@fredperrotta

Hi Nomads,

I’m Fred Perrotta, the co-founder of Tortuga Backpacks. We make carry on luggage for urban travelers.

In 2009, my co-founder, Jeremy, and I took a two-week trip to Eastern Europe. Despite a ton of pre-trip research, we couldn’t find backpacks that worked well for city travel. My hiking bag was a nightmare to pack and unpack. Having recently read the 4-Hour Workweek (and being naive), we decided that we could solve this problem.

A year later, I left my full-time job at Google to work on Tortuga. At the time, I paid the bills doing freelance work for startups.

I’m a medium-term traveler (a month here, two weeks there), rather than a full-time nomad, but Tortuga Backpacks has enabled others to take on the digital nomad lifestyle.

Ask me about making products for travelers, making physical (gasp!) products, online marketing, sourcing in China, the Canton Fair, trying to build a remote team, why I have $6,473 in Airbnb credits, or anything else.

And because I was asked in the Slack chat, you can use discount code LEVELS for 15% off any of our backpacks through the end of the year. Our flagship bag, the Tortuga, is a maximum-sized carry on. For the light packers of the DN community, the Tortuga Air (ships in January) may be a better fit.

Hi Team,

I’m totally new here so forgive me if I’ve made some horrible faux pas by asking a question so soon

I’m a kiwi but have been a digital nomad for over three years now, and have spent the last year or so in China, currently in Shanghai.

Are there many other digital nomads in this part of the world? Most of the international friends I’ve made locally are students or corpo expats, I’ve not come across that many entrepreneurial / nomadic types here - the visa and internet issues certainly make this understandable, though the country very much rewards long term travel.

Would be curious to see if there are many other like minded folk here?

Cheers,
Nathan

Hey everyone,

Thanks for having us! We’re DuckDuckGo, the anonymous search engine that doesn’t track you.

The company was started in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg and has steadily grown to a team of more than 20 people serving over 9 million searches a day.

We have a small headquarters in Paoli, PA, but the majority of our team is distributed around the world. I’m personally based out of NYC and work on the Front-end of the site.

I should be joined by a few others on the team, including: Zaahir, Doug, Chris, Adam and Jag.

Ask us anything!

There’s a lot of hype about Outlier stuff, but I haven’t been able to commit to buying any of their pants or shorts because it’s a pain in the ass (and costly) to return and get a different size if the fit is not right. Their pants and shorts also seem to be sold out most of the time (which I guess means there’s opportunity here).

Have you guys found any great pants and/or shorts that are stylish, durable, comfortable, dry quickly and are easy to wash? I was considering having some custom made here in Bali, but I have no idea how I could get my hands on the type of technical fabrics that Outlier uses.

Sign up for Nomad House Austin here

So I know it’s an idea that we all have, and judging from the response on this forum, this is the perfect place to get the wheels moving for something like this. So far @atu and I have been discussing how to make a network of nomadic shelters a reality, where anyone in the community can come and live and work from a cool, internet-rich apartment in great cities around the world (with no longterm commitments!). Our thought for a minimum viable product was to simply find a place on airbnb and try to get a group together to live in it. So here I am, starting the hunt for the first candidates in the NOMAD HOME EXPERIMENT: Austin Edition!!

The house I found is awesome!

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4369354?checkin=01%2F06%2F2015&checkout=02%2F06%2F2015&guests=5&s=vXbm

The place looks perfect, and it has 5 beds, so at $4574 for the month, it would be fairly cheap per person ($914).

So, LET THE RECRUITING BEGIN! I’m looking for 4 digital nomads who will be in Austin from Jan 6th - Feb 6th, to join in on this experiment, and be the first group to experience the power of a nomadic living arrangement!! The idea is, that we all have our own skills to contribute, and the group is encouraged to motivated each other, hold each other accountable for their goals, create an inspiring environment, work together and document all of the activity from the houses members to be shared here, and on other digital nomadic forums. I think the opportunity to bring like minded nomads together, while solving a housing problem all digital nomads face is monumental!!

For the first month, you could live and work from the Nomad Home Austin, and choose if you want to stay months after. If someone leaves, I will post on here opens, and we will bring in new members. @levelsio has been working on a social network that would bring together people looking for this sort of arrangement, so I’m trying to be the first property where people can get off this forum and into the world!

Join me in Austin, whether you already are there, or want to help to make this dream a reality, can’t wait to see who fills up the very first first nomad home!

Sign up for Nomad House Austin here