I moved to Bali alone.
I didn't want to stay alone.

In January 2024, I landed in Denpasar with two suitcases and a remote job. I'd spent months dreaming about this — the rice paddies, the co-working cafes, the freedom of building my career from anywhere in the world.

What I hadn't thought through was the part that came after the Instagram post.

The part where you're standing in a half-furnished villa at 11pm, realizing your “roommate” from the Facebook group moved out three days ago without telling you — and her half of the deposit is gone with her.

Here's how finding a roommate works when you're a woman living abroad: you join five Facebook groups. You scroll past hundreds of posts, most outdated. You message strangers and hope they're not flaky, not dangerous, not a “party every night” person when you have 8am client calls.

If you're lucky, you find someone tolerable. If you're unlucky, you find out on day three that your definitions of “clean” are wildly different, or they're leaving in two weeks, or they think splitting utilities means you pay for their AC habit.

I went through this cycle three times in one year. Chiang Mai. Bangkok. Back to Bali. Each time, the same scramble. Each time, that sinking “please let this person be normal” feeling when you hand over a cash deposit to someone you met 48 hours ago.

And as a woman, the stakes are different. It's not just about finding someone to split rent with. It's about feeling safe. Feeling respected. Knowing that your space — in a country that isn't yours — is actually yours.

It was my third month in Canggu. I'd found a beautiful villa — the kind with the open-air bathroom and the frangipani tree — but I couldn't afford it alone. So I went through The Process again.

Twenty-three messages sent. Eleven replies. Seven “actually, I'm leaving next week.” Two no-shows. One person who seemed great but wanted to pay in crypto.

I remember sitting in a cafe, staring at my phone, thinking: We have apps for everything. Dating. Dog walking. Splitting a dinner bill. But I can't find a compatible person to share an apartment with in one of the most popular nomad cities in the world?

Sola is the tool I wished existed every single time I moved cities.

It's a matching platform — but not the “swipe and hope” kind. You fill out a real compatibility profile: your work schedule, your sleep habits, your budget, how you feel about shared spaces, your deal-breakers. The things that actually determine whether living with someone will be wonderful or miserable.

Then we match you with women whose lifestyles genuinely align with yours. Not random strangers from a Facebook comment section — people you'd actually want to come home to.

And because I lived through every logistical nightmare, Sola also handles the stuff that causes 90% of roommate conflicts:

People ask me this a lot. “Why just women?”

Because the experience of finding housing as a woman alone abroad is fundamentally different. The safety calculations. The boundary-setting. The way you assess trust when you don't have your usual support system around you.

Every woman I've talked to about this has the same reaction: a nod, a sigh, and then a story. The roommate who brought strangers home. The landlord who was “too friendly.” The time they paid too much for a bad place because they didn't feel safe negotiating alone.

Sola is built around the understanding that for women, housing isn't just logistics — it's about creating a space where you feel genuinely safe and supported. Where your independence doesn't come at the cost of isolation.

Sola is live in three cities — Bali, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok. The three places where I lived this problem most intensely, and where the female digital nomad community is growing fastest.

We're early. Really early. The kind of early where your feedback genuinely shapes what this becomes. I'm not building this in a boardroom — I'm building it from the same cafes and co-working spaces you're sitting in right now.

If you've ever sat in a new city, scrolling through housing posts, feeling that mix of excitement and dread — Sola is for you. If you've ever wished you could just know that the person you're about to share a home with would actually be a good fit — Sola is for you.