Hi Everyone - and happy 4th of July! 🇺🇸

🚨 48 HOURS LEFT to enter our free flight giveaway! 🚨

I'm wrapping up this week in Bansko, Bulgaria 🇧🇬 a small ski town turned nomad hotspot during the offseason - and home to NomadFest - the worlds largest Digital Nomad Conference, where we announced that Pangea will be co-hosting NomadWeek (Jan 25-31) next year in Cape Town! 🇿🇦 

It was great to meet the leaders of nearly every major nomad community, and establish several new partnerships for our Pangea members.

Plus:

And if you haven't already:

I spent June as part of the WiFi Tribe chapter in Tbilisi, Georgia 🇬🇪. It was my first chapter despite being a member of WFT for nearly 3 years, and overall, I highly recommend it for anyone who loves community, travel, and being productive. Last month, I shared my report on our 3 night road trip through Armenia 🇦🇲 (my 100th UN country!) which a group of us planned together, and shared some of the things that WiFi tribe does differently to build deep community in a short period of time. Since then, our group continued to maximize our time together, and despite it being a super busy and productive month for me, I was able to really get to know everyone and expect I'll travel with them again in the years to come! 

To celebrate our final weekend together, we took another road trip, this time to the mountains of Kazbegi. If you go to Georgia, this is an absolute must do - and you should stay here, which was among my favorite hotels I've stayed. Unlike most travel programs, WiFi Tribe interviews everyone before they let them on a trip, and its not just a formality - only ~50% are accepted. The goal is to ensure that everyone aligns to their community values, and I can say, based on my experience of who they let in, they do a great job. Everyone in the group shared the same professional ambition, adventurous spirt, and willingness to plan awesome experiences together. However, no screening process is perfect, especially a single 30-minute interview, and I certainly know several people who I enjoy traveling with who weren't accepted even though they also meet those values. If you applied, and weren't accepted, I'd love to connect to hear more about your experience. And of course, if you haven't applied yet and have your eyes on any of WiFi Tribes upcoming trips (🇰🇿 Kazakhstan,  🇰🇷 South Korea, 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka or 🇦🇺 Australia to name a few), be sure to put "Pangea" in application under "How did you hear about us" to get an expedited interview since they are experiencing a long backlog of new applicants at the moment.  

I'm thrilled to share that I'll be co-hosting the 2nd Annual NomadWeek in Cape Town (January 25-31, 2026) with the one and only Andrae Smith, a native Capetonian, long time digital nomad, and Founder of both NomadWeek & Work Wanderers- one of the world's leading communities for digital nomads. Many of you know that Cape Town remains my favorite place on the planet, and I'm excited to work together with Andrae to connect our community to Cape Town and the whole of South Africa in several meaningful ways during NomadWeek and throughout 2026. We're also discussing lots of epic group trips including some of last year's favorites (Garden Route Castles and Our Starlink Botswana Villa) plus several new ones including Mozambique 🇲🇿, Leshoto 🇱🇸, and Malawi 🇲🇼. Early bird tickets will formally launch in the next few weeks. Pangea users with at least 10 referrals will get a significant discount as a thank you for your support 💙.

I meet Johannes Voelkner, founder of NomadCruise, at NomadFest, along with dozens of people who had been on his recent voyage through the Mediterranean. The general gist, is 200-500 Digital Nomads rent a cruise ship with enhanced Starlink WiFi, and work for a few weeks while Exploring the World, Together. Everyone I spoke to was a huge fan of the experience & the community that it created.

Their next cruse is across the Pacific (one of my favorite regions, which is otherwise fairly inaccessible) going from Seattle - Hawaii - Samoa - Fiji - Vanuatu - Sydney from 12 Oct – 9 Nov 2025. While I won't be able to join this time around, its definately on my bucketlist for the future.   Johannes and I spoke about some "custom" new routes that we might co-brand to help me reach some of the 91 countries that I haven't had a chance to visit yet - so stay tuned for that 😏.If you're interested in joining them this time around, we were able to negotiate EUR 300 off for Pangea Members who use discount code PANGEA.  And, if you book through us, and are interested in creating some content to share your journey with our community, I'm happy to throw in another 300 EUR (600 EUR in total!)

Our summer flight giveaway closes on SUNDAY. Remember, you get 1 entry per person you refer to the app - so be sure to get your travel squad onto Pangea before Sunday!  We'll announce a winner early next week.

User profiles in the app got a MAJOR facelift in this week's release. We added several new items to help connect travelers such as age & interests, and made the profile picture much larger based on user feedback.

If you're on Android - we've got a HUGE upgrade coming for you over the next few weeks with everything that we've trialed for iOS over the last 6 months. We appreciate your patience and look forward to your feedback once we release the upgrade! 

Big thanks to both Alister and Yamini - the brilliant technical team behind the app for all of their hard work.  Both have been traveling the last few weeks.  Yamini, originally from India 🇮🇳 was exploring New York & Niagara Falls 🇺🇸, while Alister, originally from Indonesia 🇮🇩 was exploring Algeria 🇩🇿.  

None of what we built would be possible without them, and we're super excited to continue to build the next phase of Pangea 🚀

We've gotten a great response from the community to our idea for an Ambasador Program.  The specifics are still being finalize, but to start, we've organized several meetups around the world, some in collaboration with our Pangea Verified partners!  

If you're interested in joining our Ambasador Program and hosting a Pangea Meetup, get in touch with with me directly.  If we haven't met in person yet, we'd love to hear from you, but for now, all of our ambassadors are people that I've personally traveled with to ensure the community stays close. 

I'll be bouncing around South East Asia with several Pangea Partners & Ambassadors in August. The plan is still evolving but will involve both Bali 🇮🇩 and Vietnam 🇻🇳 (two of my all time favorite places) along with some new countries -  likely Laos 🇱🇦, Myanmar 🇲🇲 and possibly even Brunei 🇧🇳. Stay in the loop below:

If you manage a Digital Nomad program that you think would be relevant to our community of 25k+ Digital Nomads & Solo Travelers, just reply to me directly and we can get you featured. We only showcase programs that we have personally verified - but are always on the lookout to support new projects trying to reach this community 💪🚀 

It's been an exhausting few months, but wouldn't trade it for anything. This weekend, we head on (yet another) road trip, this time from Bansko, Bulgaria through North Macedonia.  And thanks to Pangea, we're meeting several people from the 12 Month Shirazi RY Journey that has been DIY since Remote Year collapsed and are currently in Tirana with NomadNest. If you want to meet the 15 of them, they're hosting a Meetup on 24 July!  

Hope to see you somewhere in the world this summer! And definately in Cape Town for the best season yet 🕺🔥🇿🇦

-Matt

Founder & CEO of Pangea102/197 Countries

(122 UN+) & 7 Continents Traveled

View My Upcoming Travel Plans

Follow me on IG