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What I learnt bootstrapping my startup from Thailand for six months

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

#81

Post by iambateman »

EarthLaunch wrote: post #55

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…

cultural isolation is painful, even for introverts (I'm with ya).

It's bizarre to watch people, and see them as fundamentally different, separate, and other from you. The chasm is tough.

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

#82

Post by asveikau »

berntb wrote: post #8
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?

This has been discussed often, some web sites keep cost statistics. For example, Google: living costs london cluj (I was outsourced to Cluj, Transylvania in Romania. I recommend it. 250 Euro/month for a nice, central 50 m2 apartment. People are nice, it is safe. Different. Beautiful women. Mountains, but no sea. University city. The food is very good, but could be more international -- a few sushi places and one(!) I…

I thought that maybe the Romanians pronounced the letter J similar to its original use in Latin; that consonant made when the letter i brushes up against another vowel, as in iudex, like an English Y. But no, I look it up and they pronounce it as [ʒ], almost like we do in English.

Therefore, I will make my corny joke: you don't want your software written in a place that sounds so similar to "kludge". :-)

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

#83

Post by pieterhg »

crazygringo wrote: post #76
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…

Honestly, who cares? Work permits are to make sure you don't steal jobs from the locals. Working on your own project has nothing to do with that. So while it may be breaking the letter of the law, it's certainly not breaking the spirit of it. My point being, you shouldn't have ethical issues with it -- it's like driving 57 in a 55 zone. I know people who have been deported for not having the right visa -- a phone cal…

Exactly.

The culture of the judicial system works in a wholly different way in developing nations than in the West. They don't practice laws like we do. When you cause trouble in Thailand, they'll find any law you might have broken, just to get you, but when you don't cause trouble, most of the times you're fine, even if you might be breaking the law in official terms. I heard it's the same in China.

Sure, it's a risk, but please tell me why all these co-working spaces everywhere are filled with foreigners without work permits and growing rapidly.

Remote working is a new reality, and it would be highly counter-productive for these countries to start striking down on people working there. Every single foreigner I met in Thailand was working on projects either focused on their own country or internationally, thus not threatening local jobs. In reality, many of the Thai learnt from the foreigners that'd teach them about their tech stacks. That's exactly how they're building their own startup scene in Bangkok now. Learning from foreigners.

I'd argue it may increase a developing nation's level of innovation to have remote workers around and governments should embrace this new reality asap.

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

#84

Post by jamornh »

crazygringo wrote: post #76
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…

Honestly, who cares? Work permits are to make sure you don't steal jobs from the locals. Working on your own project has nothing to do with that. So while it may be breaking the letter of the law, it's certainly not breaking the spirit of it. My point being, you shouldn't have ethical issues with it -- it's like driving 57 in a 55 zone. I know people who have been deported for not having the right visa -- a phone cal…

Most of the time I would agree with this sentiment, I don't think you're morally wrong to work on your own project while living in other countries without a proper visa; it's definitely not breaking the spirit of the law. Heck, you're spending your money here, all the better. It's obviously less of a risk if you work from home than a co-working space where you could be easily targeted if a random check does happen (as its meant as a "working space" and not a casual coffee shop.) Then again, I've also not heard of people being hauled off just yet.

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

#85

Post by hayksaakian »

crazygringo wrote: post #76
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…

Honestly, who cares? Work permits are to make sure you don't steal jobs from the locals. Working on your own project has nothing to do with that. So while it may be breaking the letter of the law, it's certainly not breaking the spirit of it. My point being, you shouldn't have ethical issues with it -- it's like driving 57 in a 55 zone. I know people who have been deported for not having the right visa -- a phone cal…

The issue seems to be about avoiding deportation rather than ethics.

The real question is How much would a bootstrapper need to pay off local authorities?

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

#86

Post by notahacker »

dxbydt wrote: post #74
crucialfelix wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000/mo in thailand is living WELL. truly paradise, gorgeous weather, go to nice clubs, best beaches in the world. no comparison with just passing time in a university town in the US. you could merely survive for much less in thailand

Am just pointing out that bootstrapping a startup in a university town on 1k USD is definitely doable. You don't have to go all the way to Thailand and flout visa rules(yeah most of those rules are not exactly enforced but they are still on the books)

It's a fair point, but you'd never go to Thailand mainly to save money anyway: it's one of the most expensive countries in the region and certainly no easier to live in (beyond the tourist/expat ghettos)

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

#87

Post by javert »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #75
javert wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that number to be pretty depressing. I think I could get somewhere pretty close to that, here in North Carolina, USA.

In the original post the point was raised that at that cost of living you don't have to lift a finger. All your cleaning, laundry, and cooking are done by others. It's trivially easy to find a really nice space to rent in the USA for $500 or so. The catch is you'll still be doing all your own cooking and cleaning. And you'll be surrounded by hicks.

I think your hicks comment is unnecessary and incorrect, but otherwise, this is a good point.

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

#89

Post by gosukiwi »

Living in Argentina is quite cheap too if you are from North America or Europe, the currency is devaluating so hard dollar is actually 10 to 1, meaning you can rent a nice place for $200 (no pool just a normal appartment), good thing is though, there are no prostitutes and such, and you wont get charged so much for beeing foreigner, Argentina is full of europeans forgeigners so nobody can really say if you are from Argentina or not unless you are asian or black, and even so, people just dont care.

Now dont go to the north though, I'm talkign south of Buenos Aires and below that is a whole different story xD

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

#90

Post by homakov »

maccman wrote: post #30
pieterhg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! The most I could get from the Thai embassy in Amsterdam was a double-entry visa. If I wanted a triple-entry visa (giving me 3x90 days or 9 months), they required me to have booked all my flights in and out of the country beforehand. That was a bit too much planning for me. I believe there's education visas if you study Thai at a school for a year, but that seems like too much of a distraction while starting u…

Or Saigon - had a great time there. http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/traveling-writing-and-programming

Vietnam and cambodia are just shit compared to thai.
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