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The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

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Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#61

Post by coder543 »

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?

I just played around with this tool some, and it seems to paint a reasonably accurate picture: https://howmuch.net/cost-of-living/ny/new-york

In general, the more rural an area is, the lower the cost of living. Rural college towns are more likely to have an abundance of cheap apartments than the average rural area.

However, it's all highly relative. San Francisco and NYC are the two most expensive locations in the United States. By comparison, everywhere else is cheaper. Lots of major US metro areas are extremely affordable by comparison, and $120k could probably last a frugal person for 2 or 3 years near those locations especially if living with roommates... so you don't have to live in the middle of nowhere to be somewhere affordable. Compared to a lot of places outside the US, even the affordable parts of the US probably seem expensive, but my limited understanding is that most of Western Europe is relatively expensive... so probably not too different from the US in many places, but definitely outside my area of expertise.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#62

Post by statstutor »

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.

Valencia (the region) literally has a part which locals jokingly call "Little Britain", where residents primarily expect to speak and conduct business in English.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#63

Post by reader_mode »

Grustaf wrote: post #23
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.

Unless you're planning to hire your neighbours, why is this relevant?

Going out and being unable to speak to people on the street/in the shops or even talking to waiters in restaurants is not really a great experience for me.

Presumably you go to large cities for the social interaction.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#64

Post by reader_mode »

burlesona wrote: post #57
bobf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Italy is the only place I've seen worse English than Spain :D

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#65

Post by reader_mode »

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…

Maybe my impression of Mexico is wrong, but I would feel much safer living in Spain/EU than Mexico or South America.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#66

Post by rytill »

allenleee wrote: post #51
yaseer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Can you explain your approach/philosophy, or is it intuitive?

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#67

Post by MegaButts »

Shared404 wrote: post #59
burlesona wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can also click the timestamp of any comment to reply before there is a reply button.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#68

Post by iagovar »

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!

My suggestion is that if you plan to open a business, go to Portugal instead of Spain.

Spain is increasing taxes and they already were pretty hefty for Limited Liability companies.

Portugal is similar on paper but it's easier to start, and their tax agency is not nearly as punitive and arbitrary as the Spanish one.

And you'll have sun (in the south), contained prices and polite Portuguese, which tend to speak decent English, in case you need hiring.

Portuguese infrastructures and utilities are still far below Spain, specially roads and highways, but Portugal is slowly improving while Spain has been declining for a while and it's basically walking to a cliff.

Goin on a Travel to Spain is pretty easy too.

I'm Spanish, if anyone thought I was advertising my country.

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#69

Post by allenleee »

rytill wrote: post #66
allenleee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Can you explain your approach/philosophy, or is it intuitive?

I believe the most successful companies don't discover markets, they create them. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk forge the macro (10x) jump and then ask customers for the micro improvements.

I'm writing an essay about this topic, feel free to take a look the draft if your are interested :)

https://ab0ve.substack.com/p/ec282c2c-95fa-4914-820f-7463cb5...

Re: The Y Combinator Experience – Remote Edition

#70

Post by AlwaysRock »

koolba wrote: post #33
iagovar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Where did you get 35K???

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...

"Median household income was $68,703 in 2019, an increase of 6.8 percent from the 2018 median of $64,324 (Figure 1 and Table A-1)."

35K is closer to the poverty line in much of the USA for a family than the median income.

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