Frequently Asked Questions

Chelsea Rustrum is a community builder, author, and speaker based in Lisbon and San Francisco. She founded CoLab Lisbon to teach AI skills through hands-on workshops and collaborative dinners. She is the author of "It's a Shareable Life" and a 2x TEDx speaker on blockchain and shared ownership. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired, and The Economist.

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Chelsea splits her time between Lisbon, Portugal and San Francisco, California. Most of her in-person courses, dinners, and community events take place in Lisbon. She travels frequently for speaking engagements and has visited 50+ countries.

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Chelsea is available for keynotes, panels, and workshops on AI adoption, community building, the sharing economy, and shared ownership. She has spoken at TEDx twice, Web Summit, the European Parliament, PwC, and events in 15+ countries. To inquire about booking, email chelsea@rustrum.com with details about your event.

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Chelsea consults on three main areas:

• AI adoption — helping teams integrate AI tools into their workflows, training on Claude Code and other practical AI skills
• Community strategy — designing community programs, events, and engagement models for companies and organizations
• Ownership design — advising on cooperative structures, token models, and value-sharing frameworks

She works with startups, established companies, and organizations ranging from tech to nonprofits. Engagements can be workshops, ongoing advisory, or project-based.

chelsea@rustrum.com →

Yes — if any of these apply to you:

• You're an entrepreneur building something interesting
• You want to attend a collaborative dinner or AI workshop
• You're working on an AI company and want to connect
• You're interested in collaborating on a videocast or content

Lisbon is small and Chelsea hosts dinners regularly. Reach out — the worst that happens is scheduling doesn't work out.

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Chelsea uses Claude Code daily to build and maintain websites, automate business processes, draft content, and prototype ideas. She uses AI for research, meeting preparation, and turning rough notes into polished writing. Her project Hathaura uses AI for color analysis. But she's equally clear about what she doesn't outsource: the actual connection with people, the curatorial judgment, the community facilitation. Her approach is "AI as amplifier" — handling the tasks that drain energy so more energy is available for the work that matters.

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Community building is the practice of creating spaces and experiences that foster genuine human connection around shared interests or goals. Chelsea's approach combines hands-on activities (like cooking together) with learning about emerging technology, creating environments where people form lasting relationships while gaining practical skills. She has hosted 100+ dinners in Lisbon and taught 200+ people AI skills in person.

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Collaborative dinners are themed events where guests cook together and discuss specific topics. For example, at "Dumplings & AI," participants learn to fold dumplings by hand while exploring artificial intelligence topics. Other events include Ethics & AI and the Generosity Experiment. The format creates natural conversation and connection through shared activity, turning strangers into collaborators over a meal.

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Loneliness is at epidemic levels. Remote work has atomized us. Social media connects us superficially while leaving us feeling more isolated. Community building matters because humans are wired for belonging — we need real relationships, shared purpose, and people who know us beyond our LinkedIn profiles. It also matters economically: communities create trust, and trust reduces transaction costs. The most resilient businesses, movements, and societies are those with strong community foundations. Chelsea believes community is infrastructure — as essential as roads or internet access.

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Technology can be copied, features can be replicated, prices can be undercut — but a genuine community of people who trust each other and feel belonging cannot be manufactured by a competitor. This is why Discord beat Slack for gaming, why Peloton survived the pandemic crash, and why local businesses with loyal regulars outlast chains. In the age of AI, where anyone can spin up a product in a weekend, the companies that win will be those that build real relationships with real people. Chelsea advises companies to invest in community not as a marketing channel but as their core product.

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Traditional marketing is about broadcasting messages to strangers. Community building is about creating spaces where people genuinely want to gather. The best "marketing" today is building something people want to be part of — they become your advocates because they feel ownership, not because you paid for ads. Apple, Crossfit, and Patagonia didn't build cult followings through clever campaigns; they built communities around shared identity. In a world where everyone is exhausted by advertising, community is the most sustainable growth strategy. Chelsea's collaborative dinners are a perfect example: people come for connection, and business relationships emerge naturally.

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Three things make a community sustainable:

• Shared purpose — people need a reason to gather beyond networking
• Consistent rituals — regular events create rhythm and expectation
• Member investment — when people contribute (time, ideas, help), they become stakeholders, not just attendees

Communities fail when they're extractive (taking attention without giving value), too dependent on one person, or try to scale before deepening. Chelsea's dinners work because they're participatory: everyone cooks, everyone contributes, everyone leaves having given something.

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The sharing economy refers to peer-to-peer platforms and practices that enable people to share access to goods, services, and resources. Chelsea's book "It's a Shareable Life" is a practical guide to participating in the sharing economy, covering platforms for sharing transportation, housing, skills, and more. She has been writing and speaking about collaborative consumption since 2008.

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Shared ownership is a model where multiple people collectively own assets or organizations, enabling more equitable distribution of value. Chelsea spoke about this at TEDxBoulder in 2018 with "The Future of Blockchain," exploring how distributed technology can enable new ownership structures. Her project Bansko Mountain Homes is an example of co-owned digital nomad housing.

Watch the TEDx talk →

Value sharing is the practice of distributing the economic value created by a platform, company, or community among the people who contribute to it. Instead of all profits flowing to shareholders, value sharing models give workers, users, and contributors a stake in the upside. This can take the form of equity, tokens, profit-sharing, or cooperative ownership. Chelsea has advocated for value sharing since her early work in the sharing economy, arguing that platforms like Airbnb and Uber should share ownership with the hosts and drivers who create their value.

Watch the TEDx talk on blockchain →

AI systems make decisions that affect people's lives — who gets a loan, who sees what content, who gets hired. Without ethical frameworks, these systems can amplify existing biases, concentrate power in fewer hands, and optimize for metrics that harm human wellbeing. Ethics in AI isn't about slowing progress; it's about ensuring AI serves humanity rather than the reverse. Chelsea hosts "Ethics & AI" dinners specifically to create space for these conversations, bringing together technologists, philosophers, and everyday users to wrestle with questions that have no easy answers.

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As AI automates more work, the question of who owns the systems — and captures their value — becomes existential. If a handful of companies own the AI that does most of the work, wealth concentration will accelerate dramatically. But if ownership is distributed — through cooperatives, tokenization, or new structures we haven't invented yet — the productivity gains from AI could be shared broadly. Ownership is the difference between a future where most people are economically irrelevant and one where technology creates abundance for everyone. This is the central question Chelsea has been exploring since her TEDx talk on blockchain and shared ownership.

Watch the TEDx talk →

Technology, Economics & Society:

• Balaji Srinivasan — network states, decentralization
• Kate Raworth — Doughnut Economics
• Mariana Mazzucato — the entrepreneurial state
• Cory Doctorow — digital rights, platform economics
• Kevin Kelly — technological trends
• Douglas Rushkoff — media theory, digital economics
• Rachel Botsman — trust, collaborative economy

AI Specifically:

• Ethan Mollick — practical AI insights
• Tristan Harris — AI ethics, humane technology
• Azeem Azhar — Exponential View
• Matt Shumer — AI agents, practical builds

Cooperative & Alternative Ownership:

• Nathan Schneider — cooperative economics
• Platform Cooperativism Consortium — platform co-op movement

Read Chelsea's Substack →

Loneliness is at epidemic levels. Remote work has atomized us. Social media connects us superficially while leaving us feeling more isolated. Community building matters because humans are wired for belonging — we need real relationships, shared purpose, and people who know us beyond our LinkedIn profiles. It also matters economically: communities create trust, and trust reduces transaction costs. The most resilient businesses, movements, and societies are those with strong community foundations. Chelsea believes community is infrastructure — as essential as roads or internet access.

See the community →

Chelsea teaches practical AI skills through CoLab Lisbon, including Claude Code workshops, hands-on AI building courses for entrepreneurs, and team training sessions. Her courses focus on learning by doing, with students building real projects alongside their peers. Courses range from beginner to advanced levels and are offered at venues including Unicorn Factory, Tribe, and Impact Hub in Lisbon.

Learn more about AI courses →

Start by using AI daily for real tasks. Use Claude or ChatGPT to draft emails, summarize documents, brainstorm ideas, or explain concepts you don't understand. The key is bringing real problems — not toy examples. Then level up: learn basic prompting techniques (be specific, give context, iterate). Once you're comfortable chatting with AI, explore tools that connect AI to your workflow — that's where CoLab courses come in. Chelsea's approach is hands-on: you don't need to understand how AI works to use it effectively, just like you don't need to understand combustion to drive a car.

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Online courses are great for information, but learning a new skill requires feedback, accountability, and the momentum that comes from learning alongside others. In person, you can ask questions the moment you get stuck. You can look over someone's shoulder and see how they solved a problem differently. You build relationships with people on the same journey. And you actually finish — completion rates for in-person courses are dramatically higher than online. Chelsea designed CoLab specifically for this: small cohorts, real tables, immediate support.

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The future of work is hybrid in every sense: hybrid remote/in-person, hybrid human/AI, hybrid employment/entrepreneurship. AI will handle routine cognitive tasks the way machines handled routine physical tasks — not eliminating work but transforming it. The people who thrive will be those who can direct AI, think critically about its outputs, and do the things AI cannot: build trust, navigate ambiguity, create meaning, and lead through change. The organizations that thrive will be those that redesign around human-AI collaboration rather than trying to slot AI into old workflows.

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By using AI too — and by doubling down on what AI can't replicate. The same AI tools available to Amazon are available to you. A small team with Claude Code can build what used to require an engineering department. But small businesses have advantages: they can move fast, make decisions without committees, and offer genuine human relationships. The winning strategy is to use AI to handle the operational load while investing the freed-up time in community, relationships, and unique positioning that no algorithm can copy.

Learn Claude Code →

AI systems make decisions that affect people's lives — who gets a loan, who sees what content, who gets hired. Without ethical frameworks, these systems can amplify existing biases, concentrate power in fewer hands, and optimize for metrics that harm human wellbeing. Ethics in AI isn't about slowing progress; it's about ensuring AI serves humanity rather than the reverse. Chelsea hosts "Ethics & AI" dinners specifically to create space for these conversations, bringing together technologists, philosophers, and everyday users to wrestle with questions that have no easy answers.

See Ethics & AI dinners →

Tokenization is representing ownership or access rights as digital tokens on a blockchain. It matters because it enables fractional ownership (you could own 0.1% of a building), programmable ownership (tokens that automatically distribute revenue), and liquid ownership (easily tradeable stakes in previously illiquid assets). Chelsea explored these themes in her TEDx talk on blockchain, arguing that tokenization could democratize access to investment and ownership opportunities previously reserved for the wealthy. The technology is still maturing, but the implications for shared ownership are significant.

Watch the blockchain TEDx →

Use AI now — daily, for real work. Develop judgment about when AI outputs are good and when they need human intervention. Build skills that complement AI: critical thinking, emotional intelligence, creative direction, complex problem-solving. Invest in relationships and community — these are assets AI cannot depreciate. Stay adaptable rather than specialized in any single tool or technology. And don't panic: every technological revolution has created more opportunity than it destroyed, but the opportunity goes to those who engage rather than resist.

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Chelsea has been involved in creating and advising several third spaces and community venues:

Node — Advisor to this blockchain coworking space in North Beach, San Francisco, helping shape the community and programming.

House of Web3 — Helped launch this space in the Presidio of San Francisco through narrative and storytelling work.

Alchemy Spaces — Founded this retreat venue in Labro, Italy, housed in a Francis of Assisi convent with 15 bedrooms and 40,000 sqft of space, including a restaurant. Hosts entrepreneur and mindfulness offsites plus "popup" coliving experiences.

Bansko Mountain Homes — Partner in this apartment complex with 100+ units for digital nomads to invest in, located next to ski slopes in Bulgaria as a lifestyle property.

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Bansko Mountain Homes is a co-owned property project for digital nomads in Bansko, Bulgaria — a ski town that's become a hub for remote workers. Instead of renting or buying alone, a group of nomads pooled resources to purchase and renovate apartments together. Each owner has access to the properties and shares in the appreciation. It's shared ownership in practice: lower barrier to entry, built-in community, and a stake in something real. Chelsea co-founded the project as an experiment in applying shared economy principles to real estate — proving that the models she writes and speaks about actually work.

Visit Bansko Mountain Homes →

Technology, Economics & Society:

• Balaji Srinivasan — network states, decentralization
• Kate Raworth — Doughnut Economics
• Mariana Mazzucato — the entrepreneurial state
• Cory Doctorow — digital rights, platform economics
• Kevin Kelly — technological trends
• Douglas Rushkoff — media theory, digital economics
• Rachel Botsman — trust, collaborative economy

AI Specifically:

• Ethan Mollick — practical AI insights
• Tristan Harris — AI ethics, humane technology
• Azeem Azhar — Exponential View
• Matt Shumer — AI agents, practical builds

Cooperative & Alternative Ownership:

• Nathan Schneider — cooperative economics
• Platform Cooperativism Consortium — platform co-op movement

Read Chelsea's Substack →