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You want to open an office in Medellin, which by the way is not a bad idea, but, well... I hope you will first travel there to see the place and various locations and operational details, in person... I mean, surely you won't rely only on PC's posts to make your move and settle there?
In any case, I would be interested, and undoubtedly other forum members too, if you could publish here your process of selection, the ranking of cities, ending on Medellin being the chosen city.
For example, I wonder how Medellin could beat, say Cordova or Santiago or GDL...?
Currently we have most of our outsourcers in the PI. They work remotely from Iligan, Naga, Manila, Cebu, Davao, smaller areas.. So that was our initial plan, to open in PI, Davao.
Then we decided that we have no desire to live in Asia. I speak spanish and portuguese, and my partners are currently in Brasil. Brasil (Floripa, Campinas, Curitiba) was a no go because political instability, liabilities held by employers, non-motivated workforce, and prior experience working with partners in brasil.
Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, no interest of being a part of.. Venezuela, obviously no. Then there was Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia.
Clearly GDL, DF, Santiago, BA, Bogota are the primary places to look into- there are many other 2nd tier cities we looked into. There is already lots of documented migration of foreign capital and entrepreneurs to Medellín, so that made our shortlist.
I have two passports, but other partners do not. So then we look at visa requirements, business investment amount for business residency.. Then we looked at Philippine visa requirements for our current managers to spend months on/off in our new city.
Then, we looked at universities in the cities, average administrative assistant wage, office space rental per sq/m, rental price for apartments, ability to fly between Brasil and US for commuting purposes, cost of living using numbeo and other types of calculators.
Finally we decided on Medellín because the economic and political stability, lower cost of living than comparable SA cities, and overall business environment and talent levels of potential employees. In addition to the obvious quantifiable data, my partners and I are adventurous and love living in new locations and discovering new things; hence pulling the trigger in a steadfast manner.
I was seriously pulling for Santiago, but the GDP and cost of living are simply too high to make an argument vs. Medellín.
there are rumblings that i'm blindly entering the city to expand my business solely based on PCs posts and information in this thread. Our decision was based on a multitude of business and economic factors, none having to do with PC or this thread.