I’m going to make things happen in Germany.
There is a question in the MBTI test that is popular these days.
“You find it difficult to introduce yourself to other people.”
I am one of those who strongly agree with this question. When I first meet someone, during the silence of about 3 seconds after saying “Hello,” intense conflict and agony, and questions like “Who am I and where am I going?” flash through my mind at high speed.
Unfortunately, it’s like that every single time. Sharp-eyed people will have already noticed. The severe trembling that exists within the ellipsis of my words, “I am…”
Sometimes I feel like I’ve become a marble. A pendulum marble swinging back and forth between right and left, or a marble bouncing up and down.
In late February, I entered Factory Berlin, the mecca of Berlin startups and a sanctuary for European startups. I studied law at university, then worked in alternative education, believing that education is a major issue in Korean society and that the theater I did as an amateur could play an important role in art education. It was 10 years ago when I came to Berlin to study theater in earnest. And now, I am at Factory Berlin.
Ten years ago, Berlin was really underdeveloped. The smell of urine everywhere in the city, young people carrying beer bottles and shaking their bodies here and there on the streets, and the somewhat rustic clothing of people and the interior of shops felt fresh. There, I studied theater and felt freedom. In the short time of a year and a half, I learned intensely and played excitingly. Then I went back to Korea to direct theater, and returned to Berlin three years ago.
So I returned. But as soon as I arrived, what I experienced to settle here was the sorrow of being an immigrant struggling to settle and the high threshold of administrative processing, rather than “freedom.”
What will I do here? Theater? Performance? Art? Or a Korean restaurant? I spent countless nights with (fortunately delicious and cheap) beer and wine. I met many people and saw the end of my bank balance. But the situation was rather simple. It was too vain to think of finding my self here that I couldn’t find in Korea, and I just had to do legal work within the scope of the visa this country gave me.
Many people helped me until I received my visa. Luckily, I got a chance to teach Korean at a school, and thanks to that, the Berlin Immigration Office gave me a “visa for those engaged in teaching or research.” With this visa, I can only legally do work related to education, research, and publishing.
I have mainly done documentary theater based on a critical mind toward various social issues. In a broad context, the theater I have done resembled the process of research. So, I decided to do research that comes out as a book, rather than research put on stage in Germany.
That’s how I became interested in writing and making books. However, for me, whose mother tongue is not German or English, being hired by someone for book-related work was quite difficult. So, I decided to start my own business.
This is the process of thinking about “entrepreneurship,” simplified significantly. It’s much different from the situation at the beginning, but I wanted to organize the direction of the path I’m taking a bit. And with the modest goal of shortening the hesitation in the process of introducing myself by about a second.
In 10 years, Berlin has changed from a “poor city for artists” to “Silicon Valley of Europe, a mecca for startups.” It’s the result of the inevitable gentrification that follows the hip city created by artists. Factory Berlin is at the heart of it.
Factory Berlin’s second campus located in Kreuzberg, Berlin
Factory Berlin is where N26, Twitter, Sound Cloud, Uber, Rocket Internet, Freeletics, and Pinterest are located. From individual founders (60-70%) to large-scale startups (20-30%) and large corporations (10%), entrepreneurs of various levels gather.
If I was going to do it, I wanted to start at the most essential place in this neighborhood. That’s how I became a member of Factory Berlin, and I started making things happen in Germany.
I’ve always been confident in making things happen since I was born. I’ve challenged almost every area I wanted to learn, and I’ve met everyone I wanted to meet and done everything I wanted to do. Now, organizing while making things happen, recording, and archiving, and thus stringing these marbles together, is what I need to do in the new Berlin I’ve met.
Eunseo Yi
eunseo.yi@123factory.de
This article was edited and adapted from the “European Startup Chronicles” series in BizHankook.