3 ms·

I have a little bit of experience doing this - I built my former startup in a dusty little corner of Nicaragua and then we opened an office in Buenos Aires, Arg

I have a little bit of experience doing this - I built my former startup in a dusty little corner of Nicaragua and then we opened an office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm in the mvp-building process of starting a new company here in Costa Rica. The biggest benefit of starting in Latin America is the cost of living ... I worked for 2 years without a salary because rent was like $200/month for a house. Downside is that makes building an unsustainable business easier as well heh. Disadvantages can include poor infrastructure, in Nicaragua I used to get elec/water/internet outages each week for hours at a time. It's also a very hot part of the world although I'm Australian so that doesn't phase me much. Language and culture can be barriers in subtle ways, it's hard to surround yourself with like-minded people outside of the internet and this will be especially true the further you get from Guatamala City. The distance from your market may or may not be a problem as thesingularity mentioned, I don't think it matters that much for most of the time plus you can fly up to SF or anywhere else pretty cheap. You will have trouble hiring sales/marketing/bizdev guys with a global worldview but that may not be a problem for today.

pcmonk 13y ago
Thank you for this response. If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose to start in Latin America? Was there some reason why your startup needed to be there? I know that utility outages can be a problem, but I don't think it'll usually be that much of an issue. Guatemala has beautiful weather all year round (particularly the City; even high end houses rarely have air conditioning unless they're down near one of the oceans). I understand not being able to surround myself with like-minded people. Honestly, though, I haven't really done that even in the States. If I moved to SF, then I might be able to do that kind of thing, but I'm not sure how important that would be.
- benologist 13y ago
  I was just randomly traveling around, this was in 2005 and I was contracting and able to live anywhere I wanted, fell in love with this part of the world and a couple of the women, and had myself a half-nicaraguan, half-australian, costa rican daughter which is my main reason for opening my next office here. I didn't "plan" to build a startup as such, I built something and it became popular.

pcmonk 13y ago

Thank you for this response. If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose to start in Latin America? Was there some reason why your startup needed to be there? I know that utility outages can be a problem, but I don't think it'll usually be that much of an issue. Guatemala has beautiful weather all year round (particularly the City; even high end houses rarely have air conditioning unless they're down near one of the oceans). I understand not being able to surround myself with like-minded people. Honestly, though, I haven't really done that even in the States. If I moved to SF, then I might be able to do that kind of thing, but I'm not sure how important that would be.

benologist 13y ago
I was just randomly traveling around, this was in 2005 and I was contracting and able to live anywhere I wanted, fell in love with this part of the world and a couple of the women, and had myself a half-nicaraguan, half-australian, costa rican daughter which is my main reason for opening my next office here. I didn't "plan" to build a startup as such, I built something and it became popular.