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How To Build A Startup From A Beach

blog.simplehoney.com

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#41

As a YC founder of a venture backed company that lives in Hawaii now... Like everything in life, it's all a balance. My quality of life in Hawaii is hard to beat. My tech scene is hard to find. Which is why I come back to SF & NYC almost monthly. The travel is a bit of a pain, but I feel like I'm living a close to perfect balance. It helps that I'm from Hawaii, so I'm not in "vacation" mode... I'm in "home" mode. Whe…

You in Honolulu? If so, in the local tech scene? I'm a tech exec of a mid-sized company in Honolulu- always like to meet other local like minded folks

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#43
post #7

I was an intern in a startup that tried exactly this. It was a lot of fun. We got a ton of VC cash to burn and so why not do it in a nice environment? In the end, the company failed. We all got too much into a "holiday" mood. The webdesigner won a surf contest. The CEO started an affair with not one, but two of the female employes. We all got fat from eating delicious food from the 5-Star hotel and high class Restaur…

I think the moral of that story is to take VC money and move to Hawaii. Sure beats working alone from my apartment, and I bet everyone was on salary too.

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#45
post #29

Please don't sell that startup from a beach dream on exoticism. I would like to cast a diverging opinion from my personal experience. For various work-related reasons I left Europe in early 2008 to live in Martinique, in the French West Indies. It is very close to what the article describes - tropical weather (you will never get cold - 25 C/ 77 F is what we call cold and take a jacket for - home weather station on ht…

I have a similar experience. I actually traveled the world for 7 months last year working on my startup. It was exciting at first, but then the excitement became routine and I longed to get back to my SF home office.

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#46
post #41

As a YC founder of a venture backed company that lives in Hawaii now... Like everything in life, it's all a balance. My quality of life in Hawaii is hard to beat. My tech scene is hard to find. Which is why I come back to SF & NYC almost monthly. The travel is a bit of a pain, but I feel like I'm living a close to perfect balance. It helps that I'm from Hawaii, so I'm not in "vacation" mode... I'm in "home" mode. Whe…

You in Honolulu? If so, in the local tech scene? I'm a tech exec of a mid-sized company in Honolulu- always like to meet other local like minded folks

A great place to meet other developers in the local Hawaii tech scene is as Wetware Wedesdays. There's free appetizers and usually beer available.

http://wetwarewednesday.eventbrite.com/

Also you should definitely check out HI Capacity (http://hicapacity.org) a local makerspace/hackerspace. There is an interesting talk on Haskell coming up on May 24th: http://www.meetup.com/dynamic/events/63061002/

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#47
post #29

Please don't sell that startup from a beach dream on exoticism. I would like to cast a diverging opinion from my personal experience. For various work-related reasons I left Europe in early 2008 to live in Martinique, in the French West Indies. It is very close to what the article describes - tropical weather (you will never get cold - 25 C/ 77 F is what we call cold and take a jacket for - home weather station on ht…

That's fine and good, but writing from Berlin as it comes into springtime, I for one would much rather have my boring, isolated, day-to-day grind come without metric assloads of snow and ice on everything and relative inability to do anything outdoors for half the year.

I expect no sympathy from Californians, but for those in NYC, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, etc - upvotes to the left. :P

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#48
post #5

I was expecting some fluff piece about how to make a passive income on SEO while living a jetset life style. This was not it. The article makes surprisingly much sense actually.

I was expecting to be told how I too could live this lifestyle, if only I bought her awesome Article Spinner for 99.99 $9.99

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#49
post #29

Please don't sell that startup from a beach dream on exoticism. I would like to cast a diverging opinion from my personal experience. For various work-related reasons I left Europe in early 2008 to live in Martinique, in the French West Indies. It is very close to what the article describes - tropical weather (you will never get cold - 25 C/ 77 F is what we call cold and take a jacket for - home weather station on ht…

I've lived in Waikiki for the past 2 years. I'm a 15 minute walk away from the beach. Do you know how often I visit? Once a week.

Moving here will not magically make you more outgoing or productive. While I love it here, I lived in Austin and miss the tech culture from the area.

Granted I probably should network more but it's mostly IT, real estate, and tourism industry. There is no comparison to SF / Austin for startup culture.

If you're browsing HN and in Honolulu, let's grab a beer.

Re: How To Build A Startup From A Beach

#50
post #30

All of this advice is great except "Hawaii" which is merely good advice. There are much cheaper beach towns with unbelievable weather that aren't so isolated. Hawaii is particularly nice for US residents without a Passport, but you should get a passport! I recently did something very similar, though I was at several beaches and in a couple mountain ranges. There is a sort of inverse relationship between adventure and…

Do Americans really have such a strong aversion to getting a passport? Why is "you don't need a passport to get to X" even in the list of reasons why you should go to X? A passport is just another piece of ID. Yeah, it's a bit too bulky to carry around in your wallet, but most of the time you don't even need to carry your passport around. Is it really so difficult for Americans to get passports?

Or is passport-talk just an oblique way of saying "you don't need to worry about visas"?

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