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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

I know it's registered in the US, but still: go Romania! :-)

Hai Romanii!!!! :D

literally dozens of us!

And each of us can be a Daniel Dines if we ever decide to save up our American capital and go back to start more companies. :)

Well, it wouldn't hurt if at some point we finally have, you know... Romanian capital :-)

100%, I like how you think <3 :)

What is it going to take to get there?

More successful Romanian owned businesses, especially international ones plus, I think, better EU funds use. EU funds are not exactly Romanian funding but are earmarked for Romanian development so they're not far off, and we're super bad at utilizing them fully.

I've worked with Romanian devs a bunch around Cluj and had really good experiences. I'm assuming the talent pool isn't huge but seems very high quality.

Well, as everywhere in the world, it varies. Plus a lot of people have left/are leaving Romania, but even so, for a rather poor country of now around 18 million people (used to be ~23 million in 1990), I think there are around 100k software developers). Which is not too shabby considering where we started (I guess in 1990 we had maybe 5k).

Cluj is growing but it's still a bit of secondary center. Bucharest on the other hand has offices from almost every major player, I think only Facebook, Apple and Netflix are the only ones missing for now (that might change, as things are moving super fast these days). Otherwise, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Google, Intel, Huawei, Adobe, SAP, etc. are there.

It's my goal to save up more cash and then at some point in the near future move to Romania to try my hand at a startup there. Any recommendations on who to talk with or what kinds of resources I should read? Should a startup be incorporated in America still, or do the Romania tech tax-benefits only apply to companies incorporated in Romania? Questions like these are accumulating on my list now that I'm starting to see this goal becoming a reality! Any recommendations or advice would be appreciated.

I can't say that I have much advice for this, but if you're serious about this, it's probably a good idea to contact a lawyer, maybe try this: https://www.stratulat-albulescu.ro/en/contact/ I imagine a few hours of discussions won't cost you an arm and a leg and you should be able to get far more qualified advice than what you'd get from a rando on the internet.

If you do want to move, personally I would avoid Bucharest... a bit. Competition is super fierce. Timișoara, Cluj or Iași, especially Iași, should have a decent talent pool and slightly lower salary expenses/lower cost of living, and they all have international airports so you can easily move around when needed.

I'd learn a bit of Romanian. If you only speak English it will be relatively hard, but reasonably doable: https://www.openculture.com/2017/11/a-map-showing-how-much-t... (note: those numbers are for career diplomats undergoing intensive training, however, as you can see, it's still one of the easiest languages to crack for an English speaker :-) ).

Thanks for the advice! I really appreciate it. I'm pretty fluent in Romanian, at least by American standards. Grew up bilingual because we were always more embedded in the Romanian community around town. :) But I will definitely seek to improve massively so I sound exactly like a native speaker!

Good luck! You'll need it (both because a startup is a risky business, and also because Romania still has a long way to become fully business friendly and well... developed). On the other hand: no risk, no reward.

someone slap un lup dacic on that S1 imediat!

Romanian devs are quality devs! Go Romania!

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