Ask HN: Hacker Retreat | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Hacker Retreat

10 pointsideafarm8 comments

I'm coming off working at a startup and looking for the next thing to do. I also love traveling and particularly beaches. My love for building things is only tied with my love for vacations, so why not combine the two? When you finish working for the day, why not just be on vacation for the next few hours before starting again the next day? I was thinking of putting together a "retreat" for hacking. Basically, you fly out to wherever the retreat is (think Thailand, Jamaica, Trinidad, Bali, etc.) and you pay for room and board for a month. You get to focus on product and build without the distractions of normal life in a house filled with other hackers like yourself. You don't have to worry about logistics, internet connectivity, food, etc. You get to stay in a beautiful new place that will both be exciting for the mind, but give you a chance to learn about a new place while still working. Costs will be dramatically lower than in most major cities in the US. Not to mention it would be crazy fun.

If you do think this is a reasonable idea, how much would you pay per month for a place to stay, and all your meals, utilities etc in an exotic beautiful location where you can just hack? (Small startups, you could have your whole team come and just focus for short bursts. Consultants, you could fly over to work on projects that don't require a lot of customer interaction etc).

I've considered doing this, since I've had great success taking teams off to exotic locations and building stuff. The problem isn't that it's a bad idea or that you wouldn't be able to fill it with paying hackers. The problem is that you have to trade in being in the software business to go into the hotel business.

That is, you need to trade in the single highest margin business a fella can find himself in so that you can compete in the single lowest margin business a fella can find himself in. You'd be better off packing it all in and getting a bartender job at another resort on that same beach.

So yeah' here's hoping that somebody builds this thing. But I sure don't want that guy to be me. And if you're asking advice, I'd recommend not letting it be you either. Sad, eh?

> Basically, you fly out to wherever the retreat is (think Thailand, Jamaica, Trinidad, Bali, etc.) and you pay for room and board for a month. You get to focus on product and build without the distractions of normal life in a house filled with other hackers like yourself.

From what I understand: go to a touristic location, and instead of spending it taking a rest, doing tourist stuff or whatever, stay in a room full of stranger nerds for the whole day staring at the internet. How is it a retreat?

> When you finish working for the day, why not just be on vacation for the next few hours before starting again the next day?

How it's different from what you're doing right now?

I personally don't like tourist stuff much, but do like "living" in different places. I'd much rather fill my days making things and my nights exploring new foods, beaches etc.

I personally enjoy the end of a day rest to be some place that's new and forces me to explore versus just going to the gym and hanging out at the same bar.

How bout you, you know, take a regular vacation. You know, go out, see some small portion of the world instead of going there, shutting the door and pretending it's an interesting neighborhood of San Fran. I've found that just going around and doing other stuff is a major catalyst for ideas. For instance, I did most of my negotiation in Peru via a calculator. A $1 calculator, just typing numbers. There's gotta be a way to make that much more social and inefficienet and tie it up with marketing synergies! Seriously!

But actually seriously, when I go do actual things, I start to get real ideas. GTFO

That would be fantastic, but the logisitics of it can be difficult to work out in advance.

You need to rent out the whole resort (or a good part of it to get the right atmosphere), and provide a little help with getting VISA entry to the appropriate country and the such.

Understand, that tourist VISAs may be denied because you're not strictly a tourist in this case but are going there to work for a month or two.

It's a cool idea. Think of it as Study Abroad for hackers: you're doing what you'd be doing at home, but in a new place with new people, enriching yourself personally and — because there'd be other hackers there too — professionally as well.

This has been happening from Boston for a little while. Check out startupworkaway.com.

Love it! I would sign up ;).

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