A place to start your next career adventure: introducing the Fondo Departure Lounge

Here at Fondo, we love to travel.

One of the things Jeffrey and I love most about being on the road is the value in the unexpected.

The unexpected has found us in the hotel lobby or when meeting the hosts of an Airbnb rental, having late night drinks in a bar, or even in transition from one stop to the next.

One afternoon in late January, I arrived at Madrid Atocha train station from Seville. As I was grabbing my bag from the overhead compartment, someone asked me how to get to the airport, and it just so happened I was also heading to the airport: to the same terminal, and the very same flight! Two hours later, my new travel companion and I were still talking - about music, freelancing, New York City, and so much more. And once the jetlag wore off, we even got together for drinks in a local Brooklyn watering hole.

Of course, these serendipitous connections aren’t happening much right now. We miss those chance meetings and inspiring interactions. We miss travel.

So do a lot of Fondo users. In many of our conversations over the past few months we’ve heard a desire to connect with others who have had similar twists and turns, missed connections and new adventures in their careers. Yet when so many of us are relying on our existing strong ties and relationships, finding new perspectives and connections feels challenging.

We realized the most valuable interactions we’d had on our travels tended to happen when there was some common ground, a shared experience, or a reason to be in that same place together.

While we can’t bring that sense of travel adventure back in its fullest form, we do see a way to encourage those wonderful chance meetings with others who are on a career journey similar to yours.

We want to help arrange those valuable interactions for you through a bit of what we like to call ‘facilitated serendipity’.

Introducing the Fondo Departure Lounge

Some of our most memorable interactions have happened before a trip has really started: in the departure lounge. The departure lounge of any airport is a place where you can strike up a conversation before you board the flight, whether you’d booked months before or are taking an impulsive trip you confirmed that morning. In the departure lounge, there are few destinations but myriad reasons to travel.

We’re fascinated by the possibilities that can occur in the departure lounge because of the interplay between facilitation (a carefully yet subtly designed environment) and serendipity (where you don’t quite know what you’re going to get).

The Fondo Departure Lounge is where you can spend some time with a small group of fellow career explorers. You can arrive well before you need to make a move, or you can show up just in the nick of time when you need it most. The lounge is a flexible online space where you cross paths through that ‘facilitated serendipity’; how you use it is up to you (just keep your feet of the seats, please).

We’re opening the lounge very soon. To get early access, just visit the lounge homepage.