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The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

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Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#51

Post by allenleee »

yaseer wrote: post #18
abhinav22 wrote: post #5

Nice write up on your experience in YC, thanks for that. How much do you think you get distracted by talking and listening with others in your YC network vs actually focusing on your product? As a lone wolf programmer, I avoid talking to people

> As a lone wolf programmer, I avoid talking to people I've built things solo with my PhD (dropped out), and collaboratively in a startup. The biggest mistake we make is building the wrong thing. We need to talk to people, whether it's customers, co-founders or colleagues to correct all the incorrect assumptions we've made, but can't see. If you're building something new, there's likely to be many, many incorrect ass…

> The biggest mistake we make is building the wrong thing

I don't think talking to users can fix that. If you have the wrong vision about the product, you probably will talk to the 'wrong users' too. You’re not in the market the users think you’re in — you’re in the market you believe you’re in.

That approach will also lead you to very incremental solutions or even make you run around in circles achieving nothing. It lowers the cost of failure (downside), but also the potential impact of success (upside).

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#52

Post by mbesto »

reader_mode wrote: post #22
ramraj07 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any suggestions? Spain has been a potential target for temporary relocation for me!

I got the impression that English level is really poor in Spain (when I was visiting Valencia, didn't go to Barcelona). Even with younger population - I was going out in the evening with some friends, we approached like 4 groups of 20-something and none of them could even give us basic directions. In shops and tourist places it's better but barely.

I did the nomadic, startup-in-the-gargage, life in Barcelona and didn't speak a lick of Spanish.

Barcelona is awesome and it's cheap (spent a total of $800 for the whole month on food, living, etc.). Highly recommend for someone on a budget who wants to hack away.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#53

Post by matteuan »

ramraj07 wrote: post #12
iagovar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can live off a bunch of years in Spain for that money.

Any suggestions? Spain has been a potential target for temporary relocation for me!

If you don't need the sea, I suggest some cheap german city like Leipzig or Dresden. Another not so common idea is Bulgaria: cheap, very low taxes (flat 10%) and a lot of english speakers (expecially in Sofia). I've been there several times and it's also a very nice place.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#54

Post by robhunter »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #50
koolba wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could easily do that in the USA as well. Median income is $35K and that’s before taxes and without a corporate shell to transform some of the larger living expenses into corporate pre-tax deductions.

Survive, yes. Thrive, no. The USA is an expensive place.

Part of it are; parts of it definitely are not.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#56

Post by burlesona »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #50
koolba wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could easily do that in the USA as well. Median income is $35K and that’s before taxes and without a corporate shell to transform some of the larger living expenses into corporate pre-tax deductions.

Survive, yes. Thrive, no. The USA is an expensive place.

In a lot of the country, 125k is a lot of money, easily enough to live 2 years or more.

To answer a sibling comment since we can’t nest any deeper: so long as you’re not on the west coast with its decades long housing undersupply, small towns almost anywhere in the country are pretty affordable. This even includes parts of the otherwise expensive northeast.

In particular a lot of college towns offer a great mix of good quality of life with very affordable living.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#57

Post by burlesona »

bobf wrote: post #41
reader_mode wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the impression that English level is really poor in Spain (when I was visiting Valencia, didn't go to Barcelona). Even with younger population - I was going out in the evening with some friends, we approached like 4 groups of 20-something and none of them could even give us basic directions. In shops and tourist places it's better but barely.

English is the most spoken second language in Spain, with ~35% of the population being able to speak it. Portugal is slightly worse at 27%, along with Ukraine (18%), Romania (31%), and Italy (34%). France (39%), Croatia (49%), Estonia (50%), Slovenia (59%), and Greece (51%) are all a bit higher. And then the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, and Switzerland are all between 60-70%+. A…

FWIW I’d argue Italian is even easier than Spanish as it has fewer conjugation rules to learn and the grammar is in many cases closer to English :)

Both are pretty easy, though, and Spanish opens up a lot more of the world. But Italian is just so darn fun :)

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#58

Post by wheels »

iKevinShah wrote: post #55
robhunter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it are; parts of it definitely are not.

Curious as an outsider, which parts are not?

The middle part.

It's a little more complicated than that, but mostly, away from the coasts and famous cities (Chicago, Austin, etc.), most of middle America is pretty cheap -- by American standards. It's still a lot more expensive than most of the world, obviously. But there are lots of places you could live reasonably comfortably for 2-3 years on $125k. Hell, there are a lot of places you could buy a house for $80k, and $45k buys a lot of food and internet. ;-)

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#59

Post by Shared404 »

burlesona wrote: post #56
devoutsalsa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survive, yes. Thrive, no. The USA is an expensive place.

In a lot of the country, 125k is a lot of money, easily enough to live 2 years or more. To answer a sibling comment since we can’t nest any deeper: so long as you’re not on the west coast with its decades long housing undersupply, small towns almost anywhere in the country are pretty affordable. This even includes parts of the otherwise expensive northeast. In particular a lot of college towns offer a great mix of go…

Just so you know, you can nest deeper, you just have to wait a little while.

HN has an anti-flamewar system which kicks in when there's too many comments too fast in one chain.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#60

Post by unamashana »

switch007 wrote: post #48

I couldn’t quite tell from the api docs but is the user’s email required? Can I just supply an external ID? I’m just wondering from a privacy point of view.

You can use (as you guessed) an `userExternalId` - https://developer.magicbell.io/docs/browser-js#identifying-u....

That's how we built our HN Chrome extension that never asks for your email - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-notifi...

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