

Why Web Apps Are the Future

On a national TV program in Germany, they talked about an app related to trees in Hamburg. That same day, my app on the App Store experienced a significant spike in downloads. When I looked into it, I discovered that the app they mentioned on the news was actually a PWA! :)

I feel like the author doesn't have any idea about native app development.

It does. Apple handles the refunds automatically. They also give you a chance to provide more information about the user’s usage so if the user used the app a lot, Apple might reject the refund request.