Hacking in Paradise

I’ve been coding and building remote companies for 10+ years.

Early on, the whole idea of remote work was so…remote. I remember pushing the simple thought of some remote days at early startups I worked at, and it felt like climbing a mountain. I wanted to fly to my home in Lebanon from San Francisco, work for a month, and ship product. My employers wouldn’t budge.

I remember reading Rework and Remote by DHH & Jason Fried, and trying to implement it both at companies where I was an employee and later at companies I founded. But still, most people were opposed.

I remember being one of the first people that signed up for NomadList and getting constant marketing emails from various “nomad trip organizers” but never really making the leap.

All those years I worked and led remotely, but rarely was I immersed in the full nomad and indie lifestyle.

That all changed in November 2025.

I got accepted into the Hacker Residency Group’s first batch. Although I was excited, my expectations were pretty low. One of the hosts and good friends Travis was an alumni of HFO, the premier hacker residency where you join 10 other hackers for 3 months, get paid 1 million dollars, and build the best work of your life. Still, I wasn’t sure what i’ll get out of HRG.

Fast forward to December. I’m back, and I can easily say this was one of the most profound experiences of my life, and on so many levels.

First off: Community. Although 10+ years of remote work sounds glorious, it also means being quite lonely. Here I was alongside 20 other people that not only shared some of my passions, but were incredible kind, humble, brilliant, and visionary human beings. I could sit there and talk about the nerdiest subjects, dive deep into philosophy, or just laugh and sing along. It was special living with such phenomenal human beings everyday and it’s something I’ll dearly miss.

Second: Productivity. I have to admit this was the part I was mostly worried about. A lot of you know that I’m strictly anti hustle culture. I’ve written over and over again how the only way you can beat big companies that have 1000x your resources is to outsmart them, and the only way to outsmart them is with a well rested mind and body. So I was worried that being around so much hustle culture will burn me out and I won’t get anything done. Heck, I thought I’d come back slightly damaged. And yes, the first week was a little rough. I worked more than 14 hours a day and found myself with a mini burnout.

But I was wrong.

Being around super productive people gave me so much energy. Even after long days, I always felt energized. I rarely felt sleepy. There wasn’t much anxiety. And honestly, after that first week, I went down to 10 or so hours a day, and they were the most productive 10 hours a day I’ve had possibly in my lifetime. It’s still way above the 5 hours a day I usually limit myself to, yet I felt refreshed at the end of each of them. During this month, we took Fload from a company that relies on intermittent iOS data while struggling to pull this data in 10 minutes, to a company that has access to half a dozen data sources, pulling most data in 10 seconds. We went from a small player to the first AI employee for mobile apps.

Three: Perspective. One of the worst things about building alone is that you get into echo chambers. That includes echo chambers with your cofounders. At HRG, I got access to world class developers, ex-VCs, people that have seen it alone, founders that have worked with similar products, and everything in between all of those. I was able to quickly iterate on ideas, find solutions to really difficult technical, business, and marketing problems, and then iterate some more on top of those. Having a team of experts around me for a month put me ahead of every other competition.

Four: Friends & Family. I spent my month in paradise with my incredible girlfriend. We visited fun cafes, had a great workout schedule, immersed ourselves in Vietnamese culture, and also lived together fully for the first time. And it was at a luxurious villa, with our own giant room that was bigger than our apartment back in Copenhagen. It brought us closer. Kira even launched her first product while having 0 coding experience previously. Check it out at Vibe Tribe. And on top of that, we both made friends for life. The community I talked about above was not just a community, but people I can truly call friends.

Five: Culture. I mentioned culture, but wow. I am absolutely in awe of Vietnamese culture. I’ll be writing an entire blog post about that later today. It really reminds me of the best parts of Lebanese culture and more! stay tuned for that.

The type of people at HRG were also so diverse, which gave me so much perspective.

We had people that were:

• Venture-focused
• Indie-focused
• Indie-focused but venture curious
• Venture-focused but indie curious
• previously built and sold companies worth millions of dollars
• new to being founders
• have millions in mrr as solo founders
• …. and the list goes on and on and on.

But every single founder and their partners were some of the best people I’ve met in my life.

HRG are already accepting applications for their next batch. And the next batch is going to be bigger, better, and include a lot more than batch 0. I highly encourage you to apply no matter what kind of founder you are.