Comments on: Why I’m giving up on Europe and moving my startup to China

By: Mathias

Mathias — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:48:51 +0000

I agree with David_Winter, and from my own experience (I'm from Germany, living in Guangzhou for 6 yrs, having had a software dev team in GZ for few years): you can tell from the article that it's written by a startup guy doing small scale business and not yet having had the break through, no offense intended, but it really reads like that. I agree with some of your points of view (esp. about Germany – I also have no intention to ever go back to Europe), however, the benefits of the Chinese work force is exaggerated. Chinese graduates might be trying hard to get the work done, but they really remain *trying*, ad compare that to a German graduate, also compare the quality. Speed, accuracy and quality differ immensely. And if you're doing a lot of oversea projects (English required verbally and in writing), it's hard to find developers who are able to communicate well (without you needing to be in the middle and playing the interpreter all the time) and are also good in coding at the same time. So far, all graduates I've seen, have almost no practical experience in coding, never done any side jobs beside their studies. Of course you will find good developers in China, but on the other hand, at least from my experience, most developers are looking to work in a large company, not in a small startup. If they do, they only plan to stay for a short term in order to being able to claim that they have worked for a foreign company, not bad for their CV What you described is therefore actually a disadvantage, you want people to stay long-term, not those who are job-hopping on a regular basis. Otherwise your initial attitude towards your own startup really seems as if you're over-cautious and anxious that it might fail already.

By: jack

jack — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 18:48:05 +0000

Interesting post. Recently I've been pondering opening a company in the British Virgin Islands just to get rid of the bureaucratic burden of paying an accountant several hundred euros per month just to process a couple of invoices.

By: rrhvella

rrhvella — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:50:24 +0000

I don't agree with a single word you said in this article, but I wish you good luck nonetheless.

By: haoji

haoji — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:20:21 +0000

你在深圳？我想跟你聊聊

By: ivo

ivo — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:46:58 +0000

Best comment EVERRRR!

By: PanosJee

PanosJee — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:21:43 +0000

Awesome comment!

By: petko

petko — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:45:56 +0000

yeah, this adds up! )

By: @ungerik

@ungerik — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:01:42 +0000

How easy/difficult is it to get a visa/work permit for Shenzhen for an European?

By: idont

idont — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:26:59 +0000

By: @dumbmac

@dumbmac — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:17:21 +0000

Have you considered Singapore, Max?