ClujHub | Startups&TheCity

Cluj startup ecosystem: €3 Million raised in 2019. Most promising Cluj startups & initiatives in 2020.

Sebastian Florian — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 12:23:53 +0000

Light artwork showcased at Cluj Tech Society – “The Tunnel” powered by Lights On Romania. Photo: Gabriel Aldea / Komiti.media

An estimated €3 Million were reportedly invested in Cluj-based startups in 2019, with fintech and e-commerce leading the way. Riding on a wave of good PR, great vibe and lots of initiatives being launched in support of the ecosystem, 2020 announces itself to be the best year so far for Cluj startups and the regional innovation ecosystem.

For Cluj startup ecosystem, 2019 was a year of growing awareness and collaboration. The Startup Europe Summit organized in Cluj by the European Commission and the City Hall in March, boosted the ecosystem, enabling communication between different organizations, which translated in a much better vibe in the ecosystem in terms of startups and innovation in the months that followed. The ecosystem witnessed a growing appetite from angel investors, more deep tech startups appearing and corporates starting to collaborate with startups.

2019 saw involvement from other actors in the startup ecosystem, including the Cluj-Napoca City Hall which stepped up to support the ecosystem. More tech-focused organizations begun startup activities, and companies in general saw the value in working with startups. Besides the Startup Europe Summit in March, the ecosystem was boosted by a lot of startup related events and conferences, most notable: Techsylvania, Cluj Innovation Days, IT Days, Cluj Tech Society, Transylvanian Clusters International Conference and Codecamp.

Investment deals in the Cluj startup ecosystem in 2019

2019 witnessed a major increase in number and value of funding deals in Cluj-based startups, with an estimated over €3M in total.

AlphaBlock an AI company that builds investment management solutions for pension funds, family offices, and hedge funds, has raised an estimated €1.3 million from Real Ventures, a Canadian early-stage venture capital firm. AlphaBlock has offices both in Cluj and Toronto.

Blugento’s e-commerce solutions platform received funding of €1 million from R22, a Polish IT group, with the aim to expand in central Europe. Blugento grew its revenue almost 10 times in just 3 years and it was valued at almost €4 million in this transaction of 31% equity stake.

Beez has received an investment round of €250K from GapMinder Venture Partners and Roca X, along with a private investor. The total amount attracted by the startup has reached €450K so far. With the help of this financing, Beez is currently expanding into the UK.

Finqware is preparing to launch on the European bank aggregation market, received a seed investment of €180K from GapMinder Venture Partners. It is the company’s first round of external financing after being set up in 2018. Finqware is planning to become the market leader for Open Banking in Europe in the coming years.

Telios, the pioneer of telemedicine in Romania, raised €200K in 2019, an investment round led by angels of the Transylvania Angels Network and previous investors.

Neurolabs builds object recognition algorithms by using synthetic data alone. This allows a faster, cheaper and cost effective solutions. In 2019, they raised an estimated €200K in grants and convertibles. Their long term plan is to achieve superhuman accuracy level in object recognition.

Cyscale, a cybersecurity platform, received a pre-seed investment of €50K from GapMinder Venture Partners as part of the third round of Techcelerator acceleration program.

Startup exits in 2019

Unloq, focused on multi-factor authentication, announced its acquisition by iWelcome, worldwide product leader in identity & access management for B2C and B2B scenarios, for an undisclosed sum.

Cluj most promising startups in 2020

Beez is currently expanding into UK, has already concluded partnerships with over 2,000 stores active in the UK, and is currently in discussions to attract new funds from British investors. Beez is set to disrupt the way people are buying online or in brick-and-mortar shops.

Blugento is currently expanding on several European markets, the first being Poland and France. They also laid the foundation of the first commercial agreement to support online stores in Romania in selling their products in Poland, an eCommerce market about 4 times larger than the local one.

teleportHQ launched the beta version of their AI-powered platform for automated generation of front-end code and design at the end of 2019. teleportHQ has now discussions and is doing prototypes with several leaders in the banking industry, the automotive industry, and several other industries.

Telios, the first company to offer telemedicine service in Romania, had a breakthrough year in 2019. After two years of developing their platform, they launched their service at the start of the year. Telios is currently developing an AI powered app for self diagnosis which they plan to launch soon. They also plan to expand into Hungary, Poland and Greece in 2020.

Neurolabs offers a comprehensive solution to the issues of the current point of sale service in a high traffic foodservice environment. In 2019, they won the “Best Innovation Startup” award at How to Web, Bucharest. Their vision is to be the go-to company when it comes to product recognition. Neurolabs wants to reach 3,700 implementations in cafes, restaurants and canteens by 2022.

Finqware plans to launch in 2020 the first implementations of their innovative Open Banking solutions, making the financial life of consumers and companies easier. Romanian banks will be the first to benefit from Finqware solutions, with a regional expansion to follow in Hungary, Poland and Croatia. Finqware aims to be the infrastructure of choice for banks and fintechs in Central and Eastern Europe.

MIRA Rehab, focused on rehabilitation games, is the most impactful healthcare Cluj-based startup so far. They have been recognized by the National Health Service in the UK, which positioned and promoted Mira Rehab as one of their used innovations.

WakeZ is an app for smartphones and mainstream wearables, which improves the quality of sleep using vibrations. They provide “sleep as a service”, as long as you have a phone and a smartwatch. WakeZ was awarded “Best Product” during Innovation Labs 2018 edition.

Cyscale is the first Romanian Cloud Cybersecurity company that provides dedicated Cloud Cybersecurity Services and works on Cloud Security products.

Mockless creates code-less API prototypes. In 2019, they won “Best Cluj Startup” award at IT Days 2019.

Trainsfer is a web-based platform for AI models creation, with an intuitive UI for leveraging state of the art machine learning using your own data in your custom app use-cases.

Most promising local initiatives supporting Cluj startups in 2020

Transilvania Digital Innovation Hub (TDIH) is a new structure created by the Transylvania Cluster Consortium, with the mission to support digital transformation for small and medium sized enterprises from the non-IT sectors, and for the public administration. Coordinated by Transilvania IT Cluster, TDIH is currently supporting the ecosystem on 3 topics: Robotics (within the DIH² project funded by Horizon 2020), eHealth (coordinated by FreshBlood, the local healthcare innovation catalyst/community) and Digital City / Smart City (delivering expertise for digital transformation of different public bodies in Romania).

In 2020 the TDIH initiative will expand to the nearby cities of Oradea and Baia Mare. The project aims to share expertise, resources, and empower communities in those cities to develop on their own model and their own assets.

“We truly believe that we will be able to develop more and to create more synergies on the regional level if we can succeed to give something back from our experience to the cities in northwest Transylvania.”, says Bianca Muntean, Cluster Manager at Transilvania IT Cluster about the planned TDIH expansion in the region.

StartupCities Europe is an initiative of the European Commision meant to encourage partnerships between cities from the European Union. Within this framework, Transilvania IT Cluster and Cluj municipality is piloting a project aimed to connect Cluj startup ecosystem with the one in Varna, Bulgaria, on verticals like AI and eHealth. The first phase of the project, a Youth Innovation Camp, is supposed to take place in the spring of 2020 in Cluj.

IoT Tribe Space Endeavour is an international two-year program related to promising space technologies, offering startups, scaleups and entrepreneurs space-tech enabled business opportunities, accelerated growth and access to funding. The program will be launched in Cluj with the support of Cluj IT Cluster, in January 2020. Besides a series of activities that will happen across important space and tech hubs such as Madrid, Aix-en-Provence, Bucharest and Cluj, selected startups will have the opportunity to join a global accelerator active in London and Singapore, for a complex 6 months program.

“The ultimate ambition is to bring IoT Tribe to Cluj, a true global accelerator, to consolidate our community’s efforts to emerge as an international startup hub.”, says Andrei Kelemen, Executive Director, Cluj IT Cluster.

Cluj Future of Work is a project funded by the European Commission meant to prepare the local community for the changes that the next 20 years will bring to the labor market. In 2020, the project is expected to have an important impact in the ecosystem by stimulating entrepreneurship, especially in the field of cultural and creative industries.

“The beginning of 2020 will be the time when, together with the project partners and based on the needs that resulted from these researches, we will develop the first program dedicated to entrepreneurs from the cultural and creative industries.”, announced Anamaria Vrabie, director of the Urban Innovation Division within the Center Cultural Clujean and co-manager of the project.

FreshBlood is seen by most of the key players in the local ecosystem as the main catalyst for healthcare innovation in Cluj. FreshBlood is also the hub of EIT Health in Romania, and in May 2019 has become connected to the European Connected Health Alliance, a European network of ecosystems, forming the regional network Transylvania Digital Health Ecosystem.

In 2020 FreshBlood is committed to map the whole healthcare startup ecosystem in the region, and provide the resources that startups need. FreshBlood will provide startups within areas like strength of the teams, business approach (think beyond, regional and national level), faster maturity, and preparation for the investment (relying on collaboration with the ecosystems outside of Romania, like Israel, France or Denmark).

“We will announce the specifics early in 2020, we are talking about a project that will be will be situated at the intersection between universities, hospitals, investors and companies.”, said Ion Petrovai, FreshBlood co-founder.

Main pre-acceleration programs in Cluj

Startup Weekend Cluj has contributed over the years to the definition and development of the local startups’ ecosystem. The first Startup Weekend Cluj edition happened in 2012, being one of the first events dedicated to startups in Cluj. Between 13th-15th of March 2020 people working in the most diverse fields such as IT, marketing, business, design and many more, will have the opportunity to learn from experienced mentors. The event will be followed by a series of workshops focused on idea validation opened to people interested to test their startup idea.

“In less than 54 hours the participants have the opportunity to learn at an accelerated pace the first most important steps in developing a business: validating an idea, building a prototype, or an MVP, as well as defining a business model. In addition to that, a selection of mentors and trainers – experts in the industries they operate, are present throughout the weekend to provide participants with real-time guidance and feedback.”, says Cristina Juc, organizer of Startup Weekend Cluj.

Digital Incubator by ClujHub it’s a program which started in 2016, in the old location of the hub together with Tetapolis, and it’s coming back in 2020. The program is meant to support startup in their pre-acceleration or incubation phase, offering them space, mentoring and business support.

The Digital Incubator will offer a venue where entrepreneurs can perfect their pitching skills, solving their problem-solution fit. The mentors will help them to work on their long term vision and strategy. It will be a program with three or four editions per year, targeting youngsters from 20-25 plus years up.

Machine learning bootcamp by Google Launchpad it’s an initiative brought to Cluj by Techcelerator, targeting AI / machine learning companies looking to grow. Google it’s looking to support these type of companies through a mixed process of design thinking combined with the discovery of opportunities in what the power of machine learning is and where machine learning could bring a lot of value.

Innovation Labs is a pre-acceleration program for young people eager to make the first steps in tech entrepreneurship. Each year up to 60 teams work from March to May alongside mentors, to improve their design, captivate users, develop & test their prototype into an MVP. In May, Demo Day brings the best teams into spotlight to gain outreach, traction and continued support from our network of alumni and business connections.

Startup incubators & acceleration programs in Cluj

Techcelerator vision is to reposition Romania on the world map of leading innovative startups that will reshape the world of tomorrow and offer a higher quality of life. With programs in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, Techcelerator is the first accelerator in Romania which allocates funds for the development of the companies in the (pre)acceleration phase. In 2019, Central European Startups Awards awarded Techcelerator “Best Accelerator at CES Awards”.

“In 2020 we will continue collaboration with TechAngels Romania, trying to bring more investments together. We will also create more international exposure activities for our portfolio companies, in order to take them into international markets and to support their commercial scale up. Techcelerator will develop new programs, more specific on different topics and with different partners.”, said Cristian Dascalu, co-founder Techcelerator and Partner GapMinder Venture Partners.

Spherik Accelerator was the first accelerator launched in Romania, with a mission to connect startups with strategic resources and support the growth of the local ecosystem. Developed by KPMG Romania in partnership with Spherik Accelerator, KPMG Startup Grow Pad is looking for startups that need assistance to find the right resources and finance they need to develop and grow.

Tech’n Trade is a good example of corporate and startups collaboration. Metro Systems launched Tech’n Trade concept in Cluj in 2019, comprised of an incubator meant to help young entrepreneurs and talented teams to create and launch their startup in retail.

Other organizations supporting the Cluj startup ecosystem

Cluj Startups mission is to support and facilitate the growth of the startup ecosystem in Cluj by organising events and workshops, connecting startups with resources and supporting the tech conferences and startup programs. It counts several thousand people in the community and is in touch with most startups in the region.

ClujHub organized hundreds of event dedicated to entrepreneurship and startups in the past years. Besides offering coworking spaces right in the center of Cluj, it acts as a bridge between entrepreneurs, creating networking and communication between them.

Silicon Forest is a technology hub and coworking space, now offering workspaces for startups and freelancers in two different locations in the city.

Transylvania Angel Network is a new initiative bringing together business people interested in angel investing and mentoring tech startups. In 2020, they plan to organize regular matching meetups between investors and startups.

Innovating Society will start a new series of events called “Fireside chats”. During these events, a limited number of participants will be accepted to discuss future trends and what is their impact on business. In addition, Innovating Society will continue with their “Problem Solvers” meetups, where compared to the “Fireside chats”, there will be one speaker sharing insights in topics such as innovation and entrepreneurship.

Mircea Vadan, Cluj Startups co-founder, sees the ecosystem growing strong in 2020, with foreign capital and founders moving towards Cluj: “Cluj is in a good vibe now more than ever. Venture capital funds, startup founders and corporates have Cluj on the map. But we need to deliver to the expectations created! There are around 50 organizations active in the startup area and I believe in the next six months there will be stronger communication between them and a sort of alignment in vision on growth and local innovation support.”

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Coworking around the world for 6 months, from Lisbon to Chiang Mai

Sebastian Florian — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 08:53:16 +0000

Co-working in Portugal. Photo: Borderless Retreat.

Vlad Tamas has been working remotely as a software developer for the past ten years. At one point he decided it’s too lonely, boring and non productive to work from home. First he started working with friends, going to their place or to a coffee shop. Two years ago he discovered the concept of coworking at ClujHub, in his home city, Cluj, Romania. With nothing holding him back in Cluj, in 2019 he decided to explore other cities too. After initially spending a few weeks visiting friends in London and Zurich, working from various coworking spaces, he went to a digital nomads meetup in Amsterdam. And there, everybody told him: “Well if you want to be a digital nomad, you have to go to Lisbon, that’s the nomad hub of Europe”. He decided to book one month in a co-living space in Lisbon, and that’s where his story of 6 months of coworking around the world begun …

Interviewing Vlad at ClujHub, after his 6 months co-working experience around the world. Photo: Andreea Boros

The first co-living & co-working experience: Lisbon

I hadn’t been to Portugal before and I didn’t know anyone there so I didn’t really know what to expect. I was not sure if I would be able to connect with anyone, traveling alone. But I also didn’t want to go home yet, so I went for it, all in. I booked one month at a coliving space and let me tell you, that one month in Lisbon was the time of my life. I’ve met so many interesting people. People that travel long term and work from different places around the world. I keep saying this: when you’re in this kind of community, you do not meet one single boring person. Because it’s filled with people that have taken an intentional decision to live their lives differently.

Praia de Carcavelos, Lisbon. Photo: Vlad Tamas.

It’s so inspiring when you’re surrounded by people taking active step towards designing their lives into something more than following “the script”: get a job, get married, make babies, work nine to five until retirement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of life if you enjoy it, but there are so many other ways of living. It’s nice to know there are other options out there.

A community of like-minded people

In Lisbon I’ve discovered the concept of a coliving space, basically a hostel but for adults. You have your private room but you also have common areas like a kitchen and a coworking space. We also had this WhatsApp group where you would do your thing during the day and then evening comes and you want to go out for dinner, you text, everybody: “Hey, who’s up for dinner?”. And you have five or six people that are like, “Yea let’s do it.”. So you hang out with five different people. The next night maybe five other people, then in the weekend maybe go to the beach together or some other adventure. You basically have a group of friends that you can do stuff with and they’re all excited about doing this kind of stuff because they’re all in there with the same kind of mindset. They’re there to work, but also to meet like-minded people, explore and discover themselves, and discover the possibilities of a different kind of lifestyle.

I used to travel solo for a couple of weeks, always going to hostels. I’m 31 years old now. When you’re over thirty, you start feeling like the old guy in the hostel, where everyone’s 21-22. But in the coliving space, people were right around my age range, anywhere from 26 to 40. When you meet someone who is 40 years old, been traveling for the past 10 years, enjoying the heck out of it and showing no sign of stopping, that’s exciting, like “Oh, I haven’t missed the boat, I could be doing this for another 10-20 years”.

For me Lisbon equals that coliving space. It’s called Outsite. Whenever I tell somebody to go to Lisbon, I tell them to go to that place. Outsite is a chain of coliving spaces started in the US, and now has a bunch of places in Europe as well. Once you go to one of their locations you get some perks, discounts if you want to stay with them in other cities. I love that place so I tell everybody: Lisbon – Outsite. You will have a good time.

From freelancers writing movie scripts for Netflix to startup founders

I work in programming, I do software for a company in the US, and I kind of expected that’s the main type of people I would encounter, because that’s an easy thing to do remotely. But you meet so many different people working in different fields. Even here, at ClujHub, less than half of the people here do software, and then you have copywriters, designers, marketeers and even a guy that plays poker for a living.

Co-working during Borderless Retreat, Portugal. Photo: Borderless Retreat

I met exactly that kind of mix in Lisbon as well. There was this one girl from South Korea, writing movie scripts for Netflix. She’s from South Korea, writing for Netflix … in Lisbon. That’s wild.

There was this one girl from Florida who was working on building her company. Something with shipping products that you can’t find online or outside of their unique regions by using travelers which happen to be in that region. It’s a pretty cool product, you should sign up for it at getstork.co.

A personal coach working on building his online brand. A guy that has his own podcast show.

A girl from the Netherlands who organizes these insane 14 day trips for nomads that need to work on the road. She calls it co-travelling, I love the idea, definitely going to sign up for one next year. The website is thenomadescape.com.

Moving down the coast of Portugal

I had my first ever surfing lesson in Lisbon and realized: “Hey, this is fun!”. So for the next couple of months I just traveled down the coast of Portugal stopping in different surf towns and exploring my new found passion. I’ve stayed in coliving spaces and shared houses, meeting wonderful people along the way, many of them doing the same thing I was: finding balance between work and adventure.

Ericeira, Portugal. Photo: Vlad Tamas.

I was stoked when I found this platform called coworksurf.com which aggregates accommodations that are in a surf area and have a coworking space. One of these places was The Pipe Dream in Peniche where I’m definitely going back next year. Paul, the owner of the house, is the nicest person you will ever meet.

Work wasn’t really affected by all this. Mainly because I was hanging around people that were also working during the day. That’s the power of a coworking space in my opinion. You don’t feel like goofing off or being swept away by distractions when everyone around you is focused on work.

“Don’t complain. work on building your best life.”, has been a recurring theme in the mindset of people I have met

It’s been a roller coaster though. You meet a bunch of cool people in one place, and when it’s time to leave it’s like breaking up with your best friends. Every single time. I keep saying this, you do not meet one boring person when you do this kind of work-focused, long-term travel. People that do this have taken an intentional approach to shaping their lives into something amazing.

So I kept moving down the coast of Portugal, until I reached the southernmost point, which is a tiny surf town called Sagres. I spent two weeks in Sagres. It was late October by this point, it was getting cold in Europe and I was now determined to keep “following the sun”.

Bali, the hot spot of the digital nomad community

I remembered that a lot of people who’ve told me about Lisbon, saying that is the main hub for digital nomads in Europe, were also saying: “That’s Europe, but if you want to go to the main digital nomad hub world-wide, that’s Bali. You want to go to Bali.”. That seemed far fetched, far away. I’d never been to Asia before, let alone to fly there by myself. But at this point, I was feeling invincible, I felt like I could do anything: “I’ve been trekking Portugal by myself for the past three months. Sure, I’ll do Bali!”. I bought a plane ticket and was set to fly to Singapore in 3 days!

Tropical Nomad Canggu. Photo: Tropical Nomad Canggu.

I had zero expectations for Singapore, it was a layover on my way to Bali, but I decided to hang around for one week anyway. I met some lovely people at one event and we ended up going on a day trip together, visiting a nearby island, playing a citywide game of Clued Upp, where you solve a murder mystery by finding clues around town.

I cannot possibly go into all the cool stuff that goes on in the span of just one week in Singapore. I still focused on work during the week though. All adventures were strictly a weekend indulgence. And I think it’s very important, in order for travel to be sustainable long term, you need to have rules for yourself. You need to be aware that work comes first, because that’s the fuel making all of this possible.

After Singapore I went to Bali for one month, the hot spot of the digital nomad community.

I stayed in a town called Canggu, a tropical paradise with beach, surf, delicious food, fresh coconuts and so on, but with a strong emphasis on work and being productive.

It looks like a village, there’s barely any sidewalks, you drive your scooter through the rice fields. It’s nice, but you just don’t expect this to be a hub of developing businesses and entrepreneurial success. However, after you hang around in the coworking spaces for a couple of weeks, whatever you’re working on, you end up feeling inadequate. You feel like you need to be doing more because everybody’s doing so much more than you are. Everybody’s working on two or three side projects, or building a very ambitious business.

“You feel like you need to be doing more because everybody’s doing so much more than you are. Everybody’s working on two or three side projects, or building a very ambitious business.”

Because I felt like I was not doing enough professionally I signed up to give a talk in front of a couple dozen people, on a subject I had little knowledge about. I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, and it felt great. That is the effect of being immersed in this kind of community has on you. If you surround yourself with people that value personal and professional growth, you inevitably end up wanting to better yourself. People there eat healthy, go to the gym, do yoga, practice mindfulness and you end up getting into the same kind of healthy practices without even trying.

Vlad giving a talk on index investing at Tropical Nomad Canggu.

I have a friend in Bali, he’s actually from Romania but he moved there a couple years ago. He started a weekly event at a coworking space in Bali, a hackathon. Every Thursday at Tropical Nomad Coworking Space there’s a bunch of people that show up, and the idea is that you set that day aside, where you don’t do any client work, but instead you work on a personal project or growing your side business. You work on your thing and talk to the rest of the group about challenges they may be facing and where they’re at with their project. I attended the hackathon a couple of times even though I am not currently working on any side projects, but again, I was feeling like maybe I should have a side project. Because everybody does! I’ve played around with a few ideas that never caught on, but it was a good exercise. It’s so interesting to be in that kind of environment. And you wouldn’t expect it happening in a village on an island in Indonesia. That’s where people are getting that kind of impulse.

Hackagu, hackathon in Bali, at Tropical Nomad Canggu. Photo: Cso Horvath.

Those were weekdays in Bali. Because weekdays and weekends are totally different. During the week you work, you hustle. I mean, it’s still pretty sweet. You work in flip flops on bean bags and you get food delivered to you and the food costs $2 and it’s delicious. That’s if you eat like a local. You can still end up spending upwards of $10 for one meal if you go for the westernized version. And then on the weekends, we would go on trips around the island, visiting temples, the monkey sanctuary, go to the beach, attend a full moon party, but that’s a story for another time.

After Bali I went to Chiang Mai, a city in the north of Thailand. This place is also said to be one of the main hubs for meeting fellow remote working people. Maybe the second most popular one in the world after Bali. I booked two weeks in a coliving space in Chiang Mai. The coliving space was not that great. I didn’t interact with anybody there, people were not as open as elsewhere.

Punspace, Chiang Mai

It felt like in Chiang Mai people were not staying there for one or two months and eager to make friends, they’re staying there for a few years. So everybody I met in Chiang Mai already had their group of friends and weren’t necessarily looking to make new ones. It’s a different kind of scene, but I did end up hanging out with a couple of people at the coworking space.

Punspace, Chiang Mai. Photo: Vlad Tamas.

I was working out of Punspace and I loved it. I was doing Instagram Stories every other day about this space because it has a huge outdoor area, lots of green with hammocks and beanbags. Almost feels like you could never get any real work done in a place like this because the vibe is too chill. But once you get your headphones in you zone the world out and you just do it.

When you work remotely, even if you work from a coworking space in your hometown, or from Paradise, you need the same kind of level of discipline. The distractions are always there. You can use them to your advantage, as rewards for after you do work. You can’t just get there and slack off like you’re on holiday. This needs to be sustainable, so work always comes first.

Why would you live any other way?

I am back in Cluj for a while, visiting friends and family but I’m going to keep traveling for the next year or two at least. The past 6 months have been mind blowing and there’s no reason why the next few years should be anything less than that.

Everybody’s in a different stage in their life. Maybe you already work remotely and thinking about doing this sort of thing but you have a lot of questions in your head. A lot of “what if”’s. What if it’s too expensive. Or what if I get there and I have some health issues far away from home. What if I don’t connect with anyone and I just feel lonely and miserable. I had plenty of what if’s holding me back. But if you’re in a position where you can work from anywhere, you should definitely try and be a little bit crazy.

Take the plunge and travel somewhere for one month by yourself. It doesn’t take long until it kind of dawns on you: “This is way easier than I thought. And it’s way less expensive than I thought.”. And you meet loads of cool, friendly people. It’s amazing. It’s like, why have I have I not been doing this all along.

If you don’t have a job you can do remotely, there are ways to find one. There are online courses teaching you skills you can use to build a location independent business. There are so many ways you can be a digital nomad, if you decide it’s a goal worth pursuing.

Wherever you are, definitely give it some serious though. Because you will love it. It’s easy and it’s cheap, especially in Asia. You can live like a king in a tropical paradise. Why would you live any other way?

Want to know where Vlad is heading next? Follow him on Instagram.

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