Bootstrapping Abroad: why we do it and why it's awesome

Bootstrapping abroad, a wanderlust in two acts. Ira Glass eat your heart out.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about travel and business, and not a lot of real hard info. It’s a bit of an out there thing, I guess- start your business from Argentina for the low, low price of $1,000 a month! Call today, supplies are limited! There’s a lot of mythologizing around travel, and a lot of dreams. The latter is especially dangerous, especially for folks who work on their laptops- I think most of us love the idea of living in a tropical paradise, working from the beach and creating to the sounds of surf sweeping up onto the sand.

So what’s it really like?

I’ve now worked for at least three months from three places internationally- Buenos Aires, Koh Tao, and Budapest.

Whenever the the topic of working abroad comes up, there’s usually a list of concerns everyone has in the back of their mind. Here’s the bottom line: everything is fixable with money, and if you managed to luck out by having savings in a strong currency, it won’t cost much. It costs less each month to work on the tropical island of Koh Tao, Thailand than it does to work in San Francisco, Austin, Boulder, or New York. I won’t count Seattle because the weather sucks and it’s always overcast, so whatever. Though it’s also true for Seattle. Not that I’m counting Seattle.

Anyways.

In general, if you choose to move on over to an emerging market like Argentina or Thailand, you can count on costs being cut by two thirds for an equivalent lifestyle to what you might have in San Francisco or New York- in reality, though, if you cut to a third you’ll be tempted to spend more, go out a bit more, and drink a bit more- you’ll really wind up with a net halving.

Most expats I know don’t live an equivalent lifestyle to what they had in the States, they live it up a bit in their apartment and their day to day life. Not a lot, but a little bit in every area across the board. So, while you can definitely cut costs to a third or a quarter, most wind up cutting by a half and improving their quality of life.

So, live better life, pay less money, double your runway! Fucking score, eh? A lot of this depends on what kind of lifestyle you want- if your business is selling products on the internet to consumers, without a enterprise or B2B aspect that requires you be able to go pitch the product in person, there’s an enormous degree of flexibility in the day to day life you can craft for yourself and your company.

Life in every place is different, there’s no broad ‘bootstrap abroad’ conclusion- if you want to live on the beach, give it a go! Koh Tao was beautiful but the environment didn’t really jell for me- there’s a lot of great people living there, but it’s like living in DisneyLand- everyone is there to forget about their troubles for a week, then return to their soulcrushing job at a big multinational.

You meet a lot of folks who have checked out in a lot of respects- working real estate, one day decide that they’re sick and tired of it, move to Koh Tao, get a job as a scuba instructor, and spend every day teaching people to surf and swimming through some of the most gorgeous reefs you’ve ever seen in your life.

Amazing gig! But not exactly the ideal atmosphere for building a new company. For me, it wasn’t a good fit- but for someone else it might be perfect. The fact is, there’s tons of amazing, beautiful emerging markets that would be great to live in- I can’t recommend Buenos Aires enough, for instance.

For me, the biggest benefit is intangible- when you live in one place for years, it starts to feel a bit stale. You drive on autopilot, you walk around without really seeing the beauty around you- normalcy. And normalcy is stifling, and uncreative. When I travel, everything is new- obvious, right? But if everything is new, you always have to be a bit more on your game, a little more aware, and a little more in the moment. It’s creative, and in its moment to moment creativity, there’s a moment to moment focus that makes starting a business feel like a more natural outgrowth… of lifestyle.

And that’s what it’s about- lifestyle. Imagine working your ass off for three years starting a business only to wind up having to commute 40 minutes into a downtown highrise every day. What’s the point? Transitioning from one high rise office to a slightly larger high rise office, albeit that you happen to cast a vote on a board in favor of?

Having a business is art, and I don’t care how off the wall that might sound. A corporation is a political entity- it brings together people to make shit happen, just like a nation-state does, except on a smaller scale, and sans F22’s. When you start a business you’re creating a new organization, and a new lifestyle- you have the opportunity to create something new in the world not just in terms of product, but in terms of the day to day of each and every employee. So create!

If you want to build not just a product but an organization, go where you’re most creative, go where you have the best shot at starting something new. Make something people want, to be sure, but put yourself in a position with the cards stacked in your favor. Living somewhere where you’re more creative on a day to day basis, moving somewhere you have a higher quality of life, moving somewhere where costs are a third- these are all good things. These are all amazing things. And, at the very least, these are all things worth trying- so book your ticket and give bootstrapping abroad a go!