172: Expanding a Business to Germany is Hard – here’s why

We interview EU Whalers Michaela Luecke and Luciana Padua about their experience expanding Whole Whale’s digital agency services to Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. After over a year of work and a few clients, Whole Whale has decided that the experiment just didn’t work. 

There are many hard-earned lessons that we discuss starting digitally-focused companies in Germany and the different financial, legal, and social barriers that exist. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone looking to expand services to these regions.

One main issue is the digitalization of the country becoming a roadblock rather than an anti-small business policy. Germany is indeed highly rated for entrepreneurs. A point supported by this study: Digitalization (Germany is far beyond top countries) and a great article in the online portal tbd*.

Too often we only hear stories from the people that take risks and win – feeding the survivor bias in entrepreneurship that it is easy to succeed. We need people more like Luciana and Michaela, people willing to take a risk to start something new with a social purpose in their countries. 

Special thanks to them both for their efforts in pushing this initiative and taking a risk.

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