enewcomer

I love goats. Out of curiosity, would you be willing to share how well goat attack packs have been selling?

The point is that by addressing the non-US markets, WhatsApp helped their position everywhere -- including the US.

You only need one friend you care about using a Blackberry or Nokia for it to matter though. The long tail matters when it comes to communication.

The phone number as an id is a very important component to their adoption indeed. So do you posit that WhatsApp's adoption rates being what they are (compared to say Viber which does the same thing) is purely due to first mover?

They aren't paying for a J2ME app and the requisite testing. They are paying for the results of the network effect made possible by it.

Unless everybody switches, few will switch. Network effects also create some pretty powerful stickiness.

That's not really an option at all, at least not to your house. At the kLab we have a 15Mbps line allocated for us, but the realities of oversea (well, undersea) bandwidth purchases means we often don't really see that.

Most people not at kLab get mobile data connections that in good areas when it's working well can get downloads between 200KBs up to 1MBps (those are bytes, not bits) depending on the time of day. Up oftentimes is about the same as down. It's not heavily throttled as you see in many other countries. These data plans are also very cheap.

Really, the biggest problem here isn't so much the speed these days, it's that the connection occasionally just stops working altogether.

We'd love to have the .com, but it's not in the cards. But ya, we chose the India TLD for exactly the reason you suspect.. text it in.

I just renewed mine this week without any trouble, but of course YMMV.

As I'm sure you already know, gay rights have a long, long way to go in the region. If I were gay, it probably wouldn't be at the top of my list :(

I've certainly heard some of that, but I don't think it applies quite as much to tech entrepreneurs -- and I've seen more evidence of that in say, Kenya. If you are coming here to build a software company, I would be surprised if Rwanda's arms weren't opened pretty wide.

At this point, Nairobi has more going on in it's tech scene and certainly a more mature market to sell into, but you are right, it's definitely not as safe and transparent as Kigali.

I don't know how common these sort of visas are the world over, but Chile also has a pretty innovative approach to attracting tech entrepreneurs.

http://startupchile.org/

Rwanda has a classification specifically for technology entrepreneurs. It's a 3-year visa and if you are a qualified software practitioner, I don't foresee you having difficulty getting a permit to start a software company here. They also pride themselves on same-day business registration.

https://www.migration.gov.rw/services/permits/temporary-perm...

I don't have a lot of experience for what school is like generally, but I can speak about it from an ex-pat's perspective. Our kids go to a Rwandan school (though a prestigious private school). It's far, far cheaper than private school in the states. Like most schools, the experience you have is highly dependent on the teacher you get, but we've been pretty lucky in that regard.

In some ways the academics are a step down and in others they are step up. For example, some of the subjects can be a bit rote, but my youngest has half of his classes taught in french (even though we are not french speakers). On the whole we are quite satisfied with their school. We also remind ourselves that as humans, we learn in so many ways and having our kids experience life in Rwanda (or anywhere outside of America for that matter) is one of the finest gifts we can offer.

Kids are 7 and 9. But Nic is spot on above. It really is just a bunch of small steps except for maybe a biggish one to get started. Thankfully that's the only hard one. But ya, the other thing you can do is reach out to the folks in the region you are interested in and just see how you can get involved. Relocating may in the end just seem like a natural next step.

To be honest, Kigali is one of the easiest places to do this in Africa (if not the easiest) when looking at all factors, so we are bit spoiled in that regard. I was surprised, when talking this over with my wife she was on board right from the beginning and even moved here sight-unseen. So, I'm grateful for that. Having kids also adds the extra hurdles of finding schools and such, but nothing too difficult.

For me, moving from Seattle to Kigali was all about just deciding to do it. After the decision was made it was far, far easier. I've got a wife and kids too. I think if this is something you want, just taking the plunge without thinking too hard about it is the only way it can really happen.

As for the climate, I can say that in Rwanda it is amazing. Pretty much beautiful weather every single day. It's near the equator, but at elevation. So it hovers around 80 degrees most days with a gentle breeze. It can get hot in the middle of the day, but not uncomfortably so. Rainy season brings torrential downpours for an hour or so twice a day -- which is always welcomed.

Hey Josh,

One of the devs here..

There's several different ways your TextIt app can be deployed depending on where you are located. When you sign up, we present the geographically appropriate options for you. In some cases you will see Twilio, others you will get direct connections with a carrier.

However, no matter where you are we also have a pretty robust Android app (free on Google Play) that can facilitate 2-way SMS anywhere in the world.

My kids aren't that small, but I moved to Africa with them two years ago (they are now 7 and 9). We are actually living abroad, not really "traveling" as in the OP, though it has provided some interesting travel opportunities as well. We don't homeschool, so any travel is tied to their school calendar as well. Even without side-travel, I feel like we have a better connection with the place we live and for that it will always be a part of us. There's no way you can get that in 90 days.

It depends on where you go, but we live very well on far less than we did in the US and it's been a great experience for our entire family in many, many ways.

I always used to read posts like this jealous of those who are unattached. While it's a different experience doing it with kids. and takes a bit more planning, it's got its own rewards (such as the impact of your children living first-hand in a different culture).

Using an Android SMS relayer opens up the door for some pretty interesting projects that can be easily launched in any country without having to fight with telcos.

Add to that RapidSMS and the django smartmin project and you've got an extremely agile framework for building services like this very quickly. (I should also mention that if ever there was an argument to use a vanilla twitter bootstrap style, projects like this are definitely it).

The tech scene is definitely growing in Kigali. We recognize we've got a long way to go, but there is a strong desire to raise that profile. We've been taking steps to create a real tech community here.

Kigali, Rwanda. Represent!

Here's my experience trying to bring this to one of the offenders' attention. He actually attempted to justify it.

http://eric.newcomer.org/jamplay-defends-storing-passwords-i...