Note: this post was co-written with Claude. Ideas, sources, and edits are ours; the prose was substantially AI-drafted.
TL;DR
We've been running an affordable EA coworking hub with coliving options in Da Nang, Vietnam since February, and it's gone really well — well enough that we want to keep going. We're picking the next location now, launching mid-July for at least 2 months, and we want to know where people would actually show up.
Take the poll by Wednesday, 27 May. Use cities.moiri.dev to set your own weights across cost, climate, visa, and more, and see which candidate cities rank highest for you before you vote.
What the Impact Hub is
Impact Hubs are affordable coworking + coliving setups for EAs and other impact-focused people. The idea is simple: make it easier to do focused work and build real connections, without needing to live in SF or London (expensive cities) to do it. No mandatory schedule — many people work full time on weekdays and spend lots of social time together after work.
What Da Nang has been like
Most of this was articulated in SecularSquirrel's writeup. Some of what we've found:
- It's affordable. Da Nang runs about $600–900 USD/month all-in. Around $800 covers a private furnished apartment, coworking, healthy vegan delivery a few times a day, laundry, occasional massages, day trips with friends. Less if you cook or share. For many of us it's less than we used to pay for housing alone.
- You build trust through lots of small moments: sharing meals, attending events, coworking, watching someone handle a stressful debug or a rough morning. After a few weeks you know whether you'd want to work with someone in a way no scheduled 1:1 can really match.
- It's easier to focus around other focused people. Being in the room with friends doing deep work pulls you in. Flying across the world to do it can also make the commitment feel real in a way working from home doesn't.
- Help is two minutes away. "Can you look at this?" gets you a real response from someone who can see what you’re working on and likely has context. It helps us learn about useful resources and make better decisions. Same with planning 15-person weekend trips in a few hours for less than $25/person.
- It's fun. Making friends is easier when you see each other regularly anyway, and you can probably find people who would love to try something new or engage in your favorite niche hobby with you. Many of us live in group houses, there are regular activities from board games and jam sessions to escape rooms and frisbee on the beach, and sometimes community-organized day or weekend trips.
For the full pilot story, see the original announcement and SecularSquirrel's writeup. (Da Nang wraps in July, but there's still room to join if you want in on the current hub.)
The next hub
- When: Launches mid-July, right after the EA Summit Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. At least 2 months, possibly extended.
- Where: TBD — that's what this poll decides. We've shortlisted 13 candidate cities based on cost, visa accessibility, climate, food, internet, EA community presence, and more.
- Format: Same affordable coworking + coliving structure as Da Nang.
A longer-term track
Some of us are also evaluating whether the next location (or a pair of locations on rotation) could become a longer-term base — somewhere a sub-group commits to for 12+ months. The poll has an optional section for this.
What we need from you
Take the poll by Wednesday, May 27.
- Explore the candidates. Use the city explorer to compare cities against your own weights. You can drill into each city's details, see the underlying criteria, and check sources. If you want to look at the underlying data directly, it's downloadable here.
- Rate each candidate for how likely you'd be to attend for at least part of the 2-month hub.
- (Optional) If you'd consider committing to a longer-term base or rotation, fill out that section too — it's in the same form.
This is an expression of interest, not a binding vote. Your responses help us figure out where there's real interest and energy, and where people are actually likely to come. While the poll is an important decision tool, the final call for the next hub location will be made by the organizers, factoring in logistics, cost, visas, and other considerations.
Who this is for
Anyone doing impact-focused work who'd want to spend at least a few weeks living and working alongside others who care about doing good thoughtfully. So far that's been people in AI safety, animal welfare, longtermism, charity entrepreneurship, research, and folks pivoting toward impact-focused roles. About half of us work directly for EA orgs; the rest are on personal projects, upskilling, or job searching. You can meet some of the people who've been involved if you're curious who shows up (the org logos are on that page too).
All EA cause areas welcome. So far we've been accepting people with a decent amount of EA context, and we expect to continue this.
Who we are
The Impact Hub volunteer organizers — most of us helped run the Da Nang pilot and are still on the ground there. The co-authors of this post are just some of the folks who help out; in practice, tasks get distributed across a small-to-medium group of friends depending on capacity and specialty, all on a volunteer basis. We’re not funded at the moment.
Stay in the loop
Join the Impact Hubs Discord to connect with the community and hear about future hubs.
Questions? Drop them in the comments or reach out on Discord. And please share with anyone in the community who might be interested.