Where should the Digital Nomad set up a Company?

[richardleb]

Hi,
I've been working in Instagram for few years and I'm looking forward to set up a little business abroad.
It's about travel blogging, video making and aerial photography and I'm planning to travel through South east Asia as a digital nomad in the next months.

Do you guys have any advice? Anyone here making business in that part of the world?

 

[RuthSam]

Depends a little on what requirements you have! you need a bank account, paypal, merchant account?

 

[GoGudget]

yea just like Sam said what do you need?

 

[bournemarketer]

Depends on what type of lifestyle you want and what you need employees to do. I've always noticed that the better a place is for a good lifestyle the worse it is for hiring employees and vice versa.

 

[Sephrata]

Hi,
I've been working in Instagram for few years and I'm looking forward to set up a little business abroad.
It's about travel blogging, video making and aerial photography and I'm planning to travel through South east Asia as a digital nomad in the next months.

Do you guys have any advice? Anyone here making business in that part of the world?

You mean you worked for Instagram as a company? You want advice on setting up a company?

I went to university with someone who is a digital nomad, living in a beach hut in Thailand. He worked for Google and Facebook in marketing, learnt the ropes then freelanced himself out ever since (8 years on a beach now I think).

 

[MisterF]

You mean you worked for Instagram as a company? You want advice on setting up a company?

I went to university with someone who is a digital nomad, living in a beach hut in Thailand. He worked for Google and Facebook in marketing, learnt the ropes then freelanced himself out ever since (8 years on a beach now I think).

There's a few live out there and they hold several meetings a year for other people to attend.

 

[AneaKr]

Are you based in the US? If so, you can usually just set up things back home (online banking, PayPal, etc) and use a mailbox scanning service for getting any important paperwork digitally delivered to you.

 

[kyotobonsai]

If you incorporate in the US I would recommend Wyoming. As @AneaKr mentioned you can also get mail forwarding pretty easily.

If you spend all of your time overseas then you should look into forming a company offshore. There can be some great tax benefits that way.

Either way, advise with an attorney or an accountant before making any large decisions. You may PM me if you want to chat a bit more about your situation.

 

[Ftr]

I'm not 100% sure on which aspects you are exactly talking about regarding setting up a business. I don't know if you just mean making money online and living in another country or something more, so I will take a guess at a bit of both...

Some friends of mine have chosen Vietnam to set this pretty much up and speak highly of it for their digital marketing needs.
They seem a bit locked in to that country now probably due to setting up all aspects of the business there and now living their permanently pretty much, but they have many personal ties with the country which I'm sure made it easier.

However another group of friends who I would assume are probably on this forum somewhere have taken a more nomadic approach and set up what they can in Thailand then other more important parts in their home country, spending a large portion of the year in Thailand ensuring the business is running and all that jazz and able to leave it self sustaining for a portion of time to recheck the other aspects back in the UK. These guys had a lot of problems setting any real things up in Thailand and didn't recommend it for actual business related things, only living and working on the internet from kinda place. Rent costs are low for them and they find it very nice to live in, and they can get cheap workers for their needs, but they have admin problems and find lower quality in a lot of other areas.

If you are talking about setting up elements of business such as registering a company, getting an office, workers, admin kind of stuff, well I have NOT BEEN recommended South east Asia for any of these elements personally.
Specially if you don't know more about the country.

Pretty much everyone I know in those parts of the world have followed the same pattern, register the company and all that admin and tax stuff somewhere else, and then live in those places and work on their business online from there, I would guess that is no coincidence.

 

[Abeodu]

Try Estonia and the E-residence program to register your business. Once you do that you can use Transferwise to set up a Borderless Account or a regular account at N26 (goggle it). You're golden after that.