Episode Details

A Country on the Internet, a Passport by 2050, and the Death of the CV

- Joey Flores is Head of Marketing at SafetyWing, the Y Combinator-backed company building a global social safety net for remote workers. A two-time startup founder whose YC-funded music startup was acquired, he dropped out of high school at sixteen and now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Timothy Allen sits down with Joey at the Running Remote conference in Austin, Texas, for a conversation about building for the 21st century nomadic life. SafetyWing's pitch is simple and audacious: your healthcare, income protection and pension come from your country and stop following you the moment you live a borderless life, so they are building a safety net that travels with you instead. The endgame is to launch the first country on the internet, through Plumia, the nonprofit think tank spun out of SafetyWing and run by Lauren Razavi. They have mapped the vision to 2050, passport included.

Around the edges, the conversation ranges widely: why you cannot simply build a new Silicon Valley wherever you fancy, an unusually honest insider's view of what digital nomads are doing to cities like Oaxaca, a company culture involving rented hotels in Patagonia and a houseplant stipend, a friend allegedly building a Mach 10 passenger plane, and what AI is doing to hiring, including Joey's own story of how resume-screening software made a company founder without a degree invisible to employers.

In this conversation:

• A social safety net that travels with you
• The plan to launch the first country on the internet
• Plumia, network states and Edge City
• What would make an internet country a real country
• Nomad Citizen: income protection, healthcare and one-click visas
• A passport that brings its own safety net
• The 2050 timeline and a flag in the ground
• The future of remote work
• A Mach 10 passenger plane, allegedly six years away
• What Y Combinator is and why it matters
• Why Joey lives in Oaxaca on an American salary
• Talent, funding and why Silicon Valley is hard to copy
• How exits create angel investors and startup cities
• Nomad gentrification: tipping, housing and behaving well abroad
• Why long-term expats reject the nomad label
• Is there such a thing as nomad culture?
• Hunting the next great nomad hub, and why Florianópolis keeps coming up
• Patagonia retreats, Build Week in Norway and houseplant stipends
• What AI is doing inside SafetyWing
• Solopreneurs and who loses their job first
• Dropping out at sixteen and being filtered out by hiring software
• Should your kids skip university?
• How to actually stand out and get hired

Timestamps (audio version, includes Timothy's episode introduction):

• 0:00:00 - Welcome
• 0:00:30 - Introduction to episode
• 0:06:04 - Veritas Villages
• 0:11:43 - Start of conversation: a safety net that travels with you
• 0:12:40 - The first country on the internet
• 0:14:07 - What makes a country a country?
• 0:14:28 - Nomad Citizen and one-click visas
• 0:15:19 - A passport that brings its own safety net
• 0:16:31 - Plumia, Edge City and the nonprofit arm
• 0:17:28 - Income protection and what is actually in the products
• 0:19:15 - Travel cover without the endless add-ons
• 0:21:42 - The 2050 timeline
• 0:22:44 - The future of remote work
• 0:23:53 - A Mach 10 passenger plane?
• 0:24:58 - What is Y Combinator?
• 0:26:03 - Why Joey lives in Oaxaca
• 0:27:11 - Can you build Silicon Valley anywhere else?
• 0:30:00 - Exits, millionaires and angel investors
• 0:32:39 - Nomad gentrification: an insider's warning
• 0:36:35 - Why long-term expats reject the nomad la