91–100 of 162 posts
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Racism is arguably strong in the US and yet founders are not leaving... I don’t think political climate is on average a strong factor in their decision making.
Ehm... There is no more racism in Poland than in any other country. OP is Pole (from his profile), and some Poles who left the country are bitter about their own country and campaign against it.
Ah, If I had a dollar for every time a post like this shows up on HN, I'd be a millionaire. It's either this, or some personal anecdote of how some founder took his startup to Austin, Detroit, Nashville, Seattle .. and they are kicking butt. Last I checked, San Francisco alone accounted for 25% of the V.C Money and San Francisco + Silicon Valley accounts for over 45% of V.C. Money. Source: https://www.citylab.com/lif…
SV isn't the best fit for a lot of startups. It really shouldn't be the default location for all startups especially since there are different options that offer different things (NYC, Denver/Boulder, Austin etc). The Bay Area has 3 things that set it apart from anywhere else and startups that really need this have no other real choice: Investors who are willing to invest super early Lots of top tier engineers An ext…
V An extremely optimistic culture Except on HN where people tend to skew quite negative. Lol
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I’d worry about talent pool being too small (Estonia has a population of only over a million people). It might not be easy to get people from outside to relocate there, as no one else in EU (expect apparently some Finnish people) speaks Estonian, the weather is grim and wages aren’t that enticing. That’s probably why the government is trying very hard to attract foreign startup investors, as otherwise Tallin is at a…
Yes but Estonia has https://ccdcoe.org/ as well as numerous IT companies and startups already (most famously, Skype, now a Microsoft office). Plus I don't think you would have any issues having an English-speaking software development office. Honestly Poland's far-right is a big turn off for me and if I were an ethnically Indian/Pakistani/Turkish software engineer I wouldn't want to live there. It also just doesn't s…
Regarding tech companies, Poland has Google, Amazon and some pretty good game studios (CDPRed). It is not an innovation hub by any means though and most people just do regular corporate programming (frontend, backend) or maybe some not terribly innovative startups. If you want to create something based on existing tech, Poland will be fine, but if you want to develop new one, you might have trouble finding the people for it (that’s true for 99.9% places in the world though, Tallin included most likely).
As for Poland being a nice place to live - just come to Wroclaw or Krakow for a weekend when you have a chance and see for yourself. IMO there’s very little difference in living in Warsaw vs say London or New York. The air quality is a worse in the winter - on the other hand, there are no drugs/drug dealers on the streets, no homeless people (or very few), no guns/murders and no terrorism.
Regarding the temp visa, sadly I don’t know anything about it.
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Yes but Estonia has https://ccdcoe.org/ as well as numerous IT companies and startups already (most famously, Skype, now a Microsoft office). Plus I don't think you would have any issues having an English-speaking software development office. Honestly Poland's far-right is a big turn off for me and if I were an ethnically Indian/Pakistani/Turkish software engineer I wouldn't want to live there. It also just doesn't s…
I’ve worked with a number of Indian and Arab people in Poland. I’ve never heard them complain, and some have settled here for good. I am sure there is some level of latent racism here, but that’s true of any society. Regarding tech companies, Poland has Google, Amazon and some pretty good game studios (CDPRed). It is not an innovation hub by any means though and most people just do regular corporate programming (fron…
Ah, If I had a dollar for every time a post like this shows up on HN, I'd be a millionaire. It's either this, or some personal anecdote of how some founder took his startup to Austin, Detroit, Nashville, Seattle .. and they are kicking butt. Last I checked, San Francisco alone accounted for 25% of the V.C Money and San Francisco + Silicon Valley accounts for over 45% of V.C. Money. Source: https://www.citylab.com/lif…
Basically SF is to startups as Nashville is to country musicians or Los Angeles is to actors.
FB group for anyone else considering leaving: https://www.facebook.com/groups/373683909882919/ I can tell you that Miami would definitely like you here, even our Mayor cosigns: https://twitter.com/FrancisSuarez/status/1100425644968738822
I would love to start a business in Miami but the COL seems pretty high. I feel like it's probably the best place in the world to start a latin america-focused tech company (social networking, streaming, fintech, etc.) and it seems like a great place to live. Does anybody happen to know what kind of companies the VC's there are focused on - could see pure tech plays being outside of their core competencies and thus u…
Great except for all the hurricanes, sweltering heat and high humidity, and cultural wasteland.
Not that SF has much culture compared to world-class cities like NYC, London, Berlin, or Amsterdam, and Silicon Valley is even worse.
California also has earthquakes, so maybe it evens out.
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Ehm... There is no more racism in Poland than in any other country. OP is Pole (from his profile), and some Poles who left the country are bitter about their own country and campaign against it.
I’m a Pole as well. These people you talk about are probably a textbook example of a vocal minority.
This is the key part of this article (emphasis mine): > This kind of story is often framed as a tug of war between Silicon Valley and the rest of the country. But Silicon Valley isn't going any where, and for every startup or founder who leaves the Bay Area, someone else graduates from Stanford or wants to move here. This is about tech becoming a bigger part of the overall economy.
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How did you get information about Tallinn specifically and what other cities did you consider in the same category?
I was reading about the best places to be an expat on something like nomadcapitalist.com and Estonia kept coming up due to the ease of immigrating + starting a business there. And I've just done personal research from there. For example https://ccdcoe.org/ is also based there which is a huge draw for software talent. Other cities I've been considering - Lisbon, Riga, , Bucharest, Berlin, Prague, Dublin. Mostly was ju…
There was a decent overview of entrepreneur passport options on here the other week. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wLPGB2BdRxHWbdOXXtKA...
This one was left off the list for some reason (I have a pal who uses this visa, though he's in Ukraine a lot of the time): http://www.czechstartups.org/en/start-up-visa/