Have spent a small amount of time there...Kyrgyzstan is truly beautiful and the people are great!<p>No mention of the political risks though?<p><a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/21/kyrgyzstan-holds-an-election-that-was-not-a-foregone-conclusion?zid=307&ah=5e80419d1bc9821ebe173f4f0f060a07" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/21/kyrgyzstan-holds-a...</a><p>Even factoring that risk in, getting great talent so cheap seems like a win.
I really like this story. One thing I've noticed is that if you can find a great engineer from another country and they help you recruit good locals, that turns out to be the most effective kind of offshoring experience.
There's quite of bit of interesting startup stuff going on in Bishkek, given it's size.<p><a href="https://maddevs.io/en" rel="nofollow">https://maddevs.io/en</a> is quite a cool development consultancy based there, which has been involved in development of namba taxi, an uber type app.<p>namba itself has a whole host of projects similar to the more well known startups in Europe, e.g. Namba taxi, Namba food, and a video streaming service.<p>ololo (which was referenced in the piece) is a lovely community of different startups, and art projects fostering an entrepreneurial spirit.
Once did project working on tourniquettes for rapid transit in Astana for Beijing Second United Construction Group. Later, we somehow stumbled upon custom made drone tender for Kazakhstan's border guard (which later was found out to be just a cover for presidential guard regiment...)<p>My intention was to try to hire few juniors as assistants, and UI devs. Seemed trivial at first, but the moment applicants heard of us being a foreign company, they instantly switched the talk to paid relocation package, hiring immigration lawyer, and if we can bring them a Chinese passport on a golden platter... This was the case with like 4 out of 5 applicants.<p>My advise, keep quiet about you being an overseas company till the last moment.