Meet the pioneers in coliving software – Ramon and Sole from Mapmelon and more!

Toks: Where did you grow up and where do you consider to be home now?

Ramon and Sole: We both grew up in Alicante, a city in the South of Spain, 4 hours from Barcelona.

Ramon: We started living this life – I started four years ago.

Sole: Three years for me.

Ramon: Yeah, I would say our home base – we’re still trying to figure out.

Sole: It’s mostly Thailand for now. That’s what we consider our home base, but we don’t have a house or an apartment or anything yet.

So, everything started with COVID. Ramon started after COVID. With all of these limitations inside of Spain, Ramon started to travel and be a nomad inside of Europe and Spain and then went to colivings, like Nine Coliving in Tenerife, which was his first coliving.

Ramon: Then Sundesk, then Chateau Coliving… yeah, a lot of them.

Sole: Then I met him. I was living in Valencia at that time. We started dating and I was like, “OK, I want to join your lifestyle. I also want to be a nomad.” I met some of his friends from the nomad world, people from the Netherlands and from Germany, and I got really inspired by them and looked for a way to become a digital nomad. That’s when I talked with my boss at the time and I decided to become a digital nomad. That was three years ago and we started travelling together for all of that time. For Ramon, since his first coliving experience, and for me since that moment, we don’t have any base in Spain. We don’t have a house or anything yet there, and where we feel more like home is like a mix between Spain but also Thailand because it’s the place that we like the most to spend our time here.

Toks: Awesome, I learned a lot there. So, if I heard this right, are you both from Alicante in Spain? But you didn’t actually meet there, you met somewhere else? 

Sole and Ramon: Yeah, more or less, yes. 

Toks: Oh, that’s interesting. Where did you meet then?

Sole: We have a friend in common from Alicante, and we knew each other from one birthday party. We started dating because we went on a trip together to Lisbon. So I was going there only for a week, but he was staying there the whole month with our friend who was also staying there that month. So thanks to this friend in common, we went travelling with him and another friend too. So there were four of us, and then that’s when we started dating. They stayed in Lisbon in a coliving called Samesame, and I had to leave. I left to go back to my job because I was commuting at the time.

Toks: OK, that’s cool. I didn’t actually know you’re a couple because it doesn’t say on your website, so that’s news to me, but that’s nice! It gives a different dynamic and I’ve thought of more questions around that actually, which I will come to later. 

Toks: What’s the work history and background of both of you and what led you to create Mapmelon?

Ramon: I’m a software engineer, I studied software engineering in Alicante and then did a Master’s degree in web engineering in Madrid. I love building stuff, so after going to some colivings, I started building Mapmelon at the beginning to follow your friends that you meet in colivings. And then at some point, these friends started requesting more features about colivings, and I also met Sole. So we started building Mapmelon, more focused on colivings, like listing the best community colivings and adding features for helping people to find good colivings, community-focused ones, and avoid the fake ones that just call themselves colivings.

Toks: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean!

Ramon: So that has been our project for the last two years, and now people can even book through Mapmelon and book their colivings. We also have discounts and we are trying to standardise helping coliving owners and colivers into this coliving world that has brought us a lot of things. So we want to give back to the community by helping them.

Sole: I’m a marketer. I started working as a digital marketer intern. I was studying journalism and I did my internship in marketing. Then I started working in an agency for e-commerce doing mainly paid advertising, so I’m a Facebook ads expert. Then I started learning more about design, branding and the power of messaging, copywriting and all of that because of my job. I started developing the brand of Mapmelon and everything because when we started working together, Mapmelon was just an app to see where your friends are , but it was not launched to the public. So I was more into the branding, but also the UX part of like, “let’s start testing it and seeing what people like.”

Ramon: She’s very humble. She was doing everything. Everything that was not coding, was her!

Sole: At the same time, I was working for a Canadian company, and she was working for a British startup at the time. After that, we focused more and more time on Mapmelon and we decided to become freelancers so we could have more flexibility and be more independent about time zones and locations.

Ramon: We actually created an agency called Human Does.

Sole: We are now also trying to do marketing for businesses targeting nomads, especially colivings. So we are helping colivings find colivers. That’s more or less what we are doing right now.

Ramon: Yeah, helping colivings in any way we can, like for marketing, for attracting nomads, the bookings, etc.

Sole: Yeah. Our backgrounds are in engineering and marketing, and that’s it.

Toks: That’s awesome. So those are very good skills to put into a project like Mapmelon. I think it is a really good business that you’ve built there because I know sometimes from experience myself staying in colivings, you meet people and you want to keep in touch and it’s not so easy. You can obviously add each other on WhatsApp or social media sites, but it’s good to have a platform that’s a bit more like, “Oh, you can follow where they’re going and stuff”. I think that’s a really good idea – it adds a bit of structure to that, doesn’t it?

Sole: Yeah, that was more or less the idea. Again, as a way to keep in contact with friends. That’s something that we found out after the first year – each of us realised that it’s really difficult to have a network that you maintain and nurture over time. We were trying to meet with the same friends that we made the first year again and again, but it was getting more and more complicated because every time you meet more people, you need to be opening this list and making it longer and longer and longer. So we thought the easiest way would be just to share your plans, and then see where they are going to go and try to meet somewhere. And that’s when we decided to launch it to the public. After that, we saw that people were asking for all the features related to colivings, because we moved mostly in the coliving bubble. So that’s why we were getting this feedback all related to colivings, and that’s where the platform went – because we were building something that we wanted to use.

Toks: OK, that’s brilliant. I know you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit, but what led you to the digital nomad lifestyle?

Ramon: For me, it was Nine Coliving. I didn’t know anything about digital nomads or colivings, and I don’t know how I ended up in Nine Coliving in Tenerife. Since then, I met a lot of these like-minded individuals who showed me about this life that was possible. So I started to get more interested. I always liked to explore and travel, so for me, this sounded like the perfect opportunity, and I just started going to more colivings, meeting more people, and travelling and exploring. That was my goal.

Sole: For me, it was more like, I always dreamt about visiting the world and travelling everywhere. When I started working, I was thinking, “Oh, I would never have that phase.” You know, like when you think “Oh, I will have this backpacker phase and I will discover the world and all of that.” But when I started working, I was like, “Oh, this is never going to happen to me because I’m too old or I have now this life that I cannot and I don’t want to abandon.” So I always had this thought but never knew how to put it in place. Then when I met Ramon and I saw what he was doing, I was like, “Oh, that’s cool, but he is a software engineer and I’m not a software engineer. I don’t think it’s easy for me to find these kinds of opportunities.”

So then I talked with his friends – all of them had different backgrounds, and one of them is a consultant. So when I went to Lisbon and I met his friends, one of them was a software engineer, and I was like, “Yeah, your opinions don’t count for the real world where you need to find a job – jobs don’t rain on you, right?” Then I was working with this guy, he’s a designer, and he was telling me like, “I’m doing this and I’m a designer.” And then I thought “Oh, so it’s not only for really technical people to do this!” 

Also, Ramon really has a mindset of “Why not just ask? Let’s see what happens. Don’t put nos in front of you before you ask. So you just ask, and if they say yes, then that’s what you get.” So I went to my boss at that time and asked her, “Can I work remotely?” And she was like, “Oh, no, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to ask the CEO, but I’ll tell you now, it’s not going to happen.” And then she asked the CEO, she came back and she was like, “I don’t know why he said yes!” – amazing! 

So, then I start travelling. I also had to do all of these steps of planning. All of this was in November, and I became a digital nomad in February/March. That was pretty fast, but I managed to do everything, like cease my lease agreement and take care of all my belongings. Like, a lot of steps – it’s not something that you do one day and the next day you’ve done it. You need to have a plan. You need to see how can you make it work. But yes, it’s worth it. 

Toks: Yeah, I guess it goes to show, you don’t ask, you don’t get, isn’t it? That’s a common saying in English. Sometimes, you just have to ask. They may say no, they may say yes, but you got your yes! That wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t try, so that’s good.

Toks: What year was it that you both started becoming digital nomads?

Ramon: 2021 for me, and 2022 for Sole.

Toks: So Ramon, how did you hear about Nine Coliving and then get to stay there to start your digital nomad journey?

Ramon: I was doing my Master’s degree in Madrid and I already was working for a remote company. I wasn’t looking for a remote job, but the job I got was remote. Then COVID happened and also my ex-girlfriend, we finished the relationship and then I decided that there was nothing else that I had to do in Madrid. That was where I was at that moment. And I had a friend and we decided “OK, let’s travel.” And I guess we were looking for a coworking, maybe,in Tenerife. We wanted to go to a new place, but we didn’t want to leave Spain because of COVID and these silly COVID regulations that were changing every week. So we decided to go to the Canary Islands as we hadn’t been there before. There, we were looking at Airbnbs and apartments, but we ended up in Nine Coliving. I don’t know how it popped up, but once I saw the web page I was like “Wow, this place looks super good. We are going to meet people. We are going to practise English also and meet people from outside. It has a coworking, they do activities. OK, this is super cool. We’re going to try it.” And my friend was like, “OK, let’s do it.” So we went to Nine Coliving and yes, it was even better than we expected. I guess it was not Nine Coliving itself, but the door that was opened to me – like, you can live this life and it’s totally possible. And that’s how it that’s how it happened.

Toks: That’s awesome. I was just curious – I knew what digital nomads were quite a few years before I heard of colivings, because I think colivings are a slightly more newer thing, or they’re starting to be. Not even everyone knows what they are. So yeah, it was quite interesting that colivings were quite early in your journey. 

Toks: You’ve touched on this a bit already, about why you started Mapmelon, pretty much because you saw the need yourself to help connect you with friends that you made in Colivings. How long were you doing colivings for before you decided to start Mapmelon?

Ramon: It was three or four colivings. I was in the Chateau coliving where I was finishing my previous side project, and I wanted to do something new. I talked with a friend, Tobias Hug, and I was sitting on a couch and I was like, “I’m thinking of building this. What do you think about this? Will you use it?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure, I will do it. I will use it if you build it.” Then I built it and that’s how it started.

Toks: How long were you staying in each coliving before you started Mapmelon? Was it just a few weeks, or were you doing quite a few months?

Ramon: I was staying for a month, more or less, in each of them. Well, in Nine Coliving, I spent like 2-3 months there, but then the next ones were around one month, to a month and a half each.

Toks: That’s quite cool. So you were spending quite a long time in them, which I think is good for meeting lots of people and forming good bonds. I guess you’re the one that started it, Ramon, and then you had Sole join you later on and partner up? 

Sole: Yeah. In the beginning, he had been working on it for a year, holding everything, the product, but it was not tested and it didn’t have a brand or anything. It was not Mapmelon – it had another name. 

Roman: It was just a side project.

Sole: I started testing it, using the platform myself and I was like, “Oh, this is not working. Oh, I should make this button bigger,” stuff like that. Then, only helping him with that evolved into this.

Ramon: Definitely.

Toks: That’s good. So did you [Ramon] start Mapmelon before you started dating? Am I getting that right?

Sole: Right. Yeah, he started the coding before we met each other.

Ramon: Actually, it was in Lisbon when I started coding Mapmelon, so it was around the same time we started dating. Then one year later, Sole joined it, more or less.

Toks: That makes sense. I suppose you don’t want a new girlfriend to just jump into your business. You want to know her a bit before that, yeah? This leads to my next question – what’s it like running like a business or a project with your romantic partner, and any pros and cons to it?

Ramon: It was easy for us because we have different backgrounds. I guess, if we were two engineers or two marketers, it would be more of a disaster, but it was easy to delegate the tasks to the one that was better at that thing. The thing is that it was at some points hard to just have a normal discussion about things that were not Mapmelon. We even had to set up a separate WhatsApp group to discuss Mapmelon and try to separate the boundaries between what is the business and what is the relationship.

Sole: Yeah, it is complicated sometimes to stop talking about colivings, Mapmelon and all of that. So we put a time limit – after 6:00 pm, we cannot talk about this. We can just talk about anything else – like, you can talk about your job or your clients, but not about the Mapmelon project because that’s different. We were also creating a WhatsApp group so we could have the Mapmelon conversations in that group and not in our private chat, because all the conversations were getting mixed. The thing that I think is difficult, and I didn’t realise until some months ago, is that it’s easier to extrapolate things that happen inside the project, and you can think that the relationship will go the same way. So for example, if you discuss something about the project, then you think your partner will act the same way in your relationship and your life together. So it’s challenging to separate like “no, this is Ramon in working mode and this is Ramon in relationship mode.” So that’s the kind of thought that I just realised some months ago, that I need to realise that if he does this in the project, it is not how he will act in the relationship.

Toks: That’s really insightful. There’s a lot there around just having strong boundaries. Thank you for that.

Toks: So for each of you, what’s your favourite Coliving space and why?

Ramon: I mean, I don’t have a top coliving space. I would say, depending on what I’m looking for, I have a favourite one. So for example, in Asia, I would say my favourite one is the one from Alt Chang Mai, the one that John Ho has built, because when I want to get things done and get focused, it has a nice coworking and everything is well designed all around. It’s a very nice coliving, and John also has a business background. It’s not only like “I want to make a coliving” – he’s very focused on the numbers and making it profitable, which a lot of coliving owners don’t realise they need to focus on. They focus a lot on the community, which is perfect, but they also should focus a bit on the business model, because then if they don’t focus on that, it will not happen in the end. So, I like how John is doing things here in Alt Chang Mai.

And about colivings in Europe, it totally depends. I mean, I really like Nine because it was my first coliving, and it’s a very nice coliving. I also like Sundesk, my first one in Morocco, and I’ve been to Adventure Keys which is next to Sundesk, but it’s very into surfing, which I really like. So it also depends on what you’re looking for. If you are looking to do yoga or entrepreneurship or surfing or whatever, I would say you have a different coliving.

Sole: Yeah, I agree. I would say the same – that it depends on the moment of your life. So if you’re in a moment where you are really looking for focus or meeting and networking with people that will help your business grow, I will definitely go to Sun and Co in Spain, or I will go to Alt Chiang Mai here in Thailand, because those colivings are where they really focus on connecting with other folks that can help you collaborate and grow your projects. But if you’re looking more into something outdoorsy, doing the kind of activities outside, I would go to Cloud Citadel, for example, or Alpiness in the Alps, where you can just go hiking or climbing or have more of these like homeish kind of vibes, like sharing meals and all having dinner together or to see a TV show. That’s something that is typical in these kinds of colivings. So I think it really depends on the kind of thing that you’re looking for in each moment.

Toks: That’s a very good answer. Yeah, definitely there are different colivings. Personally, my favourite so far is Sun and Co – that’s the first one I’ve ever done, and then I’ve done others after that are not really as good. I found that with Sun and Co, it’s like you said, it’s very good for networking and finding people to help with your business, as well as just finding friends and community. It’s very structured as well, there are always activities and things you can do. Whereas other colivings, I found it’s not so easy or structured.

Sole: It depends. Some colivings are really well-structured. When I say like homeish feel, those colivings also have a structure. Those colivings like Cloud Citadel and Alpiness, also have these kinds of weekly meetings where you plan for the week together, it’s just that they are different kinds of activities. For example, in Cloud Citadel, when you arrive, they have all the art hanging that people from the coliving have done, so you feel more like you are in a house, in a home, where people are hanging their paintings and stuff like that. I think that Sun and Co is more design-focused, so it doesn’t feel like that much.

So it really depends on what you’re looking for. And if a community is not a structure, for me, that’s not a proper coliving. You need to focus and work on the community.

Toks: Yeah, 100%. I heard of Mapmelon through Sun and Co, so I’m guessing you’ve been there? Maybe you left your stickers or something like that there.

Sole and Ramon: Yeah. 

Toks: Awesome. Is there anything else you think would be good to go in this article?

Ramon: Yep. We are also now working on a new tool for colivings called MangoBeds, which is to manage the colivings, like a property management system. A lot of colivings are having issues with their property management system because there is not one to manage the bookings and the community and everything in one place. So we have developed this new product to help coliving owners to manage their colivings. It is called MangoBeds because we like fruits a lot!

Toks: Yeah, I noticed, haha!

Sole: I will say also, I think it’s important for people to know that there’s a lot of colivings. There’s not only the ones that you heard of. And if you are waiting to stay in Nine Coliving, but there’s like a waiting list, or Sundesk, or Sun and Co, or any of those, just look or ask people, because there are other ones that are less crowded and you can just go before going to the other ones. You know, like just look because there are other options and you don’t need to be waiting four months to be in SunDesk – it’s not like that. Just go now to a coliving if you have this impulse and this need, and then you can feel and experience it. Then, after that you can go to SunDesk and or on any of those [popular] colivings and feel the differences. But it’s not that you need to only go to one coliving – just go to as many as you can and you can compare and be more open-minded about different ways of managing it and doing it.

Ramon: Yeah, that’s how we’re doing it at Mapmelon. What we are trying to do is give this voice to the small colivings that are starting, that they are doing a good job but they are not well known.

Toks: This has been a good conversation. It’s really interesting hearing more about your project and then also your own experiences around working in a partnership and staying in Colivings. You know, when I said about structure, because Sun and Co is very structured, and I think with my personality, that’s what I like, because I don’t like being someone that’s trying to organise things and bring people together, but they’re very good at just doing that. You just have to turn up. With Sun and Co, it’s not even just about that they have networking anyway – it’s just that they’re very structured with all the activities. But I’ve been to other colivings where it doesn’t have that at all. It’s like, there might be a WhatsApp group, there might not. They don’t really do many events, and it’s very ad hoc and very like…you just have to be lucky if you meet people that want to do stuff informally, but it’s not easy.

Sole: Yeah. In my opinion, there are two things here. One is the kind of community. There are two kinds of community – communities that go from bottom to top, and the ones that go to top from bottom. So when you are doing this community that is bottom to top, it’s important that you have it organised, but also that you hear the ideas of the people staying in the place, because if you’re organising activities that no one wants to go, only the community manager will be there and no one else. That’s important. I think the other kind of community is the one that the top that manages and organises the activities. The top to bottom is not something that will work in the kind of community that’s a coliving, because everything should be more collaborative and more equal.

And about the colivings having no structures, I think there are also two different branches. There’s the branch of people that don’t care about that. So like they’re like, “Oh, it’s not a structure, but you can meet people if you want to.” And for me, that’s not a coliving. It’s more like a share house. So I give you a house, and if you get along with the people, it’s OK, but I’m not building a community there because you do it yourself. 

The other problem is people who don’t know how to manage a community. So they start, they want to do a community, they want to do activities that people would like, but they don’t have the knowledge, or they never worked in anything like this, or they never even went to other colivings before, so they don’t really know how to make it. And that’s when your part as a nomad is helping them, giving them feedback, being like, “Oh, you know, this coliving does this”, and then they’re like, “Oh, I’ve never thought of that. So, I’m going to start doing weekly meetings.” We met a lot of people that are like, “Oh, I didn’t know some colivings were doing that. I should definitely try that!”

Toks: Yeah. Lots of great points that I agree with!

Sole: Sometimes you need to share the other experiences, because some of them don’t even know about it. That’s another thing that we always tell coliving owners – go to another coliving before opening one or working on this, because you will get a lot of ideas. And the community of owners is really into collaboration, not competition, so it’s really nice to be part of it, because they are all the time helping each other, giving ideas, and sharing stories. So yeah, it’s just like, ask for help!

Where to connect with Sole and Ramon

Check out Ramon and Sole’s three businesses:

Mapmelon, the all-in-one hub for colivers: https://www.mapmelon.com/

MangoBeds, the first property management software made specifically for coliving spaces: https://www.mangobeds.com/

Human Does, a marketing agency catering to travel brands: https://www.humandoes.com/