Wife and I decided that we were done with the city and lack of space and wanted to travel. Spent the next year downsizing as much as we could while looking for remote first/only companies to make a jump.
Found one of those companies that wasn't necessarily large nor stable and bought a vintage transit bus with the goal of making it at least 6 months to see how it went.
Two and a half years later, we moved on from that company and are traveling slightly different, but the remote first companies and nomad lifestyle are instilled in us.
I went nomad after calculating that rent on my apartment in NYC was higher than living anywhere else in the world.<p>So I just left behind everything that didn't fit in my backpack and a carry-on sized suitcase, boarded a flight to Bali, and started a company remotely with a friend in Australia.<p>5 years later we employ 24 people, all remote.
2004... I was working out of Boca Raton FL as the first "official" employee for a web hosting company. I convinced my boss (the owner) to let me move to Dublin Ireland and work from there :). I landed on a Saturday and by Monday I was set up by the amazing people at the Guinness Enterprise center with dedicated internet and a small one-person office :).<p>I was maybe 23 years old... Crazy fun time in my life.<p>I ended up staying for about 6 months. After I got home I started several companies with 100% remote teams. I've done the nomad thing every year since then for 1 to 3 months and several 2 year and 1-year blocks. Now I have a family and I just moved to Valencia Spain for 2 years to try it out.
While in Paris working as a freelance nodejs developer, I built a website that was making me just enough to get by in South East Asia without having to work (a bit more than $1k/month)<p>So I left France, and while living on the money generated by this website, I tried to build a product<p>In the end, my website revenue dried up and I went back to France to work as a freelance developer, after a year of digital nomadism in SEA<p>It was one of my happiest time in life<p>It feels like it was decades ago, time flies
2014, I lost everything I had invested in my startup (founded in 2011) and decided to go for a sabbatical year (without a penny and no work). After some time, I liked the lifestyle and started to look for some small gigs with software development until I found a full remote full-time job.
This is what I wish to do. Unfortunately, I don't have the courage to do so b because I think I'd get bored traveling alone. I don't like city life much and think of traveling to different places as I am a freelancer and I have that luxury to go nomad.