The road to the SovSpot mobility platform
The case for mobility assets and why you need them
“in the future, one of the milestones by which you measure your financial success will be not just now many zeroes you can add to your net worth, but whether you can structure your affairs in a way that enables you to realize full individual autonomy and independence.”
― James Dale Davidson, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
One’s portfolio can be a construct of many assets, like Bitcoin, stonks, real estate and commodities. However, before the covid craze most people didn’t really think too much about mobility assets like passports (citizenships) and residencies as forming part of a portfolio, unless you were a full-blown doomsday prepper, or an oligarch.
The lockdowns made it clear in an instant that the place where you live IS the decisive factor for your quality of life, and that what was previously a great place to live can suddenly convert into a full blown dystopian surveillance state where assets are seized or frozen if you donate to a cause the local government happens to disagree with (trucker protests in Canada).
Having options as an individual or a family to move to another jurisdiction because your current one is slowly morphing into a dystopia or a breeding ground for insufferable wokeness, is a very powerful thing.
By now it should be clear that if you still haven’t read the Sovereign Individual, it is an absolute MUST read for anyone interested in mobility, digital wealth and the increasing problems the State will face to be able to coerce its citizens in the upcoming Digital Age. Another gem of a quote from that same book:
“Whatever your current residence or nationality, to optimize your wealth you should primarily reside in a country other than that from which you hold your first passport, while keeping the bulk of your money in yet a third jurisdiction, preferably a tax haven.”
It is simply amazing that this book was written in 1997 and just predicted a native currency for the internet like Bitcoin, the likelihood of a pandemic and its consequences, and the increasing difficulty for nation states to tax their citizens.
This results in a competition to attract the best and most talented people through investment visas and other incentives.
From peso paycheck to digital agency
My personal journey after moving from Europe to Argentina in 2005 has had its ups and downs in terms of income and stability. I came to Argentina with a very “first world” mindset of doing everything by the book, thinking that this mindset would change things for the better if everyone applied it.
There is still some truth to this, but one also has to survive and make a living. Also, good intentions are a great way to end up broke in an economy for inflation veterans, as I soon found out.
The first clash with reality happened while working for a local digital agency in local Argentine pesos. Seeing your salary evaporate month over month, and being forced to take out 50%+ interest loans to do some basic improvements around the house, definitely messes with a man’s mind.
Starting a local company instead of depending on a devaluating paycheck seemed like the best next step. The only problem was: I focused on the local market. This was mistake #2, but I’m glad I had that experience for 2-3 years.
Making the mistake of hiring locally and doing everything 100% on the books without a good knowledge of labor market dynamics will crush ANY company here, unless it’s a multinational with offshore funding. All in all taxes will eat you alive, besides the range of other shit you have to deal with.
After 2 years and a few labor lawsuits, ultrahigh taxes and accountants that charged around 5-10% of revenue just because legislation and capital controls change every few months, our company savings evaporated and we called it a day.
It was a great way to understand how hard it is to be an entrepreneur in Argentina (focusing on local business). The ones that make it are absolute die hards.
100% WiFi money
With the local agency I was already coding a bit more (even though it was an agency focused almost exclusively on digital marketing (SEO, SEM etc). After closing up shop and opening up an international entity to service US & EU clients, things started to change.
Living exclusively on US trash tokens in Argentina suddenly gave a complete new outlook on possibilities, real estate and quality of life. And the pond you fish in is so huge, that if your company delivers good work, referrals start pouring in.
Through this new set of clients the company focused almost exclusively on digital marketing and development for the investment migration space, inside and outside the US.
It’s a fascinating space that is growing at an insane pace (and even faster since the rona outbreak in 2020).
Bringing it all together - SovSpot MVP launch
Mobility assets, next to unconfiscatable wealth, will be the 2 most important elements for sovereign individuals in the digital age.
This insight combined with my experience of creating marketing campaigns targeting high net worth individuals (HNIs), made the idea of starting SovSpot a no brainer. SovSpot is meant to be a residency/citizenship marketplace for sovereign individuals.
Up to this date, there was no platform that unifies all investment visa options in one place, and connects those with local agents, immigration attorneys, without being a “seller” of these services.
There are a couple of sites out there that offer investment visa comparisons, but they always try to sell you their services at the end of the comparison, with a nice fat CTA.
SovSpot should be the place where investors (and non-investors that just want to move to a different country) go to and see reviews for migration agents, attorneys, and where they can compare country programs and mobility options.
My plan is to completely take out the middleman and offer agents and attorneys a spot on the site if they want, and let reviews do the rest. This way, the end user interested in moving somewhere, has a great overview of options, and can shortlist people to contact.
The platform is still in the initial stages, and development has taken about 2 months so far. The vast majority of the work is actually data collection and copywriting, image collection etc.
Rollout Stages
The different rollout stages will be as follows:
v2 - Exclusive member content
Introduction of member tiers (pro subscribers on this sub will automatically be on the highest member tier)
Additional roll out of country data (Digital nomad visa data for countries)
v3 - Q&A forum for the SovSpot community
v4 - Immigration Attorney listings (30,000+ collected so far)
v5 - Immigration Consultants, Professionals & Agencies (200+)
As you can see, still a lot of work to be done besides creating content, but we’ll get there. Revenue model will be lead generation, paid content (memberships), and perhaps native ads / banners.
Sign up - it’s free
For anyone interested in playing around with the platform you can do so through the link below (and either register or not):
As Davidson puts it in The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age:
“Faster than all but a few now imagine, microprocessing will subvert and destroy the nation-state, creating new forms of social organization in the process.”
Looks like he talked about the BowTied community before it even existed.
Comments are open, feedback and ideas from the community are welcome.
See you in the Jungle, avatar!
Would you recommend first doing freelance/contracting work for US/EU clients and then building a product like SovSpot, or what is your initial step to earning offshore income?
nice website bro. didn't know you needed $25k for netherlands startup visa, still tempted to apply