Americans in Europe

Globalization, remote work, and how we'll work going forward

I’ve been transient for a few months now, still am. I’m writing this from an Airbnb.

I moved out of my house in San Diego and crashed my parents’ house for a few weeks while selling off the rest of my stuff from my San Diego house.

Then drove up to the Bay Area to see my wife’s family and old friends for a few weeks. In the middle of that, I flew to Houston for a few days for a team offsite strategy planning session, flew back to San Francisco, then two days later flew to Barcelona with my wife and kids. All while still running my startup.

In early November last year, I wrote about wanting to move to Barcelona with my family…

… and now we’re here.

The Portuguese government has approved my wife to receive citizenship under a program to allow Jews to move back to Spain and Portugal that were pushed out 500 years ago. We took them up on the offer.

We’re still waiting to finalize the process, which can take anywhere from 2 to 8 more months, maybe more (given Portugal’s track record on bureaucracy so far, probably 8+ more months).

In the meantime, I’m getting the digital nomad visa from Spain for us to legally be here while we wait for the citizenship to finalize. I met with the immigration lawyer yesterday; she told me that since opening up the digital nomad visa earlier this year, Spain has been inundated with Americans applying.

It’s no surprise to me. The world has shifted. A trend set in motion decades ago was greatly accelerated by the pandemic.

You no longer have to live and work in the same place.

Remote is here to stay.

Leaving San Francisco for different parts of the US during the pandemic was only step one. The logical next step is people moving all over the world.

From an Airbnb in Barcelona, I’ve been brokering three deals for my startup, one with an Asian-American man working for a tech company in Boston, one with a German company where my main contacts are two Turks - one in Oslo, Norway, and one in Istanbul, and finalizing the process of becoming an approved vendor with an American based multi-national company.

When the deals are done, my team from Seattle, Washington to Stockholm, Sweden will work with the customers, and I’ll manage it all from Barcelona.

Photo by Dorian D1 on Unsplash

This is the future.

Live and work anywhere, work with people from everywhere for companies from everywhere. Just pick what country you want your kids to grow up in and where you like to eat out after work, because the work will be the same regardless.

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🍎 Apple brings investors to XR startups

Photo by Medhat Dawoud on Unsplash

“In June, AR, VR, and mixed reality start-ups in the US raised $208 million, almost as much as the previous three months combined.”

Music to my ears, we’ll be raising a substantial sum here soon.

ISP

🏘️ Not all gravy, digital nomad gentrification

Photo by Peggy Anke on Unsplash

Do digital nomads create an economic boost or increase gentrification? Probably both. The benefits are likely worth it, but the downsides will have an outsized effect on some groups. Desirable cities and countries need to start planning for an influx of nomads bringing in cash.

Global Voices

🏢 Major cities to lose $800B in office value

Photo by Clay Elliot on Unsplash

$800 billion could be wiped off the value of office space in some of the world's most important cities by 2030, with San Francisco going to be especially screwed according to McKinsey.

I’m not surprised, nor do I care. Remote work is here to stay, we can turn the office buildings into housing and solve housing cost crises.

Business Insider

^👓 Apple, Pixar, & Nvidia agree on standards

Photo by Max Cortez on Unsplash

Real inside baseball here for the industry, but it appears Apple is converging on a Universal Scene Description protocol pioneered by Pixar. The internet embracing universal standards, like HTML, was a huge boon to the web. We need the same for spatial computing, so this is very good news.

Road to VR