Welcome to The Pangea Founder’s Update , your monthly(ish) update, on all things tech, travel & community for extreme travelers & digital nomads directly from our Founder & CEO, Matt Gray , who is 118/197 countries into his mission to visit every country in the world with as many friends as possible.

Hi Everyone,

How is it APRIL already!  2026 has been off to an incredible start following last year’s news that we joined forces with Overlap & Nomadago to create the largest free platform for Digital Nomads. 

It’s been amazing seeing how much has happened across the community since then, especially during the unforgettable 2026 Season in Cape Town where I got to catch up with so many of you during Nomad Week, our Serendipity Summit on top of Table Mountain, and beyond. 

It was also amazing to connect IRL with the other top community creators from our partners at Work Wanderers, WiFi Tribe, Outsite, MTP - Most Traveled People & Nomad Cruise, and see NomadWeek get covered by Time Out Cape Town as it becomes one of the top digital nomad & extreme travel events in the world.

We’ve got a lot cooking with Pangea including a HUGE announcement dropping next week, so keep an eye out for that 👀

After visiting Uzbekistan last year, I fell in love with Central Asia, so much so that I stayed up one night during the WiFi Tribe chapter in Tbilisi figuring out of a journey through the region was possible.  Flights.  Logistics.  WiFi.   All of it.  Turns out it is!

12 of us are already confirmed to explore the region together, starting with 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan (Sold Out), 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan (27 May-18 Jun), 🇹🇯 Tajikistan (18-26 June) and 🇰🇬Kyrgyzstan (27 Jun-24 Jul) with A LOT more maybes… which given how last minute nomads tend to plan, make me think we’ll end up with a sizable group!

From the Gates of Hell in Turkmenistan, to working in the alpine city of Almaty, to hiking in the mountains Kazakhstan on the weekends, to the iconic Pamir Highway through Tajikistan from Dushanbe to Osh, to a final relaxed month in Bishkek while we explore Kyrgyzstan, this is going to be one to remember. 

For Turkmenistan and Tajikistan we teamed up with Untamed Borders, and for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we’ll be facilitating community & coworking throughout the month on our own.  Book any month directly, or join the WhatsApp for updates from me. 

We’ve got a unique opportunity to visit this region before it fully gets onto the mainstream radar… all with an amazing community in place, and I can’t want to explore it together!

The Extraordinary Travel Festival, hosted by Ric Gazarian, who has arguably interviewed more extreme travelers than anyone on his Counting Countries Podcast, the event is an amazing opportunity to connect with one of the strongest communities of people on the path to visit every country in the world (or at least quite a few of them). 

Members and other organizations in the community like MTP - Most Traveled People, plan trips that literally are impossible to book on your own. I went to a restricted zone of 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan and 🇸🇸 South Sudan with a group I met at another event like this, and after joining their own Summit in 🇪🇹 Ethiopia, I’m joining Most Traveled People on their Expedition through 🇱🇾 Libya during the the 2027 Total Solar Eclipse. The trip was only open to MTP conference alumni and sold out in under an hour.  

The good news is everyone in this community is welcoming to others with similar goals to explore the world, and events like Extraordinary Travel Festival are great places to get plugged in. 

(Plus you’ll get to hear me drone on about the future of travel tech during my panel too 🤣)

Use PANGEA for the biggest discount available and DM me if you’ll be joining! 

👉 🇧🇹 Bhutan trip for 4 nights? We’ll also be organizing a trip either before or after ETF… join the group to stay in the loop…

Cape Town remains my favorite place in the world, but the secret is out and prices in December and January are crazy. 

Here’s why: February is still peak summer, but March and April the weather is still great, the city calms down, and places become less crowded.  Plus housing becomes more reasonable. It reminds me of Cape Town a few years ago and was my favorite vibe of the city in this year’s season.

Plus, of course, an enhanced version of NomadWeek building off this year’s success!

The amazing thing about Cape Town is there are SO many things to do that even in 4 years I’ve still got plenty on my list… which is the perfect excuse to go back for Season 5…see you there 😉 

We’ve been a bit quiet on the app front lately, taking time to absorb the Overlap and Nomadago acquisitions, integrate everything smoothly into our core platform, and double down on our backend and AI infrastructure to enable our next phase of growth.

We also reached one of those milestones that’s both exciting and frustrating: a surge of growth that brought in thousands of spam messages.

Building a platform centered on human connection means walking a fine line—making it easy to meet connect with new people without opening the floodgates to spam or unwanted interactions.

Our team put significant effort into strengthening AI-powered content moderation, improving user verification, enhancing spam reporting, and rolling out more robust privacy controls, so you have greater control over who can message you.

We’ve also made it easier to see on profiles & in messages if you have mutual friends with people you aren’t connected to, so you can continue to meet trusted members of the community while you travel.

If you have any further issues with spam, let us know and we’ll get it sorted.

I’m super excited for the rest of 2026, especially with some major upgrades to Pangea on the horizon now that we’ve scaled up our team and are focused on building again.

I’m writing this from Tofo Beach, in 🇲🇿Mozambique (my 118^th country), and next week I’m off to 🇲🇼 Malawi (#119) so feel free to send me any recs if ya have em…

After that I’ll be on the WiFi Tribe 🇸🇨 Seychelles (#120) Chapter (24 Apr - 23 May) which will be my third time with WiFi Tribe! I’m generally a a big fan, especially since they go to so many interesting places.

If you aren’t a member yet, and anything in the upcoming schedule for WiFi Tribe catches your eye, be sure to apply and PANGEA in your application for an expedited interview!

After Seychelles, its Central Asia til end of July when I head to Europe!

Matt Gray
Founder & CEO of Pangea
118/197 Countries + 7 Continents Traveled
Follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn

PS: Below is an ad from Intrepid, one of our partners, that helps cover the cost of BeeHiiv & making this newsletter possible!

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Find your adventure