How a small fully remote software team used ONDA Playa Grande for a five-day Costa Rica retreat built around workshops, surf, meals, and time together outside the normal work rhythm.

At a glance

• Client: Building Swell
• Company type: Software startup
• Destination: ONDA Playa Grande, Costa Rica
• Retreat length: 5 days
• Time of year: July 2023
• Group size: 6 team members
• Team geography: United States, Latin America, and Asia

The brief

Building Swell brought a fully remote team to Playa Grande for a retreat that needed to do two things at once: create useful work time and make the team feel genuinely together.

For a small startup, the offsite did not need a giant conference setup. It needed privacy, enough structure for workshops, strong food and drinks, easy access to the beach, and local experiences that would feel memorable without becoming hard to coordinate.

Why ONDA Playa Grande fit

ONDA Playa Grande is built for teams that want a retreat to feel like a real place, not a corporate event dropped into a resort. The property gives small groups a natural base for work sessions, shared meals, downtime, and nearby activities.

For Building Swell, that meant the team could spend the week moving between workshops, surf, meals, and Playa Grande experiences without losing the relaxed rhythm that makes a small-team retreat work.

What the offsite included

The Building Swell retreat mixed structured work with local excursions around the Playa Grande area. The team used the week for workshops, meals, beach time, and surf-adjacent programming, with ONDA helping keep the experience simple and easy to run.

That balance matters for small remote teams. If the schedule is too loose, the trip can feel like a vacation with laptops. If it is too packed, the team never gets the informal time that makes the offsite valuable. Building Swell’s retreat sat in the middle: productive, social, and unmistakably Costa Rican.

The result

“Wow, everything about the ONDA experience was great. We came as a small startup team and spent the week in workshops and excursions throughout the Playa Grande area. Their team made the experience easy and incredibly memorable. The food and drinks were the best in Playa Grande. 10/10 – will come back again!”

– Jordan Easterling, Co-founder and CEO, Building Swell

What other companies can learn from it

Small-team offsites do not need to mimic enterprise retreats. They work when the setting creates closeness quickly and the planning load stays low. For remote teams, that often means choosing a destination where lodging, meals, work space, and activities can be handled in one flow.

Building Swell’s retreat is a good example of the small startup offsite done right: enough agenda to justify the trip, enough place to make it special, and enough support that the founders and team could actually be present.

Planning a similar company offsite?

ONDA hosts Costa Rica company retreats for startups, remote teams, leadership groups, and creative teams at ONDA Playa Grande. The model works especially well for groups that want private lodging, a beach-town setting, shared meals, activity planning, and a single planning lane.

Explore ONDA corporate offsites, compare Costa Rica corporate offsites, or read the international company offsite planning guide.