Having recently joined a startup as an early employee, I just can't think this is a good way to get anything really accomplished. We're running at full tilt to figure out our product fit, building backed systems we need, talking to prospective customers, etc. If we were lounging on an island some where, how could you possibly do those things well?
Truly successful businesses are not vacations. Coding on the beach with a mai thai sounds romantic, but comes across as foolish and a waste of precious runway resources.
Exceptions might include if you and your team happen to be native to a luxourious beach, in which case your environment might contribute to your success. This has not been vetted yet, so far.
It won't be a waste of resources if the place you go is cheaper than your current location. Your burn rate will go down this way.
I know 3 teams first-hand who moved to "cheap" places (two in Bali, the other one being us, in a small rural village of France), all while doing remote consulting, to bootstrap businesses (I'm bootstrapping https://www.wisecashhq.com).
I can say we have a pretty good work-life balance, all while being indefinitely sustainable, under that setup.
can I suggest (completely off topic) before you launch to get a domain other than wisecashHq just because it would be better to not have 2 repeating H (especially if you are in france, where the ache sound might make pronunciation tough) wisecash.co ? or something easy to spell. good luck! or better said bonne chance!
You have a good point, and I completely agree. This "Startup Paradise" is advertised as almost the exact opposite of that though. While the area may be cheap, trying to do a worthwhile startup under the guise of a tropical vacation detracts from the intense effort required to put into the company.
It's not about working on the beach, it's about being able to go to the beach to rest and having an amazing work place for the time you want to be effective.
Focus / Defocus are for me the best way to be effective.
I am world traveler for past 8 years and I can tell is really hard to work at some paradise longer than normal vacation time. Typical paradise consist of beach, some local bar and maybe two or three crappy restaurants.
There are many different kind of people, but I dont believe that most of us will thrive in this kind of non stimulating environment.
And how do I meet with my customers? How do I watch my users using my product? I know we have technological breakthrough using products like Telepresence, Skype but they'll never ever replace inter-personal communication. Especially, things like watching users play around our product and understanding the problems with our product.
This looks cool! There's a lot of hard things to figure out here (visas, internet access, pirates, funding landscape, and lots of things the naysayers in this thread are happily listing out), but if you can make it happen, it will be amazing. Best of luck!
Sounds greattttttttttttt ... can you provide a new identity, hidden bank accounts and something that eliminates my sense of responsibility too?
I'm kidding of course, but my point is that not everyone can just escape their current situation ... and in my case I wouldn't want to. For me, start-up paradise would be a very quiet office within biking distance of my house.
Somewhere with like-minded people who would like to establish a show-and-tell hour each day. It would be great to have at least peer-review of ideas and some intellectual conversation, then be able to retreat into the zone and accomplish something worthy of showing at the next get together.
I like "4 Hour Workweek" and its ilk ... particularly the message about not delaying gratification forever (or at least until retirement).
But come on ... does anyone really think that Google or Facebook or SpaceX or etc could have been built without significant personal sacrifice by not only the founders but also the employees?
I'm not saying that you should be worked like a slave ... but if you go into it with the explicit goal of combining comfort AND entrepreneurship ... then you should prepare to be dissapointed.
That's a dangerous way to think about it. Success often requires sacrifice, but sacrifice does not bring success.
The median time to exit from venture funding is something like 6 years. During that, you need to be at the top of your game as much of the time as possible.
I have a friend who's a serious endurance athlete. He trains hard, but he's just as dedicated about rest. Weekly massages and spa visits, great food, a clean and restful home, a lot of quiet time. Sacrificing those comforts would make him look more macho, but they'd reduce his effectiveness.
If somebody needs a daily dose of sun and sand to be at the top of their game, godspeed.
I actually think this would be really cool for working on a book or similar creative project. But for a startup.. "with bad internet connection" rules out almost anything I'd want to do startup-wise, alas.
One day I hope to try what John Carmack used to do. Go away to a really dull area with a nice hotel and spend a week working with zero interruptions :-)
Sounds great to me. I'd love to go. I would enjoy the change of pace and meeting some new people (who are hopefully working on interesting projects). Fast/reliable internet is a MUST. There are plenty of beautiful/relaxing places in the world with fast internet. I won't expect to get as much work done as I usually do. It would be nice if there were some side trips planned during the afternoons/evenings.
Thrilling idea, but I have a hard time giving my email address to a service who can't even take the time to properly setup their root domain's page: http://startupparadise.com/
Is this a joke? I hope this is some kind of sarcastic prank to make a point. If it isn't then this whole startup trend,and that's what it's becoming - a trendy thing to do - has gone too far.
This would probably be best for a focused sprint to build the first (or next) iteration of a product. You need to be back in real life to interact with users and pivot the idea if necessary.
Nice for a lifestyle freelancer, but could be problematic for a speculative startup, except as an occasional offsite. Might make the team soft. Perhaps a 'startup purgatory' instead?
Truly successful businesses are not vacations. Coding on the beach with a mai thai sounds romantic, but comes across as foolish and a waste of precious runway resources.
Exceptions might include if you and your team happen to be native to a luxourious beach, in which case your environment might contribute to your success. This has not been vetted yet, so far.