This is like a digital Nomad remote worker heaven!
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of digital Nomad TV
And if you've seen this show before you might know that I absolutely love Amsterdam
It's one of my favorite cities in the world all
18,000 of these people love it as well
and that's where we're hanging out today to answer the question as to
Why Amsterdam and the Netherlands are such a great home base for entrepreneurs startups and digital nomads alike?
Amsterdam actually has one of the highest concentrations
Of co-working spaces per square mile that I have ever seen there's over 60 of them alone
Just the ones that I could find
So today we're going to take a little tour around the city
Check out three of my favorite co-working spaces and find out what makes Amsterdam such a great place to be for people like us
Let's go
First up we are at Zoku, which is a multi concept hybrid
Working living social and community space in De Pijp in Amsterdam central
There's a meeting spaces event spaces. They have live music happy hours community events
Masterminds there's even a high impact training studio downstairs
There's a spa treatment room and they're super healthy food
You can have breakfast lunch and dinner and it's open 24 hours. I think it's the integration of
What work-life balance could look like in the future? So let's go check it out
Hi guys
I'm here with Veerela Donders who is the concept and brand manager at an amazing co-working
co-living space called Zoku
We noticed our something is happening in the world back
Then the term location independence or digital nomadism is nowhere near us to be found
But we noticed that a lot of the talents from big corporations were getting more flexible, were getting sent abroad
for longer periods
for a Few weeks or few months. there's a hole in the market these people get put in
You know, a hotel or Airbnb but they don't get you know any social structure. They don't know the city
It's really hard to get ground them in the city and it's hard to get inspired when you're all by yourself
so we said,
So we have to do something with that and that's kind of how how the idea zoku started as yet
A home office hybrid, so it's placed by great place to work and it's a great place to live
So when you come here as a resident you live here you can interact with work Zoku members
And
They're really fun. They're people from all sorts of
Industries, they're local people, they're international people that are living in amsterdam for a while and they're great mix of when you can meet
them during like little rituals that we have like maybe a daily coffee ritual where at 4:30 you come together you have coffee cake and
Sometimes people stay there for hours and just talk to each other
This is then the biggest room that we have and this is mostly based
And created for people who stay here for a longer period of time so they actually have their own
their own loft and not just a hotel room where the bed is central but actually their own loft
and actually an apartment where you can lay for a longer period which is actually nice to live in then you can even if I friends
over you have a long table that you don't have to be like uncomfortably on the
bed. wow this looks better than the photos on the website
Yes, if you are a professional gymnast the go ahead - I was gymnast! You were? Yeah. So show us!
But this is for uh
this is a male gymnast apparatus? Okay, you know more than I do!
In Zoku you can play where you live
where you work. play where you work
You're gonna work like this, you know, just hang on that I think just hang on the rings and work
Hope you guys like this tour of Zoku - one of the coolest coworking concepts I've seen yet
Okay, it's official I'm never leaving this place is paradise! this is a digital nomad, remote worker heaven!
Now we are in Liedseplein which is in the heart of the city there's always a lot of action going on here
We're close to the Heineken brewery
There's canals there's boats. There's beer there shopping
There's bars coffee shops restaurants
Everything and there's also my co-working space Boven de Balie - it was voted one of the best
co-working spaces in Amsterdam a couple years ago and it's really cool at the top of the Balie which is
A restaurant bar cafe, and they also have a theater there so up in the attic
There's a co-working space full of entrepreneurs from all over the world. Another thing. I like is that it's open from 9:00 a.m
Until midnight or even 1:00 a.m. Sometimes so you can always come in after hours if you need to get some extra work done
Let's go talk to Sander. He's one of the founders and we'll hear what he has to say as well
Okay guys, so we are here with sander
One of the cofounders of one of my other co-working spaces or I'm a member. It's called Boven de Balie
It's been such an explosion of co-working spaces here
What makes a bit culture of boven de balie different or unique?
What I personally like about it is that it's not too big not too small
So it's big enough to have different people in the office and every day and you feel like something's going on
But it's small enough so you don't feel like you work in an airport lounge
Let's say which can be the case in some really big spaces
What helps also is for example that we we have shared lunch every day together
Like really everybody gets up pretty much at the same moment and we all just have lunch together
So it's relatively easy to to integrate into the group
and
Also that we just don't for example if you have a subscription where you work two days a week
You don't have to check in with an app or go past reception through security
door you know? Yeah, I don't do that sort of stuff
If you want to bring someone to the office today for a day, you can just do that
you don't have to buy a day pass, you know where we
like to just take it easy, I think in the end most co-working spaces are kind of a reflection of
the person that started it so we have mostly
freelancers some small startups as well and then freelancers like marketers SEO people or people that own web shops or
designers or developers
And people here even organize holidays together. So last summer some people from here rented a house in
Valencia in Spain
Yeah, it's also kind of letting go with the nine-to-five mentality and separating work time from holiday time and just like it'll blend
In. I think people are just getting more creative because first it's like I don't have to work at home
I can sit in every cafe that I want. It isn't that I don't have to work in my own country
actually, I can do... and then
Yeah, people are figuring it out. The acceptance is growing I think
certain people feel like oh, my clients wouldn't accept this or
but times are changing and
and it's becoming more and more acceptable this lifestyle, which I have also been either self-employed or
location-independent
freelancer in some way
Shape or form since college and I only say to people this is like what being an adult should be like in my opinion
Like just being able to work when we want. That is a
Natural organic thing and I can't really imagine my life any other way
So thank you so much for starting this and when I came to Amsterdam
the first thing I did was look for a co-working space and I definitely felt like
At home here and within a day or so
Felt like part of the family
so thank you for creating this and
giving people like me and other digital nomads and a little like a place to work and you know a place to
Live part of their lives. Yeah, we've glad you like it so much
It might be good to say that if nomads passed by Amsterdam
We always offer free work space up until a date like three days or so
alright, so if any
If anyone watching this once you take a free trial day here at Boven de Balie
you can sign up at
You can just go to boven de balie .NL I don't know which you probably cannot spell
So you guys know that I love to change up my workspace and
Just get more inspiration from my environment and really fully take advantage of being a digital nomad
So one of the things I've done is actually paid for memberships at two different
co-working spaces here in Amsterdam
One of them is startdock and one of the owners tom is going to show us their new location
So they actually have two locations just about five minutes from each other
Their first location filled up in the first couple years, so they expanded to a three-story building beautiful
Architecture garden common spaces so he's gonna show us. Let's go check it out
Well, we started with our own co-working space and very beginning since we were in need of her own
office environment we maintained
To create an ecosystem on the Herengracht and started with with the building over there, too
Well together all these entrepreneurs and to create an ecosystem. We created now two monumental
historical buildings in the city center of Amsterdam
And we really want people to to feel that working from an office environment doesn't have to feel like working from an office environment
So with us you work from a beautiful building with lovely people around you and these two factors are very important for us
I'm still a very open City. So people
People in Amsterdam are open-minded
They are really open to to people from all over the world in order to collaborate in order to to learn from each other
So it's not only the culture of the people, but it's also the culture
Can you imagine just bringing your investor into this garden and talking business in a garden like this this is well
We really fell in love with this this garden. Alright
Well, that's all for our tour of start dock guys and I hope that you liked it and we'll see you soon in Amsterdam
But I hope you guys enjoyed this tour of co-working spaces in Amsterdam
If you have any questions
Make sure to put them in the comments and also make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode of Digital Nomad TV
See you next time