Place under the sun for a new startup
We recently published the story of the birth of LinguaLeo.ru . The service started in beta on March 1. Less than a month later, the development team returns to Moscow. But we are sorry just to leave Koh Chang island - a lot has been invested in creating a comfortable working environment. Therefore, we want to share our impressions of what it is like to develop on an island in Thailand, and tell in detail what will be faced by those who venture on the adventure and go to the tropics to devote themselves entirely to the realization of the conceived idea. And we announce the action: we will give our sunny place to the good guys with a new interesting startup!
At the beginning of May we return to the capital and are ready to transfer our place under the sun and all the acquired economy in good hands. Namely: a lucrative contract to rent a large home-office, furniture and hardware to work on the project and valuable information for living here. Furniture and "iron" - for a nominal fee.
')
Our corner is located on the west side of Koh Chang Island in the Chai-chet area. Three of them live in a home-office with three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and an extensive courtyard right at the foot of the jungle. Renting this house with water and electricity costs 15,000 baht per month (about 13,000 rubles). For comparison: renting an office with the same area in Moscow would have cost 10 times more (130-150 thousand rubles). Together with the house we got round-the-clock access to the pool of the hotel that owns the house, as well as a cute Thai black and white kitten who lived here long before us.
The other two guys from the team live in a cozy Ban Chaba hotel in a two-room Thai apartment, which the hotel owners call a "wooden VIP house."
It costs 9,000 baht per month (~ 7,500 rubles). Their rooms are regularly cleaned, bed linen is changed, there are shower rooms, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a fan, an extra room-hall with a bar, a sunbed, wardrobes and a sink. Plus you do not need to pay for electricity.
We tried various work schedules and worked out for ourselves the best. The working day starts at 11 am local time (8.00 Moscow time). We usually start with a small standup rally. After three and a half hours of hard work, it is time for lunch, which was prepared by the staff on duty in the kitchen. We are on duty in twos, preparing lunch and dinner for the whole team.
In the middle of the day we have a break, everyone is engaged in personal affairs. Who is not tired of the sea or the pool - goes swimming. Someone, taking this opportunity, is not averse to taking a nap at the hottest time of the day in one of the air-conditioned rooms.
At 6 o'clock in the evening we resume the development of the project for another 3.5-4 hours, reaching the next checkpoint - dinner, which is prepared, again, by our duty officers. After dinner, you can catch a Thai massage to your favorite salon or go to a night vigil (costs ~ 200 baht).
On Saturdays and Sundays we play volleyball, we go to the neighboring islands. Sometimes you want to feel the civilization, then we travel to Bangkok. One way to the capital takes about five hours (on a motorbike to the ferry, crossing by ferry, then by minibus to the city). Soon, by the way, there will be a Thai new year (April 13th), which coincided with the birthday of one of our team members. Some are planning a trip to Bangkok during the holiday, someone flies to the islands, someone will relax here.
Two hundred meters from us there is a webcam , you can watch the weather on Koh Chang in real time, located on Coconut beach.
In October 2009, in the first two weeks of our stay, we toured the surrounding cities with a local friend, Jack, and purchased everything we needed:
What you liked:
What startup will get our equipped corner? We are very sorry to just leave all this, so we offer start-up teams ready for adventure to move to a tropical island on our place. We will transfer the accumulated resources and experience so that you can fully concentrate on the new successful project. For those interested, no more than a month is left to them - in early May we leave the island to return to Moscow and continue to develop the project already there.
If you are seriously interested in our proposal - write to LinguaLeo habrapost or via feedback . In the letter, do not forget to tell about your team and project.
At the beginning of May we return to the capital and are ready to transfer our place under the sun and all the acquired economy in good hands. Namely: a lucrative contract to rent a large home-office, furniture and hardware to work on the project and valuable information for living here. Furniture and "iron" - for a nominal fee.
')
How we live here
Our corner is located on the west side of Koh Chang Island in the Chai-chet area. Three of them live in a home-office with three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and an extensive courtyard right at the foot of the jungle. Renting this house with water and electricity costs 15,000 baht per month (about 13,000 rubles). For comparison: renting an office with the same area in Moscow would have cost 10 times more (130-150 thousand rubles). Together with the house we got round-the-clock access to the pool of the hotel that owns the house, as well as a cute Thai black and white kitten who lived here long before us.
The other two guys from the team live in a cozy Ban Chaba hotel in a two-room Thai apartment, which the hotel owners call a "wooden VIP house."
It costs 9,000 baht per month (~ 7,500 rubles). Their rooms are regularly cleaned, bed linen is changed, there are shower rooms, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a fan, an extra room-hall with a bar, a sunbed, wardrobes and a sink. Plus you do not need to pay for electricity.
We tried various work schedules and worked out for ourselves the best. The working day starts at 11 am local time (8.00 Moscow time). We usually start with a small standup rally. After three and a half hours of hard work, it is time for lunch, which was prepared by the staff on duty in the kitchen. We are on duty in twos, preparing lunch and dinner for the whole team.
In the middle of the day we have a break, everyone is engaged in personal affairs. Who is not tired of the sea or the pool - goes swimming. Someone, taking this opportunity, is not averse to taking a nap at the hottest time of the day in one of the air-conditioned rooms.
At 6 o'clock in the evening we resume the development of the project for another 3.5-4 hours, reaching the next checkpoint - dinner, which is prepared, again, by our duty officers. After dinner, you can catch a Thai massage to your favorite salon or go to a night vigil (costs ~ 200 baht).
On Saturdays and Sundays we play volleyball, we go to the neighboring islands. Sometimes you want to feel the civilization, then we travel to Bangkok. One way to the capital takes about five hours (on a motorbike to the ferry, crossing by ferry, then by minibus to the city). Soon, by the way, there will be a Thai new year (April 13th), which coincided with the birthday of one of our team members. Some are planning a trip to Bangkok during the holiday, someone flies to the islands, someone will relax here.
Two hundred meters from us there is a webcam , you can watch the weather on Koh Chang in real time, located on Coconut beach.
During our stay here, we have created a convenient "infrastructure"
In October 2009, in the first two weeks of our stay, we toured the surrounding cities with a local friend, Jack, and purchased everything we needed:
- A complete set of office supplies: marker and cork boards, waddings, a laser printer, five comfortable tables and chairs, a coffee maker, lots of coffee, supports for papers and other trifles.
- Technique for creativity: server machine, two widescreen displays, UPS nicknames, extension cords, adapters for monitors, WiFi router, LAN cable, cooling coasters for laptops that were already every team member.
- Utensils for food and cooking, cooler for stand and cooling water, six 20-liter bottles.
- The contract with the company that delivers water to the house by phone call (price - 15 baht per bottle, 5 pieces is enough for a week, ie, 75 baht).
- The contract with the island’s only Internet provider ToT. The real speed is about 1 Mbps, sometimes slightly lower, although we were assured that the speed would be 4 Mbps. Cost - 900 baht per month, we have enough with his head, oddly enough.
- The agreement with the landlord that we can use the swimming pool at the hotel without any restrictions (see photo).
- Motorbike rental contract. The price for half a year of rent is 12,500 baht (~ 11.000 rubles) for one motorbike.
- Valuable information about where it is better to buy food, where to repair bikes, if they break, where to order a gas cylinder replacement (delivered once a month and a half, 300 baht ~ 250 rubles), how to get a student visa if you want to learn Thai or English ( it is not necessary to live in Bangkok, you can live anywhere in Thailand).
Some results of our semi-annual stay on the island
What you liked:
- Sea, sun, beach, clean air and pleasant scenery.
- Many local dishes, seafood: tasty and cheap.
- Swimming, island tours, snorkeling, waterfalls, elephants, monkeys, waterfalls and mountains.
- Prices for food, housing, service and clothing.
- There are no traffic jams on the island, no traffic jams at all. Totally.
- Medicine is at its height, both traditional (especially if there is insurance) and non-traditional (especially massage).
- Bangkok nightlife :)
- There is always someone to talk to: interesting people coming from all over the world, from Australia to Canada; expats, Russians and foreigners living in Kochang ...
- Infrastructure for entertainment and leisure: golf courses, beach volleyball courts, tennis courts, ping-pong tables and billiards. Only 80 km to Cambodia: Sihanoukville, Ankor Wat, casino, even cheaper shopping, if necessary, visa run.
- Stable weather: it is equally easy to dress every day.
- While working, the gaze does not rest on the photo wallpaper or on the wall of the neighboring building, but flies away over the horizon, glides along the water surface, it is surrounded by rocky islands in the distance, silhouettes of fishing boats, tops of coconut palms and banana trees.
- While working, you can move around with a laptop: work at the table, as usual, work on the porch, in a hammock, on the couch, in a lounge chair.
- Fresh fruits. Lot. Different.
- Friendly Thais, the country of smiles! :)
- Sometimes it is too hot weather, unusual for us. Although, if you compare with the newly arrived "snowballs", we endure the heat very well :)
- "Groundhog Day" in the most popular in Koh Chang night club "Sabay Bar". The composition of the compositions and speakers almost did not change. Apparently, designed for the cycle of tourists. But this minus is easily replaced by other equally fun places.
- Longing for civilization on some days. Although this is subjective, the main thing is to be able to relax, and Bangkok is not far.
- The island was disconnected for half a day several times.
- It is possible to communicate with relatives only via Skype, sometimes the time difference (3-4 hours) makes you know about yourself.
Conclusions that we can draw from the experience gained
- To do a startup in such conditions is real! If there is an idea, thinking heads and several laptops. Here you can create all the conditions for project development. Everything can be organized, with all agree. The main thing is to know where to go.
- A six-month trip to a tropical country really helps to focus on a startup, without being distracted by the usual worries of life. The effect of “burning bridges” also works, increasing motivation for action.
- The decision to implement a startup in Tae really helps to save money.
- You should not be attached to the letter of the development methodology (XP, in our case) or the work organization tool. If one-day iterations are suitable now - we use them, have ceased to come up - go to weekly iterations. If now arranging tasks on the board without any buggregging is fine. If it's convenient and fast to keep bugs in Google Docs - no problem. As soon as this starts to be missed - we change, but not earlier than is really necessary (if there is no ready-made and familiar tool for the whole team).
- In fact, the ocean is five minutes away, the beach and the sun are not so distracting after a month of living on the island. Pleasant with useful can and should be combined.
What we advise those who want to repeat our venture
- If you want to stay anywhere for six months or more, first take a tour for a couple of weeks to find a place that suits you. If we had not traveled here six weeks before we finally moved, we would not have this house and all the necessary information.
- Be sure to make a medical insurance for all six months. She helped us out a few times :)
- Get ready to change your lifestyle and habitual urban conditions for something wild and tropical. Rejection of some stereotypes helps a lot.
- Do not take a lot of clothes. Most do not come in handy due to climate mismatch. Here the most popular are shorts and a very, very light T-shirt or shirt, 99% of the time everyone spent in spanking or sandals. All the necessary clothes can be bought here, it is of good quality and cheap. And Bangkok for shopping lovers is paradise.
- Be prepared that jungles or tropics can leave their mark on your startup, as they did with our service for learning English LinguaLeo.ru
Our mini-contest!
What startup will get our equipped corner? We are very sorry to just leave all this, so we offer start-up teams ready for adventure to move to a tropical island on our place. We will transfer the accumulated resources and experience so that you can fully concentrate on the new successful project. For those interested, no more than a month is left to them - in early May we leave the island to return to Moscow and continue to develop the project already there.
If you are seriously interested in our proposal - write to LinguaLeo habrapost or via feedback . In the letter, do not forget to tell about your team and project.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/90460/
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