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Ask HN: Digital nomads, where's the best place in the world to work from?
Me and a friend are setting up a co-living business catering for short-term stays by digital nomads, and one of the many questions we're trying to answer is where in the world is the best place to site it.
(We also have a ton of other questions, and it would be super useful if anyone cared to help answer them by spending 3 mins on this quick survey: https://theintro.typeform.com/to/DUSbNl5v)
- warrenm 5y agoI can't answer all of this, but make sure that you investigate the legal requirements wherever you setup It may, for example, be fantastic to be a Digital Nomad™ from the Nomad's perspective in Bolivia ... but from the business perspective be an absolute nightmare :) Or wonderful to setup shop in the Maldives ... but your Nomads would all hate it ------------- Note - I know nothing about the business climates of Bolivia or the Maldives - just using then as examples :)
- randomopining 5y agoWhy don't you go find it? Most would agree all the amenities are good to have. But then people digress into two groups. One group of nomads want to be in the "poppin" location where there's tons of other people etc. Other people like to be in relatively calm/secluded spots that still have amenities.
- browningstreet 5y agoIndeed. There are whole sites and communities devoted to this question, with rankings and data.
- listenallyall 5y agoA fun, accessible, friendly, utilitarian, co-working space is highly desirable. Co-living, on the other hand, sounds like a nightmare.
- anm89 5y agoOne thing I've figured out about coliving, it really has no specific meaning. Coliving can be anything from renting an airbnb with people you meet on face book, to essentially hostels with coworking spaces, to custom built accomodations in everything from urban environments to farms and across the entire price spectrum. My guess is that most people could find some variation of it that they would love and some variation of it they would hate. Some of my best and worst travel experiences have been at coliving spaces. As mentioned in a different post, I'm in the process of trying to develop a space based on figuring out what I liked and didn't like over years of traveling.
- gabrielsroka 5y agoI'm not affiliated with them, but for anyone looking for nomad information: https://nomadlist.com https://nomadlist.com
- adamhp 5y agoHonestly surprised no one had mentioned it yet...
- gregjor 5y agoRoam was one of the more popular co-living/co-working companies, with great locations and facilities. They apparently went under. I stayed at their Ubud location for a month once, and couldn’t get a reservation in Tokyo because they were full. https://roam.co https://roam.co Besides the significant hassle setting up legally in foreign countries, co-living places are a target for immigration and labor law enforcement, since the guests are almost certainly working without work permits. Harder to stay under the radar as a digital nomad when you’re living at a place that advertises as a haven for DNs. There’s no best place to work from. DNs tend to congregate more in some places (Chiang Mai, Ubud, Medelin) than others for various reasons, mainly price. Big cities are expensive, beach towns don’t have the infrastructure or can’t attract enough DNs.
- anm89 5y agoRoam was amazing. I stayed at the Tokyo location for a few months in 2018. I was so inspired by my time at Roam that I've spent the last few years trying to figure out how to start up a similar concept and I just raised about a million and a quarter dollars to do a prototype for a first location. I'm in the process of doing user interviews to learn about what people would want out of a similar space. Feel free to email me if anyone has experience living at a Roam or similar environment and would be open to doing a user research interview. Email is in my profile
- beardbound 5y agoI was looking at booking a month or two at the Roam location in Tokyo RIGHT when they went under. I was bummed. It sounded perfect. Although as I age I find that dealing with a 10+ hour time difference a pain. These days I tend to stay in the Western Hemisphere to avoid those issues. Also there's so many places in North, Central, and South America I haven't been.
- namelosw 5y agoI was fancying all those digital nomads crowded places. But after I thought about it seriously, I found there are a lot of wonderful domestic places (or nearby countries if you're living in a small country). Usually, those places speak similar languages, cultures are different but mutually understandable so I can live in those places and maximize the joy of living. There are nice and cheap places all over the world, and there's no need to travel to the other side of the globe to find one... Unless you already have your dreamed one in mind then you already got your answer. IMHO In both ways, you don't really need other people to tell you where your perfect place is. Seriously, remote-hostile places (expensive, terrible network, dangerous) are pretty easy to identify, and they are much fewer than remote-friendly places.
- mooreds 5y ago> Seriously, remote-hostile places (expensive, terrible network, dangerous) are pretty easy to identify, and they are much fewer than remote-friendly places. What's an example? I can think of dangerous countries, but how would you find out about a terrible network?
- trcarney 5y agoBy network, I'm assuming internet. If that is the case, speedtest.net keeps a list of average internet speeds around the world. I don't know if it is super accurate but it should be enough to tell you if a place has good internet or if it is terrible. https://www.speedtest.net/global-index https://www.speedtest.net/global-index
- namelosw 5y agoSorry for being not clear, by the network I meant the Internet connection. I would try to Google first to have a general idea, there are usually many complaints if the connection is bad or problematic. Also, websites like Nomad List scores Internet connection for most of the cities (gladly it's not behind the paywall). This should clear major pitfalls already. In the end, I would travel there to see for myself for two or three days. It should be easy because it's domestic or neighboring countries. Not only for the Internet connection but for everything to see if I really want to stay here for a while.
- WorldPeas 5y agoI've heard the Philippines are a pretty good place to stretch a buck... if you can stomach their draconian free speech restrictions and authoritarian politics
- gregjor 5y agoAs an American who lived in Thailand for five years, with their draconian free speech restrictions and authoritarian regime, I think it's easy to just ignore it. You aren't part of the culture, the politics are opaque, there's no reason to form an opinion and go around telling everyone about it. I found it refreshing to live in the fog of not understanding or caring about Thai politics -- it let me focus on making friends and having fun.
- imwillofficial 5y agoI look at it as being a good guest. I don't go to somebody's house and tell them how to arrange their furniture.
- ggillas 5y agoBermuda has a 1 year pass for entry for $260 USD. https://www.gotobermuda.com/workfrombermuda https://www.gotobermuda.com/workfrombermuda I'll be there next week if anyone wants to meet up!
- bwb 5y agoValencia Spain :), best city in the world!
- adamhp 5y agoPeople really sleep on Spain in terms of "beauty" I feel. They always mention Paris or Utrecht or something but man, every place I went to in Spain was gorgeous.
- bwb 5y agoAgreed, Paris is something special but I think there are so many cities in Spain that are relatively unknown and have their own unique beauty. If the government would fix there tax system I think Spain would do a lot better and be booming.
- anm89 5y agoAfter a few years on the road, my votes mostly align with the stereotypes. I'd say Chiang Mai and Medellin are the best quality of life and value mix in the world for me. I love Tokyo, but the value factor certainly isn't there.
- dbish 5y agoIf you’re catering to Americans and might want to move beyond just short term stays, Puerto Rico might be a great option for tax reasons and that you don’t need a visa. There are infrastructure and other problems there, so choosing the right location is important, and having a plan when hurricanes show up as well.
- remyp 5y agoMost full-time American nomads claim the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion via the physical presence test, which would make anything on US soil a non-starter for them.
- BayAreaEscapee 5y agoPuerto Rico has its own tax system that you can elect instead of the United States Federal Income Tax. For some people this can result in a significant tax savings. https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/02/puerto-rico-tax-incentives/ https://nomadcapitalist.com/2018/06/02/puerto-rico-tax-incen...
- Vepkhvi 5y agoThe Republic of Georgia has a fantastic digital nomad program and is a wonderful place to work from. The value is phenomenal.
- istorical 5y agoI spent a good year trying to develop a website to answer this question and collect responses from people who'd done just this to try to aggregate their qualitative and quantitative experiences, before ultimately realizing this is something where you can sort of point out some of the obvious trade-offs but the value system and preferences of the individuals vary so much that unfortunately the only way to really determine it is for the person in question to go live there. And so I stopped working on the site and just got a one way ticket and spent a year remote working. Before realizing that for me at that stage in my life the best place for me ironically was the country where I started, just in a bigger city with a good metro system. If you wanna determine this you'd be best off constructing a matrix of priority systems (weather, cost of living, language, broad cultural region a la northern european, southern european/latin, east asian, latin american, etc), nature in the area, etc) and make a tool for an individual to rank their priorities in terms of categories/factors, then rank the options _within_ each of those categories/factors, and then try to score the results for them. But even then, people often don't know what they want or care about until they've experienced a variety of places.
- anm89 5y agoHey I would be very interested in touching base with you to hear what you learned in your research as I'm working on opening up a coliving space at the moment. Please reach out to the email in my profile if you are open to it. Thanks Andrew
- ganeshkrishnan 5y agoNot OP but as a hobby I created and ran one of the most active backpacking/nomad group on fb and also a site wikinomad. FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking The major issues with creating a one size fit all site is the bureaucracy of visas/immigration that depends on the user's location/passport/country of birth etc. Then, it's hard to run a business from a different country. Its easier to visit as tourist but running a business is extra complicated. If you have remote teams, timezones are major pain. Apart from that the best place I found was Hawaii & Toronto. Australia is also really first class with free public amenities everywhere.
- quickthrower2 5y agoOf course, the best place to work from and the best place for you to set up shop might be different answers!
- vineyardmike 5y agoNot sure how’s you work out proper network but a coworking cruise sounds ideal. Spend a few days at sea working, then dock and explore for a day or two. Then a few more days working. Of course it’s an environmental nightmare but it seems nice.
- gregjor 5y agoSeveral companies have done this, just Google "digital nomad cruise." As soon as the DN thing got a little popular scammers set up shop and left some DN groups hanging with no hotels or transportation. Be careful and do your research before signing up. For me the best part of the DN lifestyle was doing it on my own. I didn't join groups or seek out DN hot-spots, but I met lots of great nomads and non-nomads just bouncing around to places I found interesting. The trick is to start conversations with people you meet. I was always amazed at the DNs sitting in Chiang Mai or Prague coffee shops with headphones on furiously blogging away about how lonely the DN lifestyle is.
- stephenr 5y agoHonestly the biggest thing no one seems to be acknowledging here is the legal issues with this type of business. Yeah you can just fly to Chiang Mai with your laptop and work from a coffee shop and no ones likely to care. Because you’re one person. Setting up a company in another country is hard and often expensive. It’s hard to imagine how the business you describe wouldn’t come under the scrutiny of local immigration and/or labour officials, and face legitimate legal barriers and/or expectations of bribes (obviously depending on the nature of governments where you chose).
- digianarchist 5y agoIt's worth noting that working in Thailand without a permit is illegal. Even if you're self employed or working for a foreign business. In fact, there's only a handful of countries that you can work in without a permit.
- stephenr 5y agoI used to try telling people that too. It doesn't get anywhere. The responses are any one of the same set: "they should appreciate my high $$ income supporting their economy", "I'm just one person who will notice", etc etc. I'm well aware of the legalities of working in Thailand. I've lived here (Thailand) for 8 1/2 years, I'm director and own (with my wife) a company here.
- gexla 5y agoIf you're a digital nomad, then there probably isn't a best place or else maybe you would just plant yourself there and no longer be a digital nomad.
- stuaxo 5y agoStep 1: become digital gonad. Step 2: Start your blog about how easy it is to do digital gonadary, and sell subscriptions to it. At least; when I was travelling this seemed to be what all of them were doing.
- cblconfederate 5y agoI would sell subscriptions to my gonads. in fact pretty cheap
- ecesena 5y agoI'm about to try out Sicily. Italy in general is relatively cheap, you have good places and good food. I found surprising that many places don't have good wifi, but you can get really cheap SIM cards/hotspots (compare to US prices). Language might be a barrier too, but especially in the new generations English is getting much better - at least understandable :)