In the picturesque landscapes of North-East Europe and South-East Estonia lies Kupland, a region specifically designed for remote working. Lush forests, a vast national park, sleepy villages, and charming towns with historic churches and manors best characterize the Kupland vibe.
It’s also home to traditional communities like the Võro people and the Setos, with their folklore, stories, myths, and enchanting music. Our landscape has even been the training ground for several Olympic medalists. It might sound like the end of the world, but it’s a world of its own.
Just a 3-hour drive from both Tallinn and Riga international airports, Kupland is ideal for remote professionals and awaits everyone whose daily endeavors involve digital solutions.
It’s a coworking paradise in various forms. For its nearly 30 members who provide remote work services, Kupland is a professional networking club. For clients, it's a one-of-a-kind experience. From tranquil lakeside huts hidden in the forest to rural hubs filled with positive energy, Kupland offers a premium and sustainable lifestyle. If you stay at any of the Kupland locations, you are sure to meet warm and straightforward people and discover exciting opportunities in the area as well.
Every story has a beginning.
So, what’s ours?
It was a warm and sunny August in 2019 when high-level politicians and officials from Tallinn visited the South-East of Estonia. In a rural school, a social hackathon was conducted by local leaders. The idea to attract digital nomads, businesses, and diaspora found support. A regional PR plan was written and received initial funding from the Ministry of Finance. With the motto “All for one and one for all” from The Three Musketeers, Põlva County took the lead, involving neighboring counties Valga and Võru.
A small core team of men and women, county leaders and entrepreneurs, began searching for a project manager. Here is the part of the story where I come in.
Hello, I’m Lisanna – a woman in my late thirties, 5'7" tall, with shoulder-length medium brown hair, a big smile, and sparkling cyan eyes. I am often searching for connections and have a natural skill for recognizing talent in people. Constantly reading the environment, I strive to shape-shift things and get the show on the road.
My mission is to bring constructive brightness to the people around me. What do you also need to know about me? I often wear rose-colored glasses, believing that most humans around me wish good for others and are willing to put in the work, especially on themselves. However, this belief has both helped and disappointed me, not just once.
Now that you know me a tiny bit… Here I am, five years later, still in my coworking paradise and sharing the story. Kupland’s narrative is about rethinking existing approaches and mindsets. It’s about transitioning from naively altruistic, open-ended collaboration to more strategic, reciprocal partnerships. Ultimately, it’s about the positive power of change for rural coworking businesses and their clients.
When the Journey Takes You Up, Down, and Everywhere in Between
Let's rewind to early 2020 when I was applying for the project manager position. Before even getting the job interview invitation, I encountered a man like Edmund from Narnia. He came to me when no one was around and said: “Lisanna, there is still time to withdraw the job application. Then you won't have any problems with your current employer. No one must find out about it. Besides, a stronger candidate may come and close the contest anyway...” I was flooded with contradicting feelings. I looked him in the eye and dared to ask out loud: “Why should I?” On that day, I stood my ground, asserting that I would not withdraw.
Soon, I got the call to show up. Two rounds of interviews later, the job was mine. In March 2020, I started working and we all faced the joker card of COVID-19. It was clear we couldn’t invite digital nomads anytime soon. I told my core team we must change the script!
We shifted our focus to the public and IT sector, designing our coworking network for them. With the help of a branding agency, we conducted interviews with potential users, established standards for hosting individuals and teams, and selected the name — Kupland. The regional brand was born on 2 June 2020. By summertime, we had our first 16 service providers and officially launched the network.
During the first years, we listened and learned about service design and got to know each other and the market. COVID restrictions were on and off, and along with them came a significant shift in lifestyle. City-dwellers realized a higher quality of life could be found in the rural area. The number of service providers and customers increased.
Fast forward to January 2023, when I began interviews with over 30 service providers. I was hoping for friendly, constructive feedback – in the hope of improving collaboration. To give some context, at the time I was emotionally very vulnerable, caring for a loved one who had been severely ill for a long time. During one of the interviews, a member of the network reminded me of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. He was after exclusive rights. His loud messages were filled with motives that were incomprehensible to me, and I detected a strong desire for knowledge, observation, and control.
You know, emotion is the highway to the brain… During and after this long talk, I felt like a squeezed-out lemon, experiencing a rush of irritation, sadness, confusion, fear, and disappointment all at once. I was extremely disrupted, carried away by negative emotions, and lost track of time. Have you ever felt something like this? My rose-colored glasses were broken and in need of repair.
After the interview, I called my boss. For the first time, I really wanted to quit. I didn't want to be treated disrespectfully like that. I knew that there were about two dozen interviews still ahead and what if I experienced something similar… My boss encouraged me to continue, and despite my initial desire to quit the job, I took a deep breath and stayed after all. Year 2023 became the year to change the script.
Turning Challenges into Opportunities: The Way Out
As the saying went, the solution lay in everyone contributing – and they were right! Through membership fees, regular meetings, and increased collaboration, we were able to renew our cooperation agreements. We agreed to meet in person at least 10 times a year to discuss current topics and explore opportunities. These face-to-face meetings helped strengthen connections and encouraged better collaboration. We also decided to allocate part of the membership fees to social media campaigns, which were essential for any business.
We recognized that we were competing with the whole world. The world is full of remote work locations, many in beautiful places. Our strength, something that stands out, is adding a social component to the customer experience. We are a network where nearly 30 different destinations cooperate.
With this public-private partnership, we are not in the service economy, but in the experience economy. The client has comfortable working conditions with high-speed internet, accommodation, entertainment, therapy, and relaxation. We coordinate it well through warm human interactions.
We’ve picked some berries along the way! To highlight a few: in June 2021, the then-Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Regional Minister Jaak Aab awarded Kupland the Regional Strawberry – an annual award celebrating outstanding regional development. In January 2023, Kupland was featured on Euronews, and by August 2023, we had made it into National Geographic. In May 2025, we had the opportunity to organize the Nordic-Baltic Remote Work Conference in Kupland.
The collaboration between Startup Estonia Regional Expert Group, alongside Kupland’s international allies from Ireland (Connected Hubs), Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, the Netherlands, also Portugal, has been highly impactful. Together, we've advanced the concept of remote work and with the help of Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform made first connections beyond borders.
Of course, Kupland is for visiting! In the first year, we had 16 service providers and 1,400 remote work visitors. In 2024, our service providers reported nearly 19,000 work-related visits. While remote work is a niche market, it is thriving.
Experience Uncovered
Customer feedback is particularly gratifying. Max, a ski data analyst who visited both KODAS and Tehvandi Sports Center during the Junior Biathlon World Championships, praised the combination of work, accommodation, and catering. Here’s what Max had to say: "This is the most valuable place where I have been able to live and work at such a level for a whole week. I have never experienced such a combination of work, accommodation, and catering anywhere else in the world, and I have traveled a lot. I tell everyone where I spent my week! In the morning, a deer looked in through my window."
Tania, after spending six days in a remote work cabin, expressed profound gratitude for the nurturing, creative environment: "Script… done! 6 days in a remote work cabin. I have no words! A big thank you for creating this wonderful, cozy, peaceful, safe, nurturing creative hut. I can’t recommend Haani Creative Hut enough. Creative juices flowed once again – a place to recharge, to unknot myself, to heal, and to move to a new chapter."
Lessons in Collaboration and Change
I recall a moment in the first year. It was a chilly summer day, pouring rain, when I met a very wise man, like Dumbledore from Harry Potter. He told me that by the fifth year, I would begin to see who is who and understand what’s really happening behind the scenes. He was right. Wise words carry you through storms.
There is also magic in patience and having a long-term vision: Kupland is an international premium lifestyle destination where business tourism and remote work thrive. This is a place where the world’s top professionals can flourish, with their work and personal growth at the heart of our tailored services. At the heart of Kupland is a warmly connected community of entrepreneurs, united by a shared mission to continuously raise standards and provide services that reflect the unique needs and ambitions of business clients.
For me, there is no such thing as business-to-business or business-to-consumer; everything is person-to-person. This is why understanding personality types and patterns is so crucial. Awareness plays a key role in progress. It’s important to observe both ourselves and others, recognizing and addressing unhelpful patterns – changing the script when necessary.
Collaboration is like a game. According to game theory, successful strategies are kind, responsive, forgiving, and clear. I learned not only to be altruistic but also to be daring and reciprocal. Understanding personality types and collaboration strategies creates an environment for success. Embrace what works and those who contribute.
What still resonates with me today is the realization that remote and hybrid work appeal to a much broader audience than just digital nomads. Without the disruptive influence of COVID-19, we might have exclusively focused on a narrow audience. Now, we serve a diverse clientele, including digital nomads.
Life changes. The stage changes. What’s next? Change the script! Please come and experience Kupland – a homelike destination that supports your professionalism in both work and life!
Lisanna from Kupland