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Moderately off topic, but FWIW, I went to visit these guys recently:

http://www.lovelysystems.com/category/home

They're in the western end of Austria, and the firm was founded by one of the Last.fm guys. I don't think YC.news has many readers in this corner of the world, but they're looking for good people, and it seemed like a nice environment.

"...I don't think YC.news has many readers in this corner of the world ..."

yep not many ~ http://hackrtrackr.com/forum.php?region=&country=AT

Those other guys are all from Vienna, which is about as far from Vorarlberg as you can get, and still be in Austria:-)

Yep - a real world example of what pg was talking about at http://paulgraham.com/die.html.

If you have the idea the trick is to hang in there long enough with it to monetize. I think having a good co-founder can help during the crisis points you'll undoubtedly face.

This is my problem. I'm from Russia and I'm working on YC application for this winter funding right now. But those co-founders here in Russia I've been counting on are just afraid to start a startup.

...and you don't need a good product to make your users love you. Orkut, for example.