Startup Workaway II: Thailand. 25 founders. 10 days. 1 kick-ass resort. | Hacker News Reader

Startup Workaway II: Thailand. 25 founders. 10 days. 1 kick-ass resort.

startupworkaway.com

71 pointsnpt427934 comments

I did the first StartupWorkaway in Costa Rica. The other 15 founders were awesome (handpicked from 200ish applicants if memory serves). The venue was epic (12,000 square foot villa with 2 pools on a cliff). And it was cheaper than any vacation that I've ever taken (the economies of scale when 15 founders rent a big villa and a chef are pretty amazing). In fact, it was probably cheaper than staying home.

I'd recommend the experience without reservation.

Very cool. Let's say I wanted to create something like this with 10 of my friends. What would it cost, ballpark-wise?

It depends on how fancy of a place you want to get, and if food is included. Last time, in Costa Rica, we had 16 people in a $4 million dollar mansion with a private chef preparing all our meals. It cost about $10,000.

Do you mind sharing a) How long was your stay? b) Was that $10,000 per person or for 16 people c) Any information about amenities included

It was $10,000 for 16 people. 10 days. Food and private chef included. That's about it for amenities.

You can find great places on http://homeaway.com/

Villas can be super affordable when you're travelling with large groups. I'm the CTO of a startup that provides these sort of vacations. It's pretty common that the per person rate works out to much less than a hotel would be and you get the added bonus of an entire house!

Here are a couple of examples:

Sleeps 24 - $4,501/week - http://demeure.com/properties/villa-turquesa--2

Sleeps 13 - $4,569/week - http://demeure.com/properties/casa-fermentini

Tell me more!

Worth noting: You don't need to join somebody else's program to take advantage of this. Big cool rental properties in exotic locations become really cheap when you split them among an entire product team, especially if you consider the alternative to be a month's lease at a cube farm.

My personal experience doing this:

http://expatsoftware.com/articles/2006/12/chamonix-branch-of...

You do know it's illegal to work in Thailand without a work permit? Even planning a startup is likely to be classed as working.

This may sound stringent but people have gotten into trouble for more trivial activities such as karaoke.

I hope you've cleared this with immigration or everybody attending could face deportation.

I've lived in Thailand, let me fix that sentence for you:

I hope you've cleared this with immigration or everybody attending could face paying a bribe.

I've lived in Thailand too. Not everybody takes a bribe.

True, this is something you should know.

Although they primarly bust foreigners that work and do business with Thai people, aka take their jobs away.

99% nothing will happen and you have a good time but pray not to be the 1%.

I'd agree with you that being in public in anyway is how most people get caught, however they are advertising the fact that they are working in Thailand on the internet.

More importantly though, they are responsible for their attendees and should consult lawyers or immigration as to whether it is legal or not.

Having consulted immigration previously myself I firmly believe what they plan to do is illegal.

Warning: Once you get to one of these things you may not go back home. You realize that as a coder you can just keep working remotely and stay there (though not in the same expensive place after everyone leaves.) Crazy times we live in.

NOTE: As others have mentioned. You aren't supposed to be working while on a tourist visa but Thailand isn't the U.S. In some regards it's a bit like the wild west where people won't bug you as long as you aren't taking jobs away from the locals or making a bunch of cash off the local economy and people start to wonder if you are really playing by the rules. You didn't hear this from me though, respect the laws!

So what did come out of original StartupWorkaway? Anything other than beach lounging with 20 geeks?

We were surprisingly productive - I create most of escapist.me there. I'd usually wake up at 7am sharp (to the smell of bacon), do something active like waterfall rappelling until around noon, then work until 8pm.

But no amazing companies launched out of the first Startup Workaway. Maybe in Thailand. :)

We created touchbasecal.com there, for the most part. It hit #5 in Paid Productivity in the App Store and still brings in healthy cash flow (though it was never meant to be more than a "learn iOS and App Store marketing project).

I'm glad this was posted again, because I was trying to remember the name of it late last year and I couldn't find it.

The reason I was trying to find the site was that some friends and I did something similar (we called it "Vacation Startup Club") in Costa Rica in November. It was awesome.

We rented two houses in Manuel Antonio (these: http://casamonotiti.com/). They were easily the nicest vacation lodging I've ever used, and the view was epic, and with 10ish people, very reasonable.

I was surprised how much we got done. We usually woke up early (it gets light around 6am), had breakfast and coffee, then some people would start coding, or go to the park or beach. After lunch, we'd begin in earnest and work until dinner, then until about 9 or 10 most nights.

We finished our app, and then learned how hard it is to launch one. ;-) But all in all, an amazing experience.

This looks great, I hope it goes well!

If I may make a suggestion for next time though: please consider finding a place with better wheelchair access. It's very disheartening to see the de facto bias towards able-bods reenforced. Of course, I'm certain this wasn't by intent, but it's something I'd love to see improved.

Given the frigid weather here in Italy (not at all what I signed up for!), the idea of tropical beaches sounds particularly fantastic right now. Not sure it'd work out with a wife and small kids though, maybe another time:-)

I think I saw that two of the spots for this workaway are being given away as a prize for the AngelHack competition(?) I'd go just to be able to spend time working with that kind of talent.

Yeah it's listed as coming soon on both eventbrites: http://angelhacksf2.eventbrite.com/ http://angelhackbo2.eventbrite.com/

NPT4279: 2 total submissions.

Startup Workaway II: Thailand. 25 founders. 10 days. 1 kick-ass resort. (startupworkaway.com) 19 points by npt4279 33 minutes ago | 3 comments

Startup Workaway: 20 founders. 10 days. 1 beach house in Costa Rica. Apply now (startupworkaway.com) 61 points by npt4279 283 days ago | comments

Not saying this isn't interesting or appealing to the HN crowd, but disclosing that you are probably affiliated with this organization.

Disclaimer: The 'organization' is me! Sorry; I didn't see a textfield to put any commentary in, when you submit a URL.

One of your pages is broken on your site, this is you I'm guessing from the npt: http://startupworkaway.com/nick-tommarello but it's returning a 404.

What noobface is saying is that you don't participate in HN apart from to promote this, but that's not a big deal.

Seems like a cool idea. Did any companies emerge from the last one?

If you try again, it should work. I had to tweak Apache config files to keep the site up.

I don't post much content, but I read HN like 50 times a day, and upvote a lot. :) I post this because I feel it's the coolest thing I do that relevant to the HN crowd.

About half of the crowd there had existing companies, and the other half hacking on stuff. Apps were finished, but no new companies were formed.

Submitting your own links has always been allowed on HN. They'll only hit the front page if enough other people like them.

Why is it only 10 days? Is it to fit with most people's 2 week vacation slots? I would think a month would be more productive, or even better a 3 month y-combinator style intense MVP rush.

Also isn't the internet on Ko Samui kind of shitty? Wouldn't a mainland location by a nice beach be better internet wise?

I think someone else does a 3 month program overseas. That's cool too.

We just like the shorter format - it's just enough time to feel mentally refreshed and more creative. Without leaving behind all commitments in the "real world" like talking to customers and stuff.

We made the resort upgrade to 12mps Internet, and upgrade all their equipment to handle more than 100 simultaneous devices. I warned them that we're likely all going to have 3 devices on average (Mac Pro, iPad, Kindle, iPhone/Android) that that we get VERY grumpy if the Internet goes down.

I am so up fo ra 3 month getaway. Sign me up if something comes around. I think we could do it in India for super cheap.

I would think the Philippines would be better due to their relatively generous visa extension policies (you can stay in the Philippines for 1.5 years on just tourist visa extensions if you wanted to) and far less red tape in getting things like SIM cards, renting places and so on. You can also get half decent internet there too, it's tropical and there are beaches everywhere!

Our whole startup (Wingify) spent one week in Thailand during December. Here are our pics: http://team.wingify.com/thailand-trip-pictures

Though, to be honest, we couldn't work much there. It was all fun and adventure.

I love this concept and hope to do some remote working like this soon. Most important factor though, how good is the wifi?

The world needs a website with tropical resorts rated by wifi quality.

Submitted application.

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