prague
Skrevet af Femi og Michael
The last couple of days I’ve come across a couple of interesting blog posts about the state of mind of entrepreneurs. I’m sure people in all walks of life have fears or worries about what the future might hold, but running your own company can definitely put you out of your comfort zone and induce some fear. Naomi Dunford describes in Entrepreneurship: What To Do When You’re Scared Sh*tless how to face your fears and learn to accept that they are a condition of life:
“First, acknowledge it. Get to know it. The worst thing to do with fear is pretend it’s not there. You’re not fooling anyone, least of all fear itself, and by denying its existence you just look like an idiot. Get to the root of your fear. Analyze where it comes from. Find out what you’re really afraid of.”
An ATM here in Prague ate my Visa-card the other day because my account had gone red. This is of course is really annoying since I need to get a new card from my bank and everything. But it was also a bucket of cold water in the head pointing out that funds are starting to run a bit low. We should be good to get through January but sometimes it can be a scary thought. But as Naomi says…
“As a bloggers, artists, writers, business owners, we are afraid. Trying to avoid fear, circumvent fear, or remove fear is an act of futility. Fear will not go away.
Live with fear, do your thing anyway.”
Molly, a good friend of ours moved from Prague to Barcelona to start from scratch for the second time in a year. I really admire her for doing that and enjoy the way she describes it in her latest blog post:
“When I started thinking about moving to Prague (some of you will remember this) I was terrified. Terrified. And when I got to Prague I was terrified. And when I started teaching I was terrified. It seems like I spent so much time being afraid.
I think what I was most afraid of was the unknown. A pretty common fear. But not just the unknown of the big vast world, but the unknown Molly, the Molly I was turning into, the future Molly.
[...] It’s been an unbelievable ride, and I’m nowhere near finished yet! As I said to a friend recently, “If it wasn’t me I’d be jealous.” And it’s true. I’m jealous of myself.”
I have fears, yes – but I wouldn’t change it for the ride I’ve had.
20. november 2007 kl. 15:10
Skrevet af Femi og Michael
So we’ve already been in Prague for 3 months so why not try and make some kind of status of what it’s been like.
Cost of Living
Cost was one of the primary reasons why we moved to Prague. Copenhagen is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in so the first target is easily acquired. Prague is not super cheap, but it’s still a good deal when we are bringing money earned in Denmark. A rough estimate is that our money lasts one quarter to a third longer here when we consider rent, food, clothes and socializing. The quality and selection of supermarkets, restaurants etc. in Prague is just as good (if not better) than what you get in Copenhagen.
In a later post I will write more specific about what we pay here.
Social relations
We have used a number of different channels to meet other people and make new friends. As a blogger the first thing I looked for were Danes blogging from Prague and I found a couple. We went to an industry conference were we met a lot of Czech people we still keep in touch with. We used the virtual networks of CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club to meet other expats in town. The network we’ve used the most so far has been the student organization IAESTE that was the organization that brought us to US and we’ve stayed in touch with since.
Adventures
Another of the primary reasons for moving to Prague was simple for the adventure of living in a foreign country. And The Czech Republic has been good to us in terms of adventures. As mentioned above we’ve made a good circle of friends so every other week night and almost every weekend there are social activities or trips to attend. Go to my private blog if you want to read more about our adventures.
Running the company
Our company is still registered in Denmark so it’s still Danish VAT and tax we are messing around with. It’s not an enjoyable task at all but when it’s put into system skat.dk and other sites makes it easy to sit far away from Denmark and do the books.
We haven’t ventured into setting up a Czech branch or company and will not do that either. From what we hear there is a lot of red tape especially when you are not fluent at speaking Czech. Likewise we haven’t tried to work out if it would make more sense for us to pay Czech income taxes instead of Danish. In a not so distant future we will probably be setting up a limited company in UK in order to move more of our international work into that company.
Costumer relations
We still have the Danish cell phone numbers we used in Denmark so I don’t think all of our clients know that we are actually sitting in Prague rather that somewhere in Denmark. To our established costumers most of our interaction has been over the phone anyway so that hasn’t really changed. Other clients have been from UK, Germany and USA and all communication has been through Skype, IM and email so that hasn’t changed either.
Extending our stay
The first plan with our Prague stay was to stay here for six months and then go back to Copenhagen or try a stint somewhere else. But we’ve come to like Prague in our short say so far, so we just extended our plans to span a total of 12 months. That will give us enough time to focus on the project we are running now and really get to know the city.
[tags]status, prague, entrepreneur, startup, bootstrapping [/tags]
14. september 2007 kl. 13:11
Skrevet af Femi og Michael
- When we told people that we were moving to Prague for six month – everyone without exception asked “why?”. The “why?” was usually accompanied with a frowning face and a look that said “are you crazy?”. Let me try and see if I can explain it…
Our goal of starting our own company has been to enjoy life and gain experiences while making money building software that works. We started this company to let us try something we probably wouldn’t experience if we were working for an employer.
After setting up the company and working in Copenhagen for about 8 months we realized that it is not crucial for us to be stationed in Denmark to work for Danish clients. We had Danish clients but also clients we’d never met and who were sitting in US, UK and Germany. We were web workers and all we needed was (roughly) a chair and good Internet and we could do our work. When we truly realized this fact and our lease in Copenhagen was nearing an end, we started to look at a map – in the beginning just for fun – but quickly it became apparent that we had to try to move to a different country.
We settled on Prague for a number of reasons – cost of living is cheaper (since we are still paid by Danish rates), trains and flights are frequent and cheap to Denmark and the rest of Europe and finally Prague is a beautiful metropolis with a thriving night life.
Our plans for our Prague adventure is to stay here for six months as a “work holiday” where we can get more value for our buck while we focus on developing products for other companies and one of our own products. Arb Design the company is still based in Denmark in terms of tax, VAT – it’s just the two owners that are sitting in Prague for a while.
- After explaining this some people said “I guess it makes sense in a way” or “I wish it was me” – and a few continued to shake there head.
We have now been in Prague for nearly three weeks and moved into our new apartment Sunday and it already feels like home. At times we have asked ourselves whether or not it was a good idea to make this move – now I know it is.
[tags] microbusiness, company, prague, entrepreneur, moving, relocation [/tags]
20. juni 2007 kl. 15:47
