BrainHive Coworking in Guatemala Finally Open

The Coworking Space by BrainHive Consulting Opens its Doors in Panajachel, Atitlan Lake

It took us almost a full year but we are proud to announce that BrainHive finally launched operation of our first real-life impact project, the JungleLab coworking space in Panajachel, Guatemala (formerly named CastleRock, but we decided we’d rather be a lab than a castle 😉 ). The space, which is currently able to seat a relatively limited number of Internet workers (roughly a dozen, the ideal size for a working retreat), lies at the edge of the jungle next to an art gallery and an evangelist church, yet only minutes from the town’s central market, nightlife and recreational amenities right beside the most sunset-soaked lakefront side of the Atitlan, one of the most beautiful volcano lakes in Central America and the world. The following two videos taken and edited by a nearby friendly hostal-owner help to illustrate just what exactly it is that we’re doing here:

With plans to invite designers, creators and impact entrepreneurs to try out our advanced virtual-reality system and showcased tech equipment, JungleLab is positioned to become a hub for the development of good business ideas. The space was built with a zero waste and off-grid capacity objective in mind and was mostly made out of renewable material or recycled materials. We are also using a dry composting toilet and tried to implement permanent culture principles in the design of our garden, which currently holds mostly medicinal, herbal or edible crops. With our rocket stove array we can not only barbecue but also produce great amounts of different soups, sauces and jams, plus we recently built a blacksmithing oven which we used to make some knifes. There’s more coming, too, with plans to build dojo/workout, bath/spa/wellness amenities and a shooting range for bow and arrow, air rifle and slingshot.

The lab front view

Visit our Lab and Develop your Business Idea

In our lab you will find a growing number of tools that help you prototype and test out any given business idea or product. Due to the always busy Santander street pedestrian zone here in town you are able to make quick lean startup planning and testing appraisals and see within days if a business idea or product is interesting to the people. Get instant feedback interviewing and pitching a target audience made up primarily of foreigners part affluent, part hippie, Guatemala’s part Mestizo part indigenous emerging middle class and groups that would profit much from more impact business conducted in their living sphere. An ideal combination, especially considering that usually no licenses or permits are required for you to gauge the success of your idea or with a quick test set up!

Panajachel is also stacked with various NGOs and sociopreneurship entities and it is rather well-connected to Antigua and Guatemala capital in the East and the second capital Xela and a bit further the Mexican border in the West. There are many events and utopian tribe parties (goa, psytrance, ethnopunk movement) and workshops during the high season and during the rainy season it is an ideal place to write, think, plant and relax with very comfortable temperatures the year throughout. Dubbed the country of eternal spring, Guatemala never gets too hot or cold! Sure there are a few insects some of us would consider less than pleasant but you’ll get used to the unique beauty of the Guatemalan biosphere.

Building back view, garden and volcanoes / lake in the background

Coworking with a Startup / Digital Marketing Expert at your Fingertips

Since the JungleLab is a very important project to the founder and CEO of BrainHive you will be able to cowork directly with Joachim Görbert during most of the year if you decide to visit. You will be able to bounce your thoughts and hone your ideas here, as all instruments for mind mapping, presentation and discussion are at free disposal all the time. Since there are even some sleeping spots, consider the optional coliving to get an even more intense connection and become even more immersed in your project, making immense progress in the time that you are spending here. Right at the beginning, you can begin with a goal-setting session and together with the other coworkers decide on a time plan to make sure you always hit your marks, push and fire up each other and go on to reach new levels of your business or profession.

The JungleLab is the first Coworking of its kind at the Atitlan Lake but there are many impact projects nearby with less technical, less digital character. You will have a unique opportunity to study artesian, micro-agricultural and ecopreneurship projects and meet players, influencers and contributors from the impact sphere. Since many of the individuals that decided to settle long-term in Guatemala are leaning towards spiritpreneurship and Christian entrepreneurship, there are even more ports to latch onto if you’re really serious about exploring what is beyond the pure monetary and freedom aspects of owning your own business and rather improving whole communities and even countries through day to day, step-by-step action and interaction.

Enough space to work due to our partnership with the next door gallery

Remote Location Movement, Generation Liberty and the State of the World

From the very beginning, the JungleLab was laid out to be a demonstration that it is possible to build woke autarky independently, shaking up paradigms and narratives and make something that is smart yet natural, grounded, close to the appropriate technology and low-tech building principles, yet inhabited by a spirit of skyward thinking. Originally established in Germany, a country that is one of the most bureaucratic, high-taxing and over-aged in the world, we have seen and suffered by the hands of producers, keepers and propagators of limited thought, powerful dust collectives that suffocate creative courage and happily impose stifling amounts of unnecessary burdens on the young and reckless. Forevermore striving to enhance and expand the dynamism of modernity and progress to produce higher and better forms of design, we found in Guatemala and specifically its indigenous – controlled regions the ideal staging ground for our experiment.

A whole generation of people who have taken the globalist imperative to the nth degree, having become void of national, traditional, cultural and spiritual identity and having fully embraced cosmocentrism, geographic flexibility and living relatively untethered from organizations such as corporations, religious, financial and insurance institutions and even citizenships, is looking for a good place to invest the hours of their day, the funds in their accounts and the sparks of their mind. While Guatemala is by no means a paradise to your regular Joe, an inspired and smart person with no damn to give (think machete-wielding street robbers, corrupt cops and lots but lots of scorpions) and a few dollars to their name can easily buy a piece of land or rent a shop and set up something that at the very least will give them a lot of great input and insight if not blow up to become something bigger that opens up an opportunity to live a really good life.

Try Guatemala, visit the JungleLab here at the Atitlan lake. You’ll love it and we’d love to have you here. Continuing to produce game-changing opportunities and offerings for founders, by founders, we are hoping to soon welcome you and give you a space to build dreams we can perhaps one day all dream together.