Berlin startups have recently started discussing the need to have an open exchange with Berlin government officials. High on a wish list that is still being formulated by various startup representatives are periodic roundtable discussions with representatives of both the startup and government worlds as well as faster Visa approval for non EU-residents.

When Christian Reber (Founder and CEO of 6Wunderkinder) wrote an email to the Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit, he received a brief letter of refusal stating that “the busy schedule of the Mayor would not allow a meeting.”

Although the decline may be due to the lack of government protocol on behalf of Reber (no formal addressing, call for a “near-term meeting” and generally short mail with little explanation of the context), it does not speak for the Mayor’s office to not engage in further communication, but rather send a final refusal instead. 

Now the Mayor’s office is facing a social media backlash as Reber decided to make all email communication public (1. Email by Reber, 1. Response by Mayor’s Office). As expected people are retweeting the Mayor’s email rebuff and blogs are picking up the story. Let’s see whether this will end up hitting classical print media, too.

Reber has since written an open response to the Mayors office (2. Email by Reber), arguing that the fact that startups have created more than 10.000 jobs in Berlin and received millions of investment, should well justify a meeting between government officials and the startup community. Now that i could generally not agree more with!

by Nikolas Woischnik