German digital nomad, peer-to-peer investor & content creator Denny Neidhardt found a location independent business solution with e-Residency
Denny Neidhardt grew up in Berlin in the 1990s. He was born three months before the wall came down and the city's profound changes colored his early life. "It was more romantic back then, in a sense, organic and vibrant," he says. Berlin though has matured, and it is not the cacophonous hipster jungle it used to be, and Neidhardt has changed too. These days he calls the Greek island of Crete home and he intends to stay there before jetting off to Southeast Asia later in the year.
Denny Neidhardt, you see, has become an Estonian e-resident and digital nomad.
Like almost all e-Residency stories, Denny's begins with career changes and local bureaucracy. After holding a job in business management, he left his position after the company reorganized, which prompted some soul searching. "I loved working in sales and I believe that everyone is a salesperson by nature," he says. "But it also requires a sort of identification with the product and what you offer. I can't imagine changing companies just like you change a baby's diapers."
Denny wanted to become financially independent and strike out on his own. He wanted to invest more of his time in his personal passion, peer-to-peer or P2P investing, and the new platforms emerging to support P2P investors, particularly in the Baltics. In 2018, he started a German language blog called re:think P2P to explore the topic and make his insights available to others.
The Baltics are a hotspot for churning out innovative P2P lending platforms. Even today, three of the Top 10 platforms listed on re:think P2P are based in Estonia (Bondora, Estateguru, and Income Marketplace). Three more are Latvian (LANDE, Twino, Viainvest), and one is in Lithuania (Profitus). The rest of the list is rounded out by companies in Croatia and Ireland.
"There was little knowledge about those platforms, and I was intrigued by this topic because I felt there is a lot of potential but limited coverage in the German financial media," Denny says.
It was also a niche where Denny could build his own brand and help investors better understand the risk profile in the Baltics. The blog re:think P2P slowly became an income generator, as Denny earned commissions for referring retail investors to platforms. Companies also wanted him to review their services, and Denny earned money through advertising on his YouTube channel. His knowledge is in demand, he notes, considering that the P2P investment space is unregulated, and investors need to be up-to-date on trends, as the dynamics can change quickly.
A change in career direction though dovetailed with a change in life director for Denny. He wanted to go abroad, but for various reasons, he found it difficult to run his business from another country legitimately and remain a German resident, which entails certain responsibilities, such as being covered by a health insurance provider. This caused the "tipping point" that led him to pursue e-Residency, in part encouraged by Reelika Virunurm, currently the business diplomacy coordinator for Ukraine and Germany at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Virunurm was also previously partner integration manager for e-Residency and before that served as head of German investor relations at Bondora, a Tallinn-based P2P investment firm.
Denny applied for e-Residency last year and picked up his card at the Estonian embassy in Berlin in September 2022. He also visited Tallinn -- a frequent destination given his tight relationship with local P2P providers -- to meet with all of the service providers necessary for running his Estonian business. Denny detailed his experiences with e-Residency on the re:think P2P blog, and shares how easy e-Residency is:
"I just tell everyone that it's simpler than you can imagine. From the application to picking up the card, to dealing with solution providers, everything is so agile and flexible. For someone from Germany, it is a different world entirely."
As such, Denny has become an e-Residency proponent, and recommends the program to anyone looking for flexibility and freedom.
Looking for flexibility and freedom for your lifestyle and business? Look no further than e-Residency:
He also began to branch out from beyond his German target audience and recently started publishing some of his material in English, to reach more readers. P2P remains Denny's passion. It's not only liberating for him, but for the people he helps.
"You become a part of each retail investor's journey to reaching more freedom and independence," says Denny.
With freedom, however, comes more choices. And for Denny and his wife, that means he needs to figure out what comes after Crete. "Currently, we are undecided on where to go," Denny says. "But we will have an adventure in Asia and spend some months there."
There is no specific roadmap for a digital nomad, Denny notes. Where one sets up camp depends largely on connections, prices, and a range of other factors. But the road is always beckoning.
