Our goal with Pioneer is to build a vibrant online community of unconventional, ambitious outsiders who will change our world.

To date, players of our tournament interacted with each other in a limited way: they voted on each other’s project once a week. This medium allows for powerful crowd-sourcing of the most promising applicants, but it starved our players of real relationships. They didn’t seem to mind: around the Internet, bootleg Pioneer chatrooms started to emerge on Twitter, Telegram and Discord.

Our users are desperate to talk to each other. To bond with each other. And with our next tournament, we’re going to make that happen. Introducing our most requested feature: Pioneer Chat!

Players in our upcoming tournament will be paired in different variations of chatrooms, based on mutual project interest, mentorship requirements and more. We’re working on UberPOOL-style matching between the applicants that would benefit from it the most. We’ll also have mentors and advisors “go online” for brief, fast-paced AMAs. It’ll be fun. And lively.

The story of global progress isn’t written by lone actors. It’s often a collection of small groups that change the world. Highly productive individuals that form mutual kinship with each other. Perform for one another. By connecting the dots over a global chat, we’re optimistic we’ll create hundreds of these groups and hopefully enrich our petri dish of innovators a thousandfold.

The April Tournament starts Sunday night. Winners get $7,000 in cash and Stellar, $100,000 in Google Cloud Credits, a ticket to Silicon Valley and more. Enroll in the next few hours here: https://pioneer.app.