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Comment by kmt | Hacker News Reader

How about gathering in one of the countries that recently joined the EU: Bulgaria, Romania... Living is cheap, labour is cheap, people are smart. Anyone interested?

On the other hand conditions there not that professional and engineers don't have adequate experience. Hmm...

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This is a great idea simply because it combines two great experiences everyone in their 20s should appreciate - starting your own venture with friends and living in another country for an extended period.

Sprout Systems (the original one at sproutit.com, thank you very much, not the one Clustrix merged with) lived in Prague for ten months when developing Mailroom:

"The three of us met in school at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. After graduation, we decided to launch a business together. Once we got to talking about our past experiences trying to find good software to run our small businesses, we knew what we had to do.

"Since then, the three of us actually moved to Prague, Czech Republic to help launch our business. This is the internet after allXwe can be anywhere. We thought: why not some place that is both exciting and 40% cheaper than California? We will only be here for 10 months or so, but it has made this startup unforgettable!"

I'm actually eastern European (Bulgarian) who currently lives and works in US. I'm obviously biased but I think living conditions in eastern Europe are great. The somewhat relaxed atmosphere of those countries is probably great at least while building prototypes.

I'm living in Romania. It would be a great place to join up with other entrepreneurs. My biggest problem is finding entrepreneurally-minded people (co-founders).

Finding experienced programmers to hire is not a problem, there are plenty. There's an entire outsourcing industry working for US and Western Europe clients.

Finding "professional conditions" (office space? net? or what?) is not a problem either.

Living costs are still cheap, but rising, and so are wages.

Good to know that there are so many Romanians on YC. I moved from Romania in Bay Area 6 years ago. I just went back there for a few weeks in August. Life is getting more expensive there and from what my friends were telling me, there is an increasingly demand for programmers, therefore the wages are going up.

I was thinking about moving back for a while but I don't think this will happen very soon. If anybody would like to talk about Romania some more feel free to email me (email address in the profile).

I'd be interested to learn more about Romania. Danny76, please contact me if you wish to discuss this further: kmt at ftml dot net.

Personally I wouldn't recommend Romania as a place to do a startup yet, at least not to incorporate in Romania. I moved to the US from Romania about 7 years ago and while some things have improved in the mean time I think the current system in Romania would impose too many road bloacks for a startup. Great place however to outsource.

Well, you could incorporate in Delaware but be located in Romania for a while. Also, Romania has probably improved a bit since you left.

Incorporate in Delaware; bureaucracy is still time-consumming in RO. You could work like that for a while and nobody would bother you (or even know you exist for that matter).

Eventually (i.e. when you have profits and want to take dividends) you're supposed to register your business with Romania. Or you could just go back to the US. At that point you probably have enough money to have lawyers and accountants take the hassle out of doing business.

Danny, I'm Romanianian too; click on my profile and shoot me an email if you want to talk more. I understand your point exactly; I have 2 family members who are programmers there in Bucharest and when I called them up half a year ago to join me in my startup efforts, their first response was "You want to do WHAT??!?" Hang in there, send me an email -- emailadrian "at" inbox "dotcom". Things are changing especially since EU integration this year. Don't forget that Romanian programmers put UbiSoft on the Map. Look at that as an example, it's not much, but it's something. A company started by french farmers to make video games programmed first and foremost by Romanian programmers. If it can work 15 years ago, much more can be done now.

You'd be surprised by the skills of east european programmers (and engineers). Yes, their industry may be smaller but on the other hand there is a lot of good hobbyist hackers (e.g. in demoscene and computer security circles).

I lived in Bulgaria over the summer while working on my startup. Good fun, very very cheep (but maybe there was some recent inflation? Also the dollar vs euro problem, and the Leva is fixed to the euro.. still extremely cheep though)

It does help greatly to have someone who is a local to negotiate the rent for you though. My girlfriend did this for me and we got an far better deal than an english speaking foreigner probably could.

It is very true that labor was also cheep there.

I think this is a great idea! in SV, I bet you easily could find more speakers and mentors than you need, and they could generate a buzz to get the VC community out for a demo day.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hottoplessgirlsliveineurope.html

That girl sure does have a very hairy arm

It's Europe, what do you expect...

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