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Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

thebluehouse.io

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Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#31

Post by arethuza »

binarymax wrote: post #10

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:

http://www.portknockiewebsite.co.uk/

For a bit of history, here is a page describing the loss of my great-grandfathers boat the Evangeline with all hands:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/pirie/history/PFWv1-o/ui26.htm

[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].

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#32

Post by easytiger »

izolate wrote: post #13

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.

Some people I know quite literally have an issue transitioning to a busy populated city. Think its a personality thing

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#33

Post by ctdonath »

zecg wrote: post #22

They seem to be selling a dystopia: "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.

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#35

Post by josefresco »

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.

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#36

Post by eddieroger »

atmosx wrote: post #6

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 drea…

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.

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#37

Post by VLM »

noelwelsh wrote: post #17

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.

Being as charitable as possible, I read it more as "move out of moms basement at 25" than "abandon your wife and children"

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#38

Post by patio11 »

atmosx wrote: post #6

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 drea…

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."

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#39

Post by frik »

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".

United Nations peacekeeping mission is still ongoing: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_Nations_peacek... (blue region in north-west of Africa)

Re: Why you should move your startup to a small fishing town

#40

Post by tinco »

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.

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