[wheels]

"Existenz grundung" just means "founding a company". It doesn't imply anything about grants being taken. What you're probably referring to is a "Gründerzuschuss", which is a form of unemployment payment which gives you about 60% of your former salary with a fixed amount of time to get out of unemployment benefits via founding your own company. It's only available to those that were previously full-time employees.

Also, it's horseshit that €500/month was a good salary 5 years ago. More like €3500/month. Rent is also still far cheaper in Berlin than virtually any other western European major city.

[woodcut]

Apologies i meant eXist Gruenderstipendium [1]. I'm aware of the Gründerzuschuss but it's not what most tech startups at that time were funded on, specifically not the one i worked for during my initial 3 months in Berlin.

I should have mentioned the 500 was from a eXist funded startup and i worked at as an "intern" although i was qualified, i just wanted to keep myself fed until i found something that paid, but for internships that was a lot as most got ~300 or nothing, with 500 a month + coffee I could rent by day a bed off of WG gesucht and subsist on falafel. Back then the number of jobs in berlin was really minimal, i struggled to find anything so i moved to Munich.

[1] http://www.exist.de/DE/Programm/Exist-Gruenderstipendium/inh...