I have just finished my trip around the world which took exactly three years. I have visited Asia, North, Central, and South Americas, and now I’m back in Europe.

During the second year of the trip, in 2019, I had a great coliving experience in Medellin, Colombia. That’s where the idea for the Coliving App was born.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 put the travel industry on hold, but I have a strong belief that it will return with a bang, and will be even bigger than before. That’s because the pandemic accelerated the remote work and digital nomadism trends, and the vaccine will re-enable traveling soon.

Currently, while waiting for the vaccine and under various movement restrictions, travel enthusiasts are making plans for new trips to satisfy their increased hunger for new horizons.

The pandemic also accelerated other trends that require apps and digital devices. Because of the lockdowns, many people were forced to work from home, to use remote communication and collaboration tools, and as a result, many became much more digitally literate and free from their physical workplaces. This change will accelerate the digital nomadism trend, which was already big even before the pandemic.

Additionally, travel, migration, and related services also became much more digital.

I remember, before the pandemic, it was quite complicated or simply impossible to fill in various travel forms on the internet. That’s because these online solutions were either old, buggy, or non-existent. In many cases, such services even required a physical visit.

During the lockdown, and because of social distancing, many such things became digital.

This December, I had a long flight home from Medellin through Madrid and Paris with the final destination Vilnius. During this trip, I had a first-hand experience of this global digitalization.

The interesting thing was that all these destinations had easy to fill and well-working digital forms, they also required each passenger to have a QR code, associated with the form which was filled digitally, before entering the country. The system worked very well, and the experience was painless.

Coliving App

Getting back to the Coliving App. First of all, it’s a long-term project, so there is no rush, no pushy investors, no need to make a quick profit.

I already have some interesting ideas that we have brainstormed with my coliving mates and some more ideas that I have developed after my coliving experiences.

Building digital services is what I do on a daily basis. Officially trained as a graphic designer, I have more than 10 years of experience in logo design and branding, and I’m also a self-taught full-stack developer.

There is no doubt that I can design and develop Coliving App, but the more important question is will it fly? By flying, I mean, will it provide value to users, and will there be users in the first place? In the long-run, it also needs to be commercially successful. These are the hard things to achieve, as they depend also on luck, right timing, and other unknowns that are hard to control or predict.

As already mentioned, I’m not rushing with the Coliving App. It is also possible that there will be no app at all, but since I already have a cool domain, a very special coliving experience, and some validated ideas, plus some initial following (which shows the need for such an app), it would be great to give it a good try.

I think that the core principle for the Coliving App development would be to build it with the help of the community by learning from it, getting feedback, and validating new ideas and features with real users, instead of developing everything in advance.

When developing everything in advance, the solution usually is superficial, so it doesn’t work. A better approach is to build the app organically, little by little, learning from real-life use cases…

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If you have ideas, suggestions, or want to be a part of the Coliving App team and have a good reason for this, contact me by email.

Coliving App
Manage your coliving experience easily and efficiently