DN Interview – CoWorkSurf – Colive, Work And Ride Waves Around The World
We had a great chat with Pier Stein, the CEO of Coworksurf, a coliving and coworking company with locations all over the world. They gather like minded people who want to escape the traditional office, work and meet other people whilst riding a wave. More on this great concept below!
Hi, I’m Pier! I love singing, playing guitar, people, sports and nature. Life, really 🙂 I love seeing the world from space, without borders and rules, and (re)thinking about how we spend our time, and how we could make the experience of life better for all.
RTL: What is Coworksurf and what is the concept behind it?
If you want to hit the road for a while and bring your work, it’s sometimes easy to get lonely. If you want to live with other people who also work and want to (learn how to) surf, you can find one of the lovely spaces & communities on our site! 🌊🌊 We started as a physical coliving space in Portugal and Bali. Guests would stay long term and surf with each other, as well as work together in the coworking space, and generally just help each other thrive and have fun 🙂Â
After a while, we started adding spaces of some of our friends to our site too, because guests wanted to have the same experience in different countries. We’ve now fully turned into a collective of coliving spaces by the surf around the world! We love helping travellers find the right places and people to hopefully have the life changing experiences we had too.Â
There’s a lot of things to manage when running a coliving space – from marketing to bookings, and from community management to day-to-day operations like cleaning. We’d love to see the coliving model keep existing and want to help make it more profitable for the hosts.Â
So, next to connecting them with new guests (like you?), we provide hosts the tools to automate the repetitive tasks of the business, so they can focus more on being present with the community. Because the true experience is the connection between the guests!
RTL: Your website says you are creating the future of living? How do you plan do that? 🙂
The only reason why we humans exist today is because of each other. We used to live in tribes for millions of years. Agriculture, and later capitalism have introduced individualisation and specialisation, and changed the world faster than we could adapt. Many things are amazing in this world, but we think people still fundamentally crave each other, new experience and some variation in their days. We just love hosting those communities, even if people temporarily want to zip in and out of them to feel more connected with themselves, others and nature again. To gain some new inspiration on new ways of living, or to just have some fun 🙂
RTL: This is a bit of a more philosophical questions. What do you think this type of business model is getting more and more popular? Can you see any upcoming trend where Cowork surf fits into?
Remote work + communities around interests, skills and hobbies + slow travel. We only have limited time on earth. It’s fun to explore more of yourself, the world and other than what the traditional 9-5 work-focused life offered. What better way to explore your passions, hobbies, and curiosities than with a bunch of like minded people? Communities are at the core of our human lives. I think I see a split into more online experiences (The Metaverse hype), and more offline experiences. I think more and more people realise that life is now, and want to live while they live. I’m happy about slow travel because it’s better for the environment and the local communities vs. short term tourism. I still hope to see carbon tax and a universal basic income being introduced at some point, I think we’ll have to. What would you like to experience in life if time and money didn’t matter?
RTL: What should people expect to experience when they join one of your camps? (activities, networking, overall experience?)
RTL: Ok so what kind of crowd do you gather in your coliving spaces? ( what kind of jobs do they have, lifestyle, common interests,etc)
Las Palmas – One of the locations where Coworkurf has a camp
RTL: You are probably a digital nomad yourself. How do you manage to work on the go? Can you share a few practical tips with our readers?
Yup. I stay in places for 3+ months. Just came back from 18 months Bali. For me it helps to make a decision to stay somewhere longer, so you can invest in e.g. making your room cosier, and making friends. Making that decision brings more peace. I’m currently back in the Netherlands where I’ll probably stay for another 6 months or so. Love having my friends and family close for a while. I think some ‘digital nomads’ have the idea that living in your home country is a sort of ‘giving up’. I think remote work is about the freedom to live wherever you want, and if that’s home for a while, do it, and enjoy it 🙂
RTL: You’ve traveled quite a bit all over the world. What was your favourite country to live in and why?
I mean, I love Indonesia. My grandmother is Indonesian and I speak the language. Bali is connected and beautiful, the local people are amazing. I’ve spent almost 5 years in South-East Asia in total by now, and I think my next part of the world to explore will be South America. Also love living in Europe. It just works well here.
RTL: You’ve traveled quite a bit all over the world. What was your favourite country to live in and why?
I mean, I love Indonesia. My grandmother is Indonesian and I speak the language. Bali is connected and beautiful, the local people are amazing. I’ve spent almost 5 years in South-East Asia in total by now, and I think my next part of the world to explore will be South America. Also love living in Europe. It just works well here.
RTL: What’s your favourite remote working setup?