TL;DR Life as a nomadic-broke founder is fun and possible if you want to and will reward you with life-changing experiences.
I personally find the topic interesting for various reasons. For once, because i've been living a "nomadic-founder" lifestyle for the last 17months (sidenote: rather "nomadic broke" than "nomadic rich" :) and because my startup creates a platform that tries to free more people from classic employment and enables them a global "workdesk".
My whole journey was inspired by someone's travelling-story on reddit, which is why i'd like to share mine here. Maybe someone thinks about doing something similar, in which case i hope my story can give insights/inspiration as well.
I'm in my mid-20s, IT-guy for >14years, YC alumni, don't have kids, speak 2 languages (english & german) and in the process of learning spanish (thank you duolingo!). When i started, i moved out of my apartment, gave away all my belongings but a backpack of clothes, my camera and thinkpad. I had only little money on the side and apart from my role as a startup founder, not really any perspective on regular income in the near future. Never had plans for more than 1 month ahead, sometimes plans would completely change in matters of hours. I was expecting to be living very low profile and in case money runs out completely, find some simple job to get by. Money and materialistic belongings became my lowest priority pretty soon. On the upside you gain a completely new sense of freedom. (A particular quote from "Fight Club" immediately comes to mind)
So moneywise, in the first few months i was still employed and working remotely for a befriended company as a programmer. But that ended soon, because i wanted to focus more on the startup. One of my co-foundes had some funds from his former startup with which he could support the team for some time. Not overly much, but enough to get by without much luxury. Earlier that year i got the opportunity to build a funded art-installation[0] that won a price and some money. But to be honest: I'm constantly broke, but somehow there's always a way if you want to.
You'll learn to enjoy your life with the little you have. You get creative eating healthy for little money (have never eaten so much good fruit in my life) and finding places to stay. Mostly i stayed in hostels or i could live with people i met on my journey. Sometimes only due to their hospitality, sometimes in exchange for work (small IT stuff, built a hostel, crafted a "designer locker", gardening and so on). When you stay in inexpensive hostels (my only requirement was wifi), you'll also meet interesting people that are in a similar situation and learn new ways to get by.
For the last 6 months i've been in south america. Life here is comfortably cheap. Most of the time you can easily get by with 10$ a day or even less. And if you're schedule is flexible and you're not in a hurry it's easy to experience some of south-america's incredible nature for little or no money. And you will meet interesting people and life-changing moments travelling outside the usual touristic way of moving around these countries.
What i'm trying to say: If you feel your situation is similar and you maybe even have some money on the side for the beginning: do it. You will not regret it. Don't be scared and never give up. Just always remember that, even if hard times come, there's always a way and surviving those will only make you stronger. You'll find a simple way making money on the side for food & shelter (heck, here in south america you could just be making and selling bread or cake on the street for some hours a day and get by).
Needing only your laptop and wifi to work is an incredibly enabling gift. Pretty much everywhere i went i had access to wifi and could work on my startup and communicate with my co-founders. Take use of that gift and you will have a life-changing experience. Founding a startup in such a globalized way _is_ possible with some coordination skills. Our whole team is spread around the world for the whole time being and we successfully launched a couple of months ago.
Shameless plug: We[1] are building a plattform that enables many many more people to live a location-independent lifestyle like ours. Our vision is that you'll be able to work directly on our site, offer your expertise and/or being presented with jobs directly targeted at what you're good at, always knowing how much money a finished job will make you. We're still in the process of collecting feedback and iterating. Getting a two-sided marketplace off the ground is hard :)
If you have any questions about the story or feedback on our startup, i'd be happy to answer them here or contact us at [email protected]
> What i'm trying to say: If you feel your situation is similar and you maybe even have some money on the side for the beginning: do it. You will not regret it. Don't be scared and never give up.
I'm in a slightly different situation and wonder what advice you might have.
I'm not on the border of going broke. I work for myself from home, alone, and have a comfortable income that I expect will continue for a while. Definitely enough to travel with. So I'm not afraid of not having enough money.
But I am afraid of simply not knowing what to do. Typically when I take vacations it's pre-planned, a week-long thing with a specific destination or event, and then it's over.
A part of me really wants to go "nomadic" and travel lots of places, but I just don't know what I'd do with myself. How to choose where to go to next, how to get the most value out of where I'm at, etc. It seems like constantly moving and trying to get something unique out of each place would take so much consistent planning and work as to be a second job, sucking attention away from where I'm at so I can plan where I'll be.
I don't work with anyone else (even remotely) and I don't have friends scattered across the country/planet. It's extremely unlikely that I would be receiving random calls from people I know, deviating me from my path and pulling me into unexpected interesting places or scenarios.
So my fear is that I'd end up wandering aimlessly, missing the good bits for the obvious ones, not getting a whole lot out of it, and wondering what I'm doing. Is this a legitimate fear? Is there a way to prevent this?
1) Pick a place. Let's say Paris.
2) Go to hostelworld.com, sort by highest review, choose the first hostel in your price range, book a week stay.
3) Sit at a large table in the common room, nurse a beer or coffee, work on your laptop, wait for others to wander by.
4) Strike up conversation, ask about where they've been, what they've done, and what they recommend.
I traveled for 3 months in SE Asia in this way. Everybody is in the same frame of mind as you, ready to meet new people, share stories.
As someone who has been doing this for the past six months, the folks here are right. You kind of learn as you go. The beginning of my trip was in Barcelona, and I had no idea what to do.
Talked to a few folks at hostels, found out what was cool to see in Spain, and used the web to figure out how to get there. Ended up traveling all around Spain for a month, just by getting somewhere, spending time, plotting my next step, and then going.
It might be a little intimidating. It should be. The uncertainty is what makes the journey so much more worth it.
Why not take a look at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ then find a couple of places you like and buy the destination guides. They're a good start. I did this when travelling around Australia and New Zealand and found the books extremely useful.
> So my fear is that I'd end up wandering aimlessly, missing the good bits for the obvious ones, not getting a whole lot out of it, and wondering what I'm doing.
> Is this a legitimate fear?
Perfectly legitimate fear. But none that cannot be overcome. Yes it takes some time to get into it, but the only way to get there is to jump into the cold water and get out of your comfort zone. Realize the fear but have the courage to just try it.
When relocating somwhere without knowing anyone, i usually start off by just checking wikitravel (now probably wikivoyage) and check the "Sleep Budget" section. Pick the Hostel that sounds nice (kitchen, wifi, artisanias, friendly personnel) and head there. Plan nothing more (well maybe just checkout some stuff you want to see eventually, while you're around the area.).
When doing so, the most important thing is to have confidence, that a flexible schedule and your freedom to move whenever and wherever you want will help you get where you want (wherever that shall be). Unplanned and spontaneous trips have been way better and fulfilling than any planned stuff. That's something you can only learn by experiencing it yourself.
And in case you really end up somewhere without finding contacts or get bored, just relocate :) Pick another stop and do it over again, don't ever get frustrated and keep in mind that there are tons of people doing the same as you and are happy to connect and share good experiences with you.
E.g.: At some point i was in peru and planning to visit bolivia. Looked up a really nice guy on couchsurfing (who ended up hosting me for a week). In his respond to my CS request he recommended a festival at lake titicaca that was going to happen soon. Went to the festival alone and immediately met incredibly nice and interesting people (with whom i spent a lot of time in bolivia and peru afterwards). This one clueless couchsurfing request ended in 3-4 weeks of fun and many new friends that i'm looking forward to meeting again at some point.
Another time i met a guy who was travelling with his '94 chevy van from the states down to SA since 2 years. We ended up crossing the salar de uyuni and the bolivian andes towards chile together in his van (and lost the muffler along the way on the rocky mountainpaths...).
So my advice is: Just plan the first step, be open for things to come and then spontaneously choose what looks best. Freeing yourself from the idea that you _need_ plans for a good time will give you the freedom to be open to what comes and lays the way for unexpected adventures :) The people you meet (travelers and locals) are probably the best "tour-guides" you'll find.
I've never had a lonely planet on the whole trip, so dunno how useful they are for this kind of travelling. Found the reviews on wikitravel/wikivoyage to be reliable enough, so far.
Thanks a lot! Yeah we've been digging through a lot of resources on the topic already and talking to like-minded startups. Our current approach is to mainly target one side (buyers) and mentor the provider-side for now, which iirc is a strategy we stole from oDesk to gain initial traction. :)
While I'm not running a startup, I can vouch for your method. I did the same for 3 years in South America, except instead of hostels, I rented rooms on a month-to-month basis. I was also never rich doing it, nor did I come close but I must say it was pretty sweet.
I'm currently working on the details of my next stint abroad.
You're right, forgot to mention that. If you're staying somewhere for a longer period (>1month) it's usually better to rent. In peru e.g. you can get a room in a good location for 100-150usd/month (except for lima problably which is pretty much the most expensive area around peru according to my experience).
I personally find the topic interesting for various reasons. For once, because i've been living a "nomadic-founder" lifestyle for the last 17months (sidenote: rather "nomadic broke" than "nomadic rich" :) and because my startup creates a platform that tries to free more people from classic employment and enables them a global "workdesk".
My whole journey was inspired by someone's travelling-story on reddit, which is why i'd like to share mine here. Maybe someone thinks about doing something similar, in which case i hope my story can give insights/inspiration as well.
I'm in my mid-20s, IT-guy for >14years, YC alumni, don't have kids, speak 2 languages (english & german) and in the process of learning spanish (thank you duolingo!). When i started, i moved out of my apartment, gave away all my belongings but a backpack of clothes, my camera and thinkpad. I had only little money on the side and apart from my role as a startup founder, not really any perspective on regular income in the near future. Never had plans for more than 1 month ahead, sometimes plans would completely change in matters of hours. I was expecting to be living very low profile and in case money runs out completely, find some simple job to get by. Money and materialistic belongings became my lowest priority pretty soon. On the upside you gain a completely new sense of freedom. (A particular quote from "Fight Club" immediately comes to mind)
So moneywise, in the first few months i was still employed and working remotely for a befriended company as a programmer. But that ended soon, because i wanted to focus more on the startup. One of my co-foundes had some funds from his former startup with which he could support the team for some time. Not overly much, but enough to get by without much luxury. Earlier that year i got the opportunity to build a funded art-installation[0] that won a price and some money. But to be honest: I'm constantly broke, but somehow there's always a way if you want to.
You'll learn to enjoy your life with the little you have. You get creative eating healthy for little money (have never eaten so much good fruit in my life) and finding places to stay. Mostly i stayed in hostels or i could live with people i met on my journey. Sometimes only due to their hospitality, sometimes in exchange for work (small IT stuff, built a hostel, crafted a "designer locker", gardening and so on). When you stay in inexpensive hostels (my only requirement was wifi), you'll also meet interesting people that are in a similar situation and learn new ways to get by.
For the last 6 months i've been in south america. Life here is comfortably cheap. Most of the time you can easily get by with 10$ a day or even less. And if you're schedule is flexible and you're not in a hurry it's easy to experience some of south-america's incredible nature for little or no money. And you will meet interesting people and life-changing moments travelling outside the usual touristic way of moving around these countries.
What i'm trying to say: If you feel your situation is similar and you maybe even have some money on the side for the beginning: do it. You will not regret it. Don't be scared and never give up. Just always remember that, even if hard times come, there's always a way and surviving those will only make you stronger. You'll find a simple way making money on the side for food & shelter (heck, here in south america you could just be making and selling bread or cake on the street for some hours a day and get by).
Needing only your laptop and wifi to work is an incredibly enabling gift. Pretty much everywhere i went i had access to wifi and could work on my startup and communicate with my co-founders. Take use of that gift and you will have a life-changing experience. Founding a startup in such a globalized way _is_ possible with some coordination skills. Our whole team is spread around the world for the whole time being and we successfully launched a couple of months ago.
Shameless plug: We[1] are building a plattform that enables many many more people to live a location-independent lifestyle like ours. Our vision is that you'll be able to work directly on our site, offer your expertise and/or being presented with jobs directly targeted at what you're good at, always knowing how much money a finished job will make you. We're still in the process of collecting feedback and iterating. Getting a two-sided marketplace off the ground is hard :)
If you have any questions about the story or feedback on our startup, i'd be happy to answer them here or contact us at [email protected]
[0] http://www.ffaloox.com/wiremap-principle/
[1] https://www.work.io