Otar Chekurishvili
6.6K posts

Otar Chekurishvili
@otarch
Internet Citizen. Software & Wine Craftsman. Digital Entrepreneur. Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam.





We’re introducing Dynamic Workers, which allow you to execute AI-generated code in secure, lightweight isolates. This approach is 100 times faster than traditional containers. cfl.re/4c2NvPl



March 10, 2026. Remember where you were.

One of my favorite entrepreneurs on the internet is @yongfook When I started digital nomading in 2013, the scene of people traveling while working on their laptop was maybe a few thousand of people around the world. It was very very very niche. It didn't help that the internet in most of the world was still very slow, so if your job required anything more than basic internet you wouldn't be able to do it (forget video calls, it was too slow for that!) I started DNing in 2013, but after doing it for about 8 months I pretty much gave up, I flew back home, and the nomads I'd met weren't the cool nomadic startup founders I expected, it was mostly guys in neon tank tops selling shady stuff online, one guy sold illegal drugs to ship to America, many others had these get rich quick schemes, also related lots of MLMs (with those long ass pages and mailing lists), lots of shady affiliate marketing, oh and lots and lots of SEO spammers (remember the guys who'd destroy your seach results and you ended up on some page full of AdSense boxes?) It really just wasn't my crowd, not that I'm some moral knight, not at all, but I wanted to meet people building real businesses that made cool products, like stuff you could be proud of And you have to remember there wasn't many digital nomads around 2013. Like a top spot like Chiang Mai in Thailand would have maybe 50-100 at any time (not like now!). So the entire thing of "I'll fly to the other side of the world with my laptop" was lonely as frick, it's not like now where you just fly to Bali (or anywhere) and there's lots of people everywhere with their laptop doing this. It was super extremely niche!!! At the same time I was also going broke and running out of money (a story I told many times before), so I flew back to Netherlands and was back at my parents house, back in my childhood bedroom and back in my childhood bed, at age 28! In pretty much a full blown state of panic of what to do with my (in my perception) failed life, as you can imagine I remember browsing the web at 4AM on my phone and coming across @yongfook. He was a digital nomad, but he dressed nice (dandy suits, not neon tank tops!), and his businesses looked nicely designed and cool and were real honest products (providing a real service, not shady MLM shit) His main thing back then if I remember correctly was Beatrix, a social media assistant that would auto post for you but also find content to post for you (back then very very new) and it made money He would hop around Singapore to Bali to Penang eating nice street food, while making real cool startups, it was my dream life! And it was what I had tried doing the previous year, but I felt so out of place with the people I met that I thought I might as well give up But seeing @yongfook do it, I thought, okay there's this one guy doing it, maybe I can do it too, and even if it's just the two of us building cool startups while nomading, that already makes me feel less of an outcast. And when you're doing something that not many other people are doing, you kinda need some role model as a life line, to give you some false sense of confidence that you're going the right direction So a few months later I flew back to Asia, to Bali, now a new sense of dedication and energy, and that's when I wrote the first lines of Nomad List, which was my breakthrough project, made me famous and started my career in internet startups and in turn got millions of people to go digital nomad in the following years (many of which then became my friends, so I am not lonely anymore) One of the most important things that I tried to really consciously put in Nomad List back then was too "make digital nomading cool", not shady and dodgy but cool and stylish, and I think I did that, and that came directly from @yongfook!


@orodruin24 what happens when those few outlier teams realise they have done years of work in months, and aren't being compensated accordingly. either they leave, or reduce their output to match compensation. either way it all seems to self regulate if you just start writing chapter 2.












