Building a tech startup and a family as an Ex-Pat in Costa Rica

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm Brian Samson, your host, and if you've ever been interested in Costa Rica, building a business out of Costa Rica, moving your family to Costa Rica, this is going to be the episode for you. We have Nick Livingston, CEO of Honnit. Nick, it is great to have you on the show.

Thank you, Brian. Appreciate the invite. Nice to be here.

Uh, Nick, right before we, we get started, I want to thank our sponsor. Uh, that's Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. A great way to connect all the talent from Latin America to growing US companies. Well, Nick, let's go ahead and get started. Super interesting story. I know a little bit about it. Our audience doesn't. How did you end up in Costa Rica?

Quick story. I spent most of my career working in New York City as a technical recruiter and leading recruiting teams at companies like MTV and Viacom. So, I had a fun New York experience working in the entertainment and music business there. I moved to San Francisco Bay Area to get closer to tech and work at earlier-stage companies, helping them build out TA teams and recruiting teams from the ground up. And in doing so, we had 2 daughters while living in California and then had a 3rd daughter, Fiona, and my wife was on paternity leave. I had started HoneIt. She was working out of coffee shops, working for a tech company as well. And we thought we could be working out of coffee shops kind of anywhere in the world, right? Why are we paying Bay Area rates? This was back in Craigslist days where we just posted our house on Craigslist to see if we could maybe sublet it for 6 months as a furnished rental or whatnot. And sure enough, got a bunch of interest quickly that night or the next day. And we said, "Well, I guess we could sublet our place for 6 months and give it a spin." So, this was essentially November 2016 when we posted it and we moved down here January 2017.

Wow! Incredible! Had you been to Costa Rica before? Like, was that already on your list, or the world was your oyster and you were like trying to trade off between a bunch of other places?

You know, my wife was working in kind of experiential travel technology sales. She was selling software to remote tour operators around the world, and a couple of the customers happened to be in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, working at various dive shops or tourist spots here. And She'd always enjoyed her conversations with them and they were like, you know, sounded like a good community. She started doing a little more research and, you know, we basically just packed up and moved down here kind of on a whim. I had almost forgotten, though, that I had come down here in high school for a Spanish trip when I was in high school for a week and stayed with the family in San Jose for a week, you know, Spanish only. And then we spent a week on the beach. But I almost forgot that. I don't think it led to my decision, but now It makes total sense that we ended up here.

So now give us, um, for those who haven't been, um, give us like a lay of the land. San Jose is the big, the big city. Some might know of like the, the cloud forest or the tropical rainforest. Like give us a lay of the land of, of, of the country. And then, uh, um, it was Tamarindo that you, you settled in.

So we're in a little surf town on the west coast. Uh, it's in Guanacaste, which is the, the, uh, region or the kind of the state within Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a very small country and, you know, it has coasts on both sides. So we've got the Caribbean coast on the east and we've got the, you know, where we live on the west. And San Jose is kind of in the middle. And for a country with only about 5 million people, I think Costa— San Jose, the capital, has like 2.5 to 3 million there. And then the remaining people are spread out all over around the rest of the country. So just for context, You know, it's not big. It only— it takes us about 4 hours with no traffic to drive to San Jose. And when we first moved down here, we would do that to go to the, the Price Mart, which was the Costco. We would go there for healthcare and hospitals if we needed to do some sort of operation or more of a procedure or something like that. There are hospitals near the airport near us, about an hour away in Liberia, Costa Rica, where we have the close airport. And then there's even a little mini airport right in Tamarindo where you can take a 12-seat plane and zip to San Jose if you need to.

So were you originally thinking maybe you'll settle in San Jose, or was it always you wanted to kind of get free of the, of the urban environments?

Yeah, I think after 8 years in New York City living in Manhattan and then 6, 7 years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, we, we had kind of wanted a change of pace, honestly. And so it's been fun. Tamarindo is a really small town. It's a very— it's a, it's a teeny surf town, small local population, and then a, you know, a bigger tourist population from time to time, especially during high season. But yeah, we've really enjoyed living in a small town where, you know, you know everybody that works at the restaurants and the bars and you recognize the people on the street and people recognize us. And it's just kind of takes me back. I was born and raised in the Midwest in Kansas, and it's just like smaller towns, people kind of recognize, people say hi, you know, nobody's from here necessarily, at least expats from Canada or US. Europe, so people are more open to making friends and creating new relationships and things like that. Sure.

With the expats, are there other expats around, or is it mostly locals?

Yeah, no, you know, Tamarindo is a good blend of local Ticos from Costa Rica as well as expats. There's a lot of Canadians that live here. You know, many come down, you know, fly down for the, you know, the winter months and get out of the cold, as do many northern United States states like Washington, Colorado. There are certain states that come down here maybe more than others. But lots of Europeans as well. It's a really good mix. And then, the reason we settled on Tamarindo is there are really good schools here as well. And we have 3 young daughters. Our youngest was 6 weeks old when we moved down here, and so she's basically grown up tica, but the other 2 are fluent in Spanish as well. And You know, the schools, there's, there's a number of good schools to choose from in this area depending on if you want a big school, small school, traditional, you know, kind of Western school, or if you want something more experiential. There's all of that here.

Yeah. And have you been there the whole time, like the last 7, 8 years straight through, or do you guys go back and forth?

So one of the couple of things, well, what we didn't realize moving down here is that when you live in a kind of a tourist destination, as kind of an anti-vacation, like you live here the 9 or 10 months that it's not busy, you can actually sublet or rent your house during the high seasons to the tourists, right? So it's kind of the best of both worlds. You get to live in that interesting place the low season, and then you can sublet when you're back for the holidays visiting family in the States or for a month or two in the summer when the kids are out of school. What we didn't realize is we see family, our like my dad and our family, like maybe more down here than we did when we lived in New York City or California because we would only see people a week at a time there where now my dad will come down for a month or two, you know, and we'll go back for a month or two, you know, depending on the schedules. So, that was kind of interesting. And then, what was the other question? Sorry.

Oh, did you live here straight through or did you get— back. Yeah.

So we were here kind of pre-COVID. COVID happened, kind of changed everything. It was a very small, kind of sleepy town for those couple of years when there wasn't a lot of tourism. And then after that, we, we kind of wanted to reset. So we actually moved back to the US for about a school year and a half just to kind of go through a storage unit that we had been paying for because we moved down here for 6 months and just kind of stayed. And so had a pod somewhere in California that we needed to like go through and clear out and also gave a good chance to kind of give the girls a go to a U.S. public school for a year and kind of see what they've been feeling like they were missing perhaps, you know, what they see on the TV, you know, the movies or whatnot. So, we did that in Spokane, Washington and then moved back here. So, this is then our second school year as we moved back to Tamarindo.

Wow, incredible. I love the courage and exuberance. You know, I've got two small kids and We did all of our travel pre-kids. It's awesome what you and your wife have decided to do.

Well, the kids are flexible. I think they probably adjust to things easier than we do. But we want to give them a safe and consistent growing up or whatnot. I think it's actually strange here. It reminds me growing up here. Kind of like the way we grew up maybe in the '80s, right? You can walk around, you can do things maybe you can't do in big cities or super urban environments or whatnot. So yeah.

Well, we'll, we'll come back to Costa Rica in a second. Um, but you're CEO of a software company. Tell us more about, uh, what Honnit is, what your vision is, what you're trying to build.

Awesome. Yeah. So my background is mostly recruiting and TA. Um, Honnit is a global communication an interview intelligence platform purpose-built for recruiters and talent partners. So we've got recruiters all around the world using Honit for their most meaningful conversations with candidates and with clients or with references. And then they can share insights from those interview conversations with, you know, their clients or with hiring teams who might also be spread out and around the world, right? This concept of how do you, how do you qualify or interview or screen or evaluate talent when you're not inviting people into the office to say meet 6 people in one shot, it can become very spread out and slow down the process. So with Honit, we're about empowering recruiters to be able to facilitate really comprehensive interviews on the very first call with a candidate and then click a button and share interview highlights and insights with the various stakeholders for instant collaboration. And what we're finding is it removes all the he said, she said or the misinterpretation from the screening and submission process or the interview process, and it actually cuts down the number of steps it takes to get a good candidate kind of through the process with the company.

Was this a problem that you faced when you were leading talent prior to building HoneIt?

You know, I saw it as an external recruiter where we're submitting candidates and see a slow process that we can't really control. I saw it at, you MTV Networks, Viacom, where you're working with a big company and navigating multiple stakeholders and helping hire important folks but taking a long time there. I saw it in early-stage startups, you know, at TubeMogul. We went through an IPO in SF and that was a crazy run. But, you know, in doing so, when you go to grow from startup to 360 employees, the interview process changes, right? At first, the CEO or founder is that first interview, and then before we know it, Brett was the 6th interview, right? And then, you know, but what happens is the company's best and brightest evaluators of talent usually get pushed to the very end of the process, and by then you've had 5 or 6 interview conversations with nothing to show for it and no data. And, you know, so the idea is how can we get our best and brightest, you know, executives involved much sooner in the process, maybe even after the phone screen to start closing the best candidates. So yeah, saw firsthand at TubeMogul, but, you know, it's a common problem across most organizations, how to get people aligned.

You use Starlink, which I think kind of mitigates a lot of this, neutralizes it. Can you share more about your own setup and how you've kind of built your own infrastructure?

Yeah, so we, I mean, we've got, what's kind of ironic here in Costa Rica is that they only, recently paved the road we live on. Right. But, but we've had really good fiber optic internet ever since we've lived here. And then we got a Starlink backup system. But I find I use Starlink more as a primary since it just seems to be faster and more reliable. So yeah, it's pretty straightforward. And then most of the restaurants or bars in town all would have Wi-Fi that, you know, tourists could jump in and out of as they bounce around. And then other than that, you do need like a SIM card. Either an eSIM or just a physical SIM in your cell phone if you want Costa Rican data plans and things like that.

But so we were talking about Honeit, and obviously you've come from startups, you've come from larger companies. Um, was there like a— like, did it feel like this was a, a global talent issue, or like something that you saw more with startups, or something that like as a company scaled up, HoneIt was, what was an even bigger impact?

Well, I mean, I think clear communication is a really important thing, whether you're an external recruiter further away from decision makers or an internal TA partner in the middle of a hiring team and trying to get everybody on the same page. So it starts with clear communication after that intake call and how do you get everybody involved, aligned and on the same page with what a hiring manager may want for this specific role in this specific team. And so there's just clear communication from the very first step. And then as you talk to candidates and you uncover insights that aren't on a resume, how can recruiters or talent partners share those insights or interview intelligence with other stakeholders for collaboration? And so, you know, it's a, you know, talking to people is an important part of the recruiting and hiring process, yet there really hadn't been a communication platform for recruiters and talent partners. Everyone was using, either their telephone, right? Or, you know, through COVID, we switched to video calls, right? But the idea that whether you do a phone call or a video call with someone, what is the data we share? That can vary dramatically depending on the toolkit you use. And for many cases, if you end a call and you only have your scribbled notes to show for it, that's limiting to then try to make a case. Or even with a note-taking bot, if you just have some bullet points or a general summary, Is that enough to showcase communication skills, technical knowledge, domain experience, all of these other things that we're trying to capture and share across the hiring team? So, you know, we think, you know, we think while note-taking tools are helpful, it's the power of voice and the human voice that can kind of shine through to candidates to get candidates excited about an opportunity or to get the right candidates through the process faster because hiring managers know it when they hear it. And that's what's kind of missing with note-taking tools and that type of thing.

So if I had it right, Nick, you started Honeit in 2014, but then the Costa Rica move was 2017. Can you tell us more about like the first couple of years of Honeit, how you were, how you got this off the ground? Um, first couple hires, all that stuff. And then where the company was when you moved to, uh, to Costa Rica.

Yeah, so, you know, we've essentially self-funded the company. So in the early days, it was, I was doing talent advisory and consulting work with clients and, you know, helping companies recruit, hire, and scale as I would have more as a consultant, but obviously using the technology behind the scenes. And, you know, that introduces the technology and helps us refine it as we continue to add features. We went through a couple of pivots, you know, early on as we kind of learned from different things. And continued to build the platform, continuing to build the platform. And now, you know, it's been almost 10 years and we have a fully baked communication platform, everything from scheduling automation to note-taking automation, to call summaries, to write-ups, to feedback, again, purpose-built for recruiters and talent partners. So it's taken a little longer, but it's also, I think we were ahead of the interview intelligence curve a bit, and now, you know, folks are kind of catching on COVID helped accelerate that in a way, but it also, you know, kind of shook things up from a hiring standpoint in general, right? Companies paused hiring, companies had to figure out what their remote work policies were. I feel like we're still kind of on the end of all of those pauses and companies kind of reinvesting into what the hiring plan is, where it's going to be. Is it on-site? Is it hybrid? Is it remote? And then now we've got AI kind of shaking things up again. It's like, do we need to hire employees like we thought we did, or can we replace them with bots or agents in some capacity? So I feel like, you know, the hiring and recruiting market has really took a hit, let's say, you know, since COVID happened around hiring freeze, you know, letting internal talent partners go, recs drying up from external recruiters. We started to see some of that on Peel. I'm really excited about 2025 where companies I think are finally getting back to, okay, we've got a hiring plan in place. Yes, we have an AI strategy, but we need people in these places to, to, to just drive it, right? And finally getting, getting out from under it.

Would you consider HoneIt a SaaS company?

Yeah. So we have, it's a SaaS platform, you know, it's just a login that any recruiter or talent partner or interviewer can use. and they basically sync their, their, their Honet with their Google or Outlook calendar. And then we can automate everything from scheduling to the submissions or candidate presentations.

Tell us more about the internal team that you built and how you built it from Costa Rica.

Yes, so I was lucky to meet two technical co-founders, James and Kim, who were just as excited as I was about re-engineering the interview process. Both are San Francisco-based engineers and architects, have done lots of interviewing as a candidate or as on the other side as a hiring stakeholder, and both were equally frustrated with different steps of the process, right? You have to have the communication skills to get past the phone screen. You got to have the technical chops and the whiteboard skills to be able to think on the spot and code an elegant solution. Those are all very different things for one engineer to be good at, right? Especially if you're extroverted or introverted. These two were seasoned engineers and architects. We hit it off. I was trying to solve this from the internal recruiting lens. They were, you know, sort of trying to fix it from their side. So I was lucky in that these two and with other folks have been able to build the whole platform, you know, internally without having to work with external resources and things like that. And then since then, we've been able to bring on other remote workers. We're 100% remote. They're still based in SF. But we can grow as a team. We've got our daily stand-ups, we use collaboration tools like Slack to, you know, to stay in the loop, and then, you know, we do all of our demos and things like that, and our success and onboarding and training can all happen virtually with our customers around the world as well.

Have you hired anybody in Latin America?

So not full-time. We don't have an entity down here to be able to hire someone full-time, and there's some some, you know, it's never been easier though. I mean, the new tools and ways to, you know, deals and etc., to be able to manage remote workers or hire those, as you know. So it's possible. During COVID some of our friends in the community were out of work because the tourism industry was in trouble. Like one of our friends who's a musician here, Max, you know, they wouldn't let musicians play music during COVID right? So we're like, Max, come in. And, you know, I tried to catch him up on the world of recruiting and he was helping us do a little sales and stuff like that. But again, as a small community, you try to just stick together and kind of leverage what you can. I'll say we are seeing a lot more customers of HoneIt, meaning recruiting firms that were either based in LATAM, right, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, either helping US-based companies find talent in the US, but more so we're now starting to also see a shift where LATAM and US or LATAM-based recruiting firms are helping US-based companies hire folks in LATAM. And San Jose here has wonderful tech workers, lots of great universities in San Jose. You go there and there's a Beverly Hills of San Jose. You look through, there's Maserati, there's a lot of money, there's a lot of tech. Many of the US, big US companies, pharmaceutical tech companies have Latin America headquarters here because they recognize it's a bed for talent. Bilingual or trilingual employees that are also very technical. So I would love to. We're not in a place where we need it right this second, but I would very much think about looking to Costa Rica or other Latin America talent pools for hiring.

Yeah, talent arbitrage is a key factor, I think, in nearshoring. Can you tell us about your own personal life arbitrage? Cost of living differences, you know, for you and your family versus the Bay Area?

Yeah, interesting. So when we moved down here 7 years ago or so, you know, it was, it was a little different. The cost of living was lower. Groceries were less expensive. Rents and houses were less expensive. Help, you know, help was, was less expensive down here. I'd say over the last 7, 8 years, there have been some shifts, right? Mexico tourism has been impacted. A lot of that has come down here. More development, more houses have been built over the last few years. Even things like, you know, the BPM festivals and some of that stuff have transitioned from, say, Mexico to Costa Rica. And we see new pockets of tourism, which leads to more income. But, but yeah, I think the prices have gone up. There's been a lot of building here in terms of homes. And apartments and things like that. And, you know, but if you zoom out, I mean, I'd say people think Tamarindo is getting busy, but then as soon as you go on that little plane and you fly around, you're like, oh, there's tons of green. And, you know, it's— it feels busier, but there's still so much room and land in Costa Rica that you don't notice it when you get out of the city. But, but yeah, I'd say prices have gone up, um, But at the same time, again, if you can go back to the States for a couple of months a year and sublet and make money, you know, that's another way to subsidize your income here from the time from during the months that you live here.

If you were to try to enjoy the same lifestyle you have today in the Bay Area, are you— would it be about 50% less, more, less?

I don't know if it's— the cost is that much less. I think the demand for stuff is less. Right. So our girls don't watch television with commercials on it necessarily. They don't see what they're missing from a, uh, you know, you know, everybody wears flip-flops and shorts here. So you're not sizing yourself up to anybody. Everybody looks like, like a beach bum. Right. So, I mean, I think, you know, there's not nice cars here necessarily. Everybody's driving a 10-year-old version of the car they would drive in the the states for the most cases. Um, and, and so I don't know if that answers your question in terms of cost of living. I mean, some things are less expensive, like, you know, uh, having a nanny or something like that to help around that with, with a young child is still much more affordable than, you know, a rate for a babysitter, say, in SF, which could be $20 an hour or something like that now, right? So there's that. You can, you can get, uh, Costa Rica grows a lot of great produce and fruits and vegetables, so you can get a lot of that at a local market, right? Or you can go to the more expensive Safeway, approximation of a Safeway or something like that if you want. So there's choices on what you spend, but I think the demand for buying things is less. I mean, you know, the kids want a surfboard and a bike and, you know, That's, you know, I don't know, it's just kind of simpler, simpler living.

I think that's great. I think that's great. Um, when you think about, uh, your situation of building a company from Costa Rica, what do you think are, um, like the, the trades you're making? You know, where do you think you're— where do you think it, it's better building from Costa Rica than, say, SF? And where do you think it's worse?

So, I really enjoyed living in New York City, you know, to be able to go to the occasional, you know, tech meetup, you know, random happy hour networking events, meetup.com, you know what I mean? Same thing in SF. It was a little harder to get to in the Bay Area versus New York City, but there was still a lot of like networking and things like that. So, I do miss that. I really do miss that. I still try to go to some conferences here and there, and we have an airport an hour away that has direct flights to a number of US, you know, airports and things like that to get wherever. But I do miss some of the in-person interaction. I mean, Zoom demos and Zoom meetings and Zoom trainings and some of that stuff, you know, you do want to meet your customers. And so we do make a point of doing that. And then in-person events or conferences and things like that, whether or not you're sponsoring but still just attending, we've seen a lot of value in some of this in-person, and that seems to be picking up again. So I I'm excited to do more of that in person in 2025. But it's funny, I was just thinking back on flying to London for a conference and having to carry my suitcase and roll up my pants and cross a river to catch the plane to be able to get to the— right? So there's this kind of funny added complexity around doing things like that that you do from down here that you might not if you're catching an Uber to go to the airport.

Love it. I think that's great. That's great. Um, you know, last question for you, Nick. Um, what do you think are the common misperceptions, um, or maybe even reframed as like advice? You know, if someone is listening to this and, uh, they're interested in following your footsteps, you know, what, what sort of advice would you have? Or, you know, what, what are some things that, um, they probably have the wrong preconceived notions in their head and you could shed some light there?

Oh, I don't know. I think we, again, I think anything you can try it for 6 months, right? And I think maybe if you just frame things a little less extreme or, you know, we just put our stuff in our garage, we put some stuff in the attic and we locked it and then we just tried it and we could have always come back, you know, if it wasn't quite right. We learned quickly. There was obviously a ramp learning in an environment like this. I told you that we moved to a— in the middle of the jungle when we first got down here with 3 young kids. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that was a little too far out of the population. So we changed after 3 weeks, moved closer to town, and then we moved into an elevator building because we're like, okay, let's learn and quickly iterate just like you would in tech or business, right? You're kind of just iterating and not locking yourself in anything. But I'd say, you know, give it a shot. I think now there seems to be more flexibility, or there has been a lot more flexibility for workers to be able to work virtually or remotely or, you know, hybrid and do some travel. You know, we met a group of families down here where, you know, even before COVID we had planned to travel with a teacher or two with 4 families. And go to Europe and spend a year in Europe going in and out of the Schengen, 6 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 weeks, and traveling with 2 teachers and giving our kids that experience. You know, you do that when you maybe meet a group of like-minded folks that are willing to flex or can be flexible in lifestyle. And, and, you know, that's where communities like this, where you meet new, new types of folks, that things like that can happen. But I think once you do this, you realize Oh, if you, if you have a way to be productive and maybe make money while you're— no matter where you're at, you can change your location. And that's probably easier than it's ever been.

Yeah.

Love it.

It's— this conversation takes me back to years ago when I built my business out of Buenos Aires. And but like I said, I didn't, didn't do it with kids, just me and my wife. And love your story, Nick. Really appreciate you coming here and sharing your, uh, your perspective.

Well, thank you, Brian. Yeah, fun to see that you're, you're living in a fun place too, and, and you're experiencing some of the issues like power outages that we, that we do experience as well. So thanks, Brian.

It's not, not just a Costa Rica thing. Um, well, anyway, thanks again, Nick, for telling us about Costa Rica. You're listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast sponsored by Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to US companies. Thanks again, everyone, and we'll see you next time.

Thanks, Brian. Cheers.