Why Saigon became home base for a remote founder.

Hook & context

Saigon wasn't the first city I tried, but it's the one that stuck. I arrived with a remote‑friendly business, a vague sense that Southeast Asia would be “cheaper”, and not much else. What I found was a city that quietly optimized for exactly what a location‑independent founder needs: energy, density, infrastructure, and just enough chaos to keep you awake.

This isn't a travel guide; it's an operating manual. How does living in Saigon actually change the way you run a business? How does it influence risk tolerance, hiring, and your day‑to‑day rhythm? And what's the catch when your customers live several time zones away?

Starting point

Before Saigon, my life and business were split across a couple of cities with high costs and deeply office‑centric cultures. The business was remote, but my environment wasn't. I was paying premium rent for a city I barely used, mostly to sit indoors on calls with people in other time zones.

Financially, the company was stable but not extravagant. The choice was straightforward: either push for aggressive growth in a high‑cost city or redesign the baseline—reduce personal burn, keep the same revenue, and buy time and optionality. That's what led to looking seriously at places like Saigon.

Key decisions

Decision 1: Treat the move as a business decision, not just an adventure.

Before booking a flight I wrote down a simple model: living costs, taxes, travel, and an honest estimate of how much work would be lost to the move. The question wasn't “Is Saigon fun?”—it was “Does this improve the runway and margins while keeping the work intact?”. Saigon cleared that bar easily.

Decision 2: Align time zones instead of fighting them.

Most of my customers and collaborators were in Europe and North America. Instead of trying to mimic their hours, I leaned into the offset: deep work in the morning, calls in the late afternoon or evening, and almost no meetings in the middle of the day. This turned an apparent disadvantage into a forcing function for focus.

Decision 3: Build a local support system quickly.

It's easy to imagine working from coffee shops forever. In reality, you need a base: a reliable apartment, a few go‑to cafes, maybe a coworking membership, and local friends who aren't just passing through. Investing in that early meant the city started feeling like a platform rather than a novelty.

Systems & habits

The day‑to‑day rhythm of Saigon shaped how work happened. My schedule eventually settled into a pattern:

• Early mornings for deep work, before the city fully wakes up and before notifications start arriving from the West.
• Late mornings and early afternoons for errands, exercise, and unscheduled time— avoiding the hottest hours inside and the busiest hours online.
• Late afternoons and evenings reserved for calls and collaboration windows with Europe and North America.

The city's density helps: good coffee, food, and gyms are within a short ride, which keeps friction low. That matters when you're running several projects at once; any extra overhead in daily life shows up in your work.

What broke & what changed

On paper, the lower cost of living solves everything. In practice, there were frictions: visa uncertainty, banking limitations, and the emotional cost of being far from many customers and peers. Some clients needed occasional face‑to‑face time; that meant travel or accepting that a few deals would never close.

Another surprise was how easy it is to overwork when you're “living the dream”. Without clear boundaries, you can slip into working odd hours just because you can. The fix was to treat work hours as strictly as if I had an office; otherwise the upside of the city quietly erodes.

These realities are why I started documenting the details at 3bSaigon.com: not as Instagram shots, but as operating notes for founders who want an honest picture.

Results & current state

The most important shift has been psychological. Lower personal burn and a supportive environment make it easier to take patient bets: new products, new services, and experiments like Coterie Club itself. It feels less like “escaping” somewhere and more like deliberately choosing an operating base.

Financially, the city acts like an extra investor: the gap between what the same life would cost elsewhere and what it costs here is effectively runway. That shows up in hiring decisions, risk appetite, and the ability to walk away from misaligned work.

Lessons & how it feeds Coterie

The headline lesson: location is leverage. Where you live quietly changes every other decision—how much risk you can take, who you can hire, and how long you can wait for ideas to pay off. Treating that choice as a first‑class part of the business, not an afterthought, is the whole point.

This story underpins the Coterie Playbook on running companies from anywhere, which turns these observations into a more structured framework: decision criteria, legal/financial setup, and operating cadence.

For more concrete neighborhood‑level details, 3bSaigon.com is where the city itself gets mapped out. Coterie focuses on how that context feeds into the broader operating system.