A startup postmortem with a happy ending
fridriksson.tumblr.com
fridriksson.tumblr.com
I'm currently freelancing to get some $$$ in the bank again after using all my savings for our startup. We were planning to escape the German winter and work from SE-Asia and/or India as well.
I was seriously considering Thailand and liked the idea of spending time in Chiang Mai a lot... but the recent political turmoil has me worried. From press reports, it's really hard to make out what the impact on daily life is like and whether it's a good idea to go to Thailand at the moment or not. Where are you situated? What's the situation like at the moment?
Best of luck anyways!
Singapore has wonderful internet, amazing public transit, and just the right amount of crowd and bustle - you're not choking, but it's always lively. And people love their technology. Wonderfully conducive immigration atmosphere. However, although everyone speaks english, the people are not very personable, so it's hard to grow a social circle through random acquaintances if you don't already have friends there (I did). It is also a fairly expensive place (comparable to Berkeley or Seattle), one of the top 5 in Asia.
Thailand has great internet, extremely nice people, and is ridiculously cheap to live in. Bangkok is lively and bustling with lots to do, but a bit too crowded. Public transit is not nearly as well-connected except in BKK city, but taxis/bikes are affordable. Unfortunately, very few locals speak English, so again growing a random acquaintance social circle is difficult. You can however meet lots of like-minded foreigners at the co-working spaces.
I personally strongly discourage bootstrapping from India. The internet situation alone was probably enough to call it quits. Terrible ISPs, high cost, slow speeds, data caps on wired connections, bad customer service (they left me without internet for 3 days before I had to have my complaint elevated), etc makes it nearly impossible for bootstrapping a software product. Public transit is mediocre in most cities and requires knowledge of the local language (and there is a different one in every state). Electronics are expensive (heavily taxed). Majority of local vendors will try to pillage any foreigner. They even try to rip me off because they can tell I haven't spent much time locally.
If you have a close friend who is more familiar and comfortable with a part of India that you will live/work with, it can be a lot better (you mostly just need someone who can yell at them right when necessary).
Don't get me wrong though, it's a beautiful country and wonderful to spend time in, just terrible to try to get any work done.
I hope that was helpful!
I'm not exactly sure what the new rules are, but it's something you have to be aware of before moving here. We are on a visa where we "only" have to cross the border every 3 months, and the new rules doesn't yet apply to people arriving via plane, so so far this haven't been an issue for us (it's easy and recommendable to get cheap plane tickets to the neighbouring countries and combine it with an extended weekend and some sightseeing while you're at it).
Do a Google search or check out this popular forum for the latest on Thai visas: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/forum/1-thai-visas-residency-a...
Indians have 15-day visa-on-arrival in Thailand, but to get the 60 day visa I had to go to a consulate in India specifically, I was not allowed to apply for it from Singapore or elsewhere. Apparently this currently isn't true for all nationalities, but the list has been growing.
I probably should have mentioned that I'm planning to switch cities regularly to see a broader range. I don't want to overspend money, but... I also wanted to travel the region for a long time and I will definitely mix in some holidays. Currently, I can keep the business running with 1 - 2 days of effort per week. I'd like to spend more time on it, of course, but it's not strictly necessary and I can spend some time sight seeing :)
I had three fellow students doing an internship in India, all within western companies. They all liked the country a lot - but I guess it's a lot easier when the company has already organized most of the stuff.
Do you have experience with co-working spaces in India? Do they have their internet connections sorted out?
India is actually a lot of fun to travel through. If you have company, getting on a train starting somewhere in the south and working your way up north visiting the major metropolises, tourist sites (and coworking spaces I guess) can be really fresh and enlightening. I strongly recommend that, if you're ok being without internet and power supplies for extended periods of time.
[see The Darjeeling Express if you haven't]
I have not spent any meaningful amount of time at Indian coworking spaces. Due to poor navigability of public transit and not having my own ride, I didn't have a good option. And heaven forbid actually having to drive on Indian roads without lots of slow practice.
Corporate internet connections tend to be a lot better (and cost a buttload), so not all "businesses" bother to get them. I have heard that coworking spaces in any of the true IT-powered metropolises -- Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai -- are much more likely to have solid internet connections, although there are coworking spaces in some of the smaller cities too (like those in Kerala).
I worked out of Microsoft's offices in Hyderabad once because a friend is there, and funnily enough they were having massive bandwidth and ping issues that day, I couldn't stream SD video without buffering pauses for my app. Maybe it was just their guest network, but I doubt it. So who knows? If people here think American ISPs are bad, you don't want to go near India...
That is what I had in mind :) Actually, I want to start in Sri Lanka - been going to a great Sri Lankan restaurant here in Berlin that has a picture of Sigiriya, which I've looked at so many times that I need to see it in real life now :)
Definitely want to visit either Chennai or Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. Maybe also Hyderabad. I'm still not sure whether I want to travel through more cities and spend less time in each, or visit fewer cities but have more time and experience the city in a less touristy fashion.
Well, I hope to be able to check my email at least once a day, but most hostels seem to offer wifi. For real working I plan to visit co-working spaces, though.
Thanks for your input, it's good to hear some real life experiences :)
We're located in Bangkok and I can really recommend it. I've not been to Chiang Mai so I cannot really compare it, though I would guess Bangkok is still more startup friendly.
To address the current political issue with the military coup, I have just one thing to say: The media always exaggerates. I've been here through the protests, the curfew and now the coup. And I've never felt threatened or had any issues what so ever. I would invite my own mother here and not be worried.
We are currently sitting together with another startup in their offices in the part of Bangkok called Ekkamai. Previously we rented some desks at the co-working space Launchpad, which was also a really great experience and a way to meet a lot of other like-minded people.
From what I've read, Bangkok is definitely more startup friendly, but Chiang Mai is also a very interesting town and has some great options for bouldering and rock climbing :)
As a Uruguayan soccer fan, I'll have to download it to see what Easter Egg you put in it :P
I've seen very similar apps my coworkers use, so it's not exactly virgin territory (they don't have some of your features though).
Edit: a classmate of mine is testing his software with the Uruguay team, they have a company that does realtime analytics, AZsportech (http://www.azsportech.com/), formerly Kizanaro.
Keep an eye on the visa situation. Back to back visa runs over land are/will be a bit trickier from now on. Plane tickets of local low cost carriers are ridiculously cheap and plenty and will solve this issue every 30 days (I'm writing this out of Vientiane, Laos for this very reason. Visa run by plane + extended weekend to get to know Vientiane. They have a coworking space here as well: https://www.facebook.com/tohlao). You can also apply for a proper tourist visa in your home country and in countries around Thailand. This gives you piece of mind for 60-90 days. For a long term commitment you could consider an educational visa for one year. Language schools and even muay thai schools can provide you with them. If you attend them is a whole different story (some schools are entirely built around this concept.). Both - Chiang Mai and Bangkok are amazing places to live and bootstrap. When you come to BKK, make sure to check out http://hubbathailand.com/ - best coworking space I've ever come across. Peter from https://levels.io/ has some great content regarding coworking in TH.
I was planning to get a 2-month tourist visa and spend around 2 or 3 weeks in Bangkok, 4 weeks in Chiang Mai and another week or two in Krabi (they've got awesome rocks for climbing and deep water solo there!).
I was also considering staying the whole 6 months in Thailand, in which case I would have taken a language course (not only for the visa). But I figured I'd rather travel to more countries and may do that some other winter :)
Peter's blog is awesome and his post on bootstrapping in Bangkok was really encouraging to give it a try!
Meals can cost as low as $2 and lodging as low as $4 / day. Everyone knows English and very westernized compared to other SEA nation.
Email eric (at) lifebit.com if you are interested.
"But our biggest self realization was that we were not users of our own product. We didn’t obsess over it and we didn’t love it. We loved the idea of it. That hurt."
Worth skimming/reading it all.
I bet a lot of us hit this moment, over and over again: "We didn’t obsess over it and we didn’t love it. We loved the idea of it. That hurt."
When you're on the brink, remember why you're doing this at all; to build something that you think is really cool.
Anyway, best of luck with the pivot and I'll probably check your app out in more detail during the World Cup.
An app will rank differently on different keywords in different App Stores. For every keyword you compete with other apps that uses the same keywords. So popular keywords are harder to rank high with than others and "Champion" isn't easy of cause. But we've done a lot of testing on this subject and there are several things you can do.
We use a site called Sensor Tower [1] to track keyword rankings between the different App Stores.
First thing is of cause to add extra names to your App Store title and hope that people search for "champion live score" or "champion football", which will greatly increase your chances (our full App Store title is "Champion - Football Livescore").
But actually we found that it doesn't take as much as we thought to become #1 on a keyword like Champion. We launched first in the Thai App Store to be able to test a lot of this before the global launch. We've been in the Thai App Store for almost 2 months now and it took us less than 1 month to become the #1 app for the keyword "champion". So it's an achievable goal.