Coworking in Marbella: what actually works when you run a company from the coast

Almost everyone who moves here to run a business remotely starts the same way: a desk in the spare room, a good screen, a view. It works beautifully for about eight weeks. Then something happens that would normally be a five-minute conversation with someone in an office, and instead it is you, alone, at a table, in the sun, feeling slightly strange about it.

That is the actual problem with working from Marbella. Not the internet. The isolation, and the way your days stop having edges.

What The Pool is — and is not

The Pool Marbella is a private members' hub for founders, entrepreneurs and top-level operators. The people I want there are the ones who have already built something, or are building something serious, and who want to be around others doing the same. It is not for brokers, telesales or anyone who is mainly here to sell. We have more than 60 nationalities in the network, and the rule that nobody sells is what keeps the room useful.

I built it with Christian Rasmussen and a board including Andreas Mihalovits. Christian and I share the same instinct: the best thing about living in a place like this is not the weather, it is the density of people you would never otherwise meet. The Pool is the machine we built to create that density.

What to look for in a workspace here

Internet that survives a full room. Ask what the connection is, then ask what it does at 11am on a Tuesday with everyone on video. Those are different numbers.

A room you can take a real call in. If you run a company you will have investor calls, board calls, hard conversations with people you employ. An open floor and a pair of headphones is not enough. Check there is a proper enclosed room and that you can actually book it.

Air conditioning that works in August, and a building that is not empty in August. Seasonality on this coast is brutal in both directions. Visit in the month you think will be worst.

Parking and the school run. Unromantic and decisive. If the space adds twenty-five minutes to your morning you will stop going within a month.

The other people. This is the whole thing. A desk is a desk. What you are actually buying is who you eat lunch with, who you can ask a stupid question, who introduces you to a lawyer, an accountant, a developer, a customer.

The thing nobody puts in the brochure

In a city, work gives you structure for free. Here it does not. You have to build the structure yourself: a place you go, a time you get there, people who notice when you do not. That is worth far more than any amenity list, and it is the reason I stopped working from home.

Why I built The Pool

I wanted somewhere in Marbella that treated work seriously without pretending we were in Canary Wharf. Somewhere founders, operators and investors who had made the same move could work properly, take calls, run their companies, and then go outside into the reason they came here in the first place. Nobody had built exactly that, so we did.

The Pool has since had more attention than I expected — Forbes, Bloomberg and the Financial Times among others — mostly because a lot of people made the same move at the same time and needed the same thing. The coverage is flattering, but the real reason it works is the network: members doing business with each other, investing in each other, hiring each other, and becoming friends. That is the product.

If you are choosing right now

Go and sit in the space for a full day before you commit. Not a tour, a day. Bring your actual work. Take a call. Have lunch. See who talks to you. You will know within one day whether it is the room you want to be in for the next year. If you want to know more about membership at The Pool, the best place is [thepool.es](https://thepool.es).