Should we start a Digital Nomad agency?

by Matthias

Most people that became members of the Coworking Bansko community fall into four broad categories:
- nomads that are just starting out, often with the desire to upgrade their skills
- nomads that are already successful as freelancers, often looking to attract more clients
- nomads that are running a business, that are often looking to hire people or outsource services
- remote employees for larger companies

We have started to connect those people through our internal “Connections — Our Member Directory and Marketplace” app, which surfaced a lot of interesting skill sets, so I wonder if there is a bigger play that we should make here.

Is the world ready for a digital agency powered by the magic of Bansko? Having a common base where people meet again and again between their travels could be a great upgrade to a remote-first model. And having people traveling around the world could help with sales when close to customers.

A very rough outline of what I have in mind:
- Setup an digital agency with 4–5 founders that cover the most important business functions. Everyone chips in a bit of money to cover costs until there is enough cashflow to cover expenses. Afterwards we pay normal salaries plus profits. Being based in Bulgaria keeps costs low.
- Centralized project management in Bansko, sales and marketing can be partially remote
- Lead developer/architect part of the agency, everyone else contracted for specific projects.
- We provide product development and marketing services in a standardized process that makes it easy for us to use multiple nomadic freelancers to deliver certain aspects of the project. Mostly Coworking Bansko members/alumni, augmented by offshore workforce where we don’t have enough “internal” talent.
- Focus initially on specific business niches and/or specific technologies, then expand. Start with something nomadic like Shopify to take advantage of existing nomad relationships.

Who would be interested to start something like this in Bansko as a co-founder?
Required skills/roles: operations, project management, sales, marketing, lead architect
Required commitment: Ability to work on this at least 20 hours per week until we reach positive cashflow — then expectation to move into full-time as business grows
Required investment: Around €3–5k each founder

I think the next step would be to bring interested people in person together for some brainstorming on how to make this happen.

For now let’s vote/comment on this thread to gauge interest in the idea:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/coworkingbanskopublic/permalink/2981366515264835/