A home base for wandering workers’ big ideas

NomadProjects connects digital nomads to turn side passions into real products

remote worker
Image Credit: Christina Ung
By Slack Team,  February 14, 2017
For Thom Wensink, lost ideas are the great tragedies of the digital nomad life. The front-end developer and web designer from the Netherlands opted out of the classroom-to-cubicle route after college, and today his office could be a café in Barcelona, a co-working space in Bali with the beach as his backdrop, or an Ikea-decorated Airbnb in a city near you — anywhere he can find high-speed Internet he can call his office.

As Wensink travels, he’s had great ideas and met others with great ideas, but without a permanent community to call on, ideas seemed to become nothing more than passing thoughts.

That’s where Wensink and his college friend and co-founder, Linda Even, got the idea for NomadProjects. “It would be a waste if a potential fantastic idea wasn’t realized because someone is afraid they might fail or doesn’t posses the right skills to execute it,” says Wensink.

NomadProjects is a platform that helps ideas become projects by linking the right people together. Look around the site and you might see a developer from Valencia who’s looking to partner with a copywriter on a website that will offer a very niche service, or a web designer in Mallorca who’s looking to lend his time to getting an idea off the ground. Ironically, when launching the site, Wensink and Even — a marketing and growth hacking specialist — struggled to find a back-end developer; they were in need of their own services. There are also many nomads with marketing skills that are looking for projects to join.

When asked why NomadProjects is limited to digital nomads only, Wensink explains, “We experienced that people with regular day jobs have a totally different schedule and lifestyle.”

Being a nomad means, “Some days you work 18 hours, other days not at all. Sometimes you sleep in a hostel with crappy Wi-Fi, other days you stay in an Airbnb apartment,” he says. “Nomad life is versatile. Ideally you want to team up with someone that understands your lifestyle and workflow.”

The site shouldn’t be confused for a job board. Wensink says it’s not about getting paid, at least immediately — it’s about “finding someone that is as excited about your idea as you are,” and getting it done. Nomads come together and try to take an idea from an unpaid side project to a startup in their spare time. On the site, you can share your idea and put out a call for the type of people you need on your team. If you’re a skilled person looking for a project to lend your time to, you can sort the projects by the amount of time you have to spare, from two to 20 hours per week.

The site shouldn’t be confused for a job board. Wensink says it’s not about getting paid, at least immediately — it’s about “finding someone that is as excited about your idea as you are,” and getting it done. Nomads come together and try to take an idea from an unpaid side project to a startup in their spare time. On the site, you can share your idea and put out a call for the type of people you need on your team. If you’re a skilled person looking for a project to lend your time to, you can sort the projects by the amount of time you have to spare, from two to 20 hours per week.

Minda Honey once worked at the airport paging your loved one over the PA to “please meet your party at carousel D.” She promises if you ever have to pick her up, she’ll know exactly where to wait for you.

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