15 ms·

Millennials returning to Puerto Rico, launching startups

150 points by albertogui 9y ago

bitshaker 9y ago
For anyone looking to be in Puerto Rico, the massive tax incentives help as well. http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/ http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/
- Spooky23 9y ago
  US Virgin Islands are similar as well. Definitely real challenges though... these places are poor tropical backwaters. It's a shame as it's beautiful and full of potential.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Poor backwater compared to what? Puerto Rico has a GDP per capita between Spain and Italy.
    - tomjakubowski 9y ago
      And a Gini coefficient (.531 as of 2011) between Guatemala (.530) and Colombia (.535). Italy and Spain are at .319 and .359 respectively. The US as a whole is .475.
      - true_religion 9y ago
        It's an inequality coefficient, not any kind of measure of how "nice" a country is for someone living there. Countries with a high Gini, tend to segregate more heavily than those who don't, which for the typical 'rich' software developer means that they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto'. For example, Miami has a high gini at ~0.6 to 0.7 which gives you the palaces overlooking shacks effect of Miami Beach. High gini also correlates with extreme economic growth, where the benefits fall onto a small group (e.g. software developers), and a reversion to the mean hasn't yet taken place.
        JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto' cough cough the Bay Area. Seriously, though, the Santa Clara County metropolitan statistical area clocks in at 0.45 while New York is 0.60 [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-18.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-18.pdf
        Spooky23 9y ago
        County statistics are misleading here. Santa Clara County is a big place (almost the size of Long Island) with lots of municipalities. New York County is just 1 of 5 counties that encompass New York City! If you look at Brooklyn (Kings County), the number is 0.499, Queens County the number is 0.433. According to another site, the citywide number was 0.547 in 2013. ( https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/inequality-new-york-city-wealthy-poor-divide https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/inequality-new-york-city-we... )
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - anovikov 9y ago
      rayiner definitely meant per capita GDP. Yes people calling the place a poor backwater have American bias for sure.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - cpursley 9y ago
    St. Croix USVI would be a great place to start a startup. It's on the east coast time zone, and infrastructure is good enough, real estate is cheap (for the Caribbean). There are ample outdoor activities (swimming, snorkeling/diving, kayaking, kitesurfing, fishing, sailing, golf, tennis, yoga, etc). The incentives of the USVI EDC Program* are quite significant. It's one of the only legal loopholes for US citizens to avoid most income taxes. The main catch is, you have to hire 10 people, including 8 locals (this can include yourself): - 90% reduction in corporate income tax - 90% reduction in personal income tax - 100% exemption on gross receipt tax - 100% exemption on business property tax - 100% exemption on excise tax payments - Reduction in the customs duty from the standard 6% to 1% - Tax reduction on royalty income from software developed in the USVI and sold to non-US customers - Availability of rental space at below market rates in the St. Croix and St. Thomas Industrial Parks * https://www.usvieda.org/incentives/edc-program https://www.usvieda.org/incentives/edc-program
    - FlopV 9y ago
      Do you know of any startups or tech companies in the USVI? I'm located in St. Thomas and there are financial companies that take advantage of edc I haven't heard of any startups or techs. Tech scene seems kind of dead here.
      - cpursley 9y ago
        There's a small handful. Here's one: http://nearix.com/ http://nearix.com/ How can I get in touch with you? Maybe we can connect next time I'm down that way.
jameslk 9y ago
> They are motivated both by an urge to help lift Puerto Rico out of its quagmire, but also by a profound attachment to the island — its beaches and countryside, its friendliness, its intimacy and the tug of family. They're probably more motivated by the complete lack of federal income tax[0]. Funny that this wasn't mentioned once in the entire article. 0. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/07/04/hate-taxes-move-to-tax-free-puerto-rico-stay-american-avoid-irs/#43f7f9cf6397 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/07/04/hate-taxe...
- huac 9y ago
  "To qualify, an individual must not have been a resident of Puerto Rico within in the last 15 years." It seems that "returners" don't qualify for that. Maybe it's just the amazing Puerto Rican food (I'd eat every meal at La Casita Blanca if I could).
  - true_religion 9y ago
    The Forbes articles is confusing. The article is in reference to (but doesn't mention) the "Individual Investors Act (Act 22)"[1], which exempts you from Puerto Rico's own income tax, and limits your IRS liabilities for capital gains tax on long term investments sold within the first ten years of your residency. Regardless of if you take advantage of the above, you are exempt from Federal taxes. This is just an incentive atop it. [1] http://businessinpuertorico.com/en/profit/individual-investors http://businessinpuertorico.com/en/profit/individual-investo...
  - mtremsal 9y ago
    I ate at La Casita Blanca earlier this week and was blown away by pretty much anything I tried, as well as the friendliness of the owner and the beauty of the herb garden. First time in PR; the restaurant was a highlight in a week filled with great food, striking architecture, and lovely people. I can definitely see why people would move there outside of tax considerations.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Yeah, I was about to say that it's probably largely because of the policy relief under Fortuño and to some extent his successors. Like how you would expect people to have returned to Detroit if they would make the occasional policy decision which doesn't involve spending more of other people's money. It's pretty interesting to see how this works out within the U.S. when it comes to personal income tax[0] [0]: http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/ http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/
pryelluw 9y ago
Local here. Feel free to contact me (check profile) for anything. :) We have a incubator called parallel18, and a couple of working spaces. It's not a super huge tech scene but the people are awesome.
- nowarninglabel 9y ago
  How's the internet there? I'd imagine that would be a significant barrier to productivity.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    To boost productivity, wouldn't you want the internet to be really bad most of the time? Like "only good enough to read textual docs and ssh into AWS" bad.
    - nowarninglabel 9y ago
      Well, depends on what you do. Sure, it can be nice to be offline for some coding, but most work these days, even predominantly coding work, is a team affair and requires communication to work well. Further, being able to get quick access to docs, tickets, etc. is quite useful. But also, if one is responsible for the functioning of significant amounts of infrastructure, then it's not so great to have to worry about internet flaking out in the middle of working through production issues. But yeah if you were working on something solo, then bad internet wouldn't matter as much.
    - throwawayus98 9y ago
      Are you fucking retarded?
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      People do different work and different things. Some people probably also get reinvogorated after watching HD video streams as a break. Personally, I prefer fast internet and blocking sites via hosts file, extension, or an app. But I lack a certain amount of self discipline. I doubt being without fast internet for long periods of times and not wasting because of that outweighs having slow internet after the initial change of pace.
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but left to work in tech. As with any place, there's some good points and there's some bad points. Below are some points that someone moving to Puerto Rico might want to know. In my opinion, their greatest achievement has been in its educational system. Despite its huge list of problems, UPR enables people of any background to receive an affordable high quality college education. In the US, you're basically forced to take out huge loans that might take decades to pay off. This should mean you'll get access to lots of highly educated individuals, although I don't know if that's the case in practice. One of my biggest complaints is its poor representation in the US government. If you're living in Puerto Rico you can't vote in any of the US's elections, even though the actions of the president and congress could potentially affect you. e.g. You could get drafted and sent off to war. Puerto Rico has its own constitution [0], which arguably grants stronger rights to its citizens than the US constitution. For example, wire-tapping is explicitly illegal. It also includes entries allowing employees to organize into associations and collectively negotiate with their employers, as well as go on strike. An interesting point is that everyone is required to get a voter ID in order to participate in an election. This isn't seen as a problem, and getting one is incredibly easy. I found it incredibly surprising this wasn't the case in the US. Food is amazing, but there's very little variety. Since there's so few people from different cultural backgrounds, you mostly get the same templates repeated everywhere. In the last decade it has been slowly improving. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, or if you require a gluten-free diet (i.e. coeliac disease), you'll have a hard time eating out. Due to cabotage laws, you can't import directly to Puerto Rico. Everything has to go through a US port, which translates to increased costs. Shipping stuff to Puerto Rico is usually more expensive than shipping stuff to the contiguous United States. I'd guess it's comparable to Hawaii. Even though both English and Spanish are considered official languages, you'll have a very hard time living there if you don't know Spanish. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Puerto_Rico
- aiyodev 9y ago
  "In the US" Puerto Rico is part of the United States.
  - 9y ago
fakeNewsSpot 9y ago
More Fake News
pavlov 9y ago
I'm not American, so would someone knowledgeable indulge me the obvious question: Why is Puerto Rico not a state while e.g. Hawaii is? Is it the language -- a Spanish-majority state would not get the approval from other states to join the union? Or something less obvious?
- dbcurtis 9y ago
  Puerto Rico would need to petition to become a state. (I believe it meets the criteria for becoming a state, but haven't verified that.) There are benefits to remaining a territory, in particular they can create tax inventives that would be precluded if they wete a state.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    That makes sense - sort of like the UK or France overseas territories that are not part of the EU.
- avenoir 9y ago
  If I remember correctly, most Puerto Ricans aren't interested in the statehood status (wasn't there a referendum?) probably because it's a pretty major cultural shift.
- albertogui 9y ago
  It's hard to become a state when the majority of the population only speaks Spanish and the island has its own constitution.
  - vinay427 9y ago
    I'm not sure what language has to do with it. Also, many/most states have a constitution as well.
  - JBReefer 9y ago
    Probably not a huge issue - look up first home language in Texas or Arizona. Texas is also like 50%+ Hispanic, and I can't imagine the modern GOP being anti-Texas.
bane 9y ago
Puerto Rico has such tremendous potential, it's kind of a shame it's not further along than it is. For people who've never been to it, the "feel" of it wouldn't surprise most Americans who've spent time outside of rich major metro areas. Lots of the really bad crime tends to be isolated to certain areas and groups. There's also a huge mountainous interior that's a world away from the tropical beaches and Spanish colonial towns. Mostly that's the source of the absolutely incredible coffee that comes from the Island. Why it isn't more like Hawaii isn't entirely clear, but I suspect not being fully integrated into the U.S. Federal system is part of it. The local governance of the Island hasn't been fantastic and most of the Puerto Ricans I know who lived there have long ago since moved to the mainland U.S. to find a better life (many of them also then turn around and buy investment vacation property back on the Island they spend time in every summer). Still, if you know where to go, and where not to go, and learn some of the local ways of doing things, it can be a very lovely place, great history, good food, right in the Caribbean so other islands are close by...
somberi 9y ago
Some relevant reading before you pack your bags :) https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21721670-islands-debts-will-now-bring-protracted-legal-battle-puerto-rico-declares https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172167... And someone asked why it is not a state yet: https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21723149-more-60-puerto-ricans-tell-pollsters-they-would-commonwealth https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21723149-more-6... And an year-old article about the troubles facing PR: https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/05/economist-explains-8 https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/05/e...

150 points by albertogui 9y ago

For anyone looking to be in Puerto Rico, the massive tax incentives help as well. http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/ http://puertoricotaxincentives.com/

Spooky23 9y ago
US Virgin Islands are similar as well. Definitely real challenges though... these places are poor tropical backwaters. It's a shame as it's beautiful and full of potential.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Poor backwater compared to what? Puerto Rico has a GDP per capita between Spain and Italy.
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    And a Gini coefficient (.531 as of 2011) between Guatemala (.530) and Colombia (.535). Italy and Spain are at .319 and .359 respectively. The US as a whole is .475.
    - true_religion 9y ago
      It's an inequality coefficient, not any kind of measure of how "nice" a country is for someone living there. Countries with a high Gini, tend to segregate more heavily than those who don't, which for the typical 'rich' software developer means that they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto'. For example, Miami has a high gini at ~0.6 to 0.7 which gives you the palaces overlooking shacks effect of Miami Beach. High gini also correlates with extreme economic growth, where the benefits fall onto a small group (e.g. software developers), and a reversion to the mean hasn't yet taken place.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > they'll live in a trendy area and know to avoid the 'ghetto' cough cough the Bay Area. Seriously, though, the Santa Clara County metropolitan statistical area clocks in at 0.45 while New York is 0.60 [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-18.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr10-18.pdf
        Spooky23 9y ago
        County statistics are misleading here. Santa Clara County is a big place (almost the size of Long Island) with lots of municipalities. New York County is just 1 of 5 counties that encompass New York City! If you look at Brooklyn (Kings County), the number is 0.499, Queens County the number is 0.433. According to another site, the citywide number was 0.547 in 2013. ( https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/inequality-new-york-city-wealthy-poor-divide https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/inequality-new-york-city-we... )
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - anovikov 9y ago
    rayiner definitely meant per capita GDP. Yes people calling the place a poor backwater have American bias for sure.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- cpursley 9y ago
  St. Croix USVI would be a great place to start a startup. It's on the east coast time zone, and infrastructure is good enough, real estate is cheap (for the Caribbean). There are ample outdoor activities (swimming, snorkeling/diving, kayaking, kitesurfing, fishing, sailing, golf, tennis, yoga, etc). The incentives of the USVI EDC Program* are quite significant. It's one of the only legal loopholes for US citizens to avoid most income taxes. The main catch is, you have to hire 10 people, including 8 locals (this can include yourself): - 90% reduction in corporate income tax - 90% reduction in personal income tax - 100% exemption on gross receipt tax - 100% exemption on business property tax - 100% exemption on excise tax payments - Reduction in the customs duty from the standard 6% to 1% - Tax reduction on royalty income from software developed in the USVI and sold to non-US customers - Availability of rental space at below market rates in the St. Croix and St. Thomas Industrial Parks * https://www.usvieda.org/incentives/edc-program https://www.usvieda.org/incentives/edc-program
  - FlopV 9y ago
    Do you know of any startups or tech companies in the USVI? I'm located in St. Thomas and there are financial companies that take advantage of edc I haven't heard of any startups or techs. Tech scene seems kind of dead here.
    - cpursley 9y ago
      There's a small handful. Here's one: http://nearix.com/ http://nearix.com/ How can I get in touch with you? Maybe we can connect next time I'm down that way.

jameslk 9y ago

> They are motivated both by an urge to help lift Puerto Rico out of its quagmire, but also by a profound attachment to the island — its beaches and countryside, its friendliness, its intimacy and the tug of family. They're probably more motivated by the complete lack of federal income tax[0]. Funny that this wasn't mentioned once in the entire article. 0. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/07/04/hate-taxes-move-to-tax-free-puerto-rico-stay-american-avoid-irs/#43f7f9cf6397 https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/07/04/hate-taxe...

huac 9y ago
"To qualify, an individual must not have been a resident of Puerto Rico within in the last 15 years." It seems that "returners" don't qualify for that. Maybe it's just the amazing Puerto Rican food (I'd eat every meal at La Casita Blanca if I could).
- true_religion 9y ago
  The Forbes articles is confusing. The article is in reference to (but doesn't mention) the "Individual Investors Act (Act 22)"[1], which exempts you from Puerto Rico's own income tax, and limits your IRS liabilities for capital gains tax on long term investments sold within the first ten years of your residency. Regardless of if you take advantage of the above, you are exempt from Federal taxes. This is just an incentive atop it. [1] http://businessinpuertorico.com/en/profit/individual-investors http://businessinpuertorico.com/en/profit/individual-investo...
- mtremsal 9y ago
  I ate at La Casita Blanca earlier this week and was blown away by pretty much anything I tried, as well as the friendliness of the owner and the beauty of the herb garden. First time in PR; the restaurant was a highlight in a week filled with great food, striking architecture, and lovely people. I can definitely see why people would move there outside of tax considerations.
microcolonel 9y ago
Yeah, I was about to say that it's probably largely because of the policy relief under Fortuño and to some extent his successors. Like how you would expect people to have returned to Detroit if they would make the occasional policy decision which doesn't involve spending more of other people's money. It's pretty interesting to see how this works out within the U.S. when it comes to personal income tax[0] [0]: http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/ http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/

pryelluw 9y ago

Local here. Feel free to contact me (check profile) for anything. :) We have a incubator called parallel18, and a couple of working spaces. It's not a super huge tech scene but the people are awesome.

nowarninglabel 9y ago
How's the internet there? I'd imagine that would be a significant barrier to productivity.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  To boost productivity, wouldn't you want the internet to be really bad most of the time? Like "only good enough to read textual docs and ssh into AWS" bad.
  - nowarninglabel 9y ago
    Well, depends on what you do. Sure, it can be nice to be offline for some coding, but most work these days, even predominantly coding work, is a team affair and requires communication to work well. Further, being able to get quick access to docs, tickets, etc. is quite useful. But also, if one is responsible for the functioning of significant amounts of infrastructure, then it's not so great to have to worry about internet flaking out in the middle of working through production issues. But yeah if you were working on something solo, then bad internet wouldn't matter as much.
  - throwawayus98 9y ago
    Are you fucking retarded?
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    People do different work and different things. Some people probably also get reinvogorated after watching HD video streams as a break. Personally, I prefer fast internet and blocking sites via hosts file, extension, or an app. But I lack a certain amount of self discipline. I doubt being without fast internet for long periods of times and not wasting because of that outweighs having slow internet after the initial change of pace.

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but left to work in tech. As with any place, there's some good points and there's some bad points. Below are some points that someone moving to Puerto Rico might want to know. In my opinion, their greatest achievement has been in its educational system. Despite its huge list of problems, UPR enables people of any background to receive an affordable high quality college education. In the US, you're basically forced to take out huge loans that might take decades to pay off. This should mean you'll get access to lots of highly educated individuals, although I don't know if that's the case in practice. One of my biggest complaints is its poor representation in the US government. If you're living in Puerto Rico you can't vote in any of the US's elections, even though the actions of the president and congress could potentially affect you. e.g. You could get drafted and sent off to war. Puerto Rico has its own constitution [0], which arguably grants stronger rights to its citizens than the US constitution. For example, wire-tapping is explicitly illegal. It also includes entries allowing employees to organize into associations and collectively negotiate with their employers, as well as go on strike. An interesting point is that everyone is required to get a voter ID in order to participate in an election. This isn't seen as a problem, and getting one is incredibly easy. I found it incredibly surprising this wasn't the case in the US. Food is amazing, but there's very little variety. Since there's so few people from different cultural backgrounds, you mostly get the same templates repeated everywhere. In the last decade it has been slowly improving. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, or if you require a gluten-free diet (i.e. coeliac disease), you'll have a hard time eating out. Due to cabotage laws, you can't import directly to Puerto Rico. Everything has to go through a US port, which translates to increased costs. Shipping stuff to Puerto Rico is usually more expensive than shipping stuff to the contiguous United States. I'd guess it's comparable to Hawaii. Even though both English and Spanish are considered official languages, you'll have a very hard time living there if you don't know Spanish. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Puerto_Rico

aiyodev 9y ago
"In the US" Puerto Rico is part of the United States.
- 9y ago

fakeNewsSpot 9y ago

More Fake News

pavlov 9y ago

I'm not American, so would someone knowledgeable indulge me the obvious question: Why is Puerto Rico not a state while e.g. Hawaii is? Is it the language -- a Spanish-majority state would not get the approval from other states to join the union? Or something less obvious?

dbcurtis 9y ago
Puerto Rico would need to petition to become a state. (I believe it meets the criteria for becoming a state, but haven't verified that.) There are benefits to remaining a territory, in particular they can create tax inventives that would be precluded if they wete a state.
- pavlov 9y ago
  That makes sense - sort of like the UK or France overseas territories that are not part of the EU.
avenoir 9y ago
If I remember correctly, most Puerto Ricans aren't interested in the statehood status (wasn't there a referendum?) probably because it's a pretty major cultural shift.
albertogui 9y ago
It's hard to become a state when the majority of the population only speaks Spanish and the island has its own constitution.
- vinay427 9y ago
  I'm not sure what language has to do with it. Also, many/most states have a constitution as well.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  Probably not a huge issue - look up first home language in Texas or Arizona. Texas is also like 50%+ Hispanic, and I can't imagine the modern GOP being anti-Texas.

bane 9y ago

Puerto Rico has such tremendous potential, it's kind of a shame it's not further along than it is. For people who've never been to it, the "feel" of it wouldn't surprise most Americans who've spent time outside of rich major metro areas. Lots of the really bad crime tends to be isolated to certain areas and groups. There's also a huge mountainous interior that's a world away from the tropical beaches and Spanish colonial towns. Mostly that's the source of the absolutely incredible coffee that comes from the Island. Why it isn't more like Hawaii isn't entirely clear, but I suspect not being fully integrated into the U.S. Federal system is part of it. The local governance of the Island hasn't been fantastic and most of the Puerto Ricans I know who lived there have long ago since moved to the mainland U.S. to find a better life (many of them also then turn around and buy investment vacation property back on the Island they spend time in every summer). Still, if you know where to go, and where not to go, and learn some of the local ways of doing things, it can be a very lovely place, great history, good food, right in the Caribbean so other islands are close by...

somberi 9y ago

Some relevant reading before you pack your bags :) https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21721670-islands-debts-will-now-bring-protracted-legal-battle-puerto-rico-declares https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172167... And someone asked why it is not a state yet: https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21723149-more-60-puerto-ricans-tell-pollsters-they-would-commonwealth https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21723149-more-6... And an year-old article about the troubles facing PR: https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/05/economist-explains-8 https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/05/e...