How We Started
The Roamist technically started in a warm, humid kitchen in Guam in the fall of 2025. But the truth is, it was born over thousands of miles—across continents, through conversations with fellow travelers, and in the quiet moments when you realize something fundamental is broken.
The years we spent traveling, we met every type of traveler imaginable. Van lifers. Overlanders. Sailors. Backpackers. Motorcycle nomads. Long-distance hikers. Full-time RVers. Digital nomads working from cafes in countries they'd just arrived in. Every mode of travel, every conversation, every shared meal added another piece to the puzzle. And everywhere we went, we saw the same thing: travelers who'd found their tribe but couldn't find their people.
Because here's what we learned: your mode of travel isn't just how you move—it becomes who you are. Van lifers aren't just people with vans. Sailors aren't just people with boats. These are identities. Tribes. Ways of seeing the world. And when you find your people, something clicks.
But finding them? That was the problem.
Travel communities were shattered across a dozen platforms, each one fighting for your attention instead of serving your needs. Facebook groups with ten thousand members and zero organization. Reddit threads buried under spam. Instagram accounts optimized for engagement, not accuracy. Forums from 2008 that nobody maintained. And everywhere—everywhere—algorithms deciding what you should see, ads disguising themselves as advice, and clickbait drowning out the voices that actually mattered.
We kept asking: why doesn't a real home for travelers exist? A place built for us, not for advertisers. Where you could check in with your fellow Roamists and check out what the community actually has to offer. Where a bikepacker in Peru could learn from a motorcycle traveler in Mongolia. Where the sailor's knowledge and the overlander's experience and the van lifer's hard-won wisdom all lived under one roof.
So we built it.
Not as a business first, but as a solution to a problem we'd lived with for too long. We built it as a team—filmmakers, travelers, Navy veterans, content creators—people who'd spent enough time on the road to know what was missing. People who believed that real travel culture isn't built on likes and follows. It's built on authenticity, shared knowledge, and the understanding that we're all out here trying to figure out the same damn thing: how to keep moving, keep exploring, and keep the spirit alive.
The Roamist is our answer. Not just a platform, but a digital home for the travelers of the world. For people who identify not by their nationality or their age or their income, but by their movement. By their refusal to settle. By their belief that the journey matters more than the destination, and that the community you build along the way matters most of all.
This is where we check in. This is where we belong.
