Guide to the Philippines Startup Community | Hacker News Reader

Guide to the Philippines Startup Community

thestartupdigest.com

13 pointsCmccann76 comments

We wrote this in response to the HN discussion "Ask HN: Best Startup City - Outside the USA?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565375

The blog post is a profile of the Philippines and who you should meet, and what you should do there if you are thinking of moving or visiting the country.

We also have amazing beaches, cheap beer and great (but hard-to-find) coders

I can vouch for that! My favorite beaches are in Boracay and Bohol. My favorite Philippine beer is San Mig Light (at less than $0.60 most places), and the best coders I've worked with outside of Belarus live in Cebu. I have an outsourcing company and my whole team is based in Cebu. They are 100% reliable, much cheaper than stateside developers, and they write English better than some Americans. I'm a year or two away from moving there permanently to keep living costs down.

Any insights into the visa requirements? I've researched this a bit and the information is sparse. I have an LLC based in the US. What does an American need to do if they want to go over there, rent office space, and hire locals. I was under the impression that I needed to invest at least $75,000 in order to be legal.

I just got back from the Philippines (3 weeks in May), and while I was there I learned about a new visa - SVEG (Special Visa for Employment Generation):

http://immigration.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&t...

The SVEG is a special visa issued to a qualified non-immigrant foreigner who shall actually employ at least ten (10) Filipinos in a lawful and sustainable enterprise, trade or industry. Qualified foreigners who are granted the SVEG shall be considered special non-immigrants with multiply entry privileges and conditional extended stay, without need of prior departure from the Philippines.

That may be exactly what you need. I'm looking at it because I already employ 10 locals.

You really can't go wrong with the Philippines. Culture wise the Philippines is the closest to western culture among the asian countries.

Accent wise we don't have a funny accent :) you won't have trouble understanding our english. Our alphabet is very similar to the US.

Talent wise - we have a lot of great coders, I agree with the post, the technique is have a higher than average compensation for developers so you can lure them out.

Disclaimer: I'm a Filipino.

This is a post that couldn't be more timely for me. I am a US-based software engineer and entrepreneur, Filipino-immigrant, interested in venturing back to the Philippines to begin a startup. Thanks HN!

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