Berlin is poor again. Is it tech or techno?
Berlin’s startup valuations and club finances tell different stories. Together, they raise a sharper question: who gets to make a living from the value this city creates?
Berlin used to be called “poor but sexy.” Now it is just poor, and that feeling reaches beyond the cultural scene into the technology sector. Is it tech or techno? I like the provocation because it names a real frustration. I do not think blame can explain the economics underneath it.
The numbers do not say what people want them to say
The Berlin Tech Ecosystem Report 2025 puts the combined value of Berlin’s venture-backed startups at €169 billion, around 43% of Germany’s startup ecosystem value. That describes scale. It does not tell us which companies are profitable, hiring locally, or sending value back into the places where they operate.
The Clubcommission’s Clubkultur Berlin 2026 survey found that 61% of Berlin clubs broke even in 2025, while 39% operated at a loss. This is a measure of clubs, not every independent cultural space in the city. It is still a serious signal about the financial conditions facing Berlin’s nightlife infrastructure.
These figures are not directly comparable, and they do not show that technology caused clubs to lose money. They show how little a headline valuation or a city’s cultural reputation tells us about who benefits, who gets paid, and what local economic security looks like.
Culture is not decoration for the economy
Berlin’s cultural life is made by people doing real work in clubs, studios, independent spaces, small businesses, collectives, and streets. That work creates knowledge, relationships, audiences, and the character that makes the city matter to people who live here and people who arrive from elsewhere. It is not a decorative layer added after economic development has happened.
Technology companies and independent cultural spaces are not natural enemies. Their funding, business models, and time horizons are different, but they share workers, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and audiences. Technology teams need context and trust. Cultural workers need budgets, paid commissions, and a role early enough to shape the work, not a last-minute invitation to make a finished product look relevant.
The useful question is not whether tech or techno is to blame. It is how the money, skills, and local knowledge already in Berlin can meet without treating culture as cheap content or technology as an end in itself.
What Countercult is built to do
I founded Countercult to build cultural and economic infrastructure with culture as the entry point. I built its product and software with artists, cultural workers, collaborators, and supporters. My artist practice is Sketchy Shona. The work is connected, but the artist practice and the Countercult platform are not interchangeable.
The Countercult Network makes artists, spaces, and local operators easier to discover. Countercult Studios works with organisations on cultural strategy, curation, production, and place projects that lead to paid work. The Countercult Fund is a separate demand-side model: a business can reserve a small amount from selected sales for local creative work, keep control of that budget, and pay the commissioned creatives directly.
That is not a promise that venture capital will rescue nightlife, or that one event can fix a city economy. It is a practical route for connecting cultural knowledge to people and organisations with projects, decisions, and budgets.
A room is a beginning, not an outcome
On 6 October, I am convening the Countercult Creative Tech + Business Day for a curated group of artists, engineers, founders, and funders. We will share active projects and needs through structured introductions, working sessions, and a limited number of office hours.
A working day cannot guarantee investment, a job, or a partnership. It can give people a specific place to find shared questions and see whether useful work is possible. The measure comes afterwards: whether a relationship leads to paid work, whether cultural knowledge changes a product or programme, and whether local people are part of the decisions that affect them. Attendance alone is not an economic outcome.
I want Berlin’s technology economy and cultural life to share more than an address. I want the value created here to reach the people and places creating it.
Working across culture, technology, or place?
Bring Countercult into briefs that need local cultural knowledge, creative strategy, production, or paid cultural delivery.
For Shona’s founder story, read the Countercult interview or visit the Shona Neary portfolio.
Sources and further reading
- Berlin Tech Ecosystem Report 2025, Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises.
- Clubkultur Berlin 2026 survey, Clubcommission Berlin.
- Independent coverage of the Clubcommission survey, DJ Mag.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.