Cost of living was only slightly cheaper than Utah, where we are from. I'm sure it is less than California, but not nearly as cheap as we thought. We did hire a nanny and cook for a very good rate. Cars and US goods were very expensive.
Amazing and beautiful place though. I'll go again, just not to live.
Compare that to my usual South Coast train commute to London where I'm lucky if I get about 25% coverage for a 2 hour journey, and we're supposed to be a G8 nation!
On a side note, I've been working on my startup whilst travelling the states, Hawaiian Islands and backpacking through the Fijian Yasawa Islands and just got back to the UK. I'd highly recommend travelling to anyone looking to get something off the ground, I've always found it a cheaper alternative to paying rent in a fixed locality, there's nothing that beats just speaking to people from different backgrounds about your idea and getting their input.
Costa Rica's internet is better than Nicaragua though!
Here's a speed test (while off my VPN and at a restaurant rather than my house): http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3099024113
http://www.ticotimes.net/Business/Internet-slow-but-speeding...
Costa Rica has among the slowest Internet speeds and least broadband access in South America.
We have occasional hiccups in San Jose, but mostly it works pretty smoothly. I've worked in Playa Hermosa and had no problems.
BTW, if anyone is considering developers in Costa Rica, send me an email.
AirBnb has some great finds, especially if you go with a few friends. Nice places, good internet and not too expensive.
(Oh, and hi Simone! You submitted my startup notes site to HN a few weeks ago)
I've just got back from 3 mths travelling the States, Hawaii, Fiji and Aus to do exactly the same, London had too many distractions and whilst the salary was great I knew if I didn't take the plunge to dedicate some time to the startup I too had been talking about for ages then it would never get off the ground. Oh, and seeing beautiful places along the way does wonders for motivation!.
wow, what are you doing? How comes you could afford it? Are you a developer? You're living the dream!
With a billion dollar valuation, the founders will have found ways to make themselves rich - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57591017-93/snapchat-founde... - and if you already cashed out fuck-you money, then you might as well keep going and see where it lands.
If I was broke and offered $3b, sure. But if I had $10-20mil sitting in the bank… anything I do after that point is 100% risk-free.
Mind you, I'm really racking my brain on how this isn't all totally insane.
On a much larger note, I don't feel like there's a big difference beyond $20 Mil if your goal is to continue living the life you're living now, but with total financial security. I know that given the chance, that's all I'd really ask for. Anything beyond that, and the only thing I can think of to spend the money on is philanthropy.
However, I'll bet other people have different aspirations, so I guess I can't really speak on the subject.
... why am I writing this comment ...
That's a huge difference.
At $20 million, there is nothing you can't do. At that point, with some wise long term investments, you wouldn't need to worry about finances.
But most (all?) people invest their money at a far higher rate of return than inflation.
10million * 3% dividend stocks = 300k per year just having it sit there. Maybe not entirely risk free, but not too risky either.
20M is plenty to live a very well off life, but its not "do anything you want for the rest of your life" money. Look at how many professional athletes/musicians manage to blow many multiples of that amount.
Also, perhaps I'm naive, but I expect tech startup founders to be better with their money than professional athletes. Yes, you could be an idiot, but that doesn't mean 10 mil isn't FU money. It is if you have even a little bit of a brain. You can spend nearly any amount of money, but that's not really the point. You can put your 3 billion all on red and dammit if it didn't come up black. Doesn't make it not FU money. (No casino in the world will take that bet, but you know what I mean).
That's the best I have come up with too.
When we talk about "interest" here, I think its defined as passive low-risk investment income that is able to be taxed at a lower capital gains rate.
Thiel said he remembered saying, "We should probably talk about this. A billion dollars is a lot of money." They hashed out the conversation. Thiel said he and Breyer pointed out: "You own 25 percent. There's so much you could do with the money."
Thiel recalled Zuckerberg said, in a nutshell: "I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have."
This is probably how the SnapChat guys feel there is no different project down the road this is it and if you feel that way you never sell
http://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg-...
I'm not saying everyone gets a multi-billion-dollar exit (and even getting there in the first place is fucking tough; certainly a lot tougher than it was in the '90s). But there are worse paths through life than being a serial entrepreneur who's in it for the love of the game.
He is a great(and rather rare) example of bootstrapping your money upwards. Most people only get lucky/good once.
Evan has taken at least $30-40M off the table in subsequent financing rounds. He has enough stacked away to go for an exit that deems him a billionaire which my guess at this point would need to be a $5B acquisition (assuming cap gains tax for his piece)
I always liked the quote from Entrapment "What can you do with 7 billion that you can't do with 4?"
Steve Case: sold AOL to Time Warner for $164bn
Ev Williams: sold Blogger to Google for an undisclosed sum
John Sidgmore: sold UUNet to MFS Communications for $2bn
Ross Perot: sold EDS to General Motors for $2.5bn (in 1984 dollars!)
Just sayin'.
[Yes, 20 years later from the point in time I'm talking about.]
Steve Case: sold AOL to Time Warner for $164bn
[$3 billion isn't cool. You know what's cool? $164 billion is cool.]
Ev Williams: sold Blogger to Google for an undisclosed sum
[Obviously I was referring to Twitter.]
John Sidgmore: sold UUNet to MFS Communications for $2bn
[Brainfart -- I meant John Morgridge.]
Ross Perot: sold EDS to General Motors for $2.5bn (in 1984 dollars!)
[Yeah, but that's when $2.5 billion was real money.]
that being said, the market potential for a google is quite obviously higher than the potential for snapchat i think. I can't imagine a future world where snapchat is worth more than google, and if it is, it's almost certainly because they used that valuation to pivot and make something more worthwhile.
"that being said, the market potential for a google is quite obviously higher than the potential for X i think. I can't imagine a future world where X is worth more than google, and if it is, it's almost certainly because they used that valuation to pivot and make something more worthwhile."
You can only say that with the benefit of hindsight. At the equivalent stage in Google's life, you might well have been equally skeptical of Google -- and a lot of people were, including at various times their founders and their VCs. It was widely known at that time that search was a bad business -- in fact, the assumption based on several years of prior data was that it was a loss leader for portals. Google itself didn't start with the keyword advertising model, they developed that along the way (in part based on work done earlier at Goto.com, which hadn't worked nearly as well for them).
Equally, at the equivalent stage in Microsoft's life, it was well known that PCs were a toy and that people wouldn't pay for software. At the equivalent stage in Oracle's life, it was well known that data belonged in hierarchical databases on mainframes, not in relational databases on Unix servers. At the equivalent stage in Cisco's life, it was well known that proprietary networks like SNA and DECnet were standard among people who paid for things and that the Internet was only a toy for academics. And so forth and so on.
You're mistaken in your analogy.
Regardless of what some people thought they "knew", Microsoft was always in the paid-software business. Microsoft was formed in 1975 and that year, their revenue was $16,000. In 1977 it was $381K (with net income of $112K). 3 years after formation, Microsoft's revenue was $1.3M. Microsoft's business plan was based on selling software and they did that from the beginning.
Snapchat was formed around 3 years ago. At this "equivalent stage", they seem to have zero revenue. It also seems like they are holding out for a better purchase-offer. They seem to be on the familiar VC-guided route of "selling a company and its users" as opposed to the old-fashioned route of "selling a software product/service".
In general, I don't think you can equate the growth strategy/prospects of an independent/self-sufficient company that sells software-products with a company that wishes to sell itself.
Now, snapchat can make money, don't get me wrong. They have a lot of eyeballs and it is worth a big number. I just don't think the number is that big to too many people other than Facebook.
If Instagram were to sell 100% of itself today, who would buy it, other than Facebook? There are only a handful of players who can afford $3 billion+ for a speculative acquisition of a company with 0 cash flow. They definitely would not be able to IPO anytime soon, and waiting that long involves a significant amount of risk (by the time they are mature they could be abandoned and worthless). And remember, even if you do IPO, you can't just dump your shares right when the lockup period ends, if you're an executive or insider. You need to disclose your sales and if you're still involved with the company and try to sell all your shares, the stock will likely plummet. The best you can do is buy insurance on the value or borrow against shares.
Same goes for Pinterest. Who would all of the company at that valuation or anywhere near it? Other than maybe Facebook, I can't imagine anyone else.
I'd say they should be able to monetize that quite well.
Pinterest is the greatest cash cow in the making that nobody's talking about. (I mean, they're talking about it. But nobody's talking about it the way they're talking about Snapchat, which is kind of nuts. Pinterest is the perfect ad platform, outside of Google, for a demographic almost every major consumer brand cares deeply about.)
What is interesting, IMHO, is to see if the network effect is really critical, or if the service can be repicated by a thrid party. What I think we will see soon is that people will maintain a network on one site and not necessarily use it; they will turn to other platforms to communicate on an ad-hoc basis. The ad-hoc platforms will have significant value, but wheras instagram and twitter were additional platforms for audience aggregation, the next wave will be service layers where you communicate to your network by "porting over" your contact base, as needed. The only reason I'm bothering to ramble on is that I'm not sure FB wins the game buy buying out SnapChat. That worked for instagram, which had a sticky network and people didn't leave it. For SnapChat, the whole premise is LNT...so why feel stuck to it? Once FB owns it they will track the hell out of everyone using it, so the LNT value prop dies. But the demand will surely remain if the service can be cloned.
Snapchat on the other hand? I can understand the key selling point - it's basically the naked girl app. And I'd wager that a good proportion of their traffic could get the receivers arrested...
I'd have been all over it when I was a teenager, though.
What's the best country to hang out on with a beach & super fast wifi?
Costa Rica always gets thrown around - but wondering if there's anything better/warmer/cheaper/faster.
I'm living in Taghazout, which is a very small fishing/surfing village. It's quite touristic, so rent prices are high. I'm paying ~$400 per month. However, food is extremely cheap. I easily live on $25 per week when cooking at home.
My studio has a direct view towards the beach with opportunity for spectacular sunsets. The beach is 1 minute away, so I hear the sound of the ocean 24/7. The bays in the area give you more than enough beaches for sunbathing or surfing.
It's definitely warm, more or less around the calendar.
The internet that I have is extremely slow though. That would be a 0.25 Mbps connection. It's enough for working, but any forms of procrastination i.e. YouTube, cat browsing in reddit are nearly impossible. You can find 4 Mbps connection in some houses, but it is extremely rear. My guess is that in the big cities like Agadir, there will be fast wifi.
If you have questions, shoot me an email - filipminev [at] gmail
But in a nutshell - adventure, warm weather, learn to surf, meet a lot of tourists with who I can share my startup idea, and receive feedback prior launching.
To me, at least, being in Europe is also a really big plus. I love the idea that I could just take a ferry to Italy and going to Paris or London is only a slightly longer trip.
I was early to FB, a little late to Twitter, but I love it now, loved Instagram... etc.
But Snapchat? Nah, "that's for the kids"
That said, as a tech guy, every one of the kids I talk to says something like "but I wish it did ___" or "but I'd really rather use ___ if it worked a certain way". I believe Snapchat is successful for maybe one more year, tops, until some other startup gets even more in touch with the latest trends. I would have taken the $3bn and run. FB's and Twitter's days are also numbered, judging by the teenager beliefs today.
For those wanting a good idea (I don't care about this space enough), teenagers are really interested in micro-celebrity. Some of their favorite bands, actors, etc. are local to them, are generally not big hits, etc. but communicate individually with them (even through Snapchat). One of Twitter's big reasons it worked was because of big celebrities communicating directly to fans. Kids now seem to not care at all about big celebrities. If you can find a way to even more easily connect smaller celebrities/bands to young fans and allow personalized interaction, you just found a potential next big thing.
The others cant compare, its not a chat with oh send a file or upload picturr click here there herr and there. ugh.
I'd personally sell and I'm not very risk adverse, I always push for more when I'm gambling, but if you're exiting at a $1bn value you're going to have enough to explore most ideas without worrying about outside investment.
Does anyone know the name of the instagram founders? Not really. They got money but only a little fame. If Evan sells out then maybe he is less known. Gamble but a chance at legendary status.
I don't understand "legacy" or "legendary" status at all. Bill Gates may get a footnote in history, but what are you really chasing after for "legendary"? Do most people even know the YouTube founders? Does being a dead artist with legions of fans mean anything?
Now I'm getting existential, but I don't understand your comment on "fame." They should break into movies with their $20MM or so, or music if they so desire "fame."
With this being said, I believe if you knew something others didn't understand you would not be doing a) or b).
3 bn is not cool anymore.
You known what's cool? 10 bn!
a) sitting on a beach in Costa Rica
b) giving a completely different project a shot with my new found riches
Maybe I just completely lack vision, but what happens in two years when Snapchat likely isn't cool anymore and all the kids are onto the next thing. Where will the money be?