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I'm going to go ahead and recommend Bangalore (Disclaimer - I live here right now). While popular belief and stereotypes might have you believe that the city on

I'm going to go ahead and recommend Bangalore (Disclaimer - I live here right now). While popular belief and stereotypes might have you believe that the city only has Call Centers and Outsourcing companies - it has a pretty bright startup community, which I'm only beginning to discover. While I was born and brought up in Bangalore, I moved away for five years to College. I decided to start up after and moved back here, only to discover a very vibrant culture around technical startups. Due to the very strong proliferation of the internet, a lot of people have been picking up some pretty good technology and development stacks, and are not afraid to network and interact. Language: Most of the population you run into have a basic working knowledge of English, and as far as communicating with potential employees goes, it's not going to be a problem. You're going to have to put up with the funny accent though :) Government/External support: While there aren't fast-track routes to quickly get started, and there'll be a bit of paperwork involved, for which you'll need to get a local's help (heck, even _I_ am finding it a little hard). But as for bootstrapping and for staying in stealth mode, there's no place like it. Cost: It's incredibly cheap here. Maybe not China-cheap, but cheap. I am staying with some friends in a very large luxury apartment in the center of this very large city, and the overall cost is near 480 USD a month(for 5 people). Programmers are cheap and widely available. The Experienced ones aren't as economic, but pack more bang for their buck. If you're willing to be a little flexible, it's surprisingly comfortable to bootstrap on <$400 a month. Networking: There are meetups and networking sessions almost every weekend [ for example - http://www.meetup.com/Mashable/16063/?a=bn5_l1 http://www.meetup.com/Mashable/16063/?a=bn5_l1 which is tomorrow). Within a month, I'm starting to meet familiar faces, and a lot of people are looking for co-founders or someone with a good idea. I recently attended the Yahoo Open Hack Day, which attracted over 500 hackers - and was amazed at the number of people who worked nearly 40 hours nonstop to come up with some very impressive hacks. Another great example is "Startup Saturday" - a monthly networking session held by Headstart - a company to help people startup. I went to the June 12th Meet: http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/event.php?eid=43 http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/event.php?eid=43 And found nearly 180 people cramped into a little auditorium. Plenty of people from abroad, and lots of people moonlighting - trying to make connections. Examples of startups: Just off the top of my head. There are tons more but these are from people I know personally. http://www.capillary.co.in/capillary/ http://www.capillary.co.in/capillary/ http://c42.in/ http://c42.in/ http://www.notionink.in/ http://www.notionink.in/

endtime 16y ago
If I can be frank...what do you think of the work culture in India, and would you really recommend it to a foreigner? I've heard that people are frequently dishonest and unreliable, that agreements are often not honored, etc. (And I've heard this from Indian friends.)
- berntb 16y ago
  I am very curious about this, too. Realistically, I might have to go to India if I want to keep coding. The Indians/Bengalis I know locally are really nice people (if a bit square :-). On the other hand, I've heard in third hand that people moving to work in India said it was no fun at all. What gives?
- antileet 16y ago
  If you're caucasian, yeah - there will be a few people who will try to take some kind of advantage of your naivety. If you're a little careful and take some time getting used to it, you should be fine. OP was asking for relatively cheaper, still plausible cities to start up in (he/she mentioned Chinese cities), so I just pitched it as a viable alternative. I wouldn't recommend it straight out, as the last thing you'd need to worry about while working on your startup is to fit in with the local culture. Still - if you stay indoors you should be fine.
- subbu 16y ago
  Spend a lot of time during the interviews. That's the surest way to get rid of these kind of people. If you depend on your HR to hire for you then you WILL end up with an unreliable and mediocre bunch of people. (My company has a HR team but I never ask them to find me candidates. I do all activities including resume filtering and pre-screening. As a result I have a much better group of people.)
plinkplonk 16y ago
As someone who has lived in Bangalore for the last decade (and also in the USA for a while) and knows the local tech scene pretty well, I find the idea of putting Bangalore up as a candidate for "Best startup city outside the USA" amusing. There are a lot of people talking about startups, reading and quoting PG's essays, attending meetups and "networking events" and so on - but not too many companies with world beating tech or validated and scalable business models - which is what one would expect from a "best startup city outside the US". (Notion Ink is something of an exception in that they are at least trying to build something world class, but the jury is still out on their eventual success, but I thought they were based in Hyderabad not Bangalore. I could be wrong). Sure, the programmers are cheaper than in the USA (I could say the same thing about say Rio De Janeiro or Beijing). There are hundreds of thousands of programmers in Bangalore but the majority are numbingly incompetent and work for body shoppers of various kinds. The good ones are rare and expensive and already have very well paying jobs. Good luck persuading them to work on your unfunded startup ;-) Nutshell: The entrepreneurial and technically competent hacker is very much a rarity in Indian society. If you don't already know the devs you are going to work with in your startup before you come here I for one would not recomend that you try to build a company here and hope to hire good people after you land. Also, there are no government incentives or tax breaks for startups (vs yet another bodyshop/outsourcing centre/ call centre). Minor factual error: C42 (quoted in the post above) for example is a Rails consultancy (Yes I know the people who work there too. Ex ThoughtWorkers mostly). They might be a software startup (as the term is understood on HN) some day, but they are not one today. There aren't any universities doing pioneering/cutting edge research (no not even the IISc, their research quality is at best mediocre) which might form the basis of a successful startup. "There are tons more" (startups) No there aren't. At least not as startups are understood on HN. There are a few startups and a lot of frothy talk. The number of people attending "startups meets" are not a good metric for "best city for startups outside the USA". Successful startups that have changed the world/been acquired for large sums of money, extensive angel funding and VC funding networks, top class universities doing cutting edge research etc, are. Bangalore lacks most of these or have only rudimentary stubs of all the above. That said, the parent post makes some good points. Bangalore is cheaper than the USA (hardly surprising) and it has the potential for some good startups to emerge. That potential is, as of today, deeply buried. Vancouver or London or Tel Aviv or even Vienna blows Bangalore out of the water as a "city for startups". Things are changing in Bangalore but (a)very slowly and(b) under the radar of such things as "startup meetups" My 2 cents. I write this to add a bit of counterpoint to the rosy picture presented above. YMMV. As always Caveat Emptor. EDIT: A blog entry written by one of the founders of Riya.com when he wound up his Bangalore operations - http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_26_indi.html http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_... . I am not saying his observations are valid. I think Munjal did everything wrong about trying to operate in Bangalore, ("We tend to only hire folks from IIT or other top schools." is almost guaranteed to ensure that you end up with a mediocre dev team for e.g.) but that is a post for another day.

endtime 16y ago

If I can be frank...what do you think of the work culture in India, and would you really recommend it to a foreigner? I've heard that people are frequently dishonest and unreliable, that agreements are often not honored, etc. (And I've heard this from Indian friends.)

berntb 16y ago
I am very curious about this, too. Realistically, I might have to go to India if I want to keep coding. The Indians/Bengalis I know locally are really nice people (if a bit square :-). On the other hand, I've heard in third hand that people moving to work in India said it was no fun at all. What gives?
antileet 16y ago
If you're caucasian, yeah - there will be a few people who will try to take some kind of advantage of your naivety. If you're a little careful and take some time getting used to it, you should be fine. OP was asking for relatively cheaper, still plausible cities to start up in (he/she mentioned Chinese cities), so I just pitched it as a viable alternative. I wouldn't recommend it straight out, as the last thing you'd need to worry about while working on your startup is to fit in with the local culture. Still - if you stay indoors you should be fine.
subbu 16y ago
Spend a lot of time during the interviews. That's the surest way to get rid of these kind of people. If you depend on your HR to hire for you then you WILL end up with an unreliable and mediocre bunch of people. (My company has a HR team but I never ask them to find me candidates. I do all activities including resume filtering and pre-screening. As a result I have a much better group of people.)

plinkplonk 16y ago

As someone who has lived in Bangalore for the last decade (and also in the USA for a while) and knows the local tech scene pretty well, I find the idea of putting Bangalore up as a candidate for "Best startup city outside the USA" amusing. There are a lot of people talking about startups, reading and quoting PG's essays, attending meetups and "networking events" and so on - but not too many companies with world beating tech or validated and scalable business models - which is what one would expect from a "best startup city outside the US". (Notion Ink is something of an exception in that they are at least trying to build something world class, but the jury is still out on their eventual success, but I thought they were based in Hyderabad not Bangalore. I could be wrong). Sure, the programmers are cheaper than in the USA (I could say the same thing about say Rio De Janeiro or Beijing). There are hundreds of thousands of programmers in Bangalore but the majority are numbingly incompetent and work for body shoppers of various kinds. The good ones are rare and expensive and already have very well paying jobs. Good luck persuading them to work on your unfunded startup ;-) Nutshell: The entrepreneurial and technically competent hacker is very much a rarity in Indian society. If you don't already know the devs you are going to work with in your startup before you come here I for one would not recomend that you try to build a company here and hope to hire good people after you land. Also, there are no government incentives or tax breaks for startups (vs yet another bodyshop/outsourcing centre/ call centre). Minor factual error: C42 (quoted in the post above) for example is a Rails consultancy (Yes I know the people who work there too. Ex ThoughtWorkers mostly). They might be a software startup (as the term is understood on HN) some day, but they are not one today. There aren't any universities doing pioneering/cutting edge research (no not even the IISc, their research quality is at best mediocre) which might form the basis of a successful startup. "There are tons more" (startups) No there aren't. At least not as startups are understood on HN. There are a few startups and a lot of frothy talk. The number of people attending "startups meets" are not a good metric for "best city for startups outside the USA". Successful startups that have changed the world/been acquired for large sums of money, extensive angel funding and VC funding networks, top class universities doing cutting edge research etc, are. Bangalore lacks most of these or have only rudimentary stubs of all the above. That said, the parent post makes some good points. Bangalore is cheaper than the USA (hardly surprising) and it has the potential for some good startups to emerge. That potential is, as of today, deeply buried. Vancouver or London or Tel Aviv or even Vienna blows Bangalore out of the water as a "city for startups". Things are changing in Bangalore but (a)very slowly and(b) under the radar of such things as "startup meetups" My 2 cents. I write this to add a bit of counterpoint to the rosy picture presented above. YMMV. As always Caveat Emptor. EDIT: A blog entry written by one of the founders of Riya.com when he wound up his Bangalore operations - http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_26_indi.html http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2007/04/episode_... . I am not saying his observations are valid. I think Munjal did everything wrong about trying to operate in Bangalore, ("We tend to only hire folks from IIT or other top schools." is almost guaranteed to ensure that you end up with a mediocre dev team for e.g.) but that is a post for another day.