How a San Francisco-based construction software startup brought 50 team members from across the Americas to ONDA Playa Grande for four days of connection, adventure, and focused time together.

At a glance

• Client: Outbuild
• Company type: Venture-backed construction software startup
• Destination: ONDA Playa Grande, Costa Rica
• Retreat length: 4 days
• Time of year: April 2025
• Group size: 50 team members
• Team geography: United States, Canada, and Latin America

The brief

Outbuild needed more than rooms and a meeting table. The team was distributed across countries, languages, and time zones, and the retreat needed to create the kind of shared momentum that is hard to build through calls alone.

For a fast-growing startup, the goal was not to over-script every hour. The goal was to get the team into one place, give them a private home base, and create enough structure for work, meals, activities, and unscheduled connection to happen naturally.

Why ONDA Playa Grande fit

ONDA Playa Grande works well for larger startup offsites because the property combines private lodging, shared common areas, coworking and breakout space, food and beverage, and easy access to beach-town experiences. Teams can move between work, meals, pool time, and local activities without the retreat feeling like a conference.

For Outbuild, the destination also matched the emotional job of the offsite: make the team feel far away from the day-to-day, but keep the planning and movement simple enough that the trip stayed easy to run.

What the offsite included

The Outbuild retreat was adventure-forward, with ONDA supporting the core pieces companies usually have to stitch together themselves: lodging, shared meals, local activities, transportation support, and on-the-ground coordination.

The programming included a mix of beach-town energy and bigger group experiences, including surf, catamaran time, off-property adventures, catered meals, and branded moments that made the trip feel like Outbuild’s retreat rather than a generic group booking.

The result

The strongest signal from the trip was not just that the group had fun. It was that the retreat created real cross-team connection for people who do not all share the same office, language, or daily context.

“These past four days have been truly amazing and life-changing. I loved watching everyone connect–often across different languages–and come together to achieve something special. I’m excited about next year and hope we can do this again, but in a different ONDA location. Huge thanks to the ONDA team for going above and beyond to make it all possible.”

– Franco Giaquinto, Outbuild

What other companies can learn from it

For larger distributed teams, a destination offsite works best when the venue can carry more than one function. Outbuild needed lodging, gathering space, meals, local movement, and activities, but the real value came from having those pieces handled through one operating lane.

That is where a private boutique hotel model becomes useful. The team gets privacy and texture without asking an internal people or operations lead to become the local tour operator, transportation dispatcher, meal planner, and hotel manager at the same time.

Planning a similar company offsite?

ONDA hosts corporate offsites at ONDA-operated boutique hotels in Costa Rica and Panama. For beach-based Costa Rica offsites, teams use ONDA Playa Grande for private lodging, coworking, shared meals, group activities, and local support from inquiry through arrival.

Explore ONDA corporate offsites, review the destination offsite planning checklist, or compare destination offsite costs.