Why so many founders are moving south

When we packed up our lives in Sweden and moved to Marbella in 2018, the plan was entirely temporary. We meant to stay for two years, get some sun on our faces, and head back to the proper world. Six years later, we are still here. Whenever I fly back to Stockholm, people look at me with a mix of suspicion and pity. They assume I spend my days dodging taxes, playing golf, and drinking rosé at three in the afternoon with retired bankers. The reality is a lot more boring, and significantly better. I wake up, take the kids to school, and sit down at my desk to work. The only difference is that I do it in the light.

If you look around at the entrepreneurs who actually make a long-term life work down here, they rarely fit the tabloid stereotype. Mostly, you meet people between 38 and 50. They are usually on their second or third company. They have young children, and their teams are scattered across different time zones. I spent my twenties and thirties co-founding Mediapilot in Stockholm with Fredrik Bage. We built that company over roughly seven years, created more than a hundred jobs, and grew a physical office culture from scratch. It was exactly the right thing to do at the time. Later, working on the commercial side with Happeo, I saw how software was making physical presence optional. Now, I am building Substrat and Anchor with a completely distributed mindset. I don't need a headquarters in a capital city to do my job, and neither do my peers down here.

The tax myth

There is a stubborn narrative back north that founders move south solely to protect their wealth. I will be honest with you: Spain is not a tax haven. The bureaucracy alone is enough to make a grown adult cry. If your only goal is to pay zero percent on your capital gains and structure a clever corporate shell, there are much more efficient places to park your passport. People come to southern Europe because the daily friction of ordinary life is lower. You wake up, the sky is blue, and your kids can play outside in November without three layers of wool.

I keep a written life plan. I started it around 2010. Every year, I sit down and rate my health, finances, work, family, and personal time out of ten. Before we moved, my work score was usually fine, but the family and personal time scores would take a beating during the dark Swedish winters. Moving south fixed the balance. It meant I could finish a dense day of working on AI infrastructure for Substrat, and then go play tennis terribly for an hour before dinner. We can eat good food, drink decent wine, and still have energy left over.

Moving south was never a financial optimisation. It was a weather and family optimisation.

When the sun is a bad idea

But this setup is absolutely not for everyone. I have seen plenty of people arrive with high hopes and leave quietly twelve months later. Almost every time, it is the exact same profile. A single founder, pre-product-market fit, who thinks they can hack a new startup from a rented apartment near the beach. If you have not figured out what you are actually selling yet, you need a scene. You need to be in London, Stockholm, or San Francisco. You need the accidental conversations in coffee shops, the spontaneous dinners, and the uncomfortable pressure of seeing other people working harder than you.

If you are 24 and trying to find your first business model, Marbella will ruin you. The lifestyle is entirely too comfortable. The urgency fades away into long lunches. When Fredrik and I started out at a PR agency in Stockholm, we were on commission only. Everyone around me said it was a terrible idea. But the hunger was everything. We needed to prove people wrong, and we fed off the tense energy of the city. Down here, the energy is completely different. It is built for endurance rather than a frantic sprint. If you bring a fragile, unproven idea to a holiday town, the idea will probably die quietly by the pool while you convince yourself you are networking.

Knowing what you actually need

The founders who thrive here already have their engine running. They know how to sell, they know how to hire, and they know how to work independently. They have swapped the frantic networking events and the office politics for a better climate and more time with their families. Building Anchor right now, which is AI meant to help alienated fathers, requires deep, uninterrupted focus. I do not need a tech scene to build it. I just need a laptop, some quiet hours, and a clear head.

I haven't got everything figured out, and I got plenty of things wrong for years. I still miss the sharp edge of a Stockholm autumn sometimes, and there are days when the slow pace of Spanish administration drives me up the wall. But I know what makes my life work right now. The south is a brilliant place to scale a business you already understand, and a terrible place to find yourself. You just have to be honest with yourself about which stage of the process you are actually in.