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Remote batch brought 1 more real benefit of YC: $125k. Before COVID when you have to relocate to Bay Area this is just a living fee for a low quality house + p
by artembugara 6y ago
Remote batch brought 1 more real benefit of YC: $125k.
Before COVID when you have to relocate to Bay Area this is just a living fee for a low quality house + personal spendings.
Now, 125k is almost a lot for pretty much any place on the planet. Therefore, many remote entrepreneurs can be more relaxed on raising capital. I'd say you even can decide to "bootstrap" with this money + GCP/AWS credits.
- unamashana 6y agoThat's right! I completely forgot about the AWS/GCP credits. Even in a realistic usage scenario, that's adding 25 - 50k to your funding over a couple of years. The legal fees waiver for upto 10k is another one.
- artembugara 6y agoIndeed, we got 100k from GCP recently, and it will change a lot for our bootstrapped company. It basically makes us "ramen profitable"
- nowherebeen 6y agoWhat’s the criteria for getting 100k? The most I ever got was 5k.
- iagovar 6y agoI can live off a bunch of years in Spain for that money.
- ramraj07 6y agoAny suggestions? Spain has been a potential target for temporary relocation for me!
- unamashana 6y agoI live in Barcelona and love the quality of life. Happy to answer any questions. Twitter @unamashana
- mox111 6y agoLive in Barcelona too. Can confirm!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LordAtlas 6y agoWhat would rent be like for a 2-bedroom apartment?
- mindsuck 6y agoWithin the city limits in a nice-ish neighborhood 1000 EUR per month. I've been living at a 1200 EUR/mo 2br in a hipster neighborhood for the past year and a half here. If you go to neighborhoods where the locals live or outside the city limits you'll see the price drop considerably. A friend is living one hour away from here and paying 600 EUR for a nice house that's four times the size of my apartment.
- reader_mode 6y agoI got the impression that English level is really poor in Spain (when I was visiting Valencia, didn't go to Barcelona). Even with younger population - I was going out in the evening with some friends, we approached like 4 groups of 20-something and none of them could even give us basic directions. In shops and tourist places it's better but barely.
- Grustaf 6y agoUnless you're planning to hire your neighbours, why is this relevant?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fabiandesimone 6y agoGood luck with taxes in Spain.
- artembugara 6y agowhat's the problem? Apart of a fact that you have to pay them
- koolba 6y agoYou could easily do that in the USA as well. Median income is $35K and that’s before taxes and without a corporate shell to transform some of the larger living expenses into corporate pre-tax deductions.
- devoutsalsa 6y agoSurvive, yes. Thrive, no. The USA is an expensive place.
- robhunter 6y agoPart of it are; parts of it definitely are not.
- iKevinShah 6y agoCurious as an outsider, which parts are not?
- wheels 6y agoThe middle part. It's a little more complicated than that, but mostly, away from the coasts and famous cities (Chicago, Austin, etc.), most of middle America is pretty cheap -- by American standards. It's still a lot more expensive than most of the world, obviously. But there are lots of places you could live reasonably comfortably for 2-3 years on $125k. Hell, there are a lot of places you could buy a house for $80k, and $45k buys a lot of food and internet. ;-)
- pmiller2 6y agoI can live at my current spending level in the Bay Area for 3-ish years on $125k. In my small, Midwest hometown, I’m sure I could stretch that to 6-8 years. The disadvantage, of course, would be living in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere.
- 6y ago
- hashkb 6y agoTrue! Where I live now, that would fund my whole neighborhood working together on a startup for a year.
- JoeOfTexas 6y agoYou know what's going to happen with that mentality brought to investors. They gonna demand lower pay rates, forcing people to move to lower income areas.
- spoonjim 6y agoNot really. The investors will want you to use capital efficiently. If that means hiring remote developers in the Philippines then that’s what they will want but for other applications, hiring away the $500k engineer from Google is the only way to accomplish the task.
- 908B64B197 6y ago> If that means hiring remote developers in the Philippines then that’s what they will want I'm not sure the first stages of a startup is the right time to start handholding offshored devs. You typically want talented folks with you because change will happen fast. No time to draft new requirements and make sure via lengthy meetings that the offshored devs really understands them.
- artembugara 6y agoVC want you to efficiently spend money. Grow. Raise more. Exit. Or die ASAP
- madamelic 6y ago>VC want you to spend money. Grow. Raise more. Exit. Or die ASAP FTFY ;) Too many unprofitable / "pre-profit" companies have five figure monthly office rents for this to be untrue. Maybe I am biased but having heard and seen horror stories of founders losing their companies because of _having_ to raise money: no thanks. Bootstrap and if it doesn't hit ramen profitable, no biggie. If it does, go raise at favorable terms because you don't need their money.
- tjs8rj 6y agoInvestor money used responsibly can be a huge boon. The main benefit is speed and focus. Bootstrapping often means you need to do side jobs, and that faster experimentation can be cost prohibitive. That means raising, but living cheaply, is probably optimal. If you can get to a million ARR or die in 3 years instead of 8, take it.
- shuckles 6y agoI don’t understand this point. YC lasts for 90 days. 3 months of rent in the Bay Area isn’t more than $15k more expensive than the counter factual, even ignoring ramen profitability ethos. Would you be indifferent between in person and remote YC if the remote version invested $110k at the same terms?