Company news, travel, insect burgers, and cool products
A newsletter about entrepreneurship, remote work, travel, products, and other random things.
Hi. It's Niels Vugteveen.
Most likely we are connected on Linkedin or we met somewhere last year… or was it at an event in Beijing or Amsterdam?
Either way, I have news for you.
The launch of Innovation Labs (and merging with remote.io)
Early this year, I decided to launch a new company called Innovation Labs. When I registered the company, I knew I wanted to do something with services around digital nomads and remote work.
Luckily, I still had an old project on the shelf which I had been thinking about quite a bit the past year. The idea was to develop a platform for digital nomads, a central place for people to find remote jobs, travel advice, inspiration, and relocation/ visa assistance. Essentially, a full-service platform tailored to the digital nomad lifestyle.
I still love the entire idea, but when the pandemic hit hard the lifestyle of digital nomadism shifted. I immediately pivoted and thought of the one thing digital nomads would always need: remote jobs.
I launched a MVP with a remote job board named nomadify, but soon found out the site needed a ton more features to make it a sustainable project. Luckily, some weeks later I met Tony Territo, who is the original founder of remote.io. We quickly realized we had a lot of common ideas about the future of remote work and this sparked a conversation around combining remote.io and nomadify (our MVP) to further expand the platforms. Last September, we merged our ventures, which are now part of Innovation Labs Limited.
We decided to first re-brand and re-develop the remote.io platform, which is going to be launched in a few weeks. Below you’ll see a sneak peak of what we call remote.io 2.0, so stay tuned while we are finalizing this beautiful platform with thousands of remote job listings around the world!
Note to recruiters: on the launch day of remote.io 2.0 we’re going to give away a whopping discount of 70% to post a job, so make sure to follow us.
Moving to Bali
After some thinking and doubting during COVID-19, I decided to prepare for a trip to once more explore Bali. It’s fascinating how much has been changed the past years, together with Chiang Mai, Bali has become the hotspot for digital nomads. There are even talks about a new digital nomad visa, something countries and territories such as Estonia, Barbados, Bermuda, and Dubai already offer.
I used to live in Asia for quite some years, and still today, I am fascinated by the rich culture and of course the food! Speaking of which, 10 years ago I got introduced to eating bugs in countries such as Thailand and China, and about a year ago I started to experiment with bug protein myself back home in The Netherlands.
Making a burger from insect protein
I am happy to see that several Western countries are finally starting to integrate bugs more into mainstream food and that it’s actively pursued as a solution to shortages of quality food. I sometimes experiment with bug proteins, and have made some delicious burgers from it recently. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a great sustainable food source packed with vitamins and minerals.
Studies even suggest that insect powder itself can act as a prebiotic, meaning it's food for other beneficial bacteria that grow within the healthy human gut. But insects are also a source of high quality protein, containing many essential amino acids required for human nutrition.
So, why not give it a try? Just Google for Insect Protein and some recipes. You can make pasta, cookies, and of course… burgers.
Products
Crypto.com card
While preparing for the move to Bali, I wanted to find a solution to not having to pay excessive conversion fees when withdrawing money from ATM’s abroad. Luckily, mainstream Crypto products are blowing up even more than I thought and now there's even generally available crypto debit cards with benefits that exceed traditional debit cards!
I have been trying the Crypto.com Visa debit card for a while now and it has been a good experience. Besides the wonderful looks of the full metal card, it has great benefits as well. With the Ruby coloured card you get 2% cash back on all your purchases and you receive the equivalent of a Spotify subscription (12,99 USD) paid in Crypto each month. There’s no ATM fees up to $400 USD per month and you’ll get interbank exchange rates up to $4,000 USD per month in case you’re traveling and need to swap between currencies.
On top of that, if you refer a friend, and you stake 2,500 CRO, then you and your friend both get a 25 USD sign up bonus. (staking means the holding of CRO in your wallet for a period of 6 months).
Signup here and use the referral code for a 25 USD bonus: 2fdxw2nw8g
Back to Nokia
The last phone from Nokia I owned was a Nokia 3310, some 20 years ago. I am an avid iPhone and Mac user but was looking for a simple second phone to use for business purposes. I stumbled upon the new Nokia 3.4, and even though there might be better smartphones in this price class, it feels good to have a piece of nostalgia back!
That's it for now!
I'll keep this newsletter infrequent but feel free to opt out if it's not your taste. Please do reach out for questions and comments.