8. No, I didn't know 70 founders, I didn't even know one. But having a friend in the industry who didn't even work for a startup let me know the private details of 2-3 companies a day. This was standard dinner conversation- who's doing what, etc.
6. We're all in the same pond. I'm saying that your chances of beating Bay Area companies is better if you are not in the Bay Area. Most of the best people in the world do not live in the Bay Area.
5. Thailand is probably not a bad place... recruiting bright engineers right out of college is probably easier. Who wants to go live in a cubicle in a generic tilt up rather than a bungalow on a beach in a small town? Cutting these costs means you can pay people more, means you can hire better people, etc.
4. IF this is true, that's even worse. With the dramatically higher cost of living, that means your employees are having more trouble making ends meet (or sharing houses, 2 to a bedroom.)
Anyway, don't want to debate it to death, and was talking tongue in cheek to some extent. Locality is much less important than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. And past success has made the bay area somewhere I'm increasingly less interested in even visiting.
Those are the reasons why I'm moving to malaysia to create my startup....
1. Living cost are cheap
2. good internet access
3. lots of people speak english there so you can go on your daily life with english (good for attracting employees from other countries)
4. While I don't discount the usefulness of the networking effect in the bay, it's much more useful if you need investors... Since I plan to bootstrap my company, this is not such a problem....
5. Nice weather, smiling people makes for a place where people are not depressed....
6. I strongly believe that the best employees for a startup are curious and adventurous, an employee that is willing to relocate to malaysia display those qualities
Right, all the areas where you previously had to build infrastructure are now free or you can rent them ... and they have become commidtized.
Thus a team of a few can focus just on adding value, making the bootstrapping runway dramatically shorter.
I'm not sure what the benefit of physical networking is (and thus being in the bay area) other than being closer to VCs, and if you don't need VC funding, there's no point.
8. No, I didn't know 70 founders, I didn't even know one. But having a friend in the industry who didn't even work for a startup let me know the private details of 2-3 companies a day. This was standard dinner conversation- who's doing what, etc.
6. We're all in the same pond. I'm saying that your chances of beating Bay Area companies is better if you are not in the Bay Area. Most of the best people in the world do not live in the Bay Area.
5. Thailand is probably not a bad place... recruiting bright engineers right out of college is probably easier. Who wants to go live in a cubicle in a generic tilt up rather than a bungalow on a beach in a small town? Cutting these costs means you can pay people more, means you can hire better people, etc.
4. IF this is true, that's even worse. With the dramatically higher cost of living, that means your employees are having more trouble making ends meet (or sharing houses, 2 to a bedroom.)
Anyway, don't want to debate it to death, and was talking tongue in cheek to some extent. Locality is much less important than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. And past success has made the bay area somewhere I'm increasingly less interested in even visiting.