Moving to Argentina | Hacker News Reader

Moving to Argentina

26 pointsguiseppecalzone46 comments

I'm an entrepreneur, moving to Argentina.

Anyone know builders, developers, entrepreneurs, or innovative companies hiring in Argentina?

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My list:

- Core Security Technologies: http://www.corest.com

- Three Melons: http://www.threemelons.com/en/

- Sabarasa: http://www.sabarasa.com/

- Nektra Advanced Computing: http://www.nektra.com

- Globant: http://www.globant.com

- Flaptor: http://www.flaptor.com/

- Popego: http://www.popego.com

- Zauber: http://zauber.com.ar

Interesting. How did you find the companies you have listed?

My day job is knowing about more advanced companies, beyond common IT services.

Visit http://palermovalley.com/ (the event is held once a month or two I believe)... it's useful for networking and full of entrepreneurs, developers and builders. The founders of Core, Popego, Sabarasa, etc. can be found there sometimes too.

dtaylor and hhm, great links. thank you!

You're welcome, enjoy your travel! :)

I'm a rails developer, working on setting up an office in Montevideo for entp.com, i was the architect on yahoo fire eagle, and worked with the yahoo folks on pipes, before that i built odeo.com. Needless to say, i do startup stuff.

There are lots of good developers here, both Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The overhead of running / logistics of a company here are much harder than the US, but the cost of doing business is lower, with a few exceptions. You need 10 months deposit to rent an office! Crazy expensive. Also paperwork on incorporation is a pain in the ass.

There's a MontevideoValley and PalermoValley, which are more biz focused groups in both cities trying to cultivate startup culture. I recommend you go to their meetings, hang out / work from the coworking spaces... (we're starting one in montevideo, there are currently two in buenos aires).

Hope that helps.

Very helpful.

You mind if I ping you when I get down there? It'd be great to compare notes.

Hi there,

I'm the CTO of United Virtualities with our main production office (and myself) based in Buenos Aires.

There are some pretty neat tech companies in BA in the lookout for talent and you'll have a blast here as well.

Do contact me at llopatin@unitedvirtualities.com.

Thanks for the reply! I just emailed you.

Ditto. I'm Diego, founder/CEO of Flaptor (and friend of llopatin). I lived and worked in the Bay Area for several years (the first .com cycle) and then started Flaptor in Buenos Aires. I'll be happy to share my experiences, my email is in my profile.

I lived in BsAs and Montevideo for over a year (all of 2007).

I seriously doubt you'll find a company based in Argentina that will pay you enough to live the lifestyle you want (I'm making a pretty big assumption about your lifestyle based on my lifestyle coming from the US). That having been said, there are tons of smart developers there and the community is pretty great. A lot developers seem to focus on outsourced work for other countries, notably the US.

I guess the biggest question is what do you want to do? Are you a web developer? What do you do now?

Congrats on the move... I bet you'll love it there. I did.

How good is your Spanish? From your perspective, what level of proficiency is required to live in Buenos Aires?

My Spanish is good. To live there though, you'll do okay with just basic Spanish. There are lots of tourists and lots of porteños speak some English. In my experience, they really appreciate any effort to speak their language and will work with you to communicate.

If you're an entrepreneur, why do you care who's hiring? ;-)

haha, right on. I just ended an all out, all consuming project. I'm hoping to enjoy the finer things in life in Argentina. Hence, employment (not forever mind you :))

I think Chile is a better option. Much more capitalist oriented government. Income tax is at just over 40% though but there are lots of jobs, lots of activity, and the government is pro-immigration. Especially if you have technical skills.

Also Chile has huge Lithium deposits and could become Saudi Arabia of Lithium if these new electric cars work out. Get your citizenship early. Before everyone starts moving there.

After a year of Mr. O this country's entrepreneurs are probably going to be bailing out and the place could get real crowded.

See, you started off there with an fairly reasonable comment, but then by adding a stupid political zinger, you landed firmly in the wackjob category.

Oh my, we mustn't say bad things about the new messiah. You should look at the political compass web site sometime to see how different the US politicians actually are.

Obama is going to be like any other US president: optionally do some good things, not change some things and make some things worse. The biggest contribution he is likely to make is let us get back to not being embarrassed every time we see our president in the news (well, that and do something sensible about this infernal war).

Huh? He said entreprenuers are going to start fleeing the US and flocking to Chile because of Obama. That's just dumb. Your reaction is equally ... bewildering. I'd rather keep politics off of this site entirely because they have a tendancy to degenerate into knee-jerky stuff like that.

Fair enough, I guess I have too many people around me here in Europe that have much too high expectations to the point that I start seeing in more places then it is.

I agree about keeping away from politics, and now that you mention it, people flocking to Chile because of a change in president is a silly idea. People couldn't even get Richard Gear to leave after voting in W twice.

No, you just must not say them here. Political discussions about the US president are inappropriate and off-topic for a thread about Argentina on a forum about 'Hacker News'.

Wait... economics is wackjobbery, now?

Meta: I downmodded you for calling the gparent a wackjob, and now that I've decided to reply, I can't undo it. It would be nice to have an undo for comment mods here, as reddit has.

Implying that entrepreneurs will leave the largest economy in the world en masse and head to a small, Latin American economy, just because a democrat got elected is, in fact, wackjobery, even to the point of making anything else said in the same comment of dubious credibility. Chile's economy isn't even 10% the size of California's.

I would restate the claim as "Obama will take actions that make the US economy much worse than it would have been without those actions (which is what people usually mean when they reference productive people fleeing a country)." If you agree that it can be restated that way, then it seems we have a real disagreement over whether Obama's stated plans will make things worse. This has nothing in particular to do with his being a Democrat.

Chile (or Argentina, or other South American countries) just happens to be under discussion in this thread; I would agree that if productive people start fleeing the US for economic reasons, only a relatively small percentage will flee to Chile or Argentina. That just didn't seem important to the real thrust of the comment, though.

"Chile's economy isn't even 10% the size of California's."

Maybe so, but Chile has a whole lot of free trade agreements. http://www.bcn.cl/carpeta_temas_profundidad/tlc-con-japon/ma...

Bear in mind taxes are also quite favorable. Entrepreneurs pay VAT taxes and that's about it; there no bullshit taxes on capital gains, either. And for what it's worth, if you don't have a citizenship, knowing you have the right to a fair trial if you're arrested is nice.

I'm with wheels here. You're asking about opportunities in a South American country and then go and make a cheap dig that can't be addressed or refuted in the context of this forum without going wildly off topic.

While I understand that the political landscape of a country is an important consideration when making such a dramatic move, it would be a lot more civil to phrase your reasons for leaving in terms of policies and not in terms of vague grievances with a specific politician.

Perhaps travel to another country will give you the opportunity to experience other political environments, most of which are significantly different from the US, and give you a better understanding as to what makes for an effective government and why many people may be bothered by your unfounded allegations regarding the future of entrepreneurism in the US.

If you're looking to enjoy the finer things in life, Chile is probably not the best place. Argentina, Peru, or Brazil would all probably be better picks.

Chile's definitely more capitalist. I'd say the thing it has going for it is that it's got better broadband too.

That said, it's also incredibly socially conservative. Much more so than Argentina and Uruguay. Chile just legalized divorce! Where as Argentina and Uruguay have gay civil unions and are on their way to towards full gay marriage. Divorce has been legal in Argentina and Uruguay for close to a century.

On the other hand, the geography around Buenos Aires and Montevideo is really boring, flat farm land. Chile, outside of Santiago is quite pretty.

If anybody wants help, i just am now going through incorporating a software company in Uruguay, and can explain he process. It's pretty straight forward if way underdocumented. Apparently it's much easier to do in Uruguay vs Argentina. Also there's a %100 exemption to all taxes (aside from payroll, and a fixed assets tax (%1 of value of buildings and cars)) if the company you have does offshore software / IT work.

I am Chilean. I have thought of an Atlas Shrugged scenario in Chile, and Chile does have a lot of lithium, but...OK, I have no idea if the government is going to socialize what is currently Soquimich's ill-gotten concession, or if Obama is going to mess things up real bad, but I do know that getting a citizenship is a major pain in the ass. Major, major pain in the ass. An American I know lived here for twenty years, married a Chilean, and still had to do about three year's worth of bureaucratic bullshit to get a citizenship. That said, it's not that hard to immigrate or get a residency.

Now, if you want to chill out here for a while, sure, it's a great idea, but you have to keep a few things in mind. First, you're probably going to make more American friends than Chilean friends. Chileans often confuse Americans by telling them they'll do something sometime but never call and are very dodgy. It's not easy making friends. This is coming from the experiences of exchange students, teachers, and family friends that came to Chile for a while and found things to be somewhat different than they expected.

Then there's the flayte factor. [1] What I'm getting at is that there are quite a few people that aren't totally friendly to Americans or English speakers in general. They think they can take advantage of you. This should come as no surprise because I have yet to travel to a country where the default attitude towards Americans is friendly. Anyway. Taxis try to rip you off for sums that are not insignificant. People may try to steal from you. However, if you're 6' or above you're unlikely to get shit because people here are small compared to the first world. So yeah, a lot of reverse racism, and people sometimes have no class. OK, and customer service sucks. But it's not all bad.

Things are cheaper here, there are nice restaurants, cool neighborhoods, human rights, beaches, skiing, and so forth. So there are reasons to come, but for Americans, I recommend staying in the better parts of Santiago, turning off the trust instinct, going to malls, making friends in the international community, and going to a lot of restaurants and ski trips.

I know less about this, but the work environment is more chilled out than in US, but also somewhat more "Dilbert".

[1] So..."flayte" comes from someone who gets high. It's a corruption of the English "flight", as in Spanish someone who is high on weed can sometimes be referred to as "estar volado", literally "being flown".

You'll have lots of fun, regardless. :)

Send me an email (in my profile) and I'll check around. I know a few people in Brasil and Venezuela.

Maciej Ceglowski of Yahoo Pipes fame spent a year in Argentina, maybe you can ask him? http://www.idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_d...

Bar Camp Buenos Aires last year was lots of fun; you can check out my post about it. I missed it this year. It's true that Chile is more capitalist; that could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on your point of view. My wife and I just got our work visas last week after working on it for a year and a half. (It's much easier if you aren't trying to set up a new Argentine company, without Argentine employees or partners, at the same time.)

Move from where? Consider getting income from "the first world" (US, Europe etc.). Income levels are not the same in Argentina. But many things are cheaper, such as food. The beef is great :P

Computers or other things imported from "the first world" are hit with high import taxes. For instance if you want a laptop take it with you from "the first world" where it's cheaper.

Moving from San Francisco, CA.

I hear ya. I'm actually just looking to be cash flow neutral where I'm there. No need to make it big. Just keep me going.

Hey there,

I'm a freelance rails developer, done a bunch of startups and working on several new ones based in Europe and the US and I've been here for 3 months already. This city is amazing, and I've met a lot of programmers (even American ones doing the Tim Ferriss thing). When do you arrive? Feel free to email me, msethi@stanford.edu.

Why Argentina?

I'm considering spending a couple of months there next year to improve my Spanish while I hack away on a web app. A few years ago I lived in Guatemala for awhile and really enjoyed it. The people I met there were really warm and inviting.

My one escape from the computer has been Tango... and as the Tango capital of the world, Argentina is killer. Besides, I'm going to take the first month or so and take intensive Spanish classes. Living in the mission district, my barber never understands how to cut my hair :)

If you go down, look me up. I may still be down there. Email: joseph dot walla at gmail dot com

matt,

I'm actually down here in Guatemala right now. Plan is to continue developing the app for my startup but I have been busy studying Spanish and doing the tourist stuff.

I'm in Xela right now and will be moving on to san Pedro and Antigua. I will be back in the US by the end of January.

If you want to go grab a beer and talk about the local scene, drop me a line. I'm an American web developer who's lived down here for about 6 years. My email is norman@randomba.org.

Hey J.P. here! I work in keegy.com, and help with the organization of PalermoValley.com

Glad to see that some of the folks (Llopatin, Diego) already gave you a nice welcome :-)

In just one HN thread you managed to meet some of the top Argentinean IT players :-P

I'll love to share a glass of wine with you and the rest of the guys that just commented, so drop me a line: JuanPablo(at)Keegy.com

Direi dal tuo nome che sei italiano... o sbaglio? In any case, good luck, but IMO there are better places to go if you want to avoid some of what's wrong with Italy. Just guessing, though:-)

ho passato molto tempo en italia, ma non sono italiano. sei italiano?

dove sei stato in italia, ho vissuto a firenze

Hi!. I'm from Buenos Aires too.

We have BarCamp, WordCamp, PallermoValley, TweetBaires, Starbucks, and a few Apple resellers. What else do you need to live here?

Haha. I like how you added Starbucks to your list.

Drop me a line and we'll get some coffee when I arrive. My email is joseph dot walla at gmail.

Try http://buenosaires.en.craigslist.org/jjj/

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