Focus cities
Why NomadBadge starts with Bremen and Lisbon
Bremen is home ground. Lisbon tests the guide in a real travel workflow. Starting with both keeps the standard close to actual use before expanding further.
By Tim & Thomas 4 min read Updated 13 Jul 2026
2 focus cities
enough to judge the standard in public
3 likely next
Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid if quality holds
1 slower rule
outside Europe comes after the first ring works
The short answer
Why did NomadBadge start in Bremen and Lisbon?
Bremen and Lisbon come first because they let the guide be specific instead of performative. One is lived context. The other is a real travel workflow test. Starting there keeps the promise honest and makes it easier to see whether the product is useful before it spreads wider.
Why these two
Why start with Bremen and Lisbon instead of pretending to cover everything?
Because a guide like this wins on trust, and trust is easier to test in two cities with real context than in twenty cities with thin notes.
Bremen is home ground
It is easier to notice what makes a place actually work when you know the city well enough to compare one block against the next.
Lisbon is the travel test
Lisbon puts the real nomad use case under pressure fast: short stays, repeat searches, and a lot of bad workspace advice floating around.
Two cities keep the standard visible
A small public footprint makes it harder to hide weak data behind a big map. People can judge the work city by city.
Founder logic
What do Bremen and Lisbon each test?
They are different enough to matter. Bremen tests local depth. Lisbon tests travel usefulness.
Bremen is the obvious starting point because I have lived there. That gives the project something rare: a city where the notes can be judged against real lived experience instead of scraped impressions and quick guesses.
Lisbon matters for the opposite reason. It is not home turf. It is where the usual remote-work search problem becomes expensive fast. You arrive, you need a place to work, and the internet gives you ten glossy answers that still do not tell you whether the call at 4pm will be a disaster.
Put those together and you get a useful public test. If the guide can feel grounded in Bremen and practically helpful in Lisbon, then the next city should be earned, not announced.
Expansion logic
Where should the guide expand next?
Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid are the obvious next layer because they extend the same quality-first logic without pretending the system is ready for everywhere.
Berlin
Big enough to matter, close enough to learn from, and full of places where generic cafe reviews do not tell you whether a workday will hold up.
Vienna
A strong remote-work city with a practical, quality-first vibe. It fits the same careful curation logic better than a fast land grab.
Madrid
A larger test for pace, density, and repeat travel demand. It is a better next step than jumping straight into a scattered global footprint.
Berlin is close, messy, and big enough to expose weak assumptions quickly. Vienna fits the slower, more deliberate side of the product. Madrid is a stronger test of scale without jumping straight into a scattered worldwide footprint.
After that, the pace should slow down again. Outside Europe is interesting, but only when there is a reason stronger than vanity. A city should earn its place through real usage, founder context, or contributors who can keep the notes sharp.
That is the whole point of this sequence. Expansion should follow proof, not appetite.
What should qualify a new city?
- Enough places to make city-level curation feel useful.
- A clear reason to believe the data can stay fresh.
- Some real local context, either from me, the team, or trusted contributors.
- A practical user story stronger than "people know this city name."
See the current work
The easiest way to judge this idea is to open the two focus cities
If Bremen and Lisbon already feel more useful than another generic list, the starting logic is working. If not, adding more cities would only hide the problem.
origin story
How to find up-to-date places to work while traveling
The search problem that pushed this from annoyance into a real product idea.
Open pagefocus city
See Bremen
Look at one of the two cities carrying the public quality bar right now.
Open pagefocus city
See Lisbon
Compare the other side of the public story in a city with heavier nomad traffic.
Open pageFAQ
Questions people actually ask about starting small
Why does NomadBadge start with Bremen and Lisbon?
Because those are the two cities with the strongest founder context and the clearest public field work. Bremen is home ground. Lisbon is a real nomad city where the product question becomes obvious fast. That makes both cities useful places to set the quality bar in public.
Why not launch in every nomad city at once?
Because a workspace guide gets worse when coverage grows faster than the reporting quality. Ten thin city pages do less for trust than two city pages with real detail, useful venue notes, and honest limits.
Are Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid next?
They are the most natural next layer if the current guide keeps working. Each city has a strong mix of remote workers, repeat use, and enough density to make city-level curation worth the effort.
Will NomadBadge expand outside Europe?
Probably, but slowly. The better sequence is to prove the guide across a few European cities first, then add non-European cities one by one where there is real local context, not just brand appeal.
Is this an official launch roadmap?
No. It is a public explanation of the logic. The point is to stay honest about where the guide is strongest today and how expansion should happen without turning the product into another thin global directory.
Current status
Start with the cities that can carry the promise.
The guide does not need to look global yet. It needs to feel reliable where it is already asking for attention.