Creating a Digital Nation: Inside SafetyWing's Mission to Build the First Country on the Internet
This article compiles insights from a "Why Work Here" interview with Sondre Rasch, CEO and Co-Founder of SafetyWing, hosted by Amit Matani, CEO of Wellfound. Watch the full conversation here: YouTube | Spotify
Creating a Digital Nation: The Beautiful Audacity of SafetyWing
In the sprawling landscape of tech startups promising to transform various industries, SafetyWing stands apart with an ambition so vast it's almost disorienting: they're building a country. Not a platform, not a marketplace, not another forgettable app—a country on the internet, complete with the social infrastructure we typically associate with nation-states. In an industry known for bold claims, this vision manages to be genuinely ambitious.
The Vision: A Country Without Borders
"Ultimately, SafetyWing was formed to build the first country on the internet and the global social safety net for the first country on the internet," explains Sondre Rasch, the company's CEO and co-founder. This vision emerged when Rasch was building a different company and experiencing life as a digital nomad. "We discovered that when you work on the internet, you work in this kind of global labor market. But all the rules that govern things like the social safety net are made for a time when that was not the case," he observes. "They're obsolete and have to be rebuilt in a new way."
SafetyWing's mission reads like speculative fiction, yet operates with the methodical precision of a modern technology company. The greatest trick Rasch and his team have pulled is making the revolutionary sound reasonable, packaging radical reimagination in the familiar wrapper of subscription-based insurance products.
The current numbers suggest they're onto something substantial: significant revenue growth, a team of approximately 150 employees across 60 countries, and expansion that accelerated rather than collapsed during a global pandemic. But the metrics are merely the prologue to a more fascinating story.
Creating Culture Across Continents
SafetyWing functions as both a company and a laboratory for a post-geographic society. In an era where many corporations retreat from remote work, SafetyWing leans into borderlessness with the confidence of those who know they're already living in the future.
Their bird-themed identity system isn't just appealing branding—it's an experiment in creating belonging without physical proximity. Rasch credits this approach to unexpected inspiration: "This is something I really learned from online games when I was a teenager. And there were these alliances. And I was so amazed of how they were able to create this sort of world."
When he entered the corporate world, Rasch found most companies lacking in this dimension: "I just thought when I got into corporate world that, 'Gosh, you all suck at this. Your world-building is like one out of 10. It's really poor.'"
Reinventing How Work Happens
Their "Build Week" concept, where the entire company suspends meetings to focus on creation, represents another innovation in remote collaboration. "People sometimes get more done in that week than in the rest of the year. It's absolutely incredible," Rasch shares. This isn't just a productivity hack—it's a reimagining of how meaningful work happens when liberated from industrial-era constraints.
What's striking is the dual consciousness at play: they're simultaneously operating a business within our current system while building toward a vision that renders those constraints obsolete. The insurance products they offer today are stepping stones toward a larger vision of portable social benefits that follow you regardless of location—a vision that questions the fundamental premise that citizenship should be an accident of birth rather than a conscious affiliation.
Values as Business Strategy
During the early pandemic, when SafetyWing could have preserved their business by not highlighting evacuation coverage that might reduce their customer base, they chose transparency—a decision that demonstrates remarkable integrity in today's business environment.
"The right thing to do is to help in this moment—to inform our users and provide evacuation, and sort of just come what may," Rasch explains. One-third of their customers eventually evacuated. But rather than collapsing, they grew 300% over the following months, fueled partly by defectors from a competitor who had chosen self-preservation over transparency.
There's a lesson here about how trust functions in networked systems, how information flows across communities, and how ethical clarity can be surprisingly good business. But there's also a deeper inquiry about what becomes possible when we question established structures and imagine new possibilities.
Joy as Competitive Advantage
Equally distinctive is their focus on balancing productivity with joy—not just comfort or wellness, but genuine joy in the work itself. "We have this incredible focus on joy and productivity. That's sort of the outputs we measure," Rasch shares. This unusual pairing isn't accidental. "Joy feels like something you have more choice over, and it's more admirable than comfort or wellness."
SafetyWing has developed its culture around values that Rasch describes as "based on timeless universal principles." This philosophical grounding gives them significance beyond typical corporate slogans. When values connect to meaningful principles rather than corporate platitudes, they become powerful tools for navigating complex situations, as demonstrated by their pandemic response.
Reimagining What's Possible
The vision of a "country on the internet" naturally raises questions about implementation. Traditional citizenship encompasses complex legal frameworks, physical infrastructure, and community dynamics that have evolved over centuries. Yet something is compelling about exploring which elements of these systems could be reimagined to better serve a world where work and collaboration increasingly transcend geography.
"Do you share this mission? Do you want us to realize the best of the internet and build a shared global community that transcends borders?" This is how Rasch describes their recruitment approach—seeking not just employees but allies in a larger vision.
In a world of increasing global connection, this vision of building infrastructure for a more connected future feels both timely and important. The internet has transformed how we communicate, work, and form communities. Perhaps our social systems are ready to evolve alongside these changes, and companies like SafetyWing are exploring this emerging frontier.
Insights for Founders
SafetyWing's approach offers valuable lessons for founders building remote-first companies:
Values as decision frameworks: When values are grounded in meaningful principles, they effectively guide complex decisions. SafetyWing's pandemic response shows how clear values can create unexpected advantages.
Build focused creation mechanisms: The Build Week concept demonstrates how concentrated effort with clear deadlines can yield extraordinary results. As Rasch explains, "People sometimes get more done in that week than in the rest of the year."
Balancing joy and productivity: Organizations that genuinely value joy and results may gain significant advantages in attracting and retaining talent. "We want everything in the company to be joyful and productive. And it turns out that's totally possible."
As Rasch advises, "Building a startup is not something that happens. You have to make it happen. So if you're not serious, it's not going to happen." This combination of vision and pragmatism may be SafetyWing's most valuable lesson.
Check out the jobs SafetyWing is hiring for on Wellfound here.