Hm, sorry but ages of experience show that what mostly works is the other way around: You want to be a big city because you can find clients (users), meet people (e.g. possible investors) and generally speaking do any sort of networking that would be otherwise impossible.
The internet is what it is, but you can never match the face-to-face relationship with an online approach.
I totally understand that this is a dream-like situation: You make a good amount of money, doing what you like in a remote island where the sun shines and the food is always tasty (yes I'm from Greece...) but if your business can't be done 100% online, which is almost never the case, then you need offices in a big city. Then you need to visit and control these offices, etc.
I have a new appreciation for the advantages of being in a big city since moving to Tokyo recently. That said, my while I'm an occasional visitor in Silicon Valley I hold a passport from Bootstrapistan, and most of its population resides in the capital city of A Small Town In The Middle of Nowhere. [+]
A representative sampling of locations of the "head office" from small software businesses that I'm socially close to: Ogaki, Philadelphia, "way in the boonies in West Virginia", "way in the boonies in Idaho", "way in the boonies in Florida", Nuremberg, a small town in Italy whose name I am blanking on, etc etc.
There exist plenty of happy software companies in the big metropolitan areas -- and God bless them -- but they aren't the whole of the solution space.
[+] Why? Interesting question. Some days I think this is just a pure coincidence and some days I think that the low implied burn rate for the founders and generally low opportunity costs makes it easier for the business to hit both pro-forma profitability and "successfully outcompetes best available alternatives on the local labor market" profitability. Bootstrapped businesses can, of course, pay for an apartment in the Mission and exceed a Google PM's salary in Mountain View, but those are much harder bars to hit than "beats the snot out of any job available in Ogaki."
> Why? Interesting question. Some days I think this is just a pure coincidence and some days I think that the low implied burn rate for the founders and generally low opportunity costs makes it easier for the business to hit both pro-forma profitability and "successfully outcompetes best available alternatives on the local labor market" profitability.
I've always thought that when I was ready to bootstrap my own startup, I'd do it from a rural farm property. You can fly to meet whomever you need to face to face for networking, and with extremely low costs of living, your run rate is close (but not quite) to zero.
I suppose that compared to Tokyo, most anything could be considered a small town, but in Italy, Bologna isn't.
Quibbling about details aside, I think your point is a good one, although I also believe there are definitely two sides to it. The case made in this book is convincing that cities are a lot better for the sort of "spontaneous idea contamination" that can lead to big things:
Things get even more complicated when families come into the picture: a beach town in Morocco is not my own idea of the place I'd like to live with mine, although I certainly wouldn't mind an extended vacation there.
There are a lot of things I don't care for about my hometown in Oregon (THE WEATHER!), but I do find that I'm pretty partial to the mid-sized (which for me is something like 100K-400K, depending on various factors) university town like that where I grew up. I like being able to chat with people about programming over drinks from time to time, or talk about business, or have a variety of local businesses. On the other hand, with a family and not wanting to work for a BigCo, I'm not really interested in big cities any more.
Nürnberg isn't that small if you count in the other directly adjacent cities (1.2 million inhabitants) or even the whole metropolitan area (3.5 million inhabitants) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Metropolitan_Region
And you are in 1 hour 20 minutes in Munich via train.
So I would argue that this is already pretty central
Philadelphia is also not a small town and is a short train ride to NYC and Washington D.C. I think more generally Patrick's point is that they aren't from tech hubs and that there is a reason for that.
"Hm, sorry but ages of experience show that what mostly works is the other way around …"
I think it is a business by itself: you pay for your exotic startup location. What we just read is a travel agency that focuses on startups.
I agree with atmosx, that towns are better suited for startups. When we worked on our startup many years ago, one of the largest obstacles for investors was the location: a mid size sleepy town, away from where the money is. One reason for it was of course, that investors back then didn't get what internet means (they still don't). The other reason is, they want control. If their investment is out of reach, there will be no investment.
Uhh, funny idea: take their cash and disappear to a moroccan beach. Sounds certainly nice, but looks so bad.
Same experience here. Investors like to be close to their money. Being in a city that is easy traveling distance from a major international airport hub means that any investor in the world is one plane flight away. being one short hop beyond that means the number of available investors becomes limited to the people who are very local.
Even then.. Are the airports in NYC, SF or Seattle really that much better than say Portland, Denver, Boise or a number of other smaller cities that aren't as packed?
Yes - they're talking their book. Which would survive a VC funding round better: Two startups with a similar very far fetched idea - one asks for $10mm to continue in the valley, the other $5mm in Morocco?
It doesn't need to be all or nothing... Portland, Denver, Boise and a bunch of other places are still cities while still able to provide some nice quality of life features over the likes of Seattle, San Francisco or New York City.
You can have a much shorter commute. Lower cost of living. And some really nice community aspects.
I've never understood why the likes of Facebook or other large tech companies wouldn't build infrastructure in the some of the smaller cities as opposed to already over-crowded and much more expensive cities.
Intel and Motorolla built out in Chandler, AZ which brought in a lot of technology companies and built the city to what it is today. It makes perfect sense for a large company to do the same someplace with a limited market where they can build out a community.
Couldn't agree with this more. I worked for a startup-turned-recent-exit, and despite their big growth after a few years, if you go back and look at the first hundred customers or so, they were nearly all locals in the non-Silicon-Valley city the company was formed in, from other small shops to some of the bigger companies. Unless your product is niche to small fishing companies, this advice may not be the best.
"Unless your product is niche to small fishing companies, this advice may not be the best."
Yet the competition space for very young rich urban american white kids making products for very young rich urban american white kids is hyper crowded, and in "rural fishing communities" the marketplace is apparently nearly empty, so the odds of a big success appear much better.
There's a fad now of "home automation" as defined by a small ARM box with a thermometer and a microphone for $100 that does pretty much the same as the 20 competitors... you have a less than 1 in 20 chance of being the top dog alpha winner. On the other hand AFAIK there is no competition for "www.rate.your.diesel.fishing.boat.mechanic.com" social network shopping for diesel fuel filter group buy advice or whatever. And that idea only took ten seconds, I'm sure actually trying would result in better ideas.
Your odds of competing are higher if you stay in the city and follow (key word, "follow") the pack. Which is awesome if your goal is playing king of the hill and the sheer thrill of competition. On the other hand, if you want to make fat stacks of cash, you want the best odds of winning, not the best odds of being involved in an epic competition.
Just think! When you've built the app and captured 100% of the diesel fishing boat mechanic rating market, you'll make dozens - nay, hundreds - of dollars! Users could search, sort and filter all 6 diesel fishing boat mechanics in town!
I'm being sarcastic but you're right. I live in a small town (in a small country) and there are a lot of unmet needs that software could address, and minimal technical competition. The other side of the coin is that the market is small, and capturing lots of geographically disparate niche markets is hard. Even nth runner up success in Home Automation for Rich People in Big Cities is a lot of money.
Innovating in small markets is fun and part of the reason why I'm here, but big markets are competitive for a reason. The adages about small startups being just as much work as big ones, and owning 1% of $10^9 being better than 10% of $10^6, still apply.
Some googling around shows 8 million people in NYC. Figure about 1% are in the 1%, so you've got maybe 80K possible customers to split among all home automation startups.
On the other hand, some googling around shows 4 million commercial fishing boats worldwide. If your diesel boat engine microphone troubleshooting crowdsourced social network repair app drew in only 10% of ship owners, that would be a 5x bigger hit than the entire home automation marketplace. Also don't forget that ship owners who don't have money are what are called former ship owners... these guys have serious cash or they wouldn't be throwing money into a hole in the water like boat owners do.
you're right. go find a country where producers and true capitalists are rewarded and powerful, instead of just the middlemen and managers, and you'll be a millionaire.
That time will come. And once technology starts being targets are making these SMEs (fishing boats, smallholders, etc) lives easier, the world will make a big shift for the better.
I agree. More and more often you see people choosing a mix of both. Living in a big city when their product requires it, going abroad when they need more focus, or when their in a development stage that enables it. You don't have to be in the same place all the time anymore :)
Yep, I live deep in the mountains and travel to cities when I need to. Works well. Better than anything I did before anyway. It also gives a good perspective on what happens when you fail; nothing.
I think there are ways to understand people using written language that do not translate well face to face. It's a fairly subjective evaluation, but consider the whole spectrum of human writing, rather than the tendency of conversation evoked by the contemporary internet.
Hey I live in a small (former) fishing town! Except it's winter, 30 degrees and I'm inside staring at my computer screens and might as well be anywhere in the world.
Yes I can stop work, and "go surfing" (in the right season), I can even stop working and visit the local town pier and see those quaint "fisherman" struggling to make a living -because let's be honest, not everyone can be a tech-ninja startup founder.
If I wanted I could even crank the heat in my car, squint and make believe that it's actually a warm exotic beach in Europe but hey, at some point I gotta go back to the office, fire up that computer and get back to hacking.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter where you are. If you need to "break out of the box" and travel a bit, go for it. But simply moving operations to somewhere foreign will not be the deciding factor in your success.
> At the end of the day it doesn't matter where you are.
I think that it matters, instead. Unless you are one of those people who are oblivious to their surroundings.
You are not going to code 24/7. And when you will have done your share of coding for the day, or even if you would just like to take a break, then being in a nice place will help you to recharge yourself.
Only after you've tried to account for all of the intangibles, though. The right location can give you many benefits—workforce, networking opportunities, media access—that aren't available everywhere. Some of that can be done virtually, but in-person meetings still are much more memorable for many people.
Also, if all your company is doing is "hacking code", then I doubt your company will be around for very long.
All that being said, I do agree with the sentiment, and I think that the benefits of high-cost locales are probably not worth the increased cost of living. I definitely appreciate my Midwest mortgage payment.
"Some of that can be done virtually, but in-person meetings still are much more memorable for many people."
But some don't ever do in-person meetings. There are many small companies who do business 100% online, don't need investors, local staff or anything like that. For this type of companies staying in the big city makes no sense.
(Disclaimer: I live in the woods in a small mountain town)
If like me you're confused how 30 deg C is cold ... then note 30 deg F is ~ -1 deg C.
For me, in the UK, being able to go and sit outside for half-an-hour makes a lot of difference to my mood and thence my ability to focus and get stuff done. There's only really a couple of months in the year that's possible. Mind you I love snow too, and a fresh bright snowy day is a great break as well. Instead we seem to have at least 6 months of dreariness and dreich.
Well, I think this strategy might work if you want to keep your burn rate unbelievably low while you are writing v 1.0. But to be honest 300 Euro per week for space is actually not optimal.
I've been in the mountains of Vietnam for the last year and rent has been between $50 and $125 per month, which has made it possible for me to be unemployed for a long time and write v1.0 of my startup's app.
I think that Southeast Asia is a pretty ideal location if you want to go the bootstrapping route - the people are super nice and friendly and everything is unbelievably cheap. You really can get a lot done.
The serious downside is that you are not really connected to the tech scene - you can't really meet that many hackers (i.e. potential cofounders) and of course there is zero funding. And when you talk to tech folks stateside you feel pretty disconnected when you in a different part of the world.
Nevertheless I think it's a viable way to go solo.
Some points re: SE Asia tech scene, it does exist in some of the hotspots such as Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Ubud in Bali (that's where I am currently) etc.
As another point, after coming out to Asia while working a remote programming gig for a US company I discovered that I love the severe time zone difference. I have 1 Skype meeting per day and exactly 0 disturbances for the rest of my workday. Really plays well into the "Maker's Schedule" as described by pg: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Hey! It's also pretty far from Europe, Morocco is 3hrs away from Paris and London. And a lot of people simply don't want to live in Asia, they'd rather go to Africa.
12 mbps for ~$10 a month. Arguably that's burst and in the evening I can't Skype effectively because of the congestion. But it's good enough for what I'm working on.
You can get a 3 month multiple entry tourist visa pretty easily. It cost's about $140 for the various fees. You have to google visa agencies and fill the form online. Sometimes you can get 6 month visas also though I can't seem them on line at the moment. When it runs out you can fly to Singapore or similar and apply for another. The Vietnamese don't seem to worry too much what you do once you are there. I'm probably off there soon to hang out in Saigon which is quite fun but more expensive.
Yes Saigon is quite a bit more expensive than where I live. But there is a lot more going on there too.
Regarding visas - the parent is correct. I would only add that you can also make border runs to Cambodia from Saigon - which is a few hour bus ride and quite a bit less expensive than flying some where (around $10).
No worries. A few years is a bit of a commitment but it's a fun area to travel / do some coding for a few months. Chiang Mai is also popular with startup types and not that far. I liked it there and Angkor also was kinda fun.
This seems like a really good option if you want to pretend to be building a startup: Come up with disruptive startup ideas while sitting on the beach, throwing house parties like in The Social Network, and drinking a beer with other people pretending to build a startup.
It doesn't sound like a good option though if you want to actually build a startup: writing a lot of code, meeting with clients, hiring great people, etc.
I don't see how it would be a problem to write lots of code. Meet with clients, probably not. But not everyone has them. And investors are definitely an issue. But sitting down and knocking out a lot of code? Why not?
Agreed. TechStars alumni Maptia for instance build an awesome product in a surf town in Morocco, they worked like crazy, received a crazy amount of applications, grew their team there.
For those of you in the UK/London - and want somewhere cheap and amazing to code in your own back yard, I highly recommend Hastings/St Leonards.
It is (or was) a 'small fishing village' that retains a fascinating history.
1.5 hours from London, and 1 hour from Brighton, 1/3 the cost of flats and working space, good connection speeds, good coffee. If you come down to check it out, look me up and I'll buy you a pint.
I can recommend my home village in North East Scotland for everything apart from convenient access to London. Not sure about internet speeds or whether they have coffee yet.
But certainly pretty, peaceful, cheap property, great scenery and fairly convenient for the Cairngorms for climbing/skiing:
[I traced my ancestry recently and its a bit of a shock to realise that most of my male ancestors for about 300 years had a connection of one kind or another with the fishing industry].
My curiosity was peaked by a URL which actually had the word website in it. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of yellow and black animated gifs of workmen digging.
We're in Canterbury and it's very much the same situation here. Small, historical, charming town, 1 hour from London on HS1, and large enough that we have a good few local clients.
"Hey, guess what, you have to move to $middleofnowhere."
"Hey, guess what, I quit."
Exactly how the conversation would go if it ever happened to me. What would happen in such a situation is the good employees would quit because they wouldn't want to compromise their salary, marketability, and ability to take a new job, while the dead weight would go with it because it's still easier than finding a new job if they can build up enough job security in their current one.
Also interesting that someone thinks you should do it... who just happens to own office space in said location.
Cities work because there is the infrastructure and the talent pool. Going to the middle of nowhere might save a pittance on salary, but when people inevitably quit, good luck replacing them without spending even more on moving other people there.
The only place where I worked on the last 8 years that I couldn't work remotely is not the kind of place that I would work anymore.
For me these days, if a company doesn't have some remote policy in place (I mean... not full remote, nor once per week, but the option to, sporadically, work from home on a sick day or to be able to do some coding/admin stuff on the road) it automatically flares a red flag as a place that would not be a magical place where I could do the best that I can.
If the place doesn't have the remote-some-times flexibility it's probably a place with bad management practices and an out-dated culture.
Same thing regarding talent pool... Why on earth do you need to smell the emanating creative fumes of your employees every day from across the hall? :P
Remote is nice when it works, but it doesn't always or for every company. Where I work right now, for example, people work remotely but still have required days in the office for meetings etc., while I couldn't work remotely as too much of what I do is physical work with networks and servers that wouldn't be possible remotely - those are the people that will be hit with "you have to move" and so quit, especially since chances are that in the middle of nowhere, there will be few to no career opportunities for them.
I've worked in a remote-ish location in the middle of farms. Part of my work there involved some recruiting for my team. Let me tell you, moving to a place where the only career opportunity was the company talking to the candidate was basically a deal breaker. I left them because, broadly, it would have broken my career too.
" the good employees would quit because they wouldn't want to compromise their salary, marketability, and ability to take a new job, "
The good candidates wouldn't touch us with a 10ft pole, the ambitious graduates were getting out of the farmland and over to the cities. So we generally had a great intern pool (lots of sharp people in financially strapped situations not wanting to move) and second to third rate hires. Not bad hires, but... not close to best in class. So while I can perfectly understand bootstrapping or running a (very) small business in the boondocks (many many reasons to do so), I can not advise locating an office there. Nor can I advise any enterprising and ambitious student to move to the boondocks for a job. Networking matters.
It clearly can't work for all startups. It has to be something that is rooted in the company's culture. The guys at Maptia received a crazy amount of applications when people heard they were based in a Moroccan surf town. There are lots of people that are interested in this. Also, remember, it can also be only for a few weeks.
Exactly how the conversation would go if it ever happened to me.
Look at the entire business model of Silicon Valley -- the vast majority of hires are fresh graduates. Party because of ageism, but also because fresh graduates are the ones who are willing to uproot their lives and move to some place with a not particularly compelling quality of life, with enormous costs of living, just to get a job. The reality is that the Valley isn't necessarily drawing the best of the best from across the continent: They're drawing the ones who are willing to move, which overwhelmingly means people just starting their adult lives.
So if someone wants to hire new graduates, being in a more remote location might be completely tenable, if not optimal, to their strategy. It is a filter.
And then there are remote workers. I live on a sprawling property in the rural extents of the exurbs of Toronto. If I worked a traditional SD job it would be a terrible commute, but I do the vast majority of my work completely remotely, with redundant high speed connections and some fat computing hardware. There is absolutely nothing that being in the center of it offers me. On the flip side I often have peers and clients to my property for BBQs and a good time.
Sounds nice and fun for a short break. I think the copy needs some work though, which might relate into tweaking how they target their market. For instance: "Getting far away from your family" <=== If you have a family, that's not how it works. You signed up for the responsibility.
I'll further that as, I read this something like "Get away from your family, because they are a distraction"; but you have time for "surfing and yoga", because that lets you decompress. Seems totally contradictory to me; as if it is somehow OK to be distracted by your family, but if its yoga then somehow it is all good.
Where are the pictures of the lodgings? It sounds very interesting, but it's also rather expensive. I've never been to Morocco, but from what I've heard I bet it's possible to sleep in a four star hotel and eat every meal in a restaurant for under 500 euro per week.
Of course you are offering extras like being networked in with the other residents, and you are marketing to Europeans so it's not crazy to charge this amount, but it would be nice if you could have some more details and evidence on what you are offering.
Just got back from 5 weeks in Morocco, 2 of which were in Taghazout. My girlfriend and I were living very, very simply -- shared bathroom, toilet didn't have a tank, no meals included, internet only in the restaurant downstairs -- but we were paying 10 euros a night, each. You can actually see the place in the pictures they've put up, it was very beautiful, right on the beach.
There was a surf hostel that we also stayed in but it was more expensive (15 euros a night) for bunk beds but it had internet, good bathrooms and showers, breakfast included.
Morocco's a bargainers paradise. If you haggle you can get the prices down. It's the offseason now. Out of all the places we visited (Taghazout, Sidi Ifni, Mirleft, Agadir, Ouarzazate, Tinghir, Boulemane, Merzouga, Chefchaouen, Marrakesh), for a total of 2 people, we would average around 20 euros a night, sometimes paying 10 euros and sometimes 30. Of course, we weren't looking for all the bells and whistles, just a clean bed for the night. Sometimes we got just that, sometimes we got a luxury suite for 20 euros cause it's the offseason. The big cities were indeed surprisingly more expensive. But nothing about Morocco is sketchy -- the hasslers are annoying but I never once felt threatened (it was also always the 2 of us). The coast is beautiful and you should explore beyond Taghazout -- Essaouira and Sidi Ifni if you can.
20€/person/night is cheap, but you can definitively find the same prices in many of the cheaper European countries. Here in Portugal you can rent a double bedroom in a nice rural house with all the commodities (AC, pool, etc) for that price, and when I went to Budapest in April, we rented a 3-person apartment (with heating, Internet, etc all included) for a week for less than 400€.
20 euros total so 10 euros per person per night. Sorry that was confusing in my original comment! Having been in Portugal and Budapest on that same trip I can say that Morocco is definitely cheaper. But Portugal was my favorite :) Great people, great waves, great coast!
Hey Tinco, I'm one of the cofounders. Morocco is no South East Asia. A 5 star hotel is expensive in Morocco. Morocco can be really cheap if you go to a small secluded village in the mountains or in a sketchy town, on the coastside, it's whole other story. We'll upload the pictures as soon as the constructions are over! But, believe me it's going to be great (you can checkout our pinterest to see what we're going for)
I think a lifestyle location could be a cool underdog hiring strategy, at elates if you accept that you all your hire will be relocation hires. IE, if you are wiling to pay big city salaries in a small town location, that could be attractive to some people. Not everyone and obviously if you have Google/Facebook hiring requirements it's not an option. But, if you need to hire 5-10 a year it might work. Not everyone will want it. But, the minority that do want it want it a lot.
IE, imagine a couple with small kids from London comings for an interview to a nice location in Crete. Instead of a tiny London 2 bedroom, they can move into a nice cottage. They can save hours a day in commutes and get more cash into savings. That will appeal to some employees (or their wives/husbands). You can't say Crete is objectively better or worse than the London buzz. But, it is different in a way that will inevitably appeal to some.
The problem is that it's hard not to adjust your salary expectations (as an employer) to local salaries and that just isn't compatible with relocation hiring. People don't relocate for a lower salary, even if cost of living is lower. I think the EU has a lot of these possibilities that are still under appreciated.
If you think your main win/lose parameter is the quality of people you can hire, you should think creatively about how to win here. It's hard to win competing head-to-head.
While I don't wish to imply I am the world's most amazing person, I think I'm reasonably competent. I moved precisely for lifestyle reasons to Dublin, Ireland, and quite like it. While the cost of living is relatively high by European standards, it's far, far, cheaper than the bay, or west L.A. for that matter. I mostly wanted to live in a dense, walkable, European city, and Dublin has exceeded expectations in that regard.
I realize you probably weren't thinking of a European capital when you wrote it, but it does ring true that there are people for whom location is more important than maximum compensation.
I am based in Cairo. Other than the rare revolutions, occasional bombings and frequent elevated security situations, it is a perfectly suitable place to try starting up your startup.
Apparently their justification is "Because it's quiet and weird." So, when you choose to establish a new business, move to the next hipster city that no one's heard of. For... reasons.
Seems like the hipster solitude didn't work wonders for their proofreading: I stumbled upon http://www.thebluehouse.io/month-long-program/ only to be greeted by: "HOW MUCH DOES IT COSTS?". I only went there because the main homepage took ~20 seconds to load. Perils of seclusion...
Not sure I can really agree with much in this article, which seems to contradict itself (get more focused by not doing A and B, instead use your spare time for X and Y) and ignores that fact that getting close to your target audience and understanding their pain points isn't really going to happen if your sitting under an umbrella in Senegal.
It's not a one size fits all situation. Depends on your product (online/offline), on the stage your product is at, etc. The good thing is you can alternate being in big tech hub, isolating yourself in small village, challenging yourself in a city you don't know etc
I agree that short breaks away from the "norm" is good, but this isn't really unique to startups - i'd wager that you could gain the same benefits by just taking a vacation than trying to relocate your startup + staff every X months.
For years I though that the Internet would fuel re-ruralization because it allows people to work outside the limits of densely populated areas. I think I suffered from two errors in that assumption: first that many people other than me wanted to live and work in the boonies; and second that infrastructure in rural areas would catch up somehow. I think the trend toward urbanization makes perfect sense from an infrastructure perspective, and it makes a certain amount of sense that most people prefer to live with other people.
I am trying to figure out what kind of start up can benefit from this. In theory, you can be more focused if you and your team are isolated.
Maybe it is easier to answer this question: What kind of start ups will not benefit from this?
I'd say any startup that is passed the very first stages of product development, and needs to be talking to users, and investors and media and other businesses ...
Just thinking out loud.
It would be more productive to just have a remote workforce, and let them live where they want. Some people might want small fishing towns, others will make different choices. The key is to let everyone do what works best for themselves.
I live in London and I love the rain & grey skies. I cycle 15 minutes to work, but sometimes take public transport too. I feel plenty productive in this city, and if I were to start my own business, I'd have no problems being here.
I think it really depends on who you are, not where you are.
Cycling in the rain in the city your tyres can slip on oil - unpleasant results even at starting speed. The oily puddles also stain clothes, which probably aren't cycling gear on a short 15 minute ride. My last job was a Chiswick to Tower Hill ride, gear up and get dirty, but the worst part was the state of the toilets we had to change in.
For short city trips, you want to have an old cheap outdoor bike (otherwise it might get stolen anyway). I don't see why you have to clean those. (I clean my bike once every 6 months, tops, and I ride it every day. The dirt is from the dirt or forest tracks I have to cross once in a while.)
Well, if you're looking for a location like that, consider Pillar Point Harbor in California. There's a small industrial area with cheap space, 2-3 short blocks from the ocean. It's adjacent to Mavericks Beach, one of the world's great surfing spots. There's a small-boat harbor. Several riding stables. Some nightclubs. Decent restaurants. A small airport. Housing prices aren't too high.
It's a half hour drive from there to Silicon Valley. 45 minutes to San Francisco. There's bus service to both places. 10 minutes to Half Moon Bay with supermarkets and hardware stores.
"Getting far away from your family, your friends, [...] Living close to the beach, and surfing or doing yoga, also helps decompressing after work, and avoiding burnout, and therefore staying productive"
They also overlook the harsh conditions most [near-]waterfront properties suffer for prolonged periods. There's a reason non-oceangoing businesses aren't there. Wet cold, unmitigated storms (up to hurricanes), shifting waterlines, pounding waves, sketchy internet connections, delayed delivery/shipping times, debilitating heat, salt corrosion, etc. When it's good it's great, and when it's bad nobody but long-term born-and-die-there locals stay.
1) Traditionally, HN has been about startups: what works, what doesn't work
2) This entire comment thread is reading like a tourism forum
At some point, maybe 2-4 years ago, HN sublty starting moving from a board about how to make your startup to folks trying to pitch other folks on stuff to buy for your startup. It's the old thing about during the gold rush the gold miners didn't make all the money -- the guys selling pickaxes did.
I don't say that to discount these folks. Hell if I know. Probably best place in the world for a startup. It's just every now and then HN gets especially bad about this. And it needs to be pointed out.
I have a friend who works for Power Engineers. The founders built the company in Hailey, Idaho, near the Sun Valley Ski Resort.
They are now a massive company with 39 US Offices and 4 international offices. I've never been sure if the lesson is that you can start a company in the middle of nowhere, or if you need to have local offices to serve your customers. The headquarters is still in Hailey, ID, in the middle of nowhere, but they clearly thought they needed offices elsewhere to add ~1 additional office per year of the company.
Looks appealing, right near Anchor Point, a world class surf spot. Was about to pull the trigger on a 3-4 month rental...until the price. 1,200 Euros/month in Morocco, really? During the fall and spring I pay 500 Euros per month for a 2 bedroom, 5 minute walk from the beach in Capbreton, France, an area with surf as good or better than anything in Morocco.
I can appreciate, number 1, the safety (as I had all my gear stolen in Morocco a few years ago, passport included), and living with other tech heads, but in the end I just need a decent internet connection, a kitchen, and location in some interesting part of the world; the rest are nice-to-haves.
Airbnb et al have totally destroyed the bargain rental market. From India, to Morocco, to Argentina, etc. formerly dirt cheap destinations now fetch luxury prices with often very modest accomodations in return.
Best bet for the travelling coder is probably to just do a week rental via hose-you-inc and then search locally for rentals closer to market value (i.e. not 2-5X what the locals are paying).
Now, it's a fantastic market for sellers, more power to them, if I had a place to sublet I'd be more than happy to fetch top dollar for some vanilla 1 bedroom apartment with a blender, hot plate, and clean sheets ;-)
Sure the subway can suck but in New York City I have access to surfing, beaches, more yoga studios (and dance, and martial arts, among a million other classes in languages, the culinary arts, and virtually any other topic you could choose) than anyone could possibly count, restaurants, museums, concerts, sporting events, scuba diving, sky diving, and anything else you could ever ask for. (And even the things you'd never think to ask for). I mean the list just goes on and on and on. Of course this is predicated on the assumption that you will take advantage of it (and have the money, interest, time, and energy to do so).
However, that being said, the idea of waking up in my hut, and walking outside, doing a little yoga on the beach, and then setting up for a cup of coffee with some locals and hacking away in the sun does sound undeniably attractive.
I'd kill for some more sun in my workplace. And just whose idea were these damned open offices anyways? I do enjoy the social interactions and yet there is always that nipping feeling that I'm interrupting someone else's zone while I do so, much as, often, people interrupt mine when they do.
I too live in a fishing town, yes, it's nice being a small town without any traffic or people on the street (except in Summer when we get tourists) but honestly I can't wait to move out.
I can't get fast internet, power/internet goes down when it gets a bit windy or starts raining; and it rains quite a lot, making you really unproductive. Let's not talk about 3G/4G, we are lucky to have 3G on a good day.
If I wanted to go to some conference or meetup I'd have to drive at least 4-5 hours since there's nothing here, and we don't have train or anything.
Talking about leisure time, I like surfing, but that's only viable during the Summer, there's not much else to do here other than hanging out with other people; we are lucky to have a cinema, but some movies don't even make it here (I'm still waiting to watch Interstellar).
This would be the perfect place for a lonely writer working on a novel, but definitely not for people like us, who need to be always connected and making the best use of technology possible.
Disclaimer: I've never lived in a city, maybe I'll end up hating it, who knows?
You could be surrounded by thousands of people at any moment who all have headphones on and keep their gaze at a 45 degree angle towards the ground. You too can walk past homeless panhandlers asking for money and ignore them. You can hang out at hip dive-bars and pretend to be cool until the neighborhood gentrifies and you have to commute farther out to the next spot. You can sit next to the schizophrenic on the bus that went off of their meds and everyone does their best to pretend e is the hallucination and not a real person. You can go to events where every clique but your own is present. You can rub shoulders with everyone who wouldn't give a damn if they stepped on you for their next big opportunity.
You can find loneliness anywhere.
Being "always connected," I'm beginning to realize, is not always the optimal state. You lose the ability to focus, to consider the future, and form thoughts of your own. As Douglas Rushkoff suggests: we all live in the present.
For better or worse this is the way things work... but I think it's rather amazing that we have the option to work on a terrace in a medina in some North African city if we want to. And yet so few of us, at the forefront of the technology that enables this lifestyle, take advantage of it -- even for temporary periods. There's something to be said about taking a few months away from the Valley to think for a while.
As I said, it depends. Right now I'm young and eager to go work at a big company or a startup. Maybe 30 years from now I'll just want to come back and rest, who knows?
We humans are terrible at imagining the future. Might as well seize the day and find out. You might like the city! I know I did when I was young. I still do and couldn't imagine living in a remote, rural town. However I've learned to appreciate remote, rural living more and like to visit it for periods of time.
Just wanted to say that I lived in a small ecuadorean fishing village for 7 years, and my experience was the opposite ... but I'm not starting a startup!
My internet was even more limited (EDGE), power went out sometimes (two power bricks were enough for my mac air, though, and the cell towers never went out, so I could make it through even a multi-day outage without losing internet!), and comfy fast wifi in a coffee shop was 40 minutes away (I'd schedule voice or video meetings on days I liked to go into town to buy things or eat at good restaurants).
And surfing fast, big, tropical beach and point breaks ... well.
I bought a house down there; I'm back in the states right now, because I came back and got married to a girl from my hometown. But we're heading to Ecuador again as soon as we can. :)
But a startup? Hmm.
I think I'd have been a good startup employee, but contracting was a better fit anyway since I really appreciated multi-month blocks without work.
Just wanted to say that I lived in a small ecuadorean fishing village for 7 years, and my experience was the opposite ... but I'm not starting a startup!
My internet was even more limited (EDGE), power went out sometimes (two power bricks were enough for my mac air, though, and the cell towers never went out, so I could make it through even a multi-day outage without losing internet!), and comfy fast wifi in a coffee shop was 40 minutes away (I'd schedule voice or video meetings on days I liked to go into town to buy things or eat at good restaurants).
And surfing fast, big, tropical beach and point breaks ... well. It was rainy during nearly half of the year, but I didn't even need a wetsuit, and during the good season, it put a smil
I bought a house down there; I'm back in the states right now, because I came back and got married to a girl from my hometown. But we're heading to Ecuador again as soon as we can. :)
But a startup? Hmm.
I think I'd have been a good startup employee, but contracting was a better fit anyway since I really appreciated multi-month blocks without work.
Do you contract for a few months at a time in $first_world_country?
I'm asking because I've been contracting in London for a couple years and I'm considering doing half the year here, then half the year something like what you describe. But I'd have to move the wife and (soon) kid twice a year. She says she's fine with that.
Congratulations, I noticed a lot more Commonwealth types than Americans doing that sort of thing as still-working professionals (but a heck of a lot of Americans doing things as investors).
Yes, you've probably done the math and know that it would work, and can lead to a great work-life balance, to take a few projects for a few months, and then be almost completely off the radar for your clients during the other months.
I did that at first. Now I'm 100% remote with my best clients -- not that I wouldn't be able to make a certain amount of face time if it was necessary any more. But it was slapping us in the face just how unnecessary my physical presence is; it feels almost unflattering, in fact. For a while I was making it a point of coming into their offices during a busy or critical week, but after the first couple of years of our relationship, it just seemed absurd to us; I'd walk into a physical meeting and say "hey," and they'd say "hey," and we'd laugh at how silly it was that I was physically in Minneapolis over just a few minutes or hours of face time a week. My 'home base' in the US is several hours away from their offices, all of our meetings could be done over the phone, and the most interesting conversations between engineers to me seem to happen better over chat anyway.
So I'm just always remote; sometimes I'm in South America, sometimes I'm on the west coast or the midwest visiting family. I change location a lot, and it never makes the slightest bit of difference for clients; I just always call in to meetings instead of physically walk into the room.
Founders should choose the correct location that gives them the maximum possible advantage. If you're selling to the oil industry, build in Houston. Finance, NYC. And so on. Sometimes geography doesn't matter, so a small fishing town is just fine.
It's not for everyone clearly.
When you actually spend more than a couple of weeks, you stop getting that need to discover and talk to people, and get to work super productively (one of the reason is: you can't wait to go back to enjoying the place). This solution works if you have a 100% online product, or if you opt to travel at the right stage for your startup (when you have had networked for now, when you're pivoting etc).
i'm not sure what this is, it's not that clear. it seems to be an advert for a guest house that's tailored to people building startups? here's a hint, if you're building a start up you want to be successful, moving somewhere to go surfing isn't probably the best thing to do
and it doesn't seem that cheap either tbh. not forgetting remoteness is a massive problem, i worked somewhere remote, it was awful. they had surfing. i moved back to the city after 6 months, i've never been happier.
that said, i hope it works for you, i wish i could live at the beach in a warm country
I really enjoyed the piece - but I wonder if the arguments made work for a highly focused coding bender and perhaps not day-to-day business growth of a startup where meeting face to face with other founders, potential partners & mentors would be facilitated by being in a crowded city as opposed to a Senegalese beach?
It depends what stage you're in, and what is your product. If your doing a 100% online product, it doesn't change a thing. Skype works great for partners, but going in person once in a while where your partners is always better. (Thank god for cheap airplane fares)
All is perfect, until you need to hire more developers, and then find (almost) all of them live in big cites, and they're not willing to relocate to a place without theaters, bars, discos... probably a lot like the place the came from before living in the city ;)
You definitely want exposure to all types of resources and I find that being in a bigger city allows you do that. I'm currently a medium-sized fish in a small pond and it's still hard to find the right people that'll guide me along the way.
Terrible article, it basically boils down to hipster garbage. "Adventurous Startup", give me a break. We're such free, weird unencumbered souls lol! Eat pray love!
First of all, the guy is selling startup space in a small fishing town. Second, is there any evidence to support his case? How many successful startups began in idyllic locations?
Hey, I'm the writer :) We actually decided to open this space after meeting a lot of cool startups who did. In this village we had TechStar Seattle and Startup Chile alumi Maptia and media darling Chui. And there are more around the world. Check out NomadList, and Levels.io
I think it works for industries where things are tightly project based with sizable periods of downtime. It is a cliche in the music industry to have a studio in the middle of nowhere in which to try and focus, and I don't see why this couldn't work elsewhere. There is also no reason not to have an in-town office and a larger out of town campus. Might even work out cheaper than an in-town office big enough for everybody.
I'm a solo bootstrapped entrepreneur but I like working in offices with others— this is perfect for me. To me, this seems like more of a focussed co-working space abroad.
1.) this is a recruiting blurb from TBH.
2.) I want an unbiased opinion, this one doesn't address pros vs. cons.
3.) why would I want to smell fish all day?
plenty along floridas cost, depending on your definition of small:
jupiter, pine island, hudson beach..
pretty much take your pick along the coast, avoiding the major metro areas like Tampa/StPete/Clearwater/Miami/Jacksonville (all are more city than "town").
Hey Fergie. It's not our intention (I'm the cofounder) :) Our goal is to have people work as much as in their hometown, but get more done because they're in a better setting, and because when they take a break, it's a fucking amazing break.
Is Morocco a save place now? A relative was there to help in the United Nations peacekeeping mission, especially the southern part of Morocco "Western Sahara".
Western Sahara is not near this town at all. There's some trouble with terrorists in Morocco, but terrorist attacks are not on small fishing towns, they would be in the big cities.
Back in 2009, I moved from Silicon Valley (Cupertino, natch, home of...well, me, until I left - rumor is there's also another tech firm or two there, but those fruit guys well, you know).
At the time, I had it all. Consulting firm was paying half the bills and the scalable, bootstrapped and profitable media business had hit north of six million visitors the month before the big move.
New location: Maldives. Sun, sand and surf. Want to see dolphins? Top five in the world. Coral reefs? Some of the best. That underwater restaurant Tom Cruise stayed at on his honeymoon at Conrad Hilton, when it was the world's first? It's an amazing place, quite special - I hit it up in 2008 the year before we moved there.
Unlike a lot of folks that move to random locations, or say Costa Rica, the first time I moved overseas with a startup (left the US to join a Costa Rican one), the Maldives trip was my second time.
A few exceptions about my move:
* Father-in-law was Vice President, of the country at the time (I left before he became president)
* Then president was family by marriage; personally, I thought the guy was a sh!tty father when we went to the first daughter's birthday. Imho, both parents, regardless of how busy, should make time. Eg, when it was my older son's b-day, only the first lady showed. She was cool. The president was a bit uptight. Long story.
Pros about moving to Maldives:
* Any foreigner can get the "local," discount, like teachers, for example
* The islands are amazing. Seriously. Try lounging on the beach where Madonna stayed...the resort owners is nice and well, the beach spectacular. They also have the largest array of solar panels privately owned in their region.
* Fish is plentiful, fresh, and some of the very best tuna in the world. There are some amazing dishes.
Cons:
* Everything is imported and subject to a 100% tax
* Capital island is 1 square mile...most densely populated city in the world per square meter
* Internet situation is abysmal.
I lack credibility here, as I have zero background in networking, but suffice to say after meeting multiple ministers of telecommunications, pitching the government to try to fix the situation AND lobbying after my father-in-law, at the time, was President of the Country...well, I know why in my home country, "Net neutrality," makes people confused.
This article is too light, too shallow on details for those of us who've done the globe trotting thing and worked in multiple countries overseas.
> A few exceptions about my move: * Father-in-law was Vice President, of the country at the time (I left before he became president)
Hahaha, come on man, I'm pretty sure that if you're part of the ruling social class of any given country your life is defeinitely going to be much more enjoyable than if you aren't.
I'm not so sure you should be trying to push "leave your family and friends behind" as an upside. You are just reminding people of an obvious downside, you aren't actually turning it into an upside.
The internet is what it is, but you can never match the face-to-face relationship with an online approach.
I totally understand that this is a dream-like situation: You make a good amount of money, doing what you like in a remote island where the sun shines and the food is always tasty (yes I'm from Greece...) but if your business can't be done 100% online, which is almost never the case, then you need offices in a big city. Then you need to visit and control these offices, etc.