---
As you probably know, I am out of Russia. Me and my team of 12 engineers have a temporary HQ in Central Europe, and we are now looking for a permanent base to work from. We are choosing a new home, a country that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of speech in mind.
Our team includes 6 ACM champions and 6 winners of other programming contests. These guys made it possible for Telegram Messenger to gather 40 million registered users worldwide just within 8 months after its launch. Several members of this team, including my brother, were crucial in making VKontakte what it is today — the only social network that defeated Facebook in an open local market. We are now going to build our next project, a mobile social network.
What country or city do you think would suit us best? Please feel free to comment below. To give you an idea of our preferences, we dislike bureaucracy, police states, big governments, wars, socialism and excessive regulation. We like freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights.
P.S. If you happen to represent a government that meets our criteria, you are welcome to share ideas with me at durov2016@gmail.com.
Also our language is Slavic so very similar to Russian. We have democracy and I am not aware of any censorship. We are atheists and we are not homophobic. Also we have very good infrastructure and it is cheap to live here. And Prague is a beautiful city.
Seriously? Is that a good reason to move somewhere? What difference does it make? It's as irrelevant to moving as is the ethnicity of the country.
Words unfortunately spoken by someone from the Netherlands.
Anyways I would have expected more than a simple gmail address from someone developing a crypto messenger. A GPG Public Key too much to ask?
Otherwise Switzerland is indeed quite a nice play for businesses. Founding a company takes about half an hour. So that should count as fairly unbureaucratic. Plus Google etc. have their Europe headquarter here.
[0] Source: I live there.
And for the Dutch, please. Dutch hypocrisy and inferiority complex is at its peak. Just the political climate there is enough to put any decent human being off, with such support for the extreme right (Wilders) becoming mainstream, why would anyone want to live or work there, is beyond my understanding.
There are lots of nice places in Eastern Europe where the living costs are low, the weather nice and the scenery beautiful.
And in quite a few (e.g. Romania) the government is too busy stealing stuff to bother about oppressing freedoms, except maybe about elections...
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jul/12/iceland-legal-h...
On the other side it is cheap, reasonably free-as-in-freedom and not a police state yet. Also good weather.
In some places, they simply mention to them that there's a thriving gay community in the city. That seems to be enough to make them go away...
I think it's brilliant, and I also think large concentration of immigrants in one place ends up destroying that community’s reputation and invites trouble.
But! Bureaucracy is horrible, especially for non-EU foreigners trying to work here. My past company spent a lot of time bringing a (highly qualified, well-paid) Russian to work for a Slovenian! company. I think they resolved the case by using personal connections to government employees (the normal way of resolving issues in Slovenia). Also, taxes are rather high (top marginal tax is only 42%, but it kicks in way sooner than e.g. in UK).
Slovakia made lot of progress in past 10 years. In business friendlies it is ahead, it also has more stable and simpler laws. In Czech rep every new government totally changes taxes, accounting, working law...
Religion wise I do not know. Czech republic is probably the most agnostic country in Europe (if now in the world), and I have not noticed much difference in tolerance compared to Slovakia. Being from Russia will be probably bigger issue.
ISRAEL: It is by far the most disgustingly capitalistic country I've ever lived in but the VK crew may find this to their benefit. They will also find a nice and strong Russian community in Israel and a large pool of talent to pull from. What they will not find there is any sort of non-commercial activity (non-edu research, hacker spaces, fringe technical movement of any type) nor will they find a government interested in free speech. And they will have to turn a blind eye to all the shit their tax dollars will be put toward.
BERLIN: If you want free speech then definitely go to Berlin. Germanys conservative government comes off more liberal than the US's most liberal government. You'll find strong party factions with ties to post-NSA thinkers and movers. The place is beaming with intellectual discourse. It is also a hacker mecca so there are plenty of fringe technological movements. What you will not find is a large tech community (though it is growing fast) nor a very money driven culture.
Go to Berlin if you want to make impact on the world. Go to Israel if you want to make money.
I don't think it would meet the no wars criteria (probably the police state one too).
- If you get three Israelis in a room, on most subjects you'll find four very different viewpoints.
- The media are free and have a large range. From what I've seen in English, much more allowed than the almost censored Swedish media.
(But sure, it is a country in a permanent low intensive war -- and the only country in the world with a nuclear weapon threat over their heads. That will influence the general attitude quite a lot.)
Minimal bureaucracy, you can register your company in an afternoon. http://www.fundempresa.org.bo/
You can buy a huge location for peanuts. Or even rent a huge mansion for $2000/month. I'm talking about a place that could house a team of 50 easily.
Weather is really beautiful, 90% of the time it's warm and sunny. The winter months are May/June/July. With only 1 week or two of real 'winter' weather.
Lots of untapped talent. The best developers here work for outsourcing companies making about $1000-$1200/month. If you were to offer $2000 you can easily poach the best.
Cost of living is minimal. $600/month and you're set.
Not such a free place if you want to displace the government or use recreational drugs, however, but business-wise it's pretty open.
(
) http://gyrovague.com/2013/10/30/half-the-donut-why-an-entrep...i wonder what ppl from the east think europe is. europe is one big of a mess of enforced conformity. souvereignty was not in that list but i think it's implied. there's no such thing in any eu country (except uk, maybe). even switzerland has laid down to their masters overseas.
civil rights, small government, neutrality? get out of here as long as you can, buddy.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...
The chances of becoming a serious Whatsapp competitor have just vanished. Focus is everything, spread too thin and you're done for good.
This is going to be a separate product from Telegram. Durov knows what focus is, he kept VK very focused while he was around.
Canadian government is decidedly anti-Putin. Canada has both start-up visa program[0] and business immigration program[1]. Lots of talent. As for bureaucracy, police state, regulation, and big governments - really depends on whom you ask and everything is relative so I'll leave it at that.
[0] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/ind...
They even have high-speed optic fiber on the island. And here is a nice property for sale, should be great for a small team of 2-4: http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/object?finnkode=448... Plane tickets to the mainland are dirt cheap.
Anyway, that is my dream – to get a comfortable, cozy place far away from the continent. Whatever happens out in the world, will likely not distract me from work.
Edit: >They have a team of 12
Well then, one could always buy land and build on it. Also on Svalbard, taxes are pretty low.
Poland is not really friends with Russian government lately so they will protect you. Also - not like small countries - they are large enough to stand strong on any requests from big countries about data sharing etc. Some Polish people speaks russian and most young speak english so you would be covered. Cultural differences are not huge so it would be easy to blend in for you.
Another guess - Ireland. Country in Nato but in reality its neutral. There is only 12.5% corporate tax, social is pretty good and everybody speaks english. Just pick Dublin or Cork - those are more "ahead" cities. They have good web connection and there are some activities in them. They are also safe. Country is extremely friendly to web startups (good network - lots of free help). Prices are really high though.
Canada - it might be hard for visa (unless you state your reason of data protection - Canada is another country having issues with Putins politics). Canada protects freedom to speech and they can protect your data from russia easily. Energy independent (nobody can bully them) is pretty expensive though. Pick Vancouver or Toronto. If you are hardcore - choose Calgary - harsh weather but 0% state tax and business oriented community.
There are also places like New Zealand (might be to remote), Vietnam or Phillipines (to small to really give good protection), Japan (expensive and cultural differences might be a problem). Good luck!
A history of privacy violations has resulted in a favourable right to privacy enshrined in law. It isn't watertight, but it is better than many others.
Switzerland is a good location, regarding laws and no corruption. I wonder however how they are going to get work permits anywhere in westeurope tough, when they are all russians. I guess investing a lot of money might fix that problem.
Its all over the BBC News today: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27043778
The weather is different from Russia.
