B12 Bishkek: How we extended our team in Central Asia | Hacker News Reader

B12 Bishkek: How we extended our team in Central Asia

blog.b12.io

49 pointsmarcua14 comments

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Have spent a small amount of time there...Kyrgyzstan is truly beautiful and the people are great!

No mention of the political risks though?

https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/21/kyrgyzstan-holds-a...

Even factoring that risk in, getting great talent so cheap seems like a win.

> No mention of the political risks though?

Do they really need to be mentioned? For most people, i.e. those who aren't getting involved with the country's politics and won't be seen by the government/regime as a threat, it's not going to even remotely be an issue.

It's like saying that I, as a non-American citizen, should be concerned if I ever want to start a blogging startup based in New York.

>For most people, i.e. those who aren't getting involved with the country's politics

The moment 1/3 of your neighborhood in "downtown" area is heavily looted and internet is turned off completely(2005) or unidentified groups of people with AK shooting near your house(2010) is when you are involved despite your desire.

dforrestwilson made a great point about instability risks.

PS speaking from personal experience. I no longer live there

(B12 team member and head of B12 Bishkek)

Hey, @dforrestwilson, thanks for the comment! I moved back to Kyrgyzstan last year to grow the Bishkek B12 Team. Our country has had some political instability in the past, but it has been stable during the last 8 years. I am grateful that Adam and Nitesh took a chance to grow our startup here. Kyrgyzstan's government also has been focusing on helping small businesses and IT sector specifically.

I really like this story. One thing I've noticed is that if you can find a great engineer from another country and they help you recruit good locals, that turns out to be the most effective kind of offshoring experience.

There's quite of bit of interesting startup stuff going on in Bishkek, given it's size.

https://maddevs.io/en is quite a cool development consultancy based there, which has been involved in development of namba taxi, an uber type app.

namba itself has a whole host of projects similar to the more well known startups in Europe, e.g. Namba taxi, Namba food, and a video streaming service.

ololo (which was referenced in the piece) is a lovely community of different startups, and art projects fostering an entrepreneurial spirit.

What's it like to get a temporary work Visa for Kyrgyzstan for Canadians? Seems like a fun place to work/intern for a couple months.

Just noticed your question. It is fun place indeed! As a Canadian you don't need Visa for <60 days stay.

Feel free to ask if you have more questions

This is very cool. I wonder if Central Asia can work closely with the Indian startup scene - it is closer physically and culturally as well.

I live in Central Asia. No, culturally we are not close to Indians. We are close to Turks and Russians, but not Indians. For example we have no difficulties saying that something cannot be done or we do not know how to do it.

Kainar looks like Terry Tao (mathematician).

Once did project working on tourniquettes for rapid transit in Astana for Beijing Second United Construction Group. Later, we somehow stumbled upon custom made drone tender for Kazakhstan's border guard (which later was found out to be just a cover for presidential guard regiment...)

My intention was to try to hire few juniors as assistants, and UI devs. Seemed trivial at first, but the moment applicants heard of us being a foreign company, they instantly switched the talk to paid relocation package, hiring immigration lawyer, and if we can bring them a Chinese passport on a golden platter... This was the case with like 4 out of 5 applicants.

My advise, keep quiet about you being an overseas company till the last moment.

So you wanted to take advantage by not informing them?

I think he is saying it’s not a no brainer or cost effective setting up remote teams in these areas as some stories make it out to be.

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