
Ask HN: Anyone moved outside of the US to bootstrap your business? - larrykubin
I'm curious if anyone here has moved from an expensive city in the U.S. to a city in Panama, Costa Rica, or somewhere else with a lower cost of living. What was your experience like? Is it worthwhile? What are your rent/internet costs? Are there any sites dedicated to starting up this way?
======
brown
I'm currently operating in Manila. Low cost of living. Extremely cheap local
labor (hiring system admins for about USD$5k per year). People speak English
well. Very American-ized environment, so minimal culture shock. There's a
growing call center culture here, so bandwidth is pretty reliable. VC
community is small but active. Manila lacks a big talent pool of software
engineers. We've been experimenting with setting up an office in India as well
to remedy that problem.

I was in Beijing for about 6 months. I would not recommend that unless you
either (a) speak Mandarin fluently or (b) plan on staying there for the long
haul. Engineers were highest quality I've seen though.

~~~
garply
I'm in Beijing to cut costs and recruit team members. Ditto on both points a
and b.

~~~
trevelyan
Hard to recruit anyone if you don't have contact information in your profile.
I know some people who might be able to help you out. Feel free to get in
touch.

------
ced
I've been living off my (grad school stipend!) savings for almost 2 years in
Asia. I do AI research, independently. Here's the rent for one bedroom in a
"decent student" shared flat:

\- Montreal: 300$; dorms 250$

\- University town, Germany: 250$, 180$ for the dorms

\- University town, Turkey: 120$

\- India, monastery guest house: 60$

\- China, Kunming (mid-sized city): 80$

I've found that the cost of living is pretty much proportional to the rent.
Internet costs are negligible, unless you live in a very remote place.

There's a lot to write about the experience, but in short: best decision of my
life. Two years without any responsibility whatsoever, free to hack or just go
biking any time of day. With the advent of the Internet, a new lifestyle for
doing research and development (aka, sow the seeds of the next Google) has
opened outside the constraints of academia and industry. Few people seem to be
taking advantage of it.

------
patio11
You may want to bend the ear of these guys:

<http://www.expatsoftware.com>

I have lived abroad for the last couple of years. It is a wonderful
experience. There are much, muuuuuuuuuuch easier ways of reducing your burn
rate, if that is what matters to you. One simple one is taking your fluent
command of the English language, American passport, and familiarity with all
the local systems and relocating to anywhere in the US where the living is
cheap. In St. Louis, for example, I know there are plenty of livable
apartments near Washington University for about $450 or so. (When I was there
it was $800 a month for a very capacious 2 bedroom apartment.) Add on another
$200 for food, and we'll round it up to $1,000 so that you can take the bus to
see a movie once a week and deal with life's little expenses. There, that's
your ramen profitable number.

It is absurdly easy to sell that much a month, if you actually sell stuff.

~~~
abalashov
Nothing is "absurdly" easy. No, $1000 is not an incredibly difficult monthly
recurring revenue number to achieve, but to say it is "absurd" or even "easy"
unless you're a marketing guru with considerable capital and resources at your
disposal is preposterous.

~~~
APLonDrugs
Agreed.

------
lionheart
The way I see it, there's really no need to move out of the country to reduce
your burn rate. I'm 99% sure that the inevitable culture shock and myriad
other issues that come with living in a new country cancel out any benefit you
get in terms of cost of living.

If you move out of the bay area and live like a college student, that should
be more than enough to bring your expenses to a bare minimum.

I know its not hard to find a room in my local college town for under $400 a
month. And thats right by the university. I assume that somewhere further out
in the boondocks you can get a place for even cheaper.

~~~
rjurney
I second this. I'd have been better off in a piece of crap apartment in an
undesirable area, rice and beans and a motorcycle, plus access to brain power
in the bay area.

~~~
lsc
The bay area is the center of the universe, well, for my people. I think
living here and needing a part-time job to pay the bills (part-time jobs pay
twice as much here as anywhere else, btw) is a better choice than moving to
the midwest, or even Sacramento.

~~~
rjurney
Right, I agree. Pick an undesirable part of the bay area thats cheap, get a
motorcycle, etc.

But I don't really agree with a part time job. A part time computer job
anyway, will totally kill your focus. There is something big to be said for
full timing it. It sounds like he's talking about saving to go full time out
of the US, and the bottom line is that he can do the same thing by living in
poverty IN the US - and still have access to the networks in the bay area.

~~~
lsc
depending on what you are doing (and who you can hire, and what you can charge
for your time) I think working part-time sometimes makes a lot of sense.

------
ArcticCelt
To anyone interested to learn the cost of living in different places, I live
in Montreal (Canada) and think it's a god damn cheap place to live. I pay $405
for a spacious 3 1/2 with parking (+$45 electric bill). There is plenty of
entertainment in this city too. Also as a Canadian I don't have to worry about
health care. So if you ask me, I think I am in a good spot for a start up.

~~~
staunch
What does 3 1/2 mean?

~~~
edb
It's Montreal for 1 bedroom, 1 kitchen, 1 livingroom and a bathroom.

~~~
staunch
Ah. Thanks. In Japan they do nLDK: n Bedroom + Living/Dining/Kitchen (1LDK,
2LDK).

------
mahmud
Time Zone differences and crappy internet access will mess you up. I don't
mind hacking until 4AM, but it gets to ya when you need to be on the phone
that late when everybody in your apartment building is asleep. After long
exhausting business phone calls I feel like I need to leave the house and go
for a drink; try doing that at 6AM without feeling like a junkie.

I found most places in Asia to be too distracting or too removed from business
life. In places like Bangkok you will be hanging out with tourists and
teachers, laid back crowd. In Hong Kong or Singapore, it's too fast, too over-
paid and too British and annoying; you will be very self conscious and/or
lonely if you're not hanging out with MBAs and other well-paid careerists.

------
maneesh
Yea, I was doing freelance programming for 1.5 yrs (moving on now to work on
SEO stuff==> no more clients), I moved to Buenos Aires/Brazil to geoarbitrage,
made a ton of money in relative standards and lived like a king on a
relatively meager US salary. This year, off to India, Thailand, Vietnam, South
Africa, and Kenya. Not a bad life :)

------
rjurney
Yes. I moved to Goa to prototype a process-flow document organization system
for attorneys, for my first startup. The plan was to... get clients and then
build the full deal in Bagnalore. I talked about it... here:
<http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=518075> The 'paper' on the product is here:
<http://lucision.com/legal/Hammurabi_Writeup.pdf> It never took off.

The short version is: you can't ALL leave. Someone needs to be near your
market, whatever that is. You've got to be iterating products. Even for an
internet company, I am skeptical that this can be done in isolation.

That being said, Costa Rica or some place cheap to get to/from is probably a
better idea than... India :)

All in all, it was a great experience. I... learned Java, did a lot of
catching up on things like design patterns to be able to work in Eclipse, etc.
I learned... those startup things you learn the first time round. But being
stuck in India when my attorney friend stopped answering my emails meant I was
SOL on that product concept, and I could not iterate from India. I ended up
doing something entirely different, but I couldn't even get to another product
idea from there. I had to come home.

------
andyjdavis
Im currently living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Low cost of living. Nice relaxed
environment for when youre not working.

I was previously living in Australia. Made a decent living from consulting
work which may have been one of the reasons the product side of the business
didn't do terribly well. Once I was out of the country consulting work got
harder to get so I've had to devote more energy to products and that seems to
be bearing fruit.

Apartment rent is maybe $300/mth inc net connection, water, electricity. Can
get a good thai meal for $1-3. Net connection is pretty quick although the
infrastructure is a bit dodgy so there is an outtage probably once a week for
generally no more than an hour or two. Dont think Id host here but for your
own connection its fine.

~~~
maneesh
I'm moving to thailand to geoarbitrage in feb/march

~~~
VinzO
How do you plan to make some income there?

~~~
maneesh
i work online, mostly passive income, and it's well over what i need to live
there.

------
ojbyrne
Probably easier, and comparable in costs, to move to the rural midwest - e.g.
South Dakota. Or Detroit.

~~~
elsewhen
You might also consider one of the no-income-tax states like Texas, Florida or
Nevada in case your startup starts to make some money. Moving out of Silicon
Valley (with the top state tax rate over 9%) can be a big money-saver.

~~~
rumpelstiltskin
Texas doesn't have a state income tax?

~~~
elsewhen
The states with no income tax are in red on the following map:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax>

------
joel_feather
I'm currently setting up an office in Shenzhen in china, and the programmers
really are high quality, and you pay them about $400 a month. It's an
excellent way to keep your costs low and grow quickly - living space is nice
and cheap, for the office I pay $300 a month in a space that can seat 6.

If you want more info, just send me an email! I'd like more guys to join in,
so I can get bigger and nicer places. If you are up for some travel and want
to work in an office, it's perfect!

------
lsc
the SF bay area has enormous quality of life advantages for the common nerd,
when compared to anywhere else I've lived.(granted, which only includes other
parts of the US.) - but just on a personal level, being a nerd is a very
lonely thing most places, and that loneliness gets distracting after a while.
In the bay area, you are no longer weird or different. Hell, I can walk down
the street to the hacker dojo, and be the dumbest guy in a room full of people
(well, maybe not the dumbest, but certainly below average. My point is that in
the central valley, it was pretty rare to meet others with my mental
abilities. The bay area teaches me humility.)

I think this might have something to do with the disparity in wages; standards
are just higher around here. Yeah, you pay more for a person, but the pool
from which you can hire is so much richer. if you can choose good people, you
can get better deals in the bay area than most other places.

------
codyrobbins
I live in Honolulu and New York City, so I'm not qualified to give advice
regarding choosing domiciles with cost of living in mind =)

But I do always see ads in the Wall Street Journal enjoining people to move
their businesses to Moldova for a variety of attractive reasons — low cost of
living being one of them if I remember correctly.

~~~
lionhearted
Hey, do you have any feedback on where would be acceptable to short-stay live
in Hawaii? I've had a hard time sorting out which islands/neighborhoods would
be good to spend a couple months on, any input would be massively appreciated.

~~~
codyrobbins
It depends on what you're looking for. Oahu has all the amenities since
Honolulu is a pretty big city, but there's still plenty of beautiful beaches
and rural places elsewhere on the island. There's also a small but blossoming
tech scene in Honolulu. If you want complete peace and quiet, then I would
suggest the Big Island or Maui. The Big Island is like being in the middle of
the Everglades in Florida, with a few small towns and nothing for miles. Maui
is a little more suburban and cosmopolitan, but still somewhat rural since
there's no big city like Oahu. While Kauai is absolutely beautiful, it's very
small and far more touristy and commercialized — I'm not a big fan.

Renting out residential homes is technically illegal, at least on Oahu, but
people still do it and you can still probably find tons of people renting out
rooms in their homes for short-term stay on all the islands on Craigslist. On
Oahu there are a lot of short-term accommodations in Waikiki, but Waikiki is
very touristy, somewhat expensive, and most of the places are converted hotel
rooms with no kitchens. A few centrally-located neighborhoods you might want
to check that are relatively affordable are Manoa, Palolo, Kaimuki, and
Makiki. Kailua and Kaneohe are also nice, but they're on the other side of the
island and they're inconvenient without a car.

~~~
lionhearted
Many thanks :)

------
Diakronik
I can't say anything about leaving the continent, but I'll definitely back
Montreal as a great place to go. I lived there for 12 years and am looking
forward to returning (now in Ottawa for grad school).

As was mentioned, the rents are reasonable (I've got a friend living in a 5
1/2---2 bed, living/dining/kitchen for about $550/month, and he's walking
distance to downtown), there's a good tech culture (lots of speech & language
related stuff, web companies, game studies, etc.), and the city itself is
great---a mix of the best bits of North American and European culture...you
can find stuff to do 24hrs/day no problem). Also, the girls are smokin'.

As for language issues, I know people who are born & raised in Mtl and don't
speak any French (beyond "oui", "non", "bière", "poutine"). There's a street
called St-Laurent that more or less divides the city into eastside/westside.
If you're on the west side, you can use English with no fear. Yes, you may run
into a French Québecois who's an ass and tells you off, but it's really rare
(more common in the east, though).

------
abalashov
Don't need to; Georgia is quite cheap. Even Atlanta is quite cheap compared to
almost every other American city, especially the first-rate one, with very
sane real estate prices except in areas like Buckhead.

But, if that's too much, head over to a college town like Athens. Can easily
get a 2 or 3-bedroom apartment for $500-$600, $700-$900 if you want a rather
upscale one. Salaries are low, and no shortage of college talent pool. There
are a lot of townies, too; the charm of Athens seems to rub off on a lot of
folks that finish college here. The University of Georgia is here - 32,000
students or more.

The broadband is good, and the living generally cheap. Real estate is by far
the most expensive thing in Athens. It's somewhat annoyingly suburban outside
of downtown and older historical areas, but that can be dealt with.

Honestly, I think that's a lot easier than trying to go through all the
trouble of moving abroad.

------
jasoncwarner
I currently live in PHX, AZ but will be moving to Auckland, NZ in the next
year. Part of the reason is bootstrapping, but there are others as well:
lifestyle, getting a better balance in life, living in a safer, nicer, cleaner
part of the world that is very western and modern. Beaches ;) (there are quite
a few others as well).

I've done TONS of research on this and for me and my family, NZ makes the most
sense. When we get there we'll look around at the various cities and towns,
but we'll start in Auckland. The great thing about NZ is English, 4 hr time
zone diff to west coast of US (+ 1 day, but really a 4 hour diff) and a great
lifestyle balance. Plus, who wouldn't want to go to the place voted to be the
most peaceful nation on earth!!

------
supaspoida
After visiting Costa Rica I decided this was something I wanted to do. I wrote
up my idea on my blog hoping to find a team interested in the same thing.

<http://bit.ly/19Ot7a>

Over the weekend I found another team that is already doing something similar
in Europe & was planning to relocate to South America. They've already got a
profitable product just a few months after launched. We hashed out a plan to
get us all down to Costa Rica in early September.

I'm very excited about the opportunity & encourage anybody who is even
considering something like this to do whatever you can to make it happen!

------
OmarIsmail
I would imagine that one of the least expensive and most practical places to
start a business is your parents' house. Some people may not have that luxury
but for those that do it's a major cost and time savings.

------
fascinated
I'd also make sure that you honestly ask yourself the following question, when
it comes to this relocation / radical burn rate reduction issue:

Can I somehow make more money with what I (we) am about to create and stay
where I am (or US)?

Sure these places have cheap rent, but you also leave all your social ties
behind and will be limited to a particular subset of the social fabric
(expats, most likely, that either teach English or are avoiding something
important by coming there). It's also distracting by being elsewhere, though
often in a good way.

------
AlexBlom
This is interesting. Something I've always wanted to do but never had the
information for (so I'm going to Canada instead - which is not at all
cheaper).

Eagerly following this thread.

------
akd
You can live in a shared apartment in East Palo Alto, cook all your food at
home, buy a used car, and select free entertainment options. No need for
drastic actions.

------
yeti
Based in Hong Kong which is a much lower cost base than US for
engineers/designers, and we have a US based remote intern who helps with doing
focus groups etc

Working out ok so far

~~~
jaaron
I moved to Hong Kong as well, though lately I've been in Guangzhou quite a
bit.

Hong Kong is actually a great location if you're interested in China. Getting
investment visas is not too difficult and living costs are similar to the US.
If you're smart, it can be much cheaper.

Trying to startup in China is _very_ difficult. I wouldn't recommend it until
you have some experience in the area. As such, Hong Kong is a great place to
get started.

If you are going to try Hong Kong, I would suggest getting in touch with an
immigration advisor as soon as possible, because you can waste a lot of time
otherwise. Also, get in touch with the people at the Hong Kong Startup
Association:

<http://www.hksua.com.hk/>

------
rgrieselhuber
I moved to Japan, not because the cost of living is lower (though it is in
some cases) but because of the opportunities I saw here.

------
csomar
I live in Tunisia and I'm about to take a desicion: leave my studies here and
move to a cheap place like Egypt.

Tunisia is not expensive, but Egypt is very cheap (3X less expensive) so
bootstrapping from there will be easier. and they have good internet
connection.

It's dangerous to do, because if you don't succeed returning is much more
harder! So good luck if you go for it!

------
YuriNiyazov
The balsamiq guy did; he went back to Italy, but he's a native Italian, so
ymmv

------
alexbosworth
I'm in Beijing for fun and frugality - it hits on #1 but it is getting more
expensive

Many many things here are an order of magnitude cheaper than they are in the
states

------
mbenjaminsmith
Yes, part of the reason we moved back to Bangkok. Forget about operating
costs, worth it just for the awesome food.

------
pageman
"... Manila, Manila ... I keep coming back to Manila ..." back here doing
startups after trying out Rangoon, Kabul and Dubai :)

