
Wood Egg (my new company) - kryptiskt
http://sivers.org/eg
======
contingencies
As a predominantly Asia-resident member of this community who has passed
through many of the countries I find this post rather interesting. I suggest
changing the title to make the subject more obvious - I nearly skipped it.

However, I am going to be honest: I think the horrible truth here is that
there is no 'startup scene' in most of these countries, no 'serviced
apartments' in the places 'to meet the post people'. The _claimed_ contents
themselves betray a distinct lack of understanding of the host cultures
through an American perspective.

Quite simply, these products look far too much like smoke and mirrors with
external cultural baggage to boot.

As someone who as actually run a startup in China, for instance, the contents
are a joke. No mention of the most important areas of consideration,
overemphasis of things that are irrelevant.

So what the hell is this? They are hiring. Job description: "Find a few real
estate people. Ask what’s the best place for a new business to locate." ...
subtext: publish that as fact.

Come on... this is lowly. Just because you have some money to spam-market
quick-e-books with doesn't mean you are the arbiter of truth. Hire a real
writer, do some real research, and be honest about it. Without quality, there
is little point in publishing.

Fail.

~~~
mkress
There doesn't have to be a startup scene in all of the countries. The books
were written for entrepreneurship, not Valley-level startup scenes.

Eiter way, have you checked out write ups of the recent Echelon event in
Singapore ([http://e27.co/echelon/)or](http://e27.co/echelon/\)or) that 500
startups just set up a fund only for SEAsia countries?

As far as the spam-market quick-e-books comment, I'm pretty sure it was the
absolute opposite of that. Did you read that after a year and a half of hard
work he released these?

I don't see these books as a fail at all, but instead a step forward to good,
actionable information that is useful to help bring and grow entrepreneurship
to Asia.

I would love to hear what's important to you as I'm currently running a
startup in Thailand and would love to learn more about all the countries,
especially China.

Why don't you offer some advice as to what you see ont he most important areas
of consideration and what is overemphasized?

~~~
contingencies
Basic stuff: Stability, system of law, contrast available legal structures,
different types of taxation, financial services, visa/immigration,
shipping/logistics concerns, internal geographic breakdown, indicative service
costings (utilities, advertising, etc.), nature of local human resources
market, notable commercial events/tradeshows, trends over time with all of the
above, etc.

~~~
detst
Those things _are_ covered and if you would have taken the time to do even a
cursory review before writing your baseless dismissal you would have seen
this.

It's clear this is an evolving project. I don't believe Derek Sivers would do
a project like you making it out to be and I don't think you have any basis to
think he is, even if you don't know who he is.

Just to quickly address some things where you've missed the point: these are
entrepreneurs' guides; these are targeted at an American and other non-Asian
markets so it's important to answer questions from that perspective,
regardless if you think they're irrelevant (you can't know what's irrelevant
until someone tells you or you learn from experience); it's amusing that the
"contents are a joke" when they address the things you have asked for.

And from above:

> Come on... this is lowly. Just because you have some money to spam-market
> quick-e-books with doesn't mean you are the arbiter of truth. Hire a real
> writer, do some real research, and be honest about it. Without quality,
> there is little point in publishing. Fail.

Go look at the content before before making such claims
("lowly...spam...without quality") and advising them on their methods. After
you've done that, how about focusing on the content?

Sorry for the tone but I can't stand these types of off-base dismissals and
ending it with "fail" is just the icing on the cake. Derek Sivers is a
respected member of the community that just spent the last nearly two years of
his life on this and deserves better than these as the top comments on his
announcement.

~~~
contingencies
Are you suggesting that the table of contents does not reflect the contents? I
suppose that's possible.

~~~
detst
No, I'm not. I'm sure you can do your own search for "law", "tax",
"immigration", etc.

If you had done that, I'd have no issue with a civil critique of the content
but to dismiss ("fail", really?), insult ("spam") and patronize ("Hire a real
writer[...]") the project of a respected member of the community (or anyone)
to the extend that you did, with no basis (you haven't read the book and don't
seem to have read the table of contents), has no place here or anywhere
intelligent discussion is desired.

------
cjbprime
The table of contents has entries like:

> _Describe the mindset of most people in Cambodia. Progressive or
> conservative? Future-focused or present-focused? Work-focused or pleasure-
> focused? Optimistic or cautious? Pressing for change, or maintaining
> traditions? Strict or easy-going? Or, if the mindset is very divided between
> groups, please describe the divide. (Feel free to just share your personal
> opinion.)_

.. which doesn't look like a table of contents; it looks like the e-mail you
sent to the person that you asked to write the book for you.

~~~
sivers
Good eye. I looked at that question so many times in the last couple years
that I got blind to it. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed for future editions.

The books, instead of being written by one person, are written by 50 different
researchers. For every question I had, I found 3 different people to answer
it. One local, one expat, one other. That way the book isn't just one person's
point of view.

Then at the end, an editor combined all the different answers into one, and I
went through the final-final to clean it up.

I'll write more about this soon. Good lesson learned about making a robust
plan versus a fragile plan. At first I thought I'd write all 16 books myself.
Next I thought I'd hire one writer per-country. But this system turned out to
be a much better way to get different viewpoints.

Anyway - thanks again for pointing out the error.

~~~
Sambdala
Just skimming through the linked post, it seemed like you would be writing all
16 of the books (admittedly, this could be my own reading failing), which
seemed like a really ambitious goal.

Are you planning on writing about the entire process after you've completed
your journey?

~~~
sivers
Yeah. I'll be writing about it very soon.

Made a lot of mistakes. Learned some good share-able lessons from the process.
You know I always try to describe those, afterwards, in case it can apply to
something you're doing.

------
secoif
Just some feedback on your pricing: $50 is very steep for a kindle book, in
fact I don't think I've ever seen a kindle edition so expensive. If this was
around $20 I'd have bought it.

------
hamburglar
Derek Sivers is one of our industry's truly interesting people. I like to
think that if I had f-u money, my life would be like his. I'm almost certainly
too lazy for that, though. Keep being interesting, Derek. Hope this project
does well.

~~~
jmotion
Yep. Awesome guy. Inspiring.

------
peterarmstrong
Derek, congratulations on launching!

(As cofounder of Leanpub, this makes me especially happy, of course :)

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mjfern
Derek, Congrats on the launch! Just curious why you decided to launch with 16
books instead of just one or two? This seems to run counter to the Lean
Startup/MVP approach. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you!

~~~
sivers
Because I'm especially interested in the _comparison_ between countries, I
thought the most fascinating part of the project was to ask the same 200
questions of all 16 countries, and compare the answers.

This definitely isn't a typical MVP business. I didn't test the market. I
doubt this will ever make money. It's just something I wanted to do, for my
own curiosity. If other people can use it, that's just a bonus.

~~~
rogerbinns
> I doubt this will ever make money.

Why didn't you do this more of a wiki/collaborative/open style?

~~~
sivers
I may. But to get it started, I want to help set the tone and focus. But once
there's a precedent/standard/example to follow, an open style may make more
sense.

------
pan69
This is a great initiative. However, I'm missing the one emerging country in
all of South East Asia, any plans for Laos?

~~~
sivers
Unfortunately not. I skipped Laos, Brunei, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and a
few others. Having to draw the line somewhere, I picked countries where I
either had an in, or had at least heard a lot of buzz and interest about (like
Myanmar and Sri Lanka.)

------
dsirijus
It would be interesting to get insight of least editor of all editions (if
that is a sigular person) on rating of the the countries in this year's
edition of these books, rating being general impression of handling a business
in stated countries.

~~~
sivers
Check out
[http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings](http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings)

That IFC "Ease of Doing Business" index is quite well-researched. That has
better information than my books, for direct comparisons like you're asking.

------
watershawl
Derek, I like how you announced it only after actually doing it. This is much
different than saying you're going to do it, which sounds obvious, but there
is a big difference.

~~~
sivers
Thanks! It was SO tempting!

But keeping my mouth shut about it helped me slog through it and get it done,
instead of basking in advance glory. It's too easy to slack off, if you've
already felt the warm fuzzy joy from people's compliments on starting
something. I didn't want to feel any of that until it was done.

More on that thought process, here:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html)

~~~
josscrowcroft
This was a fantastic video. Thanks!

~~~
jmotion
This is almost as if the question was placed in by Derek so he could plug that
Ted talk! Saw that video a long time ago and ever since then I've kept my
mouth shut. I've learnt a lot from you (another.. ideas are just a multiplier
of execution :) )

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dhruvkaran
Is there a way to get a preview before buying? I'd love something like this.
:)

~~~
sivers
Follow the link from any book's page to its page on Amazon. There you can do
the "Look Inside This Book" thing on the book cover, to read a few pages.

Or just email me and offer to contribute. Then you'd get a free one. :-)

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pdog
Am I the only person that saw woodegg.com as "Woo Degg"?

