Building Cococo – #1 – Europe Research Trip

Going on a trip

I don’t know much about designing or planning a Coworking/Coliving business. I never built a proper business that was not online and nothing related to the digital nomads’ crowd, so figured I should better learn from those who do.

In my years as a digital nomad, I visited almost everywhere, but not really in Europe. However, I knew it was a house for many nomads, with famous communities like Bansko, Lisbon, Madeira, or the different Canary islands.

Those communities are more “mature” than other places, with Coworking spaces that have been there for over 5 years and community members buying properties and moving to live in those destinations permanently. This is very far yet from Siargao, but I believe that I will have a lot to learn there and design how I would like CoCoCo and the community to be.

So I did a 3 months Eurotrip, visiting mainly Bulgaria and Portugal, meeting hundreds of digital nomads, checking out different Coworking spaces, and joining meetups and events.

The “Coliving” trend

So I started looking for Coliving spaces to stay in around Europe. The problem was – I wasn’t the only one. All the places I found were booked already for the next 6 months. I knew Colivings became a trend since I started to hear about them more and more, but didn’t know the demand was so high.

The Coliving trend in the last 3 years, by Google Trends:

Well, not going to give up now; I figured that more important than the actual Coliving spaces would be to visit remote workers’ communities, and I can still visit Coworking spaces and show up to meetups if I stay in a hostel or Airbnb.

So I booked my flight to Bulgaria to stay in Bansko, where the famous Bansko nomad fest is taking place and organized by Coworking Bansko. There is a good mix of Long timers who made the place their home and “wannabes” who heard of Bansko and coming to give the digital nomad lifestyle a try.

Once I arrived at Bankso I had the luck to meet and be welcomed by Matthias, the owner, founder, and basically the reason why nomads arriving Bankso. Later on, I had a fascinating interview with him, which I’ll publish separately, where he explained to me how the whole idea came to mind, the way he maintains the community, mistakes along the way, and the upcoming unique structured Coliving he is planning.

Community, Community, Community.

The main thing I learned during this trip is pretty obvious, but now it’s clear: Community is everything. As one of the participants in my Coworking/Coliving poll described it: “I can find cheaper accommodation and places to work by myself. If I’m going to stay in a Coliving, it is for the community”.

I think Bansko, in that sense, is a great example, as there is no Coliving space there, but people are coming for the community built around Coworking Bansko (which has 5 different Coworking spaces around the town!).

If that’s not enough to prove how vital the community is for those who consider visiting any digital nomad destination, let me tell you about a digital nomad meetup in Lisbon I joined, organized by a company whose primary offer is a community, Nomadbase.

Similar to other nomad communities, like Hackers paradise (which has the tagline of “Community-based travel”), Nomadbase offers its members a few weeks events in different locations. They will assist with finding accommodation and getting around the new place, but most important – they will make sure you hang out with fellow nomads.

Another place that was a great example of a well-sustained community is the island of Madeira. I heard about the “Digital nomad village” in Ponta Do Sol, Madeira, sometime in 2021. It is always brought as an example of how the local government can bring to life a remote place by attracting young remote workers.

Long story short, they turned a part of an old museum(I’m pretty sure museum, maybe gallery or whatever) into a free Coworking space, with a great outside area and additional monitors, hoping to attract remote workers to the island which suffered from lack of tourism during Covid-19.

Digital nomads love things for free, and that worked out pretty well. Even when I visited (Sep 2022), there was no free space to stay at Ponta Do Sol, and it was full of nomads. What I liked a lot about it, was that even before arriving, I was invited to join the community slack channel, which was managed and organized impressively by a community manager.
This way, even before arriving, I could find surf buddies, sign up for community lunch, and get the overall vibe of the place and the people.

Different Colivings - different intentions

While I haven’t stayed in many, I still took my chances to visit different Coliving spaces, do some online research, and talk to friends I met who were staying there. First, it’s better to mention the different types of Coliving.

Tourist destination

• Overview: It mainly accommodates digital nomads looking to live in an exotic destination while maintaining their careers and keeping a cheap cost of living.
• Main focus: Productivity and Community.
• Examples: Places like this can be found in Indonesia, Thailand, and Portugal. CoCoCo will be one of them as well.

Rural area

• Overview: Mainly accommodates young professionals who can work remotely and looking for an adventure or trying a different type of lifestyle.
• Main focus: Community and self-growth.
• Examples: Rural areas of Spain, Italy, or Portugal.

Urban

• Overview: Mainly for students and young professionals of that country, not focused on travelers/digital nomads.
• Main focus: Affordable accommodation for young people
• Examples: Can be found in NY, Stockholm and is popular among big cities in Asia.

As CoCoCo belongs to the first type, a tourist destination, I focused my research on those places. Another notable player in the tourist destinations field is the big chains of Coliving, Selina, and Outsite.

The big chains

Selina is by far the biggest player, with over 150+ destinations around the world. However, digital nomads are not their only audience, they are just happy to have them. They do have usually great internet and friendly Coworking spaces, but the thing they lack the most – is a community. I stayed in many Selinas during my travels, mainly in Central America, and it was nice most of the time, but community? long-term stay for remote workers? not really. When their primary audience are young backpackers with the main focus on parties and taking nice travel photos, it’s hard to sustain a community.

Outsite, on the other hand, is focused on remote workers only. They have around 40+ destinations and seem to be growing rapidly. They aim for highly-paid remote workers, with western prices and private rooms only (around $100/night). On top of that, you need to pay a yearly subscription in order to be part of an “Online community” of remote workers.

I loved the idea of Outsite when I first came across it. Their offer is very similar to what I’m trying to offer in CoCoCo, A Coworking, Coliving, and Community.

The execution of Oustiste however, is not what I would like CoCoCo to be. The feeling I got when visiting their venues or meeting the guests, the “Outsiters”, is of a separate isolated group, with mostly similar type of people from the same kind of background (read: Americans in high-paying tech jobs). I do understand why they chose this “High ticket” business model, but this is not what I want to achieve.

The local community factor

Probably the thing I felt was lacking the most, besides Lisbon maybe, is that the Digital nomads community seems to be very separated from the local people. There are some benefits like restaurants and bars that get more clients, but that’s like every tourism business.  I don’t know how exactly or what I was hoping to see, but one of the things I decided to make sure of in CoCoCo is to make it part of the island. Therefore I decided to add to CoCoCo values a few guidelines to ensure the locals of Siargao would benefit in different ways from CoCoCo.

These ways can be simple collaborations with restaurants and drivers, hiring local people for every aspect of the business (like the architect I meet next week), and free workshops for locals from Siargao who are interested in finding a remote job.

The Coworking Coliving poll

While visiting those different cities across Europe and meeting many remote workers, I took advantage of the chance and my Israeli lack of manners to ask them to fill out a survey about their experience and thoughts of Coworking/Coliving spaces.

While I keep the poll open and ask people to fill it, there are already over 200 participants and a lot of significant data to learn from. This is crucial for me as my next step is the Architectural plan, and I wanted to know better the expectations of remote workers from those spaces.

Progress Report

The main things I learned and did since the last post.

Takeaways

💡 Community is the main incentivization to join a Coliving.

💡 There is a growing demand for Coliving spaces. supply doesn’t meet demand yet.

💡 There are different types of Coliving, and I should learn from those similar to me.

💡 I need to find ways to make my place integrated with the local community.

Actions

💪🏽 Opened a FB group for Siargao Digital Nomads

💪🏽 Decided to organize digital nomad retreats in Siargao to create a community and make Siargao known as a digital nomad destination before CoCoCo is even ready.

💪🏽 Started creating business assets like a business plan, brand book, marketing strategy, funding plan, and more. You can view them in the workspace.

💪🏽 Created the Coworking/Coliving poll