OK, I tried with the traders, didn't get trough, I'm getting back to my world which is you, programmers. The state gives you a non-reimbursable grant worth $50,000 out of a total of half a billion dollars budget. So you're only one of the small fry that gets it. The idea (of the state, the payer) is hopefully at least a few of them will grow big. The receiver, you, the developer on the other hand needs to do something profitable with those money. By that meaning they should at least cover *out of their own pocket* those $50,000 over two years hiring at least one developer. So you got $25k / year to pay a guy (hopefully) as smart as you, ideally at least 10x Subtracting taxes and ignoring running costs like office space, legal and accounting, that's $1354 / developer net take home in the European country where I live and who implements this startup sponsorship programme. That's nowhere near enough to hire a "fuck you, pay me" type, but chances those aren't real 10x programmers anyways but posers and certainly not 100xs as I hope to find a few. At $1354 you can live decently for two years here and work, again decently (no overtime or irrational deadline) for a 100x exit. Anyways, after two years the state reimburses your $50,000 investment back regardless if it's a success or a failure, as long as your accounting books are clean (like you didn't try to steal them, not an unusual attempt around these parts, gotta be honest). Worst case scenario: you got a worthless $50,000 software in your property, for free. It's worthless but at least it was free. Best case scenario: you got a highly valuable $50,000,000 software in your property, for free. Best thing overall, it was free. Of course, the sponsoring state hopes you won't dissapear with all the money next day, never to return and rather, continue to invest in the respective region. But as long as your books (and legal) are clean, you can do just that. So: would you invest $50,000 here under these circumstances? We're not the most frequentable part of Europe but we are, at least until further notice, part of the European Union. (Which, in parentheses is also the reason for the existence of this programme, although the government makes a big fuss of it being a *national* one and not an EU-commission budgeted and rather impossible to achieve bureaucratically. But we do have bureaucratically achieved programmes for let's say infrastructure consolidation, worth $20 billion. So yeah, those half a billion are our own product and budget but they'd have never been available without EU covering the gross part. There's a local saying "whip the saddle so the horse gets the message". The message in parentheses is not for you guys on this forum but my own co-national eurosceptics).
Or Southern. Could be Greece or even Italy Does it really matter afterall? If you're US-ian, gotta be honest, this is fairly accurate. How Europeans view US: http://i.imgur.com/8ySWs.png
Sorry to have to point it out but it's called "irony" and it's actually a subtle form of humor. Looks like Texas guys get it though, so not everything's lost
Come see us if you ever get to Chicago area and are allowed to work in the U.S. ajacobson@exitosus.com
Getting a visa is a formality but staying for longer periods is more problematic, I think. Not that I want to do that but I've got colleagues who are more eager to travel. Previous employer was headquartered in Los Angeles and current one is in Santa Clara, so not much travel to Chicago but thanks for the invitation and will visit, should I ever happen to get there. Both companies were local startups that were eventually acquired by Americans. First, directly and second one initially by another European company that was acquired by a an American one. Like all roads lead to Rome, looks like if it makes money, eventually it leads to California
I'll be setting up my TWS/API Java test-bed on The Great White Horse (a water-cooled gaming computer that I picked up for maybe 25ยข on the hardware dollar. ) AND I've got a spare bedroom/bath in the front of the house that I was thinking of putting on AirBnB. (The rest of the house is a construction zone, but "Hey!" we do what we can, right? I'm just glad I finished the boiler before the cold weather rolled in. I gots me some *radiating* radiators! ) AND!! The room is acoustically wonderful -- a byproduct of my uber-geeky audiophile daze.