I began my journey in New Zealand when I was 19 as a tech entrepreneur, and I built and scaled, I think to this day, New Zealand’s largest hyper-local social media app, called Shwoop, S-H-W-O-O-P. You can Google this online. We came number four on the App Store in New Zealand.
Whenever we did a launch, we came top ten. Number four was our record. We were basically getting our university, which had 30,000 people in it, really connected to viral Internet trends and doing a bunch of different things. I was a tech entrepreneur and doing a lot of great things over there, but I felt like New Zealand was a very small ecosystem, so I wanted to upgrade to Silicon Valley, Austin, and New York.
So I left there two years ago when I was 24 years old in March of 2022, and I arrived in Bali for three weeks before going to America.
I was temporarily a Buddhist monk, but I spent four months of my life on meditation retreat. And, you know, I practice Buddhism a lot. And I actually grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years.
So I have an Indonesian background and I visited Bali a little bit. And then it's just I'm really excited. very different today. It's obviously a lot more developed, but for me as a tech entrepreneur, I love it over here. I was going to go to America to recharge, but then I instantly realized that Bali would be a much better place to recharge, get inspiration, and relax after four years of being a tech entrepreneur and scaling my business.
So I stayed in Bali for a year and eventually went to America. I stayed there for three months, and then it took me about two months to finally realize that Bali was actually a much better economic hub that I found easy to navigate.
Obviously, America is a larger market and more established, but in terms of living in an island paradise with happy, open-minded people who are in a good mood and willing to do anything with you, I found this to be the ultimate business hack. I have direct experience of finding it very difficult to really do anything or start anything in America, which isn’t like the advertising, to be honest.
There’s this impression that America is great, but it’s also a bit of a fallen nation, and there are other superpowers like UAE and Southeast Asia that are on the rise. I can attest to Bali being the most profound one, which is why I call it, code name, Silicon Bali, like the island, which is a community I’ve started for tech entrepreneurs here.
There are some really amazing people based in Bali, but they’re hidden in different parts of the place, and there isn’t any particular institution to bring people together. So I meet people in the gym, in the store, or at restaurants, and I’m always blown away by the level of talent here, but it’s very frustrating that there’s nothing to bring it together.
And I was in New Zealand for 10 years. And I just think Bali is one of the most exciting places to be in the world at the moment. And people mistake it for a holiday island destination, but actually it's way more than that.
As the story goes, many people come to Bali for three weeks and then decide to extend their stay. So I ended up staying for a whole year, just enjoying Bali, recharging, finding energetic strength, and also finding new inspiration.
To take it chronologically, I started off in Canggu and threw massive house parties. Lots of people started to know me. I threw a massive house party every month with maybe 150 people at my villa, which was great for the community and a way for me to network and get my brand out there.
I did it mostly for fun. Then I started hosting private business dinners with 30 or 40 of Bali’s best entrepreneurs and started to put myself in the direct position of being in the highest level of business. I found it very difficult being in Canggu because life is so good there, but it was really hard to avoid temptation. So I ended up partying for two or three days out of the week. The disruption to my sleep cycle was just not worth it.
I eventually decided to have a little bit of a monk-mode getaway retreat here in PARQ Ubud, which I’ve been enjoying a lot. I did that for a month and then went back to Canggu. After a month of being back in Canggu last November, I decided that PARQ Ubud was for me and that it would be way better if I was serious about being an entrepreneur, to relocate here, which I’ve done and have been pretty much growing out the Silicon Valley community here.
A lot of people are surprised that I’ve left Canggu because I used to be called Mr. Canggu as a joke by many people because I threw crazy parties.
But now most people think that I’m a completely different person because I’m really dedicated to being a serious entrepreneur in Bali and getting really successful friends from all over the world, like my friend Kingsley, to relocate his company here and for everybody to deep work in paradise.
I currently live in a really amazing five-bedroom house in the PARQ where I host entrepreneurs from all over the world and throw private business meetups with the highest caliber entrepreneurs. Except this time the stakes are way higher, and I am lucky to be surrounded by some of the richest people on this island who share the aspiration and mutual vision of creating Silicon Bali as a tech ecosystem. It honestly feels like a bit of a glitch in the matrix.
I live around people who are involved in the top traded projects on Ethereum and blockchain globally, usually meme wonderful entrepreneurs, and I live in an environment where people are very open-minded and willing to play with new rules as opposed to being in an old ecosystem that has almost become industrialized.
I think the sky’s the limit in Bali, and if you can do it in a way where you’re not distracted by the partying in Canggu, we’re rather in a secure oasis here. That’s really great, which is why I’ve really enjoyed staying in PARQ Ubud.
I’m still in the venture capital space, helping entrepreneurs get connected to capital. One of the things I’ll be doing to really accelerate this is inviting my friends from around the world to go into “monk mode” with me for the month of October.
We’ll be living in a PARQ with 350 rooms, gyms, restaurants, saunas, spas, and a bunch of other amenities where we can all come together to grow our businesses as much as possible.
We’ll be quitting drinking and partying for the whole month just to be in each other’s company and do fun activities during the week like paintballing, which will keep us energized while allowing us to focus on our businesses.
We’ll be doing a bunch of fun challenges, and it will be very social. I’m really excited that even my top friends, like Daniel, the founder of Y Combinator, will be joining us.
We’re in a new space where, if you’re a tech company focused on building code, being able to base yourself in Bali can almost increase your IQ from 120 to 130. As a startup founder, this matters a lot. It’s also really cheap in Bali, and hiring talent in Southeast Asia is a strategic advantage with wage costs being one-tenth of those elsewhere. You can make any investment you raise go further.
I’m not necessarily saying Silicon Valley and New York should be avoided. Rather, I think a hybrid model should be adopted. Companies are now global; you can have a presence in all these ecosystems. But being able to do deep work in paradise and stay focused is a secret recipe for success.
This is why I live here in this island paradise, surrounded by the most interesting people, working hard and also having fun. It honestly feels like I’ve arrived in a Disneyland movie where it says “happily ever after,” except I wake up every single day and it’s that again and again. It wouldn’t surprise me if I lived in Bali for the rest of my life.
Just to be clear, I’m still a digital nomad. I help external companies and startups overseas get connected to venture capital, working from my computer. I help startups raise funding by booking calls with someone in Dubai and helping them raise money from another investor in Singapore or Silicon Valley, for example.
Actually, I’m just saying this at the end because I don’t have a key to the house at the moment and don’t want to be associated with any place I've ever lived. The journey continues.
Jamie McDonald, entrepreneur, digital nomad, New Zealand
