That’s what we told ourselves when we started our entrepreneurial adventure in 2016. From then on, we quit our jobs, put our lives in a suitcase and left our apartment. We enrolled in a business accelerator program in Lisbon, where we got to bring our business idea to life after an intensive month of research. Our biggest realization was that being a digital nomad and hopping from one place to the next can be very lonely.
We wanted to build a business that integrated travel and the strength of a community; and found the concept of coliving!
“Challenge accepted”; with that in mind we went back to Switzerland (the location we knew best) and opened what we thought would be our prototype (as we planned to hop from one location to the next).
Little did we know that Switzerland would be our full time location. Our first clients loved their experience so much that they asked us to come back the next year. This is how our prototype turned into a year-round business.
"Let's meet inspiring people every day."
Where it all started
Hello, we are Haz & Fanny, the founders of ESCAPE. We met during our Master’s studies in Lugano, Switzerland. This is where we fell in love (not with pasta) but with one another.
As soon as we finished our studies, we started dreaming about our perfect job, and moved to the Netherlands to our new apartment and corporate jobs. Only to be frustrated a couple of months later, when we felt that our life had become so boring.
With coliving, we love exploring human connections and we are fascinated by what happens when you bring together people from all walks of life. The coliving story goes back to how human brains are wired. How we crave for a tribe – at work, at home and in life. Although this feeling is primal, we sometimes forget it and choose to live in the bubble of our apartments and offices. Coliving with others enables us to create CONNECTIONS and a sense of BELONGING.
With business coaching, we empower new & seasoned entrepreneurs to bring their own dreams & ideas to life; the ultimate power of creation, if you ask us. We do all this within the safe space of our awesome community where mistakes and failures are redefined into lessons and life experiences. We get to talk about our fears & worries, and most importantly, we learn the tools to transform them into success.
The ESCAPE family empowers us to reimagine the way we live, work and learn from each other - allowing us to discover not just the freedom of living & working, but also the freedom of mind. Welcome to our world!
Our Story
if we could sum up our journey so far in one word - it would be TRANSFORMATIONAL.
Our main goal is to provide best-in-class experiences to our amazing customers where the community is at the center. We believe in a world where living, working and learning from beautiful places is a norm.
We are driven by four big values that are at the core of our business:
Our promise
Authenticity
We aim to provide our community with authentic experiences that include high-quality services and infrastructure.
Engagement
We have each other’s back. We care about what we do, go the extra mile and have fun.
Community
Our community’s well-being and the interactions between each other are at the core of our attention.
Passion
Everything we do, we do it with all our heart. We prioritize fun over perfection.
I am the co-founder of ESCAPE. Born and raised in Dubai but I decided to change the scenery and went to Switzerland to study tourism. Fell in love with the country (and the girl) and it became a base for me...one of many. I also won a traineeship (one of three people selected in the world) to go on a world trip, exploring the industry of business travel. That’s when I first got the taste of traveling and working from anywhere, but these trips were always too short (max one week).
I am an advocate for remote work and I often speak at conferences and events, specifically about "life without walls" (a story of how we are shaping the future of living and working).
I don’t just run my own Coliving spaces, I also help other founders create and grow their spaces through the NGO, Coliving Hub. This is where managers of Coliving spaces come together to share knowledge and support each other - through events, conferences and webinars that we host throughout the year.
Previously I have worked for companies in UAE, Switzerland, Netherlands and USA and I am currently working with several companies and governmental institutions on the benefits of community living, home office, virtual teams and tools for remote work.
I am also an avid traveling entrepreneur, exploring world cultures. And I document those moments through photography thus half my suitcase is always filled with tripod, stabilizer, drone and camera.
Hi, I'm Haz!
I’m the co-founder ESCAPE and the reason why we started the business in Switzerland (in case you were wondering). I was born in a small Alpine town in the French speaking part of Switzerland close to Grimentz where Swiss Escape is located. Grimentz is the village where my grandfather comes from, and as a kid I used to spend my winter holidays and weekends skiing there.
During the last year of my Master studies, Haz and I applied for a grant and got funding to develop our own project within the university. This is when my love for entrepreneurship was born. I knew I wanted to be my own boss one day, but I didn't know what the business would be.
Two accelerator programs and lots of studying later, my dream became true.
This is why today I am a business coach for small business owners who want to start or grow their business. I have spoken on many stages around Switzerland on entrepreneurship, digital nomadism, coliving and its potential for the tourism industry.
I’m a big believer of the power of transformation through a combination of mindset work and business strategies. There is nothing that lights me up more than transforming fears, worries and doubts into successes. From experience, I've learnt that the hardest part of starting and staying in business is to deal with our thoughts and emotions.
When I’m not in the mountains walking in the woods and thinking about my next big idea, I am traveling to nomad hotspots, meeting entrepreneurs and being inspired by new places.
Hi, I'm Fanny!
Get to know us
In 2020 we had to close Swiss Escape for a few months, and both of us decided to venture on our own paths within the company. Haz wanted to grow the coliving to a new location and Fanny wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses.
That year, we scouted a destination that we had loved for many years: GREECE. After many holidays (and raki), we decided to test the town of Chania in Crete by bringing together a group of remote workers. Needless to say, the culture, the food and the people made us fall head over heels with the town and we launched Greek Escape. Going from the Alpine landscape of Switzerland to the island life of the Mediterranean sea.
By then, we had created a global community of entrepreneurs, freelancers and remote workers who filled our houses with laughs, ideas and “aha” moments.
As if that wasn’t enough, we decided to add another service: business coaching. After many years in business, Fanny realized that the education we got was productivity & growth oriented and lacked human aspects & sustainability. Our values were not aligned with the “academic” education we had received.
Instead we started looking into the principles for a new way of creating and being in business: collaboration over competition; mindfulness over ego; ease over speed & efficiency; and integrated psychology in the business. This was the beginning of a new era, which led us to create a program in which anyone who wants to turn their idea into a business can do so. Our newest member of the ESCAPE family was born in 2021.