>EDIT: Of course, I'm not exactly familiar with the visa situation since I don't actually need it. Based on the OP, it seems pretty complicated, but still worth the hassle.
I lived in Thailand for several years and 'bootstrapping' your business there as a foreigner without a work permit is breaking the law.
You need a work permit to do ANY type of work in Thailand and although working out of sight is unlikely to get you deported, working in co-working spaces isn't exactly out of sight and a phone call to immigration would get you arrested, deported and blacklisted from the country.
Getting a work permit in Thailand is very very difficult. Foreign owned businesses have to employ Thai citizens and require silly amounts of registered capital deposited in Thai banks. It's marginally easier if you are an American.
Thailand is not worth the hassle and FFS research the law before you just up and go there!
Look I'm American who has been living in SE Asia (mostly Malaysia) for the past 10 years. I've spent lots of time and worked in lots of countries here including Vietnam, Thailand, Philipines, Singapore, India and obviously Malaysia.
In Asia a work visa is intended for foreigners working for locally incorporated companies. Regardless of what it says on the websites, if you have a tourist visa you are free to startup / bootstrap your new enterprise. If your coding up a new website, hosting it on Amazon and serving customers over the internet your not really doing business and the country your living and honestly no body cares. It's cool.
If you want to start selling to locals, offering consultancy services to locals then yes you should probably get a visa. But of course you don't need the visa until you are actually doing that.
People who quote websites stating "facts" about visa's in SE Asia obviously don't know how the law works in SE Asia. In SE Asia the law is a guideline and your clout / how you treat people is much more important than the words written on the page, when it comes to the courts and the interpretation of the law.
So if you want to bootstrap in Asia, chillax and just do it. If your too worried about it, your probably won't adjust well anyways.
Somebody who throws Singapore in with a list of other South-East Asian countries and goes on to state that laws are just a guideline clearly has no idea what they are talking about.
I can only speak for Thailand and Singapore and both are stringent on enforcement when it comes to visas. I've never heard of anyone walking away with a slap on the wrist or being able to bribe their way out of a situation with regards to visas.
In one of my first replies I said that if you are working alone and out of sight then yes you will probably get away with working in any of those countries.
My whole point though is that it's irresponsible to promote breaking the law here on HN and especially foreign laws at that.
Well... I am from Malaysia. As long as you are not employed, not conducting any activities that earn money from locals (ie. consulting, etc), not employing anyone, you are not technically running a business/being employed. So you are not running against the letter of the law
Come to think of it, there could be a lot of people coming here with business on Ebay... and keep checking their Ebay website every minute. It would be weird not to mention wrong to be checking anyone doing anything on a webpage on a coffee shop.
And if there is co working area, well, as long as you are not hired and not running local business, believe me, no one cares. Just by being there does not constitute you breaking the visa, when employment visa specifically talks about being employed.
And if you want to open a local company, that is easy too. I had a guy from Australia interviewed me after he had opened a company here. It takes somewhat less than a day to do.
If you want to hire foreigners however, that might take a while, since you need to go through the due process. But if you are in the tech sector, you could go for MSC status application, where you could hire foreigners as much as you want and even have tax exemption for few years.
The worse case is that you are here working for your company for few months before the MSC status is approved. Last time I worked it took about 8 months for it to get approved, all the time where my Italian boss and European colleagues keep leaving the countries after 90 days. From what I understand, even that is kosher, since they are in a payroll from an incorporated company in UK.
Bottom line is, at least for Malaysia, the government here is doing the best it can to get the cross pollination of talent from outside to the locals. And as many of the commenters here mentioned, if you are not causing trouble with anyone, no one has any reason to check on you.
Work permits are to make sure you don't steal jobs from the locals. Working on your own project has nothing to do with that. So while it may be breaking the letter of the law, it's certainly not breaking the spirit of it. My point being, you shouldn't have ethical issues with it -- it's like driving 57 in a 55 zone.
I know people who have been deported for not having the right visa -- a phone call by an angry ex or housemate in every case. Nobody's going to report you to immigration unless you've seriously pissed someone off. So just don't piss people off. And worst-case scenario, you leave early.
The culture of the judicial system works in a wholly different way in developing nations than in the West. They don't practice laws like we do. When you cause trouble in Thailand, they'll find any law you might have broken, just to get you, but when you don't cause trouble, most of the times you're fine, even if you might be breaking the law in official terms. I heard it's the same in China.
Sure, it's a risk, but please tell me why all these co-working spaces everywhere are filled with foreigners without work permits and growing rapidly.
Remote working is a new reality, and it would be highly counter-productive for these countries to start striking down on people working there. Every single foreigner I met in Thailand was working on projects either focused on their own country or internationally, thus not threatening local jobs. In reality, many of the Thai learnt from the foreigners that'd teach them about their tech stacks. That's exactly how they're building their own startup scene in Bangkok now. Learning from foreigners.
I'd argue it may increase a developing nation's level of innovation to have remote workers around and governments should embrace this new reality asap.
Not in this case: they specifically target foreigners working without permits here, though mostly English teachers.
China isn't really a cheap place for bootstrapping a startup, so the random foreigner coding in starbucks isn't going to attract any attention. Kai Fu's Innovation Works, a YC-style incubator, can help get foreigners working visas for incubated projects, I think.
or you can take university classes, a win for both the visa and language situations.
the random foreigner who replies to a couple of job listings, has industry experience, and can crank out more than php or javascript spaghetti (because there are plenty of good developers here who will work for much less than sv wages) can definitely find startup-like situations. or maybe i just lucked out, dunno.
The low end tech scene is quite vibrant but wages for competent dev's keeps going up. China really just isn't that poor anymore; though you still have plenty of kids who are poorly trained but willingly to work hard on the cheap.
Most foreigners outside of the few American tech companies are entrepreneurs and/or managers. I'm quite unusual as a researcher.
yeah, i was doing the high-school thing at that time.
and plenty of kids who -- with or without formal training -- are solid hackers.
there are def more foreign businessmen than 老外 devs, and not without some cause: i'd definitely get more compensation from a startup in the bay or bank in ny than i do at my current job.
I work at Microsoft, we have plenty of laowai devs and PMs, though quite a small percentage compared to local and even haigui (returnee) talent. As I rise in level, my pay is becoming more similar to Redmond, combine with the fact that research jobs are rare in general, its a fairly good job for me. But the pollution in Beijing...is the biggest problem for me right now.
Most of the time I would agree with this sentiment, I don't think you're morally wrong to work on your own project while living in other countries without a proper visa; it's definitely not breaking the spirit of the law. Heck, you're spending your money here, all the better. It's obviously less of a risk if you work from home than a co-working space where you could be easily targeted if a random check does happen (as its meant as a "working space" and not a casual coffee shop.) Then again, I've also not heard of people being hauled off just yet.
In this case it was a profitable business and the guy was also hiring locals. There are probably tax considerations and I would say this is breaking the spirit of the law.
Those shared work spaces could be subsidized to encourage locals so taking advantage of that is problematic.
It would be different if he was just building his product, no business entity and no local hires...
At any rate, there's some fine line where an activity that could otherwise be described as a hobby becomes work. It's the actual activity + intent + context + judgement of the authorities that matters... Presumably when you essentially establish residence, get paid, hire and manage other people, that line has been crossed.
>Getting a work permit in Thailand is very very difficult. Foreign owned businesses have to employ Thai citizens and require silly amounts of registered capital deposited in Thai banks. It's marginally easier if you are an American.
It may sounds silly, but Thais are very scared of seeing foreigners taking over the country. This thinking is the most noticeable in lower-class Thais. I believe the result of this thinking is the ridiculous requirements for business visa. It's not only a bureaucrat problem, but also a social one.
Why would that sound silly? One example is European/US colonization and related efforts in recent times. Foreigners taking over your country is something you _should_ be worried about if you are paying any attention to history. The wealth differential in countries like the US, would be a huge advantage for foreigners to take over business markets if it weren't for laws like that.
I live in Cambodia (Phnom Penh) and over the last few years have seen many expats move from Thailand to here due to the relative visa situation (very difficult in Thiland, very easy in Cambodia). Cost of living here is about the same as Thailand. The number of decent places catering for westerners has increased dramatically over the last few years. Local people are very friendly. I reckon Phnom Penh an awesome place to live.
Been in Thailand 10 years - honestly most Thais don't care one bit about the letter of the law. A banal example might be that unless there's a helmet check stop, you can drive by any policeman without a helmet on - nobody cares.
The work permit situation is not that clear either - there are different interpretations depending on who you ask. If you are here, but your income is entirely in another country, it's legal according to officials - the law just was not made for that situation. The law is to prevent foreigners from working illegally in Thailand - if the foreigner basically "brings their own job" to Thailand it's a different story.
Who can prove what you're doing on your computer? Will they ask the NSA and the IRS for assistance to uncover the company you're building? And if not, how could they tell whether you're not a trust fund kid playing Counter Strike all day long?
Once you start hiring people here, you'll need legal assistance, but even that is relatively straightforward. I know many with BOI companies here, with 100% foreign ownership.
I highly agree that you should definitely research the law before packing your bags and heading for Bangkok to just start bootstrapping.
As hackerboos mentioned, it is illegal to "work" here without a work permit. As I understand it, even with a work permit, you're only allowed to "work" at the place that is specified on your work permit and no where else. If you are caught working outside your permitted working location, you can be deported.
It all sounds very harsh but I assume that this is often the way labor laws for foreigners are written by most countries; the main goal is to protect the local work force from unfair outside competition... that's just how it is.
You can't conduct any type business on a tourist visa you will be deported if you are caught. People have been warned that they will be deported for singing on a karaoke in clubs as it's classed as work.
The business visa you are talking about (NON-B) is designed for employees of foreign companies who are conducting business with Thai companies. Not foreign businesses conducting business alone or with each other.
In fact without evidence of this you won't even get your NON-B visa.
Are you sure you can do business meetings on a tourist visa? On a business visa is fine of course as you've declared that your intention is to be there for business, but having a business visa also require you to have a company that is sending you there on business before hand. Plus, I'm not sure how long of a stay you'd normally get with a business visa.
With a tourist visa, I think you're strictly not supposed to perform any business activities. You might be able to pass off your meeting as a "casual chat" if you want to risk it.
In the countries I've been to the business travel visas are the same as the tourist ones, you just have to declare you are there for business purposes also. So the length is the same, 3 months.
I know colleagues (engineers) who were detained and kept under "hotel arrest" in Indonesia for being on the customer site without the correct working Visa (our guess - a tip off)
I worked in Thailand on assignment for a large company there and we got a wind that the authorities where going to come in on a certain day and check every single foreigners passports. We were told even that we had the correct Visa, work from home that day.
In Japan you can get a 3 month tourist visa on entry. I know many who have worked on the customer site with this. Once again - illegal, all it takes is a tip off from a local employee and your in big, big trouble.. don't expect to ever visit that country again.
I know someone who was working in Sweden without the correct Visa - a local employee (part of a work union) reported him.
There appears to be a fine line between "business" (meetings etc) and actually doing productive work for a company entity based in Japan. I don't have clarification on this, and this is only second hand information.
On a different note, they do check the frequency of re-entries (on a tourist visa) as I know of one peer who was put into a room at the airport and questioned after re-entering a few times in one year. So if your "doing business" a couple of times a year with a few months in between, it may still look suspect.
Additionally I know of a guy's wife who was deported on re-entry after the 3rd time. She wasn't working and was banned from re-entring for 11 months.
The probability may well be very low - There could be a statistical influence in why I have all these 'stores' due to being required to travel 70-80% for my employment for the past 5 years.
If you read blogs on these types of things you are only going to see the 'worst case scenarios' as the majority of people with positive experiences are unlikely to rush to their PC and write a glowing post about their Visa experience...
I lived in Thailand for several years and 'bootstrapping' your business there as a foreigner without a work permit is breaking the law.
You need a work permit to do ANY type of work in Thailand and although working out of sight is unlikely to get you deported, working in co-working spaces isn't exactly out of sight and a phone call to immigration would get you arrested, deported and blacklisted from the country.
Getting a work permit in Thailand is very very difficult. Foreign owned businesses have to employ Thai citizens and require silly amounts of registered capital deposited in Thai banks. It's marginally easier if you are an American.
Thailand is not worth the hassle and FFS research the law before you just up and go there!