I can understand your point but you're not just giving up comfort - you're giving up something we all consider a basic necessity: shelter. I'm willing to bet the end result of your work, whether you do it your way, or do it part time, will be the same. I don't want to come off condescending but the attitude (and it's not unique to you, I've seen many other people with a similar attitude) seems like that of someone who has been brainwashed by the SF/SV startup culture mythology.
His Dodge Caravan is shelter, which is pretty fancy shelter if you were from a poor village in Africa so I think he'll be alright. If he's not brainwashed by pain = gain, then I think what he's doing is really cool.
That's not true, because in a poor village in Africa you'd have family to look after you and keep you well. You also won't have police harassing you all the time. Lastly, it is easier to find a legal and free place to use the bathroom in a poor African village.
Why not Thailand? For $8 a night or less you get a bed, WiFi and living costs for food run in the dollars a day. $10 a day is possible, $20 a day is good living.
Even with the cost of a flight, that pays for itself in no time.
how can you devote 100% of yourself (or as much as is possible) to something when so much of your cognitive resources are devoted to surviving day to day?
It's actually possible to run a startup entirely on 5$ droplet. I would suggest switching to Vultr (still 5$ but 0.75 GB and block storage and they accept bitcoin)
It's motivating to get that first paying clients quickly to pay for server. (ramen profitable)
This is a highly absurd comment. No one I know is paying anything more than $3000/month and they all make well over $100k as software developers.
I love how when people come up with these numbers they cite salary-only/pre-negotiation/entry-level income and then they compare this to a small-family sized rent expense to justify your "typical" SV absurdity.
The fact is, many people make well over that with stock options, raises, etc. And even while making that money, lots of my friends in their mid-20s opt to live with multiple roommates and flex their living rooms to reduce their rent cost further.
> Well it's pretty foolish to go even more into debt with a mortgage if you are at risk of having a negative net worth.
Negative equity is usually something that happens after you take a mortgage. And whenever you take a mortgage, there is a risk of getting into a negative equity situation (though the degree of risk varies.)
At the same time, think of all the energy lost to the stress of not knowing where those basic things are coming from. Think of what could be done with that energy.
I built a community crowdfunding platform to help inventors, makers, developers, etc to find the community, resources, and feedback needed to build and share quality products, and transparent companies. Check it: Baqqer - (https://baqqer.com)
Our plans are to also turn this into equity crowdfunding, and eventually have a fund to contribute to and support popular/promising projects.
I'm building this to build some other projects down the line like Playa (http://getplaya.com)
There is a major problem in the industry. There is no one path to a successful business.
I find my time is more valuable than my comfort. To each their own.