bluekite2000

Relevant:http://www.khanacademy.org/video/renting-vs--buying-a-home?p...

I was 27. I quit after 3 years out of grad school. But you are right. I dont think its just age. It is also the differences in the backgrounds. You just need to adapt and mirror the other person. It is easier said than done but my social skills improved a lot because of that.

How I did it:

1. quit my corporate software engineering job (it was slowly killing my soul)

2. went surfing in maui for 2 weeks then bali for a month. when there was no waves, there were parties on Kuta beach

3. opened an English bookstore in Southeast Asia(highly risky considering I knew nothing about the local market or government censorship) Everyone I knew thought I was crazy. But I DIDNT care! For the first time in my life I was doing something meaningful, to me and to society.

4. met tons of babes (locals, other asian babes, europeans, americans) by going out every single night for 1 year straight (averaging 4 5 clubs per nite). Plus did tons of traveling around asia, south america and north america. Trust me you are forced to socialize when EVERYONE at the hostel was happy go lucky young backpackers. And the bookstore also attracted lots of girls (which was NOT the reason why I opened the store :)

5. Now I m back in Silicon Valley and guess what it is still the same (nice guys toiling away in front of their laptops while life, and hot babes, are passing them by) And I smile to myself. It is me who has changed!

You are still in a better situation than many here. SF's coffee shops are littered w/ debt-laden (pseudo)-hackers who have half-baked ideas/projects, no gf's (or wives), zero connection to anyone of value and sleeping on a sofa of some friend's musty apartment.

I heard Brian Chesky (Airbnb's cofounder) on Gigaom talking about announcing other categories in 2011 on top of housing (which sounds like a natural extension).So kudos to the guy who executed this but I can already see this space is going get ultra competitive pretty soon.

Airbnb is a good startup but the founders struggled so much at first without gaining any significant traction. And even with PG's endorsement they still had trouble getting funding from a progressive-minded VC. I wonder if they (Airbnb's founders) could make it to this point without YC.

"Moving here will help you find a cofounder, meet lots of other entrepreneurs who can help you, and build relationships with investors." Can you share some specific experiences (how you met them, how they helped you, outcomes,etc)?

"it comes down to a question of whether I'd rather be distracted by a cute girl or an old man getting reprimanded for looking at dirty pictures" : exactly my experience in SF public library vs a cafe in Mission.

I m also interested in the same kind of career (spent the past 3 years in S.E Asia doing startup) so let me know when you make enough money&have nothing stopping you:)

not a bad idea..what is stopping you?

why do you need to supply an email? Is that even necessary? Most people will fake it anyway

On a related note,I hosted glype (a free proxy script) on a server in the US to help people from Vietnam access facebook. But javascript is disabled and I m having trouble enabling it. If you are interested in helping me, pm me please. My php/proxy skills are pretty limited

" If you think it's easy to get laid in Silicon Valley, you are a bartender with a huge dick, not the VP of Product for Whatever.com" LOL. This is the best sentence I have read on hackers news by far.

so what will you decision be (working for a startup or doing ur own thing)? I remember you did your own stuff (iphone app) and stuff. I m in Sf now and in a similar situation so I d like to hear your take.

Did you rent a scooter and rider around Cat ba island? Good times...

how did pua help you through bad times when u were just a theorist? please clarify

Why say so? You found pua's here? That d be shocking.

I just came from S.E Asia after 3 years. its pretty gritty there so you must watch out. Where will you be and what will you do exactly?

Can you hack non-VM phones to use this plan?

Because vietnam is a friendly and loving country. bookstore because government-owned stores in Saigon sold really shitty English books

What? You opened a bookstore in Vietnam too? lol.

have u considered living abroad? I spent 3 years in silicon valley and got burnt out. So i just moved to vietnam, opened a bookstore and outsourced most of the work. Then I just went out a lot and traveled a lot since Vietnam is close to everything (thailand,singapore,indo, hongkong,etc). Best years of my life by far:)

Have you been able to grow beyond the "inside contact" deals? And by "look for companies in fields outside of internet tech" can you give some examples?

How did you go about finding these 500K+ web apps? What kind of clients are they? What kind of apps do you do for them? If you dont mind me asking