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3rd Space Bucharest

Why He Registered in Hong Kong Instead of București

26 August 2026 10:08 Eric Melchor

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About this episode

Bogdan Sandu started the Design Your Way blog back in 2008 and now runs Upcut Studio, where he scales client websites to hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors. His early companies were registered in Hong Kong and Paris rather than Romania — and not for tax reasons. Clients in the US and Europe hesitated at Romanian entities. Hong Kong, for whatever reason, didn’t raise an eyebrow.


He’s also cheerfully unimpressed by the scramble to optimize for ChatGPT and friends, calling it a gold rush that pays out about 3% more traffic for all that effort — so Upcut keeps its money on ordinary SEO instead.


We also got into the 28,000-subscriber newsletter he deliberately shrinks, an economics master’s that turned out useful anyway, and a completely unhedged defense of Taylor Swift.


  • Why “registered in Hong Kong” opened doors that “registered in Bucharest” didn’t

  • The number he puts on LLM traffic — and why he’s not chasing it

  • Why he deletes people from a 28,000-person mailing list on purpose

  • What surprised him at King of the Court padel night


Find Bogdan at upcutstudio.com and on X at @bogdansandu.


Connect with Eric

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  • 3rd Space Bucharest AI Circle — get on the waitlist

  • 3rd Space Bucharest on Instagram


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