Featured NomadX Resident: Peter Jacobson
Considering the magnitude of Lisbon’s up-and-coming tech scene, it comes as no surprise that a versatile and adventurous CTO would want to make it “home.” Peter Jacobson is a nomad who has picked this city as his current homebase on his seemingly endless world tour that is his everyday life.
After mastering careers in information technology, social network development, and software, Peter founded a web development company in San Francisco back in 2004. Ever since leaving California for a change in scenery, Peter has been bouncing around all over the globe: New York, Mexico, Barcelona, Italy… you get the picture. In his own words, “I realized that everything I’m doing is remote — I’ve never met half my clients, so it really doesn’t matter where I am. If I don’t take advantage of that, I’m crazy.”
From working as the IT director of San Francisco’s annual Jewish Film Festival, to developing a ‘socially networked wedding planning’ startup, Peter thrives in creative endeavors. Nowadays, Peter and his wife run a web development company, completing projects for Starbucks and the U.S. National Park Service. Officially, they are based in the United States, but the team is extremely distributed, with only three Americans. They have a crew of eight contractors, and they’re from all over the world: Jamaica, Uruguay, Argentina, Ukraine, and Bulgaria.
They value diversity in everything: gender, culture, race, experience, and the list goes on. “You’re dealing with things like user experience design, where people from certain cultures perceive things differently. The way something works for you won’t necessarily work for someone from another culture. Having a variety of perspectives helps in ways you can’t even quantify.”
Recently, Peter linked up with Ani Gupta, a fellow NomadX resident, to create a side-project. They’re currently in a “discovery phase,” scoping out the tech and startup scenes in Lisbon in attempts to discover how they can provide assistance to emerging companies.
“If you’re trying to promote entrepreneurship, especially tech entrepreneurship, you need to be leading the way rather than limping along. You need to be a resource for people.”
Prior to residing with NomadX, Peter was doing work while traveling on a motorcycle. With the help of charging ports on the bike, Google Fi, and T-Mobile, he had internet pretty much anywhere, even without a cafe or hotel. Since his clients were all in a U.S. time zone, he could ride his bike during the day and just work in the afternoon. An authentically nomadic way of life.
Peter’s top two places in the world right now are Lisbon and Verona, Italy. Both cities have an “institutional will” to develop enhanced startup and tech scenes because they believe that this will be key to the city’s success. Of the two, Peter says Lisbon makes more sense right now due to the larger size, low cost of living, and depth of growth and development.
After spending the past two decades watching the tech industry evolve, Peter believes that remote work is certainly here to stay: “There is an infrastructure allowing the idea of the digital nomad, where people can work remotely, have solid internet in more and more places all over the world, and easily access all these tools that simplify nomadism. New services like NomadX support people doing that.”
Peter doesn’t “do” the typical nine to five, and he wants others to know they don’t have to either. He put it best, saying, “Hopefully you’re doing something you enjoy and you believe in.” Maybe it’s on a motorcycle. Maybe it’s from an apartment. Maybe it’s from Lisbon.
More about Pete at linkingarts.com, or @petejacobson on Twitter & Instagram.
ABOUT NOMADX
NOMADX is a real estate technology platform developed to meet the needs of the rapidly growing global community of location-independent remote workers, or “Digital Nomads”.
As Digital Nomads ourselves, we know what the market is looking for: trusted, affordable accommodations in highly-attractive locations worldwide at 50% less than AirBNB. We also offer educational masterclasses to help master the lifestyle as well as community events to help foster new friendships.
Please join our community of Digital Nomads and remote workers from around the world:
Instagram: nomadx.experience
Facebook Group: Support Community for Remote Workers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Williams is the CEO and Co-founder of NOMADX with his base in Lisbon, Portugal. Dave is a US pioneer in the digital marketing, advertising, and ad tech industries as a serial digital entrepreneur over the past 20+ years with multiple exits in the early formative stages of the search engine marketing, social media, and ad tech industries.
