Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

levels.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 191 posts

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#51

Post by nielmalhotra »

dxbydt wrote: post #42
digitalnalogika wrote: post #3

Thanks for the post, I now feel like I want to do similar thing sometime in my life. Is there any other interesting, safe, cheap place where you could live comfortably using at most $1000/month?

Props to the OP for being open to exploring a whole different continent. But frankly, there are plenty of university towns right here in the USA that'll fit the OP's 1000 USD budget very well. As a TA in a CS grad program, I made $800 per month. With that money, I lived in a comfortable studio & had everything the OP describes & when I graduated in 2 years, in addition to my Masters degree, I had managed to save $500…

Out of curiosity, where did you do your CS grad program, so that you could live on less than 1k a month?

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#52

Post by Radim »

scheff wrote: post #20
Radim wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably because the OP had a double entry tourist visa. You can renew easily -- or at least could, a few years ago. I lived in Thailand for two years, entirely on tourist visas. Let me just add there's a marked difference between how OP describes his Thailand experience, and living outside of start-up/expat communities.

care to elaborate?

Why not. There's plenty of more detailed info out there, and I don't claim to be any sort of expert after mere two years, but here's two stereotypical extremes:

Tourist-eyes: beautiful beaches; nice weather; safe; cheap food; laid back, friendly smiling people -- PARADISE!

Live-and-work-there-eyes: rampant bigotry and racism (common to most SE Asia); dishonesty ("losing face" and all, again shared across SEA and not specific to Thailand); nothing ever gets done (the famous wait-for-crisis management aka the reverse side of the laid back culture); encouragement of keeping in line and professional mediocrity; (lack of) quality healthcare; dirt; systemic corruption and mafia; massive drinking in connection with ubiquitous handguns; relationships aka love the farang cash machine; farangs always 2nd class citizens no matter what (land ownership &c) -- BUSINESS OWNER'S HELL!

Now that's just to juxtapose two extremes, neither is "the truth".

When it comes to running a business, beware of that viewpoint #2. Freelancers who just hang out with other freelancers on the beach for a few months don't need to care, of course :) For serious business, Malaysia is much more organized and welcoming.

Hopefully I don't get downvoted for this paradise-shattering post -- I still have many Thai friends and I love the country despite all its problems.

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#53

Post by jamornh »

peterjancelis wrote: post #48
hackerboos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>EDIT: Of course, I'm not exactly familiar with the visa situation since I don't actually need it. Based on the OP, it seems pretty complicated, but still worth the hassle. I lived in Thailand for several years and 'bootstrapping' your business there as a foreigner without a work permit is breaking the law. You need a work permit to do ANY type of work in Thailand and although working out of sight is unlikely to get…

1. You are allowed to do business meetings on a business/tourist visa. 2. You can do business meetings from a co-work office. Now please tell me how being in a co-work office, working for a company incorporated abroad and not accepting local payments, can get one arrested.

Are you sure you can do business meetings on a tourist visa? On a business visa is fine of course as you've declared that your intention is to be there for business, but having a business visa also require you to have a company that is sending you there on business before hand. Plus, I'm not sure how long of a stay you'd normally get with a business visa.

With a tourist visa, I think you're strictly not supposed to perform any business activities. You might be able to pass off your meeting as a "casual chat" if you want to risk it.

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#54

Post by RomanPushkin »

> The enterprise loves C# coders. But that’s not necessarily the best language for a startup stack.

Why? It's quite easy, much more powerful, performance is great! Jeffrey Richter in his book "CLR via C#" says it's often more fasten than even compiled C/C++.

Have you heard about Entity Framework and ASP.Net MVC? It's growing like a mad thing, a lotta features, improvements and so on.

Maybe the license price is high? Yep, but with EF you can switch MS SQL database to any other one. And, moreover, you can obtain a license for free on bizspark. And, for sure, you can switch to Mono if you prefer Linux or Mac.

BTW, you comparing "proprietary language C#" to Java, but Java is by Oracle ;)

PS http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/editorials/why-many-develop...

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#55

Post by EarthLaunch »

Be careful about that cultural isolation. I'm an arch-introvert with mostly online friendships. I lived in a small mountain community alone for a year and was happy enough. But I tried working from Ukraine for 3 months, and although it was fascinating, the cultural isolation made me leave. It's a strange feeling, almost like you aren't on the same plane as the society you're in, or as if you're watching from a bubble.

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#57

Post by RomanPushkin »

jamornh wrote: post #35
stratosvoukel wrote: post #19

1000$ is supposed to be enough to live in lots of european countries as well. Eg. Estonia, Greece, Austria

I think that number is only if you're living very very comfortably. Personally, on a normal standard of living, I can get by with around $500 USD a month, and that's normal 3 meals a day with internet, phone, apartment (no pool or facilities.) Street food, normal portions are going around $1 to $1.5 USD so it's pretty cheap. Now of course, you might be able to only afford to go to socialize at bars and restaurants on…

Would you please tell more? Country/city? Weather, visas, etc? Thanks!

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#58

Post by MichaelTieso »

I've been traveling around the world for the last 5 years and have started various businesses on the road. It's been an incredible experience. I just moved to Sayulita, Mexico a week ago where I plan to finish my new startup ForkFox.com. I'll be here for 6-months. The downside is that there isn't much for resources. I'm basically here to just focus on programming but in paradise.

Having been to Thailand several times, the food there is AMAZING.

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#59

Post by jamornh »

RomanPushkin wrote: post #57
jamornh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that number is only if you're living very very comfortably. Personally, on a normal standard of living, I can get by with around $500 USD a month, and that's normal 3 meals a day with internet, phone, apartment (no pool or facilities.) Street food, normal portions are going around $1 to $1.5 USD so it's pretty cheap. Now of course, you might be able to only afford to go to socialize at bars and restaurants on…

Would you please tell more? Country/city? Weather, visas, etc? Thanks!

Oh, my above post is referring to living in Bangkok City in Thailand. Here are some visa information:

http://www.mfa.go.th/main/en/services/123/15388-Non-Immigran...

I believe you will need a business visa to legally work here (I am a Thai national so I do not have that issue) and getting one isn't a trivial task, unfortunately.

I suspect that the OP is most likely working using a tourist visa. IANAL but it is likely not legal if caught, but if you can get away with it, more power to you.

Re: What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

#60

Post by sirn »

jamornh wrote: post #17

Thai national here, and as a fellow bootstrapper I would have to agree with most of the points of the OP. The reason why I left my well-paid job in Singapore and come back to Thailand to bootstrap my startup is due to the much lower cost of living and un-tapped talent pool. I'd like to add that the quoted figure of $1,000 USD a month is rather high. Most Thais can get by with $500 USD. That is the current starting sa…

> Most Thais can get by with $500 USD.

As local, I can confirm this. Though it was roughly three years ago, ~$400 a month back then could get me a very comfortable life in outer area of Bangkok (Onnut), this includes an apartment with to-the-door food service, air conditioning, parking slot, 10 minutes walk to the BTS (train station) and 16Mbps internet. No pool, though!

The trick is to rent an apartment within BTS range at x minutes of walking in an outer area of Bangkok, where x is >= 10. An apartment with 5 minutes walk to the BTS can cost about $200 to $400, but past certain point in the same Soi, the cost could be reduced by more than 50%.

The cost could get much cheaper if you cook. Food are ridiculous cheap, but food ingredients are even more cheaper.

Post reply on HN