Is Cambodia The Next Bali?
July 31, 2019
Thanks largely to Instagram, Bali has become a hub for digital nomads over the past few years. Is Cambodia following in its footsteps? The country is quickly becoming an expat haven—trendy smoothie bowls, affordable cost of living and beautiful scenery included. While Cambodia has had a much rougher recent history than Bali, it is a relatively peaceful time for the country politically.
Here’s how co-working spaces is changing the future of work culture
July 19, 2019
Here’s how co-working spaces is changing the future of work culture
A couple of years ago, a quick glance at a co-working space would have given you a good idea of the people who work there.
The low seating, cushy beanbags, foosball tables, and readily available cold brew coffee (and maybe even beer) would tell you that the users were young — think – tech entrepreneurs, designers or creative types.
Featured in Phnom Penh Post
May 11, 2019
Yellow Tower
Cocooned in foliage and outfitted as a tech-savvy co-working space, the seven-storey Yellow Tower is the greenest office space in the capital – and one of the most aesthetically unique. Over 2,400 square metres of plant life clings to the building’s facade, forming a lush vertical garden that instills calmness and keeps out the tropical heat.
The rooftop courtyard and balconies on every floor offer sweeping views over the Chroy Changvar peninsula and across the river to the city. Each level has its own style and function, but all have high ceilings and mezzanines with large unbroken spaces bathed in natural light.
The furniture is eclectic as the floorspace, set for work, creativity and relaxation. There are boardroom tables, and billiards tables, books to read, and sofas to lounge on. There is also a kitchen full of drinks and snacks to power those creative minds – just drop some cash in the honesty jar.
The best place to work?
December 28, 2018
by Florian Cabirol
I am currently staying in Cambodia, and I needed a quiet place with nice amenities so I could practise my work as a web developer.
Like most people would do, I tried cafés; but I quickly gave up on the idea. There is this constant noise, tables are often wobbly, and wall plugs are often too distant… and the worst part is having to pack up your things when you need to go to the restroom!
Thanks to a Google search, I found out that several coworking spaces exist in Phnom Penh, with many different offers and rates.
I won’t go into details here, but I visited some of these places and only had disappointing experiences – the price and quality of service were simply not satisfying.
However, Outpost Cambodia seemed to stand out from the other places, thanks to nice photographs and good ratings. It looked more like a youth hostel, with a quirky spirit. I was skeptic about the location and the atmosphere (would I be able to get some work done there ?), but I decided to give it a try anyway.
And I was right to! I was welcomed in a really professional way by a member of the staff, who even took the time to make me further visit the place. I had an excellent first impression, as the place is really unique and stands out from everything that exists in Phnom Penh.
Outpost Cambodia is a 2-story place located in a 9-story building. The 6th floor is a living place, while the 6 1/2th floor (a Cambodian specialty!) hosts offices, as well as the 7th floor, which is right in front of the guest house rooms.
Etant au Cambodge pour quelques mois, j’avais besoin d’un endroit calme et bien équipé pour pouvoir exercer mon métier de développeur web.
Après avoir testé comme tout le monde les cafés, j’ai vite abandonné cette solution : il y a un brouhaha permanent, les tables sont souvent bancales et bien souvent on n’a pas la chance d’être proche d’une prise électrique… Pire, quoi de plus chiant que de remballer tout son matos quand on a besoin d’aller faire sa pause pipi !
Après une recherche sur Google, j’ai vu que Phnom Penh offrait des solutions de co-working space : pas mal d’offre et différents prix.
Sans rentrer dans les détails, j’en ai visité quelques uns mais j’ai franchement été déçu tant sur la prestation que sur le prix.
Mais Outpost Cambodia semblait se démarquer sur les photos et sur les avis postés, et semblait complètement décalé, ressemblant plus à une auberge de jeunesse qu’à un co-working space. Donc j’ai été visité avec une petite réserve sur la localisation et sur le fait qu’on puisse vraiment y bosser.
Et là quelle belle surprise ! J’ai été très bien accueilli par un membre du staff qui m’a fait le tour du lieu et franchement ma première impression fût bonne, l’endroit est vraiment unique et complètement déconnecté avec ce qu’on trouve sur Phnom Penh.
Le lieu est sur 2 étages dans un immeuble de 9 étages avec ascenseur, le 6e étage étant le lieu de vie, le 6e et demi (à la Cambodgienne) étant des bureaux et le 7e des bureaux également en face des chambres de la guest house.
Double Win in Coworker Awards
May 2, 2018
by Destination Outpost
Outpost has secured its position as South-East Asia’s favorite colive–cowork destination with its double win in the 2018 Coworker Members’ Choice Awards run by Coworker.com. Both of Outpost’s spaces were awarded the top spot for their locales, with Outpost Ubud winning in Bali, and Outpost Cambodia winning in Phnom Penh.
Members’ Choice award winners were determined based on thousands of reviews, votes and opinions collected in a single year from coworking members worldwide.
“What’s really meaningful to us is that this award comes from a direct vote from our members — the incredible location independent and purpose-driven entrepreneurs, professionals and creatives who form our global community,” said Outpost co-founder David Abraham.
“It’s a huge vote of confidence that we’re successfully providing spaces that exceed our members needs.”
Members’ Choice Awards 2018
April 23, 2018
The Coworker Members’ Choice Awards are the only global coworking industry awards based on thousands of reviews and opinions from coworking space members around the world. This year 345 coworking spaces received recognition based on the quantity & quality of member reviews during the past 12 months.
The award is given to only 1 coworking space in each city, with the exception of a handful of spaces who were nominated for the “best female focused coworking space” award.
Introducing the winners of the 2018 Members’ Choice Awards for cities in Asia:
Afghanistan, Kabul: The Hub
Cambodia, Phnom Penh: Outpost Cambodia Popup
Bangladesh, Dhaka: Hub Dhaka
Cambodia, Phnom Penh: Outpost Cambodia Popup
Hong Kong, : The Hive (Wan Chai)
India, Ahmedabad: Uncubate
Coolest Coworking Space?
April 18, 2018
by whatsonphnomppenh.com
Situated in a green oasis overlooking the Mekong, Outpost Cambodia feels a million miles away from the chaos of Phnom Penh. Here, freelancers, entrepreneurs and digital nomads from all over the world explain why they choose to make this their office - and in some cases, their temporary home.
Coliving and coworking pop-up
August 2, 2017
by Cheyenne Chia
Over the years, we have seen co-working spaces sprung up in our Kingdom to help further the sense of community within entrepreneurs and startups in the tech scene. Some examples are TRYBE, a blend between a coworking space and makerspace, EmeraldHub, a diverse space for co-working and events, and ImpactHub, a laidback startup space with various workshops for all.
And now, another has literally ‘pop up’ into the scene – Outpost, a Bali-based co-working and co-living community has announced that its first international pop-up will be in Cambodia, at the Green Penthouse.
As the pop-up title suggests, Outpost Cambodia would open its doors for 6 months, offering boutique coworking in the luxurious setting of the Green Penthouse that is wreathed in wildlife inspired by Cambodian jungles.
Phnom Penh was chosen as the location for their very first international pop up as there has been an increasing trend in destination coworking.
“Destination co-working means people can really throw themselves into their ideas and projects, but it’s also about inspiration, adventure, and enrichment. Our mission is to create productive, collaborative spaces in culturally-rich destinations. Giving our members the opportunity to share business ideas and develop new practices in the midst of a different culture is really exciting not just at an individual level, but at a global level, too. It creates a real innovation ecosystem,” expressed Outpost co-founder Bryan Stewart.
Co-Working Spaces in Demand as Alternative to Rising Rent
July 19, 2017
by Hang Sokunthea - Cambodia Daily
When Duong Kim Hak and his business partner decided to expand their online bookstore to a brick-and-mortar location, the entrepreneurs went for a non-traditional store site that’s growing in popularity abroad and in Phnom Penh: a co-working space.
“It would be at least 30 percent more expensive to rent an individual house to run our business, and we would not make much profits at the end,” he said.
Through their bookstore at workspace Emerald Hub, Mr. Kim Hak has joined dozens of entrepreneurs who are warding off Cambodia’s rising rents by sharing office spaces.
When comparing the space, location and other costs associated with parking, security and utilities, Mr. Kim Hak concluded that using a co-working space would allow them to sell books while cutting some of the costs of running a business.
Outpost pops up at the Green Penthouse in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
July 16, 2017
by Blau Journal
Get your passport ready: Outpost Coworking is delighted to announce it’s first international pop up!
Set in a must-see urban treehouse, Outpost Cambodia at the Green Penthouse delivers a range of contemporary coworking and coliving options along side everything you’ve come to expect from Outpost: great events, fast internet, and a creative, productive space.
Located just across the river from the buzzing cultural, foodie and entrepreneurial hub of Phnom Penh, Outpost Cambodia the perfect spot for your next great venture.
“Our members are adventurous, imaginative professionals. They’re seeking idyllic lifestyles. We saw this opportunity with the Green Penthouse to develop a half-year pop-up in a stunning building within the vibrant, entrepreneurial Phnom Penh community and knew it was a great fit,” said Outpost co-founder Bryan Stewart. “It’s a rare find and a chance for our members to design their best possible work life balance. We love the idea of temporary pop-ups to experiment.”
Music Video for ព្យាបាលបេះដូង Awaken at The Green Penthouse
Music Video for ព្យាបាលបេះដូង Awaken
Green-sulated Buildings Bring Cool Savings - Khmer Times
November 20, 2014
"Peaceful & Productive"
by Marina Shafik
PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – Rising seven stories above the Chroy Changva Peninsula, the Yellow Tower is distinctive for two reasons; its capsular curved-glass elevator shaft and its “vertical garden,” the lush coat of climbing plants that covers its facade.
The unusual building, completed three years ago, was designed by a pool of five architects and houses office space and a penthouse residential suite. For Phnom Penh’s burgeoning skyline, where ‘green’ buildings usually refers to construction sites covered in green protective mesh, the tower stands as a rare example of a “living wall.”
And in the capital’s tropical climate, it makes a lot of sense.
By adding a vertical garden, “the building becomes more energy efficient, which leads to a decrease in carbon emissions,” explains Kim Gjemmestad, one of the tower’s owners. “[It] also mitigates the urban heat island effect, absorbs and filters storm water, reduces pollution and acts as a carbon sink.”
Inspiring tech entrepreneurship
June 25, 2012
Stuart Alan Becker
The arrival of Startup Weekend in Cambodia marked a new beginning for high-tech entrepreneurship as more than 80 people worked on all kinds of new business ideas all weekend at Yellow Tower across the Tonle Sap from The Riverside.
Chief Marketing Officer Joey Pomerenke of Startup Weekend flew out specially from the US to attend all three days and to lead a planning group of regional high-tech participants at the Lazy Beach private hideaway on Koh Rong island off the coast of Sihanoukville and is leaving on Tuesday.
“It is really about bringing the region together. The organisers from Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand can work together,” he said.
Startup Weekend originated in Boulder, Colorado in 2007 as the brainchild of a man named Andrew Hyde. Two friends of Pomerenke, Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen, attended a Startup Weekend in Seattle and found it very inspiring.
“They saw an opportunity to take this model and turn it into a non-profit and scale it up across the world.” In 2009, Nager and Nelsen paid Hyde more than $100,000 for the Startup Weekend concept and since then have grown it to 86 events in 2010 and 261 events in 2011.
“This year we’re on track to do 550 events,” Pomerenke said.
Since the status of Startup Weekend is as a non-profit, Nager and Nelsen were able to get a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the largest in the world for entrepreneurship, to fund Startupweekend.org. The first year’s grant disbursement was $250,000.
“This is funded all through corporate sponsorships and foundations. That’s how we pay our staff of 25.”
Pomerenke says the Startup Weekends are experiential education.
“You are learning by doing and you can take these two days over the weekend and have a zero-risk way of validating your idea. In two days you learn a lot, validate your idea with your peers and you have mentors and judges on Sunday night.”
He says a “ton” of real businesses have been founded as a result of Startup Weekends, citing Zaarly as one, a business that organises deliveries.
“Entrepreneurship is the best thing for economies,” …
Phnom Penh Post: Tech start-up pitches sought
June 11, 2012
by Stuart Alan Becker
A group of Phnom Penh-based high-tech professionals are putting on the second annual Startup Weekend Cambodia from June 22 to 24 at Yellow Tower, across the Tonle Sap from the Riverside.
Darren Jensen of Yoolk, a software company that builds content, sales and HR management systems for Yellow Pages, invites anybody who wants to pitch a good idea for a start-up business, especially with high-tech components, to pony up the $15 to join the event.
“There are 15 organisers flying in from around Southeast Asia, a mixture of investors and entrepreneurs,” Jensen said. “This is a really great opportunity for Cambodians to meet these people for the first time. Some people may get invited into an incubator which helps their business grow and may even get funded.”
Last year 25 people came to the event and 100 are expected this year.
Last year’s winner was Australian Dave Wilkie, 26, whose idea became a successful mobile dating and networking service that works all on mobile phones and does not require an internet connection. It can be seen on the website chibitxt.me.
According to Jensen, Wilkie is launching the service in conjunction with Smart Mobile.
“They’re going to launch with other partners in Thailand, Vietnam and who knows where else,” Jensen said.
Jensen describes the weekend as an entrepreneurial education experience.
“Everyone gets to pitch their business to a panel of judges, and then they announce a winner. There is a prize: some tools, vouchers, some things to help a business get started.”
A trip to the Yellow Tower on the other side
December 8, 2011
Following a ride over the Japanese Bridge across the Tonle Sap to “The Other Side”, you take a right turn and head along the peninsula, towards the confluence with the Mekong, the 7-storey Yellow Tower rises up alone, easily visible from the Riverside, an unusual building specially designed as a workplace for technology and development.
As the curved-glass elevator speeds up the front edge of the tower, the view up and down the Tonle Sap and across to the Riverside district swiftly becomes a stunning panorama.
Constructed during the last three years, the building is designed to house creative forms of businesses.
With a total of five architects involved in the design, Yellow Tower is now being completed and ready for tenants in the new year, the sides of the building are being covered in mesh with a “vertical garden” concept.
The architects believe the building offers attractive, specifically designed space for creative work and development.
While the top floor is in use as a residential penthouse apartment, four floors are available for leasing, each with more than 400 square metres of working space, 57 square metre balconies and each with their own “vertical garden” consisting of planting areas with vines that climb up the mesh installed up and down the exterior.
The architects’ design purpose was to create “a sense of an environment inspired by nature” with a buffer between the hot sun and the working space. Each floor has its own dedicated IT room and storage, along with an executive bathroom and shower, plus two other toilets on each floor for ladies and gents.
The building was designed with eight metres between the columns, offering large, unbroken open spaces, each floor with a different style of mezzanine; each floor five metres high.
Strong current for development
November 4, 2010
Steve Finch
FROM the top of Yellow Tower, a new seven-storey office space on the Chroy Changvar Peninsula, the views extend 360 degrees into the surrounding provinces on a clear day. To the east the view of the Tonle Bassac is uninterrupted with only a few buildings in the surrounding area rising above two floors. While significant development has transformed the waterfront property across the river in recent years, changes to the capital’s Russey Keo district have been rather modest, but that is changing.
Of the half dozen satellite districts the government has earmarked for completion by 2020, in many ways this slither of land between the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers is the most advanced.
While Camko City on the northern edge of Phnom Penh is years from completion – none of the commercial space is even under construction as yet, according to real-estate firm CB Richard Ellis – and Grand Phnom Penh is looking at a 2014 launch at the earliest, new properties in Chroy Changvar are coming online at an accelerating pace.
VTrust Apartment III was completed at the end of last year, Yellow Tower is scheduled to open in February and meanwhile construction workers at Mekong Tower could be seen finishing the building’s parking area this week. In just over a year another apartment building, the US$30 million Bellevue Apartments, is also due for completion.
“Chruoy Changvar is developing into one of the most exciting districts of … Phnom Penh,” said CBRE Country Manager Daniel Parkes, who is acting as agent for Yellow Tower and other buildings in the capital.
Although still undeveloped in comparison with the opposite bank of the Tonle Sap, the government has targeted this riverside district for major infrastructure development that would make it increasingly attractive for investors, property developers including Bellevue’s Arakawa told the Post this week.
“We do not have any problem with the infrastructure at all,” said a senior executive at the Japanese developer, declining to be named. “All the basic infrastructures are in place.”
Work continues on a project to widen National Highway 6 that extends into Kandal province from the Japanese Friendship Bridge, but the main improvement in access will be the new bridge across the Tonle Sap River, announced in September.
Ministry of Land Management spokesman Nomm Pheany said on Tuesday that private infrastructure development built around new projects will in turn transform the district.
“The infrastructure in Sangkat Chroy Changva will be better [than the city centre] because … developers are taking … new technology and materials that are modern to develop that area,” she said by email.
Prices on the peninsula are still low by Phnom Penh standards. Bonna Realty is advertising plots of land in the district starting at about $400 per square metre, or roughly five times less than those in sought-after Boeung Keng Kang I. Similarly, Bonna was selling a gated four-bedroom two-storey villa in Chroy Changva for $350,000 this week. Meanwhile, comparable properties in BBK I rarely priced below $500,000 with sellers often asking for $1 million or more.