I Was Lonely as Hell.
So I'm Building Bunk Labs.

The Coffeeshop Lie

Last year, I moved to Lisbon to build my SaaS. I had the playbook down: get a cheap Airbnb, find a coworking space, ship features from a cafe with good wifi and better espresso. Every indie hacker blog told me this was the dream.

Here's what they didn't tell me: three weeks in, I hadn't had a single real conversation about what I was building. I was surrounded by people — tourists, remote workers on Zoom calls, retirees — and I had never felt more alone. I'd close my laptop at 7pm, eat dinner by myself, and scroll Twitter to feel some connection to other builders. That's not a life. That's an existence.

The worst part? I started losing momentum on my product. Not because the technical problems were hard — I'm a decent engineer. Because I had nobody to say “that landing page is confusing” or “why not just charge for it?” or even just “yeah, I get it, my churn rate keeps me up at night too.” I was making decisions in a vacuum, and every decision felt heavier than it should.

“Solo founding isn't hard because of the work. It's hard because every decision echoes in an empty room.”

I tracked my own data — output, mood, shipping velocity — over 18 months across four cities. The pattern was brutal and obvious: the weeks I was around other builders, I shipped 3x more. The weeks I was isolated, I spent half my time questioning whether I should just get a job again. The variable wasn't the city. It wasn't the time zone. It was the people in the next room.

Your GitHub Already Knows Who You'd Vibe With

Here's the thing that hit me one night, scrolling through a co-living Facebook group: everyone was describing themselves with the same vague labels. “Digital nomad, love travel and good vibes.” Cool. That tells me nothing about whether we'd actually get along at 11pm when I'm debugging a Stripe webhook.

But you know what does? Your GitHub. Your commit history shows whether you ship daily or in big bursts. Your stars reveal what tech excites you. Your contribution graph tells me if you're a morning person or a night owl. And your Twitter — the accounts you follow, the threads you engage with — paints a picture of how you think about building.

We already broadcast who we are as builders. Every day. In public. Nobody was using that signal to solve the most important variable in a founder's life: who's around you.

The best flatmate I ever had wasn't someone I found through a listing. It was someone I met at a meetup who happened to be working on a similar-stage product in a complementary niche. We could debug each other's thinking. That serendipity shouldn't be random. It should be engineered.

Why Lisbon, Bangkok, and Mexico City

We didn't pick cities off a “best digital nomad destinations” listicle. We ran the numbers on three things that actually matter: builder density, cost of living relative to indie hacker revenue, and visa accessibility.

These three cities give us timezone coverage across the globe, a range of price points from $700 to $1,800/mo, and — critically — enough existing builder density that our first houses won't feel like outposts. They'll feel like home.

What We're Building (And Where We Are)

Bunk Labs is a matching membership for indie hackers and solopreneurs who want to co-live with compatible builders. You connect your GitHub and Twitter. Our algorithm analyzes your work patterns, interests, and stage. We match you with 2-4 other builders and place you in a vetted house in Lisbon, Bangkok, or Mexico City.

The membership is $39/month. That gets you algorithmic matching, house placement, and access to the Bunk Labs community. Housing cost is separate and depends on the city — but we negotiate group rates, so you're paying less than if you found the same place on Airbnb.

I'm not going to pretend we're further along than we are. This is early. The matching algorithm is being built. The houses aren't locked yet. But the thesis is validated — I've lived it, tracked the data, and talked to dozens of builders who say the same thing: “I wish I could just find 3 people like me to share a flat with.”

I'm Looking for 50 Founding Members

Here's the honest ask: I need early adopters. People who get this problem because they've lived it. People who are willing to join the waitlist, share their GitHub, and trust us to match them with someone great.

The first 50 people on the waitlist get founding member status. That means free matching for life — no $39/mo, ever. You just pay for housing. In return, I need your feedback, your patience with rough edges, and your willingness to tell me what sucks so I can fix it.

If you're a solo founder, indie hacker, or freelance builder who has ever stared at your laptop in a foreign city and thought “I wish there was someone here who gets this” — this is for you.

“The people you build around determine the thing you build. I'm done leaving that to chance.”

This is the most vulnerable thing I've published. I'm admitting that I was lonely, that I struggled, that building alone almost broke me. But I think that honesty is what makes this worth building. Because if you're reading this and nodding along, then you already know: the next chapter of your founder story shouldn't be written alone.