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Re:Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures by rjurney on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:57PM (#532825)
Speaking from personal experience, the challenge for doing this in developing nations is that the hard part is being connected enough to a market to know if something can be built in three months that people will pay for. If you're in a developing nation intending to sell to America, you're probably not as close to your users as you need to be because products tend to change rapidly in the early stages of a startup and you need to be interacting directly with potential users and learning from them.

But the money does go 10 times as far, so the idea could have potential. $25K can roll a startup for a year or more on the cheap in Bangalore.

Re:Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures by ajju on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:14PM (#532849)
Good point. On the other hand countries like India and China are already at a point where there are successful startups serving local customers.

Also, a startup that's doing something like, say Reddit, may not need to be physically close to users to be successful.

Re:Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures by rjurney on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:36PM (#532869)
Serving local customers is key, but even if you're Reddit, I think that ideally you are immersed in a community of people doing similar things. You need that feedback and energy.