I'd like to interject for a moment. Before using vanilla-js, have you tried Svelte, the magical disappearing UI framework? It compiles/transpiles your JavaScript to... vanilla JavaScript and it literally "solves the JavaScript bloat crisis".
Someone on hackernews said it would be the future!
I personally know the team trying to build the first production electric plane. One of the team members is an ex-engineer from NASA who was fired after trying to resuscitate one of the former kan-jis. Kudos to them !
I was just about to ask about them. I'm curious how YC works with companies like them and Boom Supersonic. They get in, and are given $120k in seed funding. Then what? You can't build aircraft with $120k.
Sure, but they still need to build a plane, and not just any plane, but an aircraft never before built. What do you think their game plan is moving forward?
The team needed to build such a plane might be far removed from the network or knowledge needed to raise the money necessary to build such a plane.
In that case, YC is tremendously helpful in giving the platform to raise enough money to do all of the hard things involved in building a plane that's never been built.
Time is the most precious resource in startups. One way to get more time is to have a phenomenal team, so you do things faster (either by building the right things faster, having the expertise to not build the wrong things, etc.)
Another way is by having more money, so you have a longer time to figure things out. When I say that the $120k isn't what is valuable about YC, I don't mean money in general. The fiscal benefit just tends to come indirectly, from access to platforms (Demo Day, press), investors, and pitch advice.
Not immediately. Businesses that have these immense goals are about research, discovery and innovation in smaller elements of something. It's an incremental process with additional investment along the way, each step going a bit further to proving your team can do what you've set out to do, until eventually you have the whole product.
You can become extremely proficient in the language and be highly sensitive to the culture. You can also spend 10 years in the country to the point were you grasp practically everything, no matter how much randomness is involved in the conversation or the place and time it takes place.
It does not matter. Majority of foreigners, westerners or not, won't have real local friends in English speaking countries.
Even though you do acclimatize to the culture and language you might still not be fond of it. I lived in countries were it would have been easier than in others to interact with people, but in the end I wasn't able to because I either wasn't a fond drinker (commonplace in all english speaking countries) or I didn't enjoy being involved in mundane silly-office conversations during the smoke break.
Most of the fresh expats can't even realize what they are getting into when they move into another country. If you are deciding to do so and you come across this post, do it, go and check it out, but beware that your inner you will never completely mold to that place.
