Citation from a Facebook post by Pavel Durov (founder of vk.com and Telegram), for those who don't want to open Facebook:
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As you probably know, I am out of Russia. Me and my team of 12 engineers have a temporary HQ in Central Europe, and we are now looking for a permanent base to work from. We are choosing a new home, a country that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of speech in mind.
Our team includes 6 ACM champions and 6 winners of other programming contests. These guys made it possible for Telegram Messenger to gather 40 million registered users worldwide just within 8 months after its launch. Several members of this team, including my brother, were crucial in making VKontakte what it is today — the only social network that defeated Facebook in an open local market. We are now going to build our next project, a mobile social network.
What country or city do you think would suit us best? Please feel free to comment below. To give you an idea of our preferences, we dislike bureaucracy, police states, big governments, wars, socialism and excessive regulation. We like freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights.
P.S. If you happen to represent a government that meets our criteria, you are welcome to share ideas with me at durov2016@gmail.com.
I would suggest you Czech Republic. Russians are accepted here as minority and a lot of them is living here.
Also our language is Slavic so very similar to Russian. We have democracy and I am not aware of any censorship. We are atheists and we are not homophobic. Also we have very good infrastructure and it is cheap to live here. And Prague is a beautiful city.
JetBrains (of IntelliJ fame) is a prominent software firm founded by Russians in Prague. I'm sure that Russians in the tech community are at least semi-aware of the Czech Republic being a good place to move to. If the Czechs are smart, they'll use the current turmoil as a chance to brain drain the Russians. There are a lot of good technical people in Russia who unfortunately don't have a political and economic environment that would enable them to flourish. There was probably a lot of hope after the USSR collapsed that things would get better, but if I were in Russia, I would be losing hope at this point for any significantly positive reform in the foreseeable future.
Another vote for Czech Republic (well, Prague) - great for living and running a small/private business, though kind of bad for getting funding, going public or getting the best employees.
Strange, I'd say it's the contrary, people in .cz generally dislike hearing Russian, especially in Prague, because here you can see Russians everywhere, tourists or residents. I also don't remember anyone ever claiming that CR has a good infrastructure (when it comes to roads). As for homophobia and Prague being beautiful...well, that's arguable.
Georgia (eastern Europe) seems like a good fit for those requirements. No bureaucracy, low taxes, cheaper than most central/western European places. One of the most capitalist states in Europe :)
Switzerland is fairly expensive though [0]. Might not be a problem for Pavel Durov, but maybe for his engineers?
Anyways I would have expected more than a simple gmail address from someone developing a crypto messenger. A GPG Public Key too much to ask?
Otherwise Switzerland is indeed quite a nice play for businesses. Founding a company takes about half an hour. So that should count as fairly unbureaucratic. Plus Google etc. have their Europe headquarter here.
You're talking about a "crypto messenger" that doesn't have end-to-end encryption enabled by default (and is therefore insecure by default, just like Whatsapp and other apps like that), so maybe you're expecting too much of him.
Germany is a good second choice after Switzerland, I think. Iceland would still be my #1 choice for Wikileaks-like companies, but I don't think Telegram is in that situation, and they might prefer a warmer weather anyway.
As a German expat who moved to the UK to start a business, I second this. Incorporating (a GmbH) in Germany would've been a major nightmare compared to the UK. Not that I'd recommend the UK as a good location at this point.
Find it strange how people feel free to give advise on things they have no clue about. ie the Swiss only recently voted for a very harsh anti-immigration law, targeting especially Europeans in fact, and more so from the eastern block (prostitution and crime coming from Russia, Bulgaria etc. in big cities), but not limited to.
And for the Dutch, please. Dutch hypocrisy and inferiority complex is at its peak. Just the political climate there is enough to put any decent human being off, with such support for the extreme right (Wilders) becoming mainstream, why would anyone want to live or work there, is beyond my understanding.
In my family's experience Switzerland can be a quite hard place to be a foreigner though, unless you work in one of the UN "enclaves" in the major cities. And then it is just very expensive.
Other than banking secrecy, what other advantages does switzerland have? Most markets and research areas are just as regulated as in the rest of europe (i.e. heavily).
More or less. One thing that is happening in the near future is moving the responsibilities for long-term care from the national government to local municipalities, that will probably get less money for it as well.
Yes indeed! Beautiful countryside and really excellent internet connections.
For example:
"Based on Net Index report at the end of first half of 2013, Timișoara has become the city with the highest download speed in the world. "
And in quite a few (e.g. Romania) the government is too busy stealing stuff to bother about oppressing freedoms
Doesn't that also mean that the government would gladly accept a bribe from a foreign state actor in exchange for suppressing the freedom of the telegram team?!
If things there are anything like in Greece, the system is corrupt and dysfunctional enough to not care about newfangled problems (there's literally no enforcement of anything limiting online (maybe even offline) freedom here), but not corrupt enough to do egregious/outright illegal things because of bribes.
Spain has three layers of malfunctioning uncoordinated and corrupt big governments, incredible amounts of red tape and taxes and a slow-as-molasses and politicized judicial system. Not big on free markets either.
On the other side it is cheap, reasonably free-as-in-freedom and not a police state yet. Also good weather.
Culture-wise and considering the costs, I'd absolutely agree with Berlin, but keep in mind that the german government sure loves its bureaucracy and regulations.
It's just that Berlin is cheaper, more international and more civil than Paris for instance.
This is Europe anyway,there will be regulation for everything,cost of Employee will be higher,not because you have to pay them more but because taxes,and there is no guarantee of "free speech" whatsoever.
They should have fled to the US if they really wanted a "free market" environment.
I've recently learned, hunting apartments in Spain, that many realtors don't want to deal with Russians. They find them too crude, and no amount of money they are willing to throw at them, seems to make up for the feeling of revulsion.
In some places, they simply mention to them that there's a thriving gay community in the city. That seems to be enough to make them go away...
I think it's brilliant, and I also think large concentration of immigrants in one place ends up destroying that community’s reputation and invites trouble.
Crazy expensive and the winters can destroy your mood (some friends from abroad could not cope and had to go back home). Probably not the best choice for a long term move unless it's already on your mind.
Comments
Citation from a Facebook post by Pavel Durov (founder of vk.com and Telegram), for those who don't want to open Facebook:
---
As you probably know, I am out of Russia. Me and my team of 12 engineers have a temporary HQ in Central Europe, and we are now looking for a permanent base to work from. We are choosing a new home, a country that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of speech in mind.
Our team includes 6 ACM champions and 6 winners of other programming contests. These guys made it possible for Telegram Messenger to gather 40 million registered users worldwide just within 8 months after its launch. Several members of this team, including my brother, were crucial in making VKontakte what it is today — the only social network that defeated Facebook in an open local market. We are now going to build our next project, a mobile social network.
What country or city do you think would suit us best? Please feel free to comment below. To give you an idea of our preferences, we dislike bureaucracy, police states, big governments, wars, socialism and excessive regulation. We like freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights.
P.S. If you happen to represent a government that meets our criteria, you are welcome to share ideas with me at durov2016@gmail.com.
I would suggest you Czech Republic. Russians are accepted here as minority and a lot of them is living here.
Also our language is Slavic so very similar to Russian. We have democracy and I am not aware of any censorship. We are atheists and we are not homophobic. Also we have very good infrastructure and it is cheap to live here. And Prague is a beautiful city.
JetBrains (of IntelliJ fame) is a prominent software firm founded by Russians in Prague. I'm sure that Russians in the tech community are at least semi-aware of the Czech Republic being a good place to move to. If the Czechs are smart, they'll use the current turmoil as a chance to brain drain the Russians. There are a lot of good technical people in Russia who unfortunately don't have a political and economic environment that would enable them to flourish. There was probably a lot of hope after the USSR collapsed that things would get better, but if I were in Russia, I would be losing hope at this point for any significantly positive reform in the foreseeable future.
Another vote for Czech Republic (well, Prague) - great for living and running a small/private business, though kind of bad for getting funding, going public or getting the best employees.
Strange, I'd say it's the contrary, people in .cz generally dislike hearing Russian, especially in Prague, because here you can see Russians everywhere, tourists or residents. I also don't remember anyone ever claiming that CR has a good infrastructure (when it comes to roads). As for homophobia and Prague being beautiful...well, that's arguable.
Seriously? Is that a good reason to move somewhere? What difference does it make? It's as irrelevant to moving as is the ethnicity of the country.
Georgia (eastern Europe) seems like a good fit for those requirements. No bureaucracy, low taxes, cheaper than most central/western European places. One of the most capitalist states in Europe :)
Switzerland, what else?
Words unfortunately spoken by someone from the Netherlands.
Switzerland is fairly expensive though [0]. Might not be a problem for Pavel Durov, but maybe for his engineers?
Anyways I would have expected more than a simple gmail address from someone developing a crypto messenger. A GPG Public Key too much to ask?
Otherwise Switzerland is indeed quite a nice play for businesses. Founding a company takes about half an hour. So that should count as fairly unbureaucratic. Plus Google etc. have their Europe headquarter here.
[0] Source: I live there.
You're talking about a "crypto messenger" that doesn't have end-to-end encryption enabled by default (and is therefore insecure by default, just like Whatsapp and other apps like that), so maybe you're expecting too much of him.
Germany is a good second choice after Switzerland, I think. Iceland would still be my #1 choice for Wikileaks-like companies, but I don't think Telegram is in that situation, and they might prefer a warmer weather anyway.
Germany? As an expat in Germany, the amount of bureaucracy here is sucking the life out of me. YMMV, though.
As a German expat who moved to the UK to start a business, I second this. Incorporating (a GmbH) in Germany would've been a major nightmare compared to the UK. Not that I'd recommend the UK as a good location at this point.
The problem is, the further south you go, the more the red tape tends to pile up.
Germany is a NATO country and might obey requests from NSA.
what makes you think that way about germany?
Find it strange how people feel free to give advise on things they have no clue about. ie the Swiss only recently voted for a very harsh anti-immigration law, targeting especially Europeans in fact, and more so from the eastern block (prostitution and crime coming from Russia, Bulgaria etc. in big cities), but not limited to.
And for the Dutch, please. Dutch hypocrisy and inferiority complex is at its peak. Just the political climate there is enough to put any decent human being off, with such support for the extreme right (Wilders) becoming mainstream, why would anyone want to live or work there, is beyond my understanding.
In my family's experience Switzerland can be a quite hard place to be a foreigner though, unless you work in one of the UN "enclaves" in the major cities. And then it is just very expensive.
Other than banking secrecy, what other advantages does switzerland have? Most markets and research areas are just as regulated as in the rest of europe (i.e. heavily).
I read a year ago that the Netherlands were about to pass big reforms to shrink the welfare state. Did that ever happen?
Also; not really. Small changes on the fringes and generally lowering welfare payouts but nothing too massive, luckily.
Firing was made a lot easier in the private sector though; reducing it to essentially at will employment with a forced separation allowance.
More or less. One thing that is happening in the near future is moving the responsibilities for long-term care from the national government to local municipalities, that will probably get less money for it as well.
High living costs.
There are lots of nice places in Eastern Europe where the living costs are low, the weather nice and the scenery beautiful.
And in quite a few (e.g. Romania) the government is too busy stealing stuff to bother about oppressing freedoms, except maybe about elections...
Yes indeed! Beautiful countryside and really excellent internet connections.
For example: "Based on Net Index report at the end of first half of 2013, Timișoara has become the city with the highest download speed in the world. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania
Doesn't that also mean that the government would gladly accept a bribe from a foreign state actor in exchange for suppressing the freedom of the telegram team?!
If things there are anything like in Greece, the system is corrupt and dysfunctional enough to not care about newfangled problems (there's literally no enforcement of anything limiting online (maybe even offline) freedom here), but not corrupt enough to do egregious/outright illegal things because of bribes.
Probably not from Russia, in Romania's case. But it is a point, maybe not worth betting on.
Funny, I chose my DigitalOcean VPS to be located in the Netherlands rather than the UK. Freedom comes in various levels.
Because you felt that gave you some legal protection, despite the fact that you're using a US-based company?
The advantage of locating in the Netherlands is that you get served to Europe a little quicker.
Physical protection, not legal protection.
Iceland was planning on being the 'Switzerland of data freedom' at a certain point, but i'm not quite sure how they're doing right now:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jul/12/iceland-legal-h...
sheep screwed themselves again: http://m.rte.ie/news/touch//2013/0428/386975-iceland-vote/
Definetly not France ! I'd suggest Germany(Berlin) or Spain. Great places to leave and cheap.
Spain has three layers of malfunctioning uncoordinated and corrupt big governments, incredible amounts of red tape and taxes and a slow-as-molasses and politicized judicial system. Not big on free markets either.
On the other side it is cheap, reasonably free-as-in-freedom and not a police state yet. Also good weather.
Culture-wise and considering the costs, I'd absolutely agree with Berlin, but keep in mind that the german government sure loves its bureaucracy and regulations.
It cant be worse than France.
It's just that Berlin is cheaper, more international and more civil than Paris for instance.
This is Europe anyway,there will be regulation for everything,cost of Employee will be higher,not because you have to pay them more but because taxes,and there is no guarantee of "free speech" whatsoever.
They should have fled to the US if they really wanted a "free market" environment.
OP hates socialism so Germany is OUT! Poor people are free to starve in the OP's preferred state.
Citation needed.
Not everyone who opposes socialism wants a state where poor starve.
Cyprus, that's where russians go.
I've recently learned, hunting apartments in Spain, that many realtors don't want to deal with Russians. They find them too crude, and no amount of money they are willing to throw at them, seems to make up for the feeling of revulsion.
In some places, they simply mention to them that there's a thriving gay community in the city. That seems to be enough to make them go away...
I think it's brilliant, and I also think large concentration of immigrants in one place ends up destroying that community’s reputation and invites trouble.
Iceland?
Crazy expensive and the winters can destroy your mood (some friends from abroad could not cope and had to go back home). Probably not the best choice for a long term move unless it's already on your mind.
Because Russian winters are warm? They may have experience surviving the winter.
(Northerner too)
It is not about the cold, but about the 23 hour darkness for several months. The winters are actually a lot warmer than much of Russia.
capital controls.
Sweden matches.