Mark, how did you come to coodo?

Mark: 15 years ago I moved from the densely populated Berlin-Mitte closer to the river and noticed that I felt better directly, close to nature. That fascinated and interested me. I asked myself: why can’t we have mobile houses that can stand on solid ground as well as on the water? That blend seamlessly into the environment. Wouldn’t that be great?

There is a real boom for tiny houses …

Mark: coodo is not a tiny house. coodo is a coodo. It was research work and luck that I discovered the excellent work of Slovenian architects who had already given a lot of thought to the principles of mobile living. As a result, I founded LTG Lofts to go, which later bought the rights to coodo. With a small team, we further developed the principles of mobile living until it was ready for the market.

Jens: coodo is a house but also an attitude. Those who choose coodo ensure that new, sustainable forms of living are created for the future. That changes people, that protects nature.

What brought you two together, Jens and Mark?

Jens: My girlfriend once told me about a guy she danced with at a party in the 90s. Unforgettable for her because the dancer, it was Mark, had turned her around the dance floor with so much talent and extreme stamina. In passing she mentioned that professionally, he would develop beautiful tiny houses. One click on the coodo website and I had an inkling of the opportunities that lay in the product – for tourism, for a new way of living. With my agency weltmeyster, I have successfully set up and implemented tourism campaigns with brands and destinations for many years. coodo seemed to me to be the right piece of the puzzle to completely reinvent tourism and fulfill a dream.

What dream?

Jens: I always wanted to be a hotelier. Now I’m going to be, only much bigger and better than I could have imagined as a young man.

Mark: When Jens called me and we chatted about his and my ideas for coodo, we quickly realized that we were both riding the same wave. He was the doer with great contacts and ideas, and I was the passionate, well-connected visionary who had been inhaling the tiny-house market for years. Our common goal was to bring a 100% sustainable product onto the market with coodo in such a way that it was also socially responsible.

Are you friends too?

Mark: I love Jens (laughs). No, seriously, Jens is a cool guy, totally loyal. I appreciate that very much.

Jens: Let’s call it love, ok. (laughs) We’re like a perpetual motion machine, once we get going, we push each other to move forward. Sometimes one gives more gas or slows down, sometimes the other. Within a year, we have set up production, a distribution system, blockchain, brand development and much more. For example, the cooperation of top-class brand partners. And yes: Mark and I also go out for a meal and a drink together sometimes…

Mark: … or cycling, dance again soon!

You say that you want to reinvent tourism. What do you mean by that?

Mark: I am convinced that we have the chance to make the world a better place. Especially now in, after the crisis. We have it in our hands to change the future positively, especially for young people. coodo is a wish granter, coodo is the future, because coodo is sustainable in all aspects: starting with the building material wood, the production in one place, the fact that we screw the coodo on instead of putting it on a concrete foundation but sustainability has even more aspects…

Jens: We call it coodo eternity, new sustainability. The coodo planets sun, moon, eart, as our models are called, can grow with needs by adding more modules. They are mobile and they fill gaps and roofs, on fallow land in cities or in the countryside.

Mark: For tourism, this means that coodo universes are now being created in new places, which are available for tourism purposes via a common platform. It’s like Airbnb, only better, because it has its own product.

Mark said coodo is not a tiny house, coodo is a coodo – what does that mean?

Mark: That means we want to do more than build houses, we want to help people upgrade their lifestyles, invite them to become part of the coodo club, a community that promotes 100 percent sustainable building while benefiting from democratic sharing and financing models. Young or old, low or high net worth – everyone can participate. We have created the infrastructure for this.

Jens: coodo makes ownership possible for everyone via “tokens,” which are shares in coodo universes. Whether the coodo is used by the owner or rented out, the return is distributed transparently and fairly among the shareholders. Here, digitization creates opportunities that simply didn’t exist in the past. You had to have the money or borrow it at great expense from the bank, or you could never own a house, as most people did. We are leveraging this unsolidary principle with tokenization.

Where will the first coodo universes be created?

Jens: In your own garden perhaps, as a rest box to work or to sleep undisturbed? There will be a universe in Hamburg, in Denmark and in Portugal but that is only the beginning.

Mark: The world is my oyster, the world is at our feet or we are at its feet. coodo universes can now be created anywhere, on derelict roofs and plots of land in the city as well as in places where it is not permitted to build in the conventional way. But you can put up a coodo – because it can disappear again. Mobile just like its owners.