TL;DR I created a new project called This House Does Not Exist which uses AI to generate modern architecture homes.

Just 2 weeks ago Stability AI open sourced their AI imaging model Stable Diffusion. It lets anyone generate images based on text. I think it's groundbreaking and revolutionary.

I think it's amazing this technology is immediately open sourced and put into the hands of anybody with a computer. OpenAI launched their text to image model called Dall-E but it was closed source and severely limited what you could generate.

For example it doesn't allow you to generate anything even remotely close to naked bodies, or sensitive topics. That's sad and against the ideas of free speech I think. Information wants to be free. Technology too. I stopped using Dall-E quickly as it felt unusable.

Meanwhile Stable Diffusion is fully open, hackable, and you can see everyone hack on it already. You can install it on your computer locally without using any internet server to generate images:

I played with it for days and generated lots of stuff. Of course first cute cats and Samoyeds:

I think nobody tells this but most people will spent about an hour generating NSFW images, just cause it's fun and exciting to see if it's possible. And because DALL-E didn't allow it. Then after a while, the weird four armed people with faces merged with hands gets boring and you switch to generate other topics.

I've always loved dreaming about architecture, in specific ArchDaily-style houseporn. Houseporn means "Houses you can fap to" meaning and there's a subreddit about it.

So I tried to generate houses. My first tries were pretty basic and not great, e.g. "modern house":

Then "modern architecture house":

I first thought it was Stable Diffusion, but then I learnt it's VERY important to write extensive paragraph-long detailed text, so called "prompts", to get what you want. The thing with OpenAI's Dall-E is that they pretty much write the prompt for you. If you enter "modern house", they'll add lots of text to make it look nice. With Stable Diffusion you need to do that yourself.

I tried to generate "a modern design villa in Bali", and it got a little bit better:

I then scoured Discord, Github and prompt-making sites to learn how to write good prompts. And after a lot of tweaking it started generating interesting houses:

I started realizing the prompts are the secret sauce here. Prompts are as important programming code if you're working with AI generative models. The computer is still stupid and it wants to know EXACTLY what you like to generate, in what style, at what time, with which details. If you give it all that it'll shock you what it can generate for you.

With my prompts improving, the houses I generated started becoming very beautiful:

I built a website around and inspired by the name of This Person Does Not Exist which is an AI that generates non-existing people, I called it This House Does Not Exist and launched it:

Within a day it showed up on ArchDaily, the site that inspired it:

I've since been improving it every day, adding different style houses:

I also added upvoting, so now there's a top ranking of the best houses:

I also used an AI text generator to generate house names and descriptions:

And added social media cards:

A Modern Beach House in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with Exposed Wood and Stone - Architecture Inspiration - Generated by AI

This house is designed to take in the stunning views of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The house is made mostly of wood and stone, with large windows to let in the natural light. The exterior is also curved, with bamboo and rocks adding to the overall aesthetic.

Generated by AI

As well as tag pages like for houses in Bali:

And for the top voted house (and my own favorite too) I've asked an architect to model it in 3d:

In a week or so it'll be done and I will open source the model and AutoCAD. And it'll be the first AI-generated open sourced house!

It hasn't even been 2 weeks working with and making stuff with Stable Diffusion and it's been such a whirlwind already.

It's really commendable and amazing that the hardcore ML software engineers from Stability AI open sourced this model so that anyone can build stuff with it. I'm not a hardcore software engineer, but I am a builder. And so getting these new tools to build things with is just really fun for me. Thank you Stability AI! And I'm really excited about the next developments of this project and the spinoffs I have planned.

And hopefully in a few years you can visit me in my AI-created house, or any of the variations of it:

Sam Parr has been trying to get me to come on his podcast for a year:

I was honored but reluctant because it's a video podcast so I wanted to get a good setup first, so it doesn't look like shit.

When I came back to Portugal, I got a Rode table mic arm and used my iPhone with Camo as a camera so I could finally go on.

It was really fun and different type of podcast to go on. Sam and Shaan are fast-paced and it's not just asking easy questions. Sam challenges you on your viewpoints which is good. Their reach is also very big, I call them the Joe Rogan of business podcasts. It's much more mainstream than Indie Hackers, and thus gets more viewers. The topics are less technical and more business/money-focused.

I like that they can appreciate my different style of doing business (and life), while not necessarily agreeing with it at the same time.

I hope you enjoy listening/watching/reading it!

Here's the video:

Spotify:

Here's a few clips:

Sam Parr (00:00:08):
Are you intimidated? He said he took a run before this because he was nervous.

Pieter Levels (00:00:13):
No, because I've been on a lot of podcasts, but they're usually small. It's like I see you guys as Joe Rogan for business, so it's like this one step above is Joe Rogan and then it's you guys. Yeah, I don't want to diss all the podcasts I've been on. They're amazing, but this is a level. It's good. I'm [inaudible 00:00:31]

Shaan Puri (00:00:31):
Big Pieter Levels. And you also don't know what Sam might ask you because Sam might just come out of left field and be like ...

Pieter Levels (00:00:37):
No, but that's the thing. I was thinking Sam is this not a regular interviewer. He asks some crazy shit.

Sam Parr (00:00:43):
Wait, me?

Shaan Puri (00:00:45):
Yeah, you.

Sam Parr (00:00:45):
First of all, I don't know if that's true. First of all, it's not just me. It's you, too, Shaan, that asks weird stuff, but also I don't think we ask that weird of questions. I think we ask the questions that everyone's thinking.

Pieter Levels (00:00:57):
No, that's true. I mean you're not yes men. There's yes men podcast where it's like fan thing. Obviously that's not you guys. You have real shit, real questions and I think it's more interesting as well.

Shaan Puri (00:01:09):
Sam, can we share the thing you were just telling us in Slack? Can I share that on here on the pod?

Sam Parr (00:01:13):
Yeah. Wait, which one?

Shaan Puri (00:01:15):
The Sam Parr strategy for networking. You can go to Harvard, you can go to Stanford, you're not going to learn this one. Sam has this habit where ... It's a very small little tweak, but it's just so Sam that it just is awesome. So if Sam wants to hang out with you, he'll text you just like a normal person would. And he doesn't need to even know you. He's just interested in you. Maybe it's a cold DM, maybe it's a text message, maybe he got your number from somebody else. He'll be like, "Hey, it's Sam. I'm in San Francisco." But instead of saying want to hang, Sam will just go, "I'm in San Francisco. Let's (beep)."

Pieter Levels (00:01:56):
He sent me some shit that I won't say out loud, but I think it works.

Shaan Puri (00:02:02):
So, Sam, what is this and why does it work so well?

Sam Parr (00:02:06):
It's like a phrase. People will be like I fuck with that guy. I fuck with Drake. I like Drake. It extends from that and I just say it and people, they reply. I don't know. This particular one night, it was a CEO of a multibillion dollar company who I'm friendly with. I just said, "What's up? I'm in your hood. Let's (beep)." And he goes, "Down. When?" So it worked out.

Shaan Puri (00:02:33):
It's amazing. So normally we try to play it cool, but we've actually been chasing you, Pieter. We've been talking about your projects. We've been being like, "Hey, we got to get this guy in the pod." Sam is a fan of you, for sure. I would say I am less of a fan than Sam, but that doesn't mean I like you, It's I'm more in the closet about it where Sam is very open. Sam's like this guy's amazing, this guy's an artist.

Pieter Levels (00:02:56):
Thanks, man.

Shaan Puri (00:02:56):
This guy's got great hair. And you do have great hair, so it's all true and we finally got you here. And it was hard, I think, because you don't schedule or something like that?

Pieter Levels (00:03:07):
I mean, it looks like being an ass if you do that, but, like you guys, I would get so many DMs. I mean, generally they're very low quality DMs. I want to collaborate, but I don't want to invest. People want something from you. I think it's being a hot girl in the club. People want something from you, but they don't want invest the time to actually get to know you or you feel like an object. And I don't like to feel like that and I want to spend more time with my friends in real life, with my girlfriend or something. I want to spend time in the gym, on my health and cooking food and that kind of stuff, go for walks. And I think because I've been doing this for 10 years, startups eight years, and now the money's going well, so I don't really need to do any calls anymore, any DMs.

Pieter Levels (00:03:56):
So I'm just trying to create a more chill life. And I'm not an asshole. It just means I don't have time to reply to everybody. So I close my DMs and then people got really angry on tweets. They're like, "You closed your DMs. Are you arrogant and stuff?" So I wrote a blog post explaining my day and my routine and what I do in a day. And that I don't really have time, if I do all the things I do now, to also DM everybody and reply to everybody and do calls and stuff. And that's pretty much the argument for it.

Shaan Puri (00:04:24):
So let's give the context, so let's explain who the heck you are. So your name is Pieter Levels. You're known on Twitter as levelsio, right?

Pieter Levels (00:04:33):
Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:04:34):
That's the right way to say it?

Pieter Levels (00:04:35):
Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:04:36):
I saw you a while back. I'm just going to say some interesting things about you. Now, you can correct me if I have any of these wrong. I believe you publish how much you make every year. And, in fact, it's in your Twitter bio in your location. There's a meter that's your road to $3 million a year and it says $2.7 million. So your meter is almost all the way filled up. You build a bunch of random, small projects usually around some things you like, or believe, or your lifestyle, which is a nomadic lifestyle. So I think you hop around or you don't have a home base.

Shaan Puri (00:05:11):
So you could be in Bali and then you could be in the Netherlands or you could be in a different place all the time. And you make these small websites or apps and it says in your bio that you have 13 million monthly active users. And I remember seeing you because you did a Nomad community, a Slack community really early on. Slack had just come out and I was like, "This guy's charging, I think it was, 10 bucks a month or something to get into this thing." I was like, "He's got 1,000 people here. Wow, this guy's making good money doing this, just by making a Slack group." And you just do a bunch of small experiments like that. That's what I know. Sam, what did I miss that's interesting?

Sam Parr (00:05:53):
Pieter, let me give the outsider's perspective that's a little more holistic. So basically there's two things that are interesting to you. The first one is your businesses, which actually are the lesser of the two interesting things. Yeah, you have seven different businesses ranging from Nomad List, which makes $2.1 million in the last 12 months. That's a job board. You have another job board called Remote OK that's making $115,000 a month. You have readMAKE, which looks like it's an ebook, something like that.

Pieter Levels (00:06:23):
Yeah, it's like and ebook. Yeah.

Sam Parr (00:06:25):
Yeah, 60K a month. Then you have got a bunch of really small ...

Shaan Puri (00:06:28):
Sam, you're seeing these numbers because he publishes them. Where do you publish these?

Sam Parr (00:06:31):
He publishes all of them on the URL. Go to his Twitter profile. And we'll let you talk, Pieter, in a second, but go to his Twitter profile and then click off and it's open revenue at the very bottom, but I'm reading off of our notes. And then you have a QR menu creator, then you have an inflation chart, which doesn't seem like it makes money, but tracks inflation. And then you have Rebase, which is a platform to help people become a citizen of Portugal, help him relocate to Portugal. So the first part is those businesses, like I said. You have those that are interesting. I would narrow it down to say you have a series of job boards for nomadic or remote work that are pretty profitable, but the second thing that's even more interesting is the way that you do these things.

Sam Parr (00:07:13):
So you do a few things that are interesting. The first thing is I think you're the only full-time employee and you use a team of contractors. And second of all, you have this weird personality that's very embedded in everything you do. So that's my big intro of what you do. Is that accurate?

Shaan Puri (00:07:30):
Yeah, I could see a website and I could know you built it without you having an about page, which is the ultimate compliment.

Pieter Levels (00:07:35):
Because it looks clunky, right? It looks a little ...

Shaan Puri (00:07:37):
No, it's got an attitude.

Pieter Levels (00:07:37):
No, but this is in a nice way. Yeah, because I'm not a designer. Yeah. No, I think it's an accurate description. I'm not very nomadic anymore. I'm slowly settling down, but I started very nomadically. I was moving around every month. I started in 2014. I started nomading and I went to all these places and I started building these apps, these little websites, little products to validate. I mean, I told the story so many times, but I was following Patrick McKenzie, patio11, on Hacker News. Famous Hacker News guy and now he works for Stripe. And he would share his revenue on his blog about all his little products he made. And it was a poignant reminder for barbershops so you got SMS just before your appointment so you don't forget it, that kind of stuff. And I was really inspired. Okay, this is not some big VC funded guy. This is just an indie guy who was just on his laptop building stuff.

Pieter Levels (00:08:32):
And I mixed that with the nomad thing, where building from your laptop, from your backpack, moving around. I think also getting inspired from different places because, if you move around, you ... I mean, I know Sam moves around a little bit as well. Your life becomes very unique because you meet different kinds of people. You're in different kinds of places. You see different kinds of products in shops. If you're in Asia, you see some futuristic shit you don't see in Europe and America. And all that stuff, it helps for inspiration for creating products in some indirect ways as well. So that's pretty much what I've been doing. I've been trying to be radically honest. I know this American guy who pushes the radical honesty movement, so I'm trying to do that in my personal life. I'm trying to do it on the internet.

Pieter Levels (00:09:15):
I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to be as honest and open as possible because I don't like this fake corporate stuff. And it's because I started business administration and I have a master's degree in it, so I know all the management consultancy bullshit. I've been there, done that. That's where my friends work. I know investment bankers and I hate that a lot of that world, where it's fake and not real. And I want to be very open and honest. And I think it's also a little bit of a European thing, not to slack off Americans. I love America, but in Europe people are a little more direct and a little bit more straightforward. And I think that comes across in the stuff I do a little bit.

Sam Parr (00:09:56):
So what's the total size of all your projects in terms of top line and bottom line revenue? And isn't it true that you're the only full-time person? And how many contractors are you using?

Pieter Levels (00:10:07):
Yeah, so I have one customer support contractor part-time, Isabelle, and she works for all my projects. And I have moderator for the Slack group because there's some drama in there. I've had some crazy drama in these Slack groups and communities. So you need to have a moderator, you need to have rules and you cannot just automate this moderation away. I tried that, but you need a real person there to check on messages and stuff. And then I have a dev ops guy. He's my best friend, Daniel, and he works a SLA, a service level agreement, where if the server goes down he gets a message. If I'm sleeping or something, he brings it back up, but the problem is it never goes down anymore. We haven't really had that for years. So he does security updates and stuff because I have a VPS. I don't use Amazon, I use a VPS on DigitalOcean and Linode and it keeps that stuff safe. So that's good.

Sam Parr (00:11:03):
And big's the business top line and bottom line?

Pieter Levels (00:11:06):
Sorry, how big's the business? So Remote OK is the job board. It's the biggest business, makes the most money. Normally this is starting to grow, though. It's past I think $100K a month, so almost a million dollar business. Remote OK is $1.6 million a year I think and Rebase's new business is immigration agency. So I want to help remote workers immigrate to countries that want to attract remote workers with beneficial tech stuff. Portugal is one of the first ones to do that. So those are the three businesses that really make money and the rest doesn't really make money a lot. The book makes I think $4K a month.

Shaan Puri (00:11:44):
But everything you do is part of one flywheel. So I've looked at your system and I've looked at a bunch of people because I got into a little pickle where I was like, "God, I'm doing so many things and I want to do all these things." I'm interested in all these things, but am I going to be able to juggle five different things? I got a podcast, I have a VC fund, I have my eCommerce business, I have a newsletter business. I don't even know what else. A course business, I got another shit. So it's like am I going to be able to do this? And what I saw that you did, I have this mental model of a solopreneur. And a solopreneur, nobody's actually solo. Everybody's got a little support team around them that's helpful. Some in a big way, some in a small way, but basically it's somebody who builds a personal brand and then builds a successful business and lifestyle around that.

Shaan Puri (00:12:36):
And what I noticed was that you had this formula, which is I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional, but I'll say it out loud because here's my read of your business. It's basically it starts with the red pill. So a red pill is that scene in the matrix where Morpheus is holding out a blue pill, red pill. He's like, "Do you want the truth or do you want to take the blue pill?" You could just go back to your normal life just as everything was, you could forget this ever happened. And Neo's like, "No, I need to know the truth. What's the truth?" He takes the red pill and basically it's every great solopreneur I think starts with one truth.

Shaan Puri (00:13:08):
So Tim Ferris' truth was basically that the 9:00 to 5:00 work in a cubicle for 40 years model is effing broken and you don't need to do it that way. You could work four hours a week and live like a millionaire. And so that was Tim Ferris's red pill and yours was basically this idea of being a digital nomad, which was like you don't have to subscribe to the normal way of living. You pick a place, that's where you are from, that's where you live and you just stay where you grew up. And go to an office every day and you have to wear shoes and whatever. You're like, "No, I wear flip flops, I walk around on beaches." I just go wherever I feel like whenever I feel like and I carry a little backpack and that's my life.

Shaan Puri (00:13:54):
So you start with the red pill, then you create content around that red pill. So it's you talking about that lifestyle and sharing everything from people always ask what I keep in my backpack for the day. Here's what it is. It's just every bit of content you can come up with that's poppy, that fits that red pill. So then that gives you authority on that subject, so you become authority. And so Pomp became an authority around bitcoin and Tim Ferris became an authority around life hacking and you've become an authority around nomadism. And then you take that and then you basically spin off one of many businesses that can come up with it, but every one of those businesses, either it's a big money maker or it's just another funnel, more content, more new audience that's going to get sucked into that same red pill lifestyle that you are talking about.

Shaan Puri (00:14:43):
And so even though you're doing six things, they're all actually part of one flywheel. And everyone that you do, is it going to feed it either because it's going to give you a bunch of cash that lets you fund this lifestyle in a bigger and better way or it's going to give you new content, new stories, new things to be known about that fit that lifestyle as well? That's how I see it. I'm curious, is that true or is that not?

Pieter Levels (00:15:05):
Yeah, I think it's really accurate. And my thing started when I was blogging, just like you said. I was blogging about nomading, but I was blogging for my mom because back then you had travel bloggers, like 2014. And I was going to travel and nomad. And every place I went I wrote a little. How was this city to live in and stuff, and what happened, all the crazy shit that happened to me. And my mom was reading that, but I wrote it in English because my mom was obviously Dutch, but I was like she can read English, so it's maybe easier to get more traffic and stuff, more audience. It wasn't super a big idea. It just happened and then those blogs started showing up on Hacker News. And I started writing more about bootstrapping startups as a nomad in Thailand or something or in Asia.

Pieter Levels (00:15:46):
And those started going on Hacker News really high. And I think that was the time, it was like 2013, 2014. There was the time when I noticed that the developers in San Francisco working for all the startups, they also were realizing maybe I can start doing this remotely because remote work was not cool back then and nomading was not cool back then because you had the Tim Ferris wave in 2008. It was the first nomad wave. I love Tim Ferris, but there was something about the followers there and the business that were created. They were shady. There was a lot of shady shit I came across in Asia, in Thailand, Americans and Europeans.

Shaan Puri (00:16:22):
A lot of brain supplements and shit like that.

Pieter Levels (00:16:24):
Dude, yes. Yeah, drug dealers, online drug dealers and spam decking. And there's still shady shit, but less. And I was like, "I really hate this shady shit. I don't feel like part of this scene." I think it would be cool to make it more mainstream, reputable businesses, reputable jobs that do it. So I kept blogging about it and it kept taking off on Hacker News. And you're right. And then I went on Twitter and I think organically people started following me. And then a lot of people went nomad. A lot of my friends went nomad because I was blogging and they became my friends now. Yeah, and then I started all those businesses, but it sounds very like a constructed ...

Shaan Puri (00:17:05):
It's not a master plan.

Pieter Levels (00:17:06):
No, it's not a master plan. It's very organic. I'm like user zero. I try to build stuff for myself and I always have new ideas. There's, just like you said, red pill. There's a discongruence in society and what I'm thinking. And most people then think there must be something wrong with me, but I think arrogance. I think there must be something wrong with society. Maybe this is a new thing, so I'll try and make a little website about it. Inflation three years ago or two years ago, I was tweeting about inflation. This shit's going to go crazy with all the fed printing money. And everyone's like, "Nah, inflation is fine. Stop whining about it." I'm like, "No, I'll just prove you that the real inflation numbers are higher." So I made this inflationchart.com website that shows the inflation numbers are really high. Turned out to be true now.

Shaan Puri (00:17:54):
Yeah, that's great.

Sam Parr (00:17:56):
What technology are you using to build those sites? Because they all do look alike and you seem like you can spin them up really quickly.

Pieter Levels (00:18:04):
Well, that's really funny because I get a lot of criticism for the technology I use. I use PHP because that's the language I knew because I was making a blog, like WordPress. So I knew PHP a little bit. So I was like I just need to write with the language I know because I don't know other languages. And I did that. And then I used JavaScript and I use jQuery. So everybody starts laughing now cause jQuery is way passe, but I still use it because it's so easy to make a button, bind an event to it, age exterior to the server, to the PHP script, does something with a database, sends it back and it works for me really well. And I think it doesn't matter what you use, but as long as you use something that's really fast feedback loop and iterative loop where you can really quickly develop. I can make a new button in 20 seconds and deploy it to the server and it's really fast.

Pieter Levels (00:18:50):
And I know other developer friends of mine use a very big stack, Kubernetes and all this stuff, all these keywords I don't really know. And for them it takes sometimes an hour or maybe even days to deploy new feature. And I think what we learned from startup and lead startup is that the customer feedback loop has to be very fast, iterative so you can really quickly change stuff. And it also makes your customers really happy because they see something, they have a problem or a feature idea. You can really quickly build it and then they see it. I mean, if you want happy customers, that's how you get it. You make something for them, they're like, "Oh, my god, I influenced this product." So that works for me. So very, very simple stack.

Shaan Puri (00:19:32):
And we won't laugh at you not because we're nice. I don't know what jQuery is, neither does Sam. So we're not going to make fun of you. You're safe here. We're too dumb to call you out on any of your technical [inaudible 00:19:49]

Pieter Levels (00:19:49):
Nice. This is a good podcast.

Sam Parr (00:19:51):
What do you think your whole thing's worth?

Pieter Levels (00:19:53):
So if you do 5X ... Sorry.

Sam Parr (00:19:58):
Shaan, go to his sites and you could see it's something slash open. It's usually the website slash open. And then it says so many stats, most of which honestly are useless, but it's cool.

Shaan Puri (00:20:09):
Yeah, 70% of them are the equivalent of a step counter. It's like how many DMs did I get today?

Pieter Levels (00:20:20):
No, I don't have that.

Shaan Puri (00:20:22):
No, you do.

Pieter Levels (00:20:24):
But it's collective. It's like DMs sent. It's collective events.

Shaan Puri (00:20:27):
Okay, for example, I'm on nomadlist.com, which you said is I think your biggest one, slash open. And on it you see the revenue chart, you see CO2 removed from the atmosphere, you see the full P&L, you see a bunch of other things. And one of them that you see is 73% profit margin. Your team says .78, so that's part-time?

Pieter Levels (00:20:48):
Yeah, full-time equivalent, like FTE. Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:20:50):
And then plus 492 bots. What is that, servers?

Pieter Levels (00:20:55):
Yeah. So on the server you can do ...

Sam Parr (00:20:57):
Also, he has valuation, too. If you scroll down it says if we sold for whatever the multiple is.

Shaan Puri (00:21:04):
If it was 30X profit, this would be $17 million.

Pieter Levels (00:21:07):
So I tried to take the PE. I mean, it's not super accurate. I did business, but it's the PE ratio of public companies that are similar in the industry. And I try to sync it to that sometimes, but it completely depends on the multiple if somebody's going to pay for it.

Shaan Puri (00:21:19):
Have you sold any of these?

Pieter Levels (00:21:21):
[inaudible 00:21:21] multiples are extremely low. No, I've sold nothing.

Shaan Puri (00:21:23):
Do you want to sell any of these?

Pieter Levels (00:21:25):
I've been in the selling processes with previous guests on your podcast, but it bounced off.

Sam Parr (00:21:33):
I'm just going to guess it was Andrew Wilkinson because he loves ...

Pieter Levels (00:21:36):
Yeah, Schmandrew Schwilkinson.

Sam Parr (00:21:37):
Yeah, because he loves job boards. That's just a guess.

Pieter Levels (00:21:40):
I can't say anything. I signed NDA. 80% of the acquisitions, they bounce off. So right now, I don't really care. I like that I have cash flow and my life is nice, but until a few years ago I was obsessed by the selling because you build a startup in the movie Social ... Well, not the movie Social Network, but in big movies about startups, they're like, "Oh, my god, grow big and then sell and you're millionaire." But then if you become a millionaire yourself with your cash flow, you're like, "Okay, why does it matter actually?"

Sam Parr (00:22:10):
Well, let's actually talk about that because what's interesting about you is you have a few that you could sell. So Remote OK and Nomad List are both pretty cool. Have you calculated how much money you want and how long it's going to take you to get there via cash flow? Well, why don't I just sell one and I can get an $8 or $10 million lump sum? But then I still own this other one that's making $3 million a year. I mean, have you thought done that math and what have you ...

Pieter Levels (00:22:35):
Yeah, so the thing is most of my revenue is profit. The margins are really high, especially Remote OK. It's like 94% margin pre-tax, so it's very high. So I'd say 10X. After 10X it gets interesting. I think the problem is with bootstrap companies you usually get 3, 4, 5X profit or revenue share, which is too low for me. I might as well wait three years or four years and sit in this chair and the sites will probably keep running because they're fully automated and I barely need to work on them. They just keep going. It's heavily automated, really heavy, heavy. It's just that I won't build new features anymore then and the site will start looking a little bit old because design trends change, but generally it will keep running. So it doesn't make sense for me to sell for 5X or 4X if I might as well wait.

Pieter Levels (00:23:22):
And also Nomad, this is my baby. So if I sell it, they're going to fuck it up. I already know because they always do. Let's say a big remote startup buys it. I know VC fund remote startups are cool, but they're also going to be bought by big, boring companies later, corporate companies. And they're going to shut this down and they're like, "This is my contribution. This is my life's work." It's like legacy. So Remote OK I care less because it's a job board. Job board's not very interesting, but normally this is this whole movement and culture and there's tens of thousands of people on there and my friends are on there. And it's like this work of love. Yeah, it would be hard to sell that because people are going to fuck it up.

Sam Parr (00:24:06):
Are you the largest ... Go ahead, Shaan.

Shaan Puri (00:24:09):
Well, one thing I was going to say, you tweeted out something that said a 10 year overnight success, which I think is a common idea that most people don't realize, which is by the time you hear about something you don't know the 10 years of toiling and tweaking and iterating that it took before the big breakthroughs happened. My life was the same way. I started my first startup when I was 20, 21 and I made my first million by the time I was 30 or 31. It took 10 years.

Pieter Levels (00:24:37):
That's early, man. Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:24:40):
And then every year since then, a bunch of great stuff has happened, but it took a long time to get that breakthrough. And I was looking at your chart. Sam, I don't know if you saw this tweet that he has, but the chart basically shows, I think you start ...

Pieter Levels (00:24:50):
I think the sum of all my revenue together in one chart. Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:24:53):
Yeah, it's all your revenue from all your projects all together in one chart. And it's looking like it's 2012 or 2013 start. And basically, if I go all the way up until, let's call it 2019, you're at maybe $600K, $700K per year in revenue. And only in the last pandemic boom, let's say 2020, from 2020 you went from under a million dollars to $2.5 million a year. So you two and a half X'd because it sounds amazing. Wow, this dude's making almost $3 million a year. Yeah, but he's also been building that momentum and stacking these assets and it just really took off, which I'm guessing is pandemic fueled a lot of people wanting to be nomads and you were there to catch that wave. You were the guy ready to catch the wave at that time.

Pieter Levels (00:25:41):
Yeah, but no idea this was coming. I did this presentation in 2015 where I predicted there would be one billion remote workers in 2030 and everybody laughed at me and even in the YouTube comments were like, "This is ridiculous. Where are your sources? This is bullshit." And then COVID happened and it suddenly seems very reasonable, but nobody could have seen this coming and I had no idea. I was actually thinking ...

Shaan Puri (00:26:05):
Did you cause COVID or what?

Pieter Levels (00:26:06):
Exactly, with Fauci. If you look at the chart, it doesn't really go anywhere. And I was thinking this is bullshit. I tried everything to make it grow and sometimes it grew and sometimes it didn't, but generally it wasn't a VC star, where ...

Shaan Puri (00:26:25):
Well, it looks like there's these run ups and then a plateau and run up and a plateau. Which is, by the way, that's how all progress actually looks if you zoom out far enough.

Pieter Levels (00:26:35):
Exactly.

Shaan Puri (00:26:35):
And I remember that during 2014, when I first moved to Silicon Valley, there was a small group of people like you, this is I think when you created that first Slack community, that was like, "No, being a nomad is the way to go."

Sam Parr (00:26:46):
Yeah, but those people were freaks.

Pieter Levels (00:26:51):
100%, yes.

Shaan Puri (00:26:54):
But there were some people who took the red pill at that time. I think Steph Smith who also worked [inaudible 00:27:00] she met you in Indonesia or Bali or something like that because she had, I think, probably during more that time period, 2014, '15, '16, something like that, she was one of those people that defected then. Whereas now there's another wave. And if you look at any lifestyle movement, it happens this way. Take crypto, it starts with the cypherpunks.

Pieter Levels (00:27:23):
Exactly same. You're right. Yes, exactly.

Shaan Puri (00:27:24):
They hang out in cryptography forums and they took the pill first. And then came the next, the developers, then came the finance bros. And then came the next wave.

Pieter Levels (00:27:32):
It's the same with music genres, like hiphop, early hiphop. And I come from electronic music, so [inaudible 00:27:39] bass music was my previous career. Music producer, it was the same thing. EDM taking off in the US in 2009, 2010 with dubstep, that's what broke EDM in the US, that kind of stuff. These scenes are almost dead and then suddenly something happens and it's so unpredictable. You have no clue what's going on. You can only surf it. So I think the metaphor of surfing is very accurate. It's better to surf these waves in general, I think life. Just surf waves, stop trying to control it. Just surf it and pivoting startups into, that's pretty much just surfing, steering the surfboard over the waves, because you cannot control the market at all. You cannot control society at all.

Sam Parr (00:28:20):
One of the things that bothers me about this indie hacker movement is ... Well, I really like it. I like it, but in general what I don't like about it is people think pretty small. So it's related to the fire movement, which is I just want to save a little bit of money so I can make $40,000 a year in passive income. And I'm like, "That's cool." Getting your first step is cool, but that can't be it with life. You're going to want more. You want to do more things and you can contribute to society. And with a lot of these indiehackers, they come up with silly stuff, where it's a small widget that they sell for $4 a month and they hope that they can get to $1,000 a month. And I'm like, "Man, that's neat if you're just starting out, but I think that this could be bigger." And you're actually one of the few people that I've seen go harder. You're going harder on this. Are there any others like you?

Pieter Levels (00:29:15):
How do you think I'm going harder on it?

Sam Parr (00:29:15):
Well, your numbers are bigger. It's substantial. Your numbers are nice already and it's very clear that ...

Pieter Levels (00:29:21):
But it could be survivorship bias, right?

Sam Parr (00:29:25):
Well, yeah. Definitely, but I still think that there's a mindset of ...

Shaan Puri (00:29:30):
For example, your Twitter bio thing says your meter is going to $3 million. I would say most people who are indiehackers and makers and the tinkerer community, they don't even have their meter to there. Their meter initially is going to start much lower, $60,000 or $70,000 a year. And maybe yours did, too, but then you're like, "I filled up that meter, I leveled it up." So what was your initial goal? Was it make enough to not need a job or where did you start and when did you get more ambitious?

Pieter Levels (00:30:01):
I mean, back when I started, I had a YouTube channel for this electronic music I was making and stuff. And I was making a few thousand dollars from YouTube AdSense, so I had some cash flow to live off, travel off and work on mini startups, but it was very fast. It was shrinking because of the copyright claims on YouTube in 2012 and stuff. So it was pretty much becoming below $1,000 a month. So I had that cashflow, but to go to your question, I think it's a power law. You always have a few people in a scene who will make more money or get more successful and stuff. Also, there's a delay effect. I started in 2013 or 2014. This any scene, it wasn't cool until maybe I think 2018 or something or 2017.

Pieter Levels (00:30:49):
So these people that are going into it now, they're just starting. And I think the widget thing is interesting because you said it's only a widget. If you make one feature really well that solves one problem, you can get some customers and you get some cash flow and then you can build a second feature. And you can slowly scale up to a real product toolkit. And then I think another thing is you don't see a lot of people with multimillion revenue because they will quickly raise VC. Once you pass a million dollars a year, they'll switch to let's go big. Let's go become a billion dollar company. And I think I'm the exception. I'm like I don't want to be a billion dollar company, I'm fine like this, chill. And that's why you don't see those people a lot because I do know them and they quickly disappear. This app we're using now, Riverside, I think has raised VC now.

Pieter Levels (00:31:38):
Started bootstrapped and then I think Oprah Winfrey used it because it's my friend, Adav. He makes it. He's like, "Dude, Oprah Winfrey used it." I'm like, "Oh, my god, this is crazy." He's like, "Yeah, I think I'm going to raise VC." I'm like, "Okay. Yeah, you should do that," because they think this could be bigger than just a few million, right?

Shaan Puri (00:31:56):
So you tweeted something out the other day that's related to this. You go, "Not sure if people realize it, but if your app does $20,000 a month on revenue, you're probably already a millionaire." $20,000 per month times 12 months, assume you could sell for, let's call it, 4X or 5X multiple, that's a million dollar selling price. You're sitting on a million dollar asset. And when you put it that way, I think that sounds, and it is, way more achievable than this idea of like I got to build a million dollar business. Do I have the big idea, whatever? But getting something to $20,000 to $30,000 a month in revenue [inaudible 00:32:30]

Pieter Levels (00:32:30):
That seems approachable, right?

Shaan Puri (00:32:31):
It's approachable and that's awesome. All you did is you said something that was true out loud. And I think if more people heard that, that's why I'm bringing it up here, I think if more people heard that, that is a pathway to a millionaire status that does not require winning the startup lottery of inventing the next big thing or working and saving and paying your crazy W2 taxes for 15, 20 years to get the same outcome.

Pieter Levels (00:33:03):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's reachable, especially if you think about high automation, very high margins. So software business, you're not going to hire a big team of 10 people immediately. You work with part-time contracts, like I do, and you keep your margins very, very high because then you can sell for 5X. Then your revenue's almost your profit, so it's the same. Yeah, I think $20K is approachable. Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:33:29):
Let's brainstorm a business together that could get to $20K. So what's an idea that you're not currently building, but you thought of, because I'm sure you're an idea guy and you think you can make a website that does X, or you could make Nomad List for this other niche, or you could make the immigration one for this other thing. So what's a business? Let's brainstorm a business together. What's a business that you think could get somebody to this millionaire status?

Pieter Levels (00:33:54):
Man, again, this is so personal. So I used to live in hostel dorms in 2014, but didn't have money. Shared with six people, crazy. Then I started private rooms in hotels. Then the rooms got a little bit more luxurious because I had more money. And then I started discovering apartment hotels and it sounds like bullshit, but it works so well with remote work. So I'm in an apartment hotel right now in Europe on the beach and there's a kitchen.

Shaan Puri (00:34:21):
So what's an apartment hotel? What does that mean?

Pieter Levels (00:34:22):
Sorry. Apartment hotel is essentially a hotel, so full serviced, furnished, nice interior hotel room, but you also have a kitchen, you have a bedroom, you have a living room. It's very big. It's pretty much like an Airbnb, but it's ...

Shaan Puri (00:34:36):
And you pay for month or per night or what?

Pieter Levels (00:34:37):
Well, you can pay per night, you can pay per month. It's just like a hotel.

Sam Parr (00:34:42):
Shaan, it's like that guy who ...

Shaan Puri (00:34:42):
Sander or whatever?

Sam Parr (00:34:43):
Yeah, it's like Sander and I forget the other one. The guy was supposed to come in the pod, but he canceled last minute. What was his name?

Shaan Puri (00:34:49):
Sam, you did one of these in Nashville or something, where you're like, "This is awesome." There's a [inaudible 00:34:52] where everyone's working.

Sam Parr (00:34:54):
Yeah, it's basically just an apartment that you can rent for five days and they're pretty cool. I do them all the time. The problem that I've experienced in New York, it's 10 grand a month and it's 600 square feet. So that's why I tend to go Airbnb, but I'm in smaller, less expensive cities, you can get a 1,000 square foot place for $6,000 a month. And it's basically an apartment building that has one floor or all floors dedicated to Airbnbs.

Pieter Levels (00:35:22):
Yeah, the problem with Airbnb is that I've noticed is the quality is very, very high. There's a big range of quality and there's problems. There's no daily cleaning. It feels too much like you don't know what's going to happen. Stuff might break. If things break here, you just get a new apartment. And I've done this in Europe and I've done this in Asia, too, in Thailand. And I spend about usually $2K to $3K, three and a half K. So it's a lot of money. It's more than normal rent, but the cool thing is that it solves a lot of problems you have in your daily life because it's surface and stuff. And it's a huge thing in Asia. It's a huge thing in Southeast Asia, even in Korea, Taiwan and stuff. So I think that's going to be bigger because of remote work, because you have remote workers, even with families, with kids.

Pieter Levels (00:36:11):
And you don't want to live in a hotel room. Hotel room is very depressing. I go insane in hotel rooms. It's just a bed and you can barely walk around the bed. There's no space. I need to cook food, I need to buy steak from the local butcher. I need to cook it with broccoli and spinach and with my friends and stuff. And you can do it in an apartment hotel. And I think if you target, it's a high end market, I think, of remote workers who make a lot of money, like $200K or $100K, something. If you target them, you can make a lot of money because it's serviced, furnished.

Shaan Puri (00:36:42):
So what would you build? You'd actually build an apartment hotel or you'd build a digital product for ...

Pieter Levels (00:36:46):
That's a big question because I'm a software guy. I don't want to own stuff. I don't want to have all this. I don't even want to buy land. I don't even want to buy a house. I want to be able to be consumer, a customer of these kind of things, but I want it long term. I want to be able to rent for six months or 12 months even. I want to be guaranteed to stay.

Sam Parr (00:37:05):
So my wife and I, we're at the point where we're going to start having kids soon. And I live not like you entirely, but a little bit, where we spend half the year at one place, half the year at the other place. And what we're going to do next year is just rent, do a 12 month lease in New York, and just not be there all the time. But I'm looking to rent all of my furniture and I've been looking at a place where I was like I just want to book this one place and I want to pay someone three grand a month, but they have to show up before I arrive. They've got to completely set it up and it has to be 100% furnished for me. And I've been looking at these and there's a few startups in the space that are doing furniture rental. And furniture rental is not popular right now. And I tell people all the time, I'm like I just want to rent all my furniture.

Sam Parr (00:37:49):
I don't want to own any of it. And they think it's nonsense and they think it's crazy, but if you run the math it's about the same in terms of price, but in terms of headache I think it's 1,000 times better.

Pieter Levels (00:38:07):
100%, yeah. Yeah, so it's all about the headaches. So if you can afford it, you can reduce the headaches of ownership. And ownership, it sounds so privileged, though, but whatever. Ownership is a big hassle. Shit breaks all the time. And if I spend my time on my laptop building on these apps, it's probably better use of my time than managing all this stuff. And if a company can specialize in managing this stuff and renting it to you, it's much better. I think you're on point. That's a real business. And imagine you can go to a website, you can choose different sets of furniture, different interior and stuff, paintings on the wall or whatever. And you can just click and you arrive and it's already done for you, like you said. I think that would be really interesting. Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:38:51):
What are some other things that you're interested in, either niche categories or things in your lifestyle that you're like, "I do this lifestyle thing differently than people." You could build a business around this?

Pieter Levels (00:39:05):
I think that the biggest problem with the digital nomad thing is that maybe it's a good big podcast to say that there's a perception that people travel really fast. And half the day that they don't travel fast, they travel every few months or even I think the average is seven months now. It's very slow. So the word digital nomad is a horrible word. Of course it has so many connotations, but it's mostly remote working people who want a little bit of a different life, who want to see different places a little bit. They have boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, they have kids even. There's families doing this as well. Moving around every week doesn't really work. Being very slow is big. And if people are more aware of that, they can find a lot of products built for this long term slowmad market, which most of us are. We're mostly slowmads.

Shaan Puri (00:39:50):
Slowmad. I like that. Nice.

Pieter Levels (00:39:54):
Slowmads, yeah. Think about education, think about homeschooling is taking off also because of remote work. If I have kids, I don't know if I want to put them in a regular school. Maybe Elon Musk builds his own school that's cool, but you can do things in a different way. And now it's still very niche. This remote work thing is still niche. It's going to get only bigger. There's only going to be more and more people doing this once physical jobs get automated. So if you make products, I don't know a specific product, but if you build products for those people, that's a high end market of tech workers that are remote.

Sam Parr (00:40:26):
So you said that you don't own stuff or you said you don't like owning stuff. You said that you don't want to own real estate. So if you're making two and a half million dollars a year in profit, this is a question that Shaan always asks that I'm stealing it, which is what do you do with your money then?

Pieter Levels (00:40:45):
Yeah, so I'm heavy in ETFs. I read a blog post by the guy from Google that does SEO. And he's like I just put everything in ETFs, so Vanguard ETFs, S&P 500, but also I'm heavily invested in Asia because I believe in Asia. I believe in the future. There's a lot of things about Asia that are good, but there's still things very futuristic. And I also invest in crypto. I hold Bitcoin and Ethereum. I'm always scared to say those things on the podcast, but it's all very secure and stuff.

Sam Parr (00:41:17):
It's not exactly the most shocking thing to assume that you own some crypto.

Pieter Levels (00:41:23):
True. Every tech bro has crypto. Yeah, exactly.

Shaan Puri (00:41:26):
You're actually not allowed to have that haircut if you don't own three [inaudible 00:41:29] you can't have a high face with long top hair if you don't own three.

Pieter Levels (00:41:36):
I spend about $4K or $5K a month or something. That's it. I do need to pay tax, but after that most of it goes to ETFs and stuff. It's scary to invest now because it's a scary time, but generally I want to do this for 20, 30 years in ETF invested and stuff. And sometimes stocks, but I did a benchmark, my S&P 500 ETF outperformed all my stock decisions over the last two years. So I'm stupid just like most people.

Sam Parr (00:42:01):
Shaan, you want to tell him what you did recently?

Shaan Puri (00:42:05):
What? Selling?

Sam Parr (00:42:06):
With your stocks.

Shaan Puri (00:42:07):
Yeah, I sold not everything, but pretty much everything sold maybe 70%, 80% of the stocks that I hold.

Pieter Levels (00:42:15):
I get that. I mean, yeah, but I'm scared. They always say don't try and time the market. So I'm like I'll just sit and just crash with it, let the whole thing go back up.

Sam Parr (00:42:25):
Shaan, why did you do that? Why don't you just chill?

Shaan Puri (00:42:29):
Two reasons. One, I didn't want a risk of margin call because I borrowed a little bit against my stock portfolio and to what I felt was extremely safe and it's still safe. But I was like if this drops another 20%, then all of a sudden I'm having a headache that I don't want to deal with. I don't want to have to deal with freeing up a bunch of cash just to buffer this. So I was like, I noticed that every morning I was waking up and I was checking it and I was like, "Okay, logically I know I'm in pretty good shape here," but the stress of having to think about this is taking away from my day to day quality of life. It's like that's the opposite of what I want money to do. I don't want money to give me stress. My money's supposed to take away my stress.

Sam Parr (00:43:10):
So what did you do with the money?

Shaan Puri (00:43:12):
[inaudible 00:43:12] opposite?

Sam Parr (00:43:13):
What'd you do with it? Where is it?

Shaan Puri (00:43:14):
It's in cash right now. I might do some short term fixed income type stuff, but for now, again, I don't care. I don't need the 2%, I needed the peace of mind. And so that was the first thing. The second thing was I thought what will I regret more? What do I believe more? Do I believe that this is the bottom or do I believe that this is actually thinking that this is the bottom six months in and that it's all going to get better soon? Basically, there's three paths. Either it gets better now, this is about the bottom, but we stay here for an extended period of time, one, two, three, four years, or it has further down to go. And I basically thought that things going up soon seemed like the least likely thing. I would actually be betting against that heavily.

Shaan Puri (00:44:04):
And so I thought, "Okay, I have nothing to lose here in terms of upside," because I just fundamentally don't think that stocks and everything's just going to go rip back up again and we're all going to pretend that was it. We just had a few months of pain and then it all went right back up and remember things are all green again. And so I thought either it's going to be flat, boring and sideways for a period of time or it's going to go down more. And I thought in either case that I won't regret being in cash because, A, I don't have to sweat it every day. I don't have to think about it every day and, B, I'm not losing anything doing this. And so that was my thought process. And I figured there's going to be these little bear market rallies, so just sell at the top of the next, so that's what I did.

Shaan Puri (00:44:47):
Everything rallied 5% and I just sold and I kept 20% still in the market and I just left the other 80% in not thinking about it cash. But I held my crypto. I didn't sell my crypto.

Pieter Levels (00:45:00):
That's good. Yeah. Are you guys mostly invested in the American stock market or worldwide?

Shaan Puri (00:45:06):
Yeah, like you said, I believe in Asia. I'm like I believe in Asia, too, but I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. How do I go invest in Asia and where would I invest? I don't even know. What does that mean? Are you buying the equivalent of an ETF for Japan or something? What are you doing?

Pieter Levels (00:45:17):
Dude, I had a Vanguard ETF China and then suddenly it disappeared from my broker app. And I'm like, "What the fuck's happening?" And I get this message, they're like Vanguard left China in March or something because they were like this is too crazy. So I had to buy a different ETF.

Shaan Puri (00:45:33):
[inaudible 00:45:33] privatize. They made private companies public or something.

Pieter Levels (00:45:36):
Yeah. No, they fucked Jack Ma, for sure. There's a lot of weird shit happening, but I still think I should be invested in those markets.

Shaan Puri (00:45:45):
Sam, have I told you about the Jack Ma thing?

Sam Parr (00:45:48):
How it's crazy that the third richest man in the world [inaudible 00:45:52] was like, "Hey, Jack, shut up." And he was like, "Yes, sir."

Shaan Puri (00:45:57):
They just took Jack offline. Yeah, my brother-in-law calls me. So we had one moment where a month in when people started noticing Jack Ma is missing. And my brother-in-law in the car one day was just like, "Where's Jack Ma?" He was in the car, but he's like, "Bro, why aren't we talking about this?" He's like, "Where's Jack Ma?" And we just started laughing. How crazy is that, that Jack Ma is just not ... What if you just couldn't find Elon Musk because he said something that Biden didn't like? That idea is crazy.

Sam Parr (00:46:24):
They did it with the tennis player, too.

Pieter Levels (00:46:27):
Yeah, I saw that. Dude, it's fucked up.

Shaan Puri (00:46:27):
And my brother-in-law still calls me. He'll just call me out of the blue. It's been like a year now and he'll be like, "Yo, where's Jack Ma?" And he'll hang up and that's the whole call.

Pieter Levels (00:46:36):
That's so good.

Shaan Puri (00:46:37):
He'd just be yelling where is Jack Ma?

Pieter Levels (00:46:41):
But, dude, that's the thing of Asia and China, all this stuff is accurate. There's some crazy, but the other thing is also accurate, that there's lots happening in Asia. And I think in the West, in Europe and America, we have a blind spot because we get so much information that's negative about Asia, especially about China. And I'm not a China spy or something. My friends call me a China spy because of that, but I think it's a blind spot a little bit in the west, that we're going to miss out on ... I mean, China's going to be the biggest economy in 2030. I think by GDP it's already the biggest economy by purchasing power or something. Ignoring that, just because there's a lot of arguments why we should ignore China, but it sounds like a blind spot in the west a little bit to me.

Sam Parr (00:47:29):
We'll do an easy one. You tweeted out your calendar and it was free for a week or something like that. And I know Shaan does that, too. And I like that. Sometimes I don't like that because I'll do that for three days and I'm like, "Oh, my god, I'm so bored." Is it real that you just don't plan anything?

Pieter Levels (00:47:47):
Yeah, so this is the only planned thing and it gives me stress because I'm like, "Shit, something's coming up." I live with my friends, so my friends are my neighbors now. So I brought all these nomads friends to Portugal and Europe and we live together. A lot of our lot them are in the city near here, whatever. Everybody's near, so we just have dinners outside and we cook food and the sunsets on the beach and just this nice, chill life that I never had because I was always alone in hotel rooms. I had friends, but they were always around the world. And now they're all here, so I mostly do that. So I don't want to do calls because what am I going to call about? I like having calls with you guys. What am I going to call with other people about? New business [inaudible 00:48:28]

Sam Parr (00:48:27):
Don't you get bored?

Pieter Levels (00:48:29):
No, because I work on my websites. I make coffee, I make open my laptop, me and my friend, we code a little bit together, make a new feature. Then you go to the gym, we go to sauna, we go swim, but that's very recent, this kind of chill life. And I don't get bored as long as I ship a little bit on my websites. I don't really get bored.

Sam Parr (00:48:55):
So basically it's almost always the truth that no matter how hard you try, the more income that you make, your lifestyle gets inflated. Maybe sometimes not as much, but then other times a ton. And I was like I'm going to fight it. I can't imagine spending more than $10,000 out a car or whatever. And then you make more income, you're like whatever. Who cares? You said you spend $4,000 or $5,000 a month. You're one of the few people that has acknowledged that your lifestyle actually doesn't seem like it's been ... It's not lavish at all.

Pieter Levels (00:49:27):
No, but it's on purpose. It's 100% on purpose. Incidentally, sometimes you spend more. Last month hotels were really booked, so we had to pay a lot of money, but now it's chill. I think it's on purpose.

Sam Parr (00:49:40):
How much?

Pieter Levels (00:49:41):
Last month was like $10K or something for hotels because we're in Lisbon.

Sam Parr (00:49:45):
That's still nothing, though. You're making $3 million a year.

Pieter Levels (00:49:47):
But paying $10K for hotel is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. It should be the max $2K or $3K for me personally, but I've seen a lot of people do that lifestyle inflation because I know from corporate, again, from studying business, I know the management people and stuff they get paid more and they get golden handcuffs and they can't leave. A lot of my friends are like that and I don't want that to happen to me. I mean, it can't happen it to me, but you get what I mean. And I know that material goods don't really make me happy. So I buy a new shirt or something or I buy a new iPhone, within two weeks I'm used to it. And there's studies on this. There's research about this stuff. If you buy a new car, even you get married, after six months you're at the same happiness. If you buy a house, after six months same happiness. So if you know that stuff, you don't really need to spend money so much. You don't need to buy stuff, essentially. And generally it will probably make you happier.

Shaan Puri (00:50:35):
What do you think you would want to spend more on? Let's say that ...

Pieter Levels (00:50:39):
Food. Good food, organic, free roaming. I mean, it's cliché, like Joe Roman, but free roaming, grass fed cow, beef that are happy animals, organic vegetables, that kind of stuff. Not goods, experiences. It's on purpose I do this.

Shaan Puri (00:50:58):
What are some experiences that you think are worth the money?

Pieter Levels (00:51:01):
What is what? Sorry?

Shaan Puri (00:51:02):
What are some experiences that are worth the money? When most people [inaudible 00:51:07]

Pieter Levels (00:51:06):
Most experiences that are good don't even cost money, right?

Sam Parr (00:51:10):
[inaudible 00:51:10] coach?

Pieter Levels (00:51:11):
Life coach? What?

Sam Parr (00:51:12):
No, do you fly ...

Pieter Levels (00:51:13):
Fly coach. Sorry. Yeah, you're right. Man, you got me. You're trying to find stuff, right? Yes, I fly business class. No, exactly. I only do it long haul and I flew only once in the last 16 months and I flew business. Qatar, really nice and you can lie down and sleep and stuff, but that's about it I think. And one thing I notice, I was in Bangkok in this luxury apartment hotel stuff, but it was a little bit too luxury for me. And I was there for a month and you start noticing that you don't meet as much interesting people. I met one interesting person who had this giant wheat farm, the biggest wheat farm in Thailand, because they just legalized it. It was cool, but generally it's more like a socialite, Paris Hilton audience. But in the hostels you would meet crazy people. You would meet backpackers, but also researchers, and entrepreneurs, and fledgling entrepreneurs. You met generally more interesting people because you were more in those areas. Yeah.

Sam Parr (00:52:15):
Sorry. Listen to this. Did I tell you about Sam Corcos from Levels? Other Levels. What's the URL?

Shaan Puri (00:52:27):
Levels Health.

Sam Parr (00:52:28):
Levels Health, the thing that goes in your arm. So this guy, so he raised ... Yeah, that's right. So he has a startup that makes eight figures in revenue. It's worth, I think, it was $400 million. So let's just say that he's worth $150 million on paper. Not real, but on paper. He came over to my house and he was with his girlfriend and she made a comment, joking he always gives me a hard time because it takes me forever to pack, but that's ridiculous. I only had this one carryon. And I was like, "Well, how long does it take you to pack, Sam?" He goes, "I don't pack." I was like, "What do you mean?" He had a draw string bag. You know what a draw string bag? It's like a bag where you put [inaudible 00:53:02]

Shaan Puri (00:53:02):
You get these at conferences.

Sam Parr (00:53:04):
Yes. That's all he had, was that bag. And he goes, "Well, you see, I only own the clothes that I'm wearing right now, which is a white T-shirt, a pair of pants, socks, underwear and shoes." I only own that plus another pair of underwear, a jacket and this bag and my laptop, which I have right here on me. That's literally the only thing that I own. I was like, "Wait, what?" He goes, "Yeah, I've been doing this for eight years now or something like that and I only live and I do what you do." He's like he does what you do, Pieter. He lives in these Airbnbs and hotel style setups and he's been doing it for years. And that's all he owned. And I thought that was the craziest shit I've hear in a long time.

Shaan Puri (00:53:42):
He does laundry every day? I don't understand. How's he living off two underwear?

Sam Parr (00:53:44):
Well, I was like, "Well, what if you got to go to a funeral?" What if you have to do this? He goes, "Well, I just go to a thrift store when I need to go and I buy stuff and then I just bring it back." This is my guess, he does it partly out of convenience of not wanting to worry about stuff. I also think that there's a very philosophical thing going on here because it's extreme, but have you ever heard of anyone, Pieter, being that crazy?

Pieter Levels (00:54:12):
Dude, yes. Actually, in 2015 I was in Chiang Mai and there was an Australian guy who would fly from Australia to Thailand to Chiang Mai with only his MacBook Air and the clothes he wore and not even a bag. And he would buy everything he needed on the spot and he would be there for two or three months and he would donate the clothes he wore to charity. And then he would fly back to Australia with his MacBook Air in his hand and I was so impressed.

Speaker 4 (00:54:39):
This data is wrong every freaking time.

Speaker 6 (00:54:42):
Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Speaker 4 (00:54:47):
Whoa, I can see the client's whole history. Calls, support, tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed.

Speaker 6 (00:54:57):
HubSpot, grow better.

Shaan Puri (00:54:59):
See, that's cool. I would do that because I think that actually adds to the experience of traveling. Traveling fully light and then when you get there buying what you need and then giving it away when you leave. I'd actually get down with that, but I rotate two underwear and I put my underwear in my bag with my Macbook. I don't know about that. Yeah.

Pieter Levels (00:55:19):
Yeah. No, but I think it comes down to philosophy. And I do think it sounds pretentious, but I don't care. It comes down to constraining your life in a certain way. I think constraints are good in creativity and life and stuff. And it makes you focus on the really important things in life for you personally. It must be different for everybody. For me, that's girlfriend, friends, health, food, happiness, all that stuff. And creative work, meaningful work, very important. I need to have something to do in my day. I need to feel like I'm contributing something, like Sam said.

Sam Parr (00:55:56):
So what do you own?

Pieter Levels (00:55:58):
So I have a backpack. I have a rolling suitcase, though, a small one. I have clothes, I have a iPhone, MacBook Pro. I have a toothbrush, I have [inaudible 00:56:14]

Sam Parr (00:56:14):
So minimal.

Pieter Levels (00:56:14):
Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:56:14):
If you can name all the things you own, that's amazing.

Pieter Levels (00:56:16):
I'm looking around, I have two Stadia controllers, like game pads. You can use Stadia here. It's cool. Yeah, that's about it, I think. I mean, I have backup phones and stuff because two-factor authentication stuff, but it's not a lot of stuff.

Sam Parr (00:56:33):
You could talk about your family or not, if you want, but do you think you're going to do this when you have kids?

Pieter Levels (00:56:38):
So what does doing it mean? Because I'm mostly settled down. I'm mostly in one place. I'm just trying to not buy stuff from Amazon.

Sam Parr (00:56:45):
Doing it as in not owning stuff. I mean, I think your life is cool, but you have to acknowledge that it's alternative in the sense of 1% of the population does what you do.

Pieter Levels (00:56:57):
Yeah, for sure. I think it's interesting that the stuff I do may or may not become a thing because a lot of things I did eight years ago now are normal. So it might be that the things that [inaudible 00:57:08]

Sam Parr (00:57:08):
Who cares? I mean, if you're happy, who cares if it becomes big?

Pieter Levels (00:57:11):
It's not about me, It's more like it might become major. I think even if you have kids, you can do it in an alternative way. You can go to the thrift store or get secondhand toys or something, secondhand clothes, that kind of stuff, but it all doesn't have to be so consumerist and buying. We can do it in a different way and I'm just trying to figure out how I want to do that and trying to keep the focus on ... Yeah.

Shaan Puri (00:57:40):
Well, we've talked about a Nomad List style red pill before briefly, which was my ... I forgot what it's called. Sam, do you remember the name of the Zero Waste Project or the Zero Project or something like that?

Sam Parr (00:57:51):
Yeah, I think I heard about that.

Shaan Puri (00:57:52):
So basically my wife told me about this. She was like, "Yeah, in the city, in the little town we live in, there's this Facebook group." And what they do is it's not even a barter economy. It's a giving economy. So it's like if you have stuff, you just give it into the giving circle and other people can take it out and then they can give stuff in. I think it's a lot around kid stuff. My kid's grown out of this.

Pieter Levels (00:58:16):
But it doesn't make [inaudible 00:58:19]

Shaan Puri (00:58:19):
It's not like Craigslist randos. It's amongst this trusted group of people who believe the same thing. The Buy Nothing Project. And I think I might have butchered exactly how it works. Sam, do you know a little bit how it works?

Sam Parr (00:58:31):
Well, it's just the idea of instead of reduce, reuse, recycle for plastic and shit, they're like, "No, let's just reuse." We're going to reuse everything. So instead of buying a new toy, we're going to go get one for free and then we're going to give away when we're done. It's just a mindset. And then there's a bunch of companies in the space, but the big one is this buy nothing series of Facebook groups where it's just like I'm giving away these children's clothes, come get them.

Pieter Levels (00:58:59):
Yeah. I mean, that's nice. It doesn't make any sense. You have a baby and it grows out of its clothes every month or something or every two months. So why would you buy everything new if you can ask your family for clothes they already wore or whatever? It makes more sense to me personally. Yeah.

Sam Parr (00:59:18):
Who do you want to be like? Who do you admire and who do you want to be like? Because the reason why people buy for their kids is because they want their kids to have Jordans. So they look cool for other people because they want to impress other people. Who do you want to impress and who do you want to be like, you think? Who do you look up to?

Pieter Levels (00:59:38):
I like Derek Sivers. I don't know if you know Derek Sivers.

Sam Parr (00:59:40):
Yeah. Tell me about him. Who is he?

Pieter Levels (00:59:44):
He started a company called CD Baby in the '90s, I think, or in early 2000s, which was one of the first indie music distributors, where you could send your music as a indie musician. And they would press the CDs for you and they would send it to your customers and stuff. And they're also now on Spotify and stuff and he sold this for $30 million. I interviewed him for my [inaudible 01:00:06] actually. He's really nice guy, the most nice guy in startups, I think. And he writes a lot, writes a lot of books now. And he's very philosophical, also nomadic. He's been in living in Singapore, he lives in New Zealand, lives in US and stuff. If you go through his website, sivers.org, I think he writes very much same concepts that I talk about, about simple life. Yeah, it's hard to describe him, but I think that's a very inspirational guy to me.

Pieter Levels (01:00:40):
I think I want to impress my parents, but they're already happy with me, so it doesn't really matter. I want to try and have a stable happiness because I've been depressed a lot. I've been anxious, especially when traveling. You go crazy in hotel rooms alone. Traveling, it brings you very deep into your own self and stuff. And I think the most important thing for me is to impress myself by just being stable and having a stable happy life with people around me and a wholesome life.

Shaan Puri (01:01:18):
What part of your life are you not impressed by for either yourself or Derek Sivers or any of those people? You just mentioned [inaudible 01:01:27]

Sam Parr (01:01:26):
Like the lifestyle, you mean?

Shaan Puri (01:01:28):
Yeah. What part of your life is not at that point where you feel like it's not impressive in that way?

Pieter Levels (01:01:33):
Well, I want to have a family, too, like you guys. And that's what I'm working on. Yeah, that's more of a focus now.

Shaan Puri (01:01:46):
Pretty easy, by the way. You just got to do one thing. I'll tell you about that later.

Pieter Levels (01:01:49):
You got to find the right girlfriend and then you need to see if they're not crazy. You need to connect and all this stuff. And I think that's it.

Sam Parr (01:01:58):
Shaan, you have a ... Go ahead. I want to hear this answer.

Pieter Levels (01:02:01):
No, the thing about Elon Musk, every time Elon Musk presents something, you're like, "Fuck, that's so cool." Why am I building internet websites? This is my only life I have or I'm going to die. I should do something bigger, but then I have to bring myself back to like, "No, it's cool. You're doing okay." Doesn't really need to be bigger, but everybody wants to make space rockets, but it's just so hard to do that.

Sam Parr (01:02:26):
Shaan, you have a dog. A little dog. I've got a big dog.

Pieter Levels (01:02:32):
I love dogs. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:02:34):
Yeah, so you like animals. I love owning animals, big, aggressive looking dogs. That's my thing. I'm a weirdo. How do you live this? I want to live a little bit more like you. And I can do it, A, now because I have a little bit of money so I can just pay for fancier Airbnbs that are pet friendly and, B, I can only do it basically in America. Doing this lifestyle abroad with an animal, even in America you either have to fly private or you have to drive most places. I drive most places. How do you live this life with an animal?

Pieter Levels (01:03:07):
I don't have animals, but I want them. I had two cats with my ex-girlfriend and it was actually interesting. We went in Bangkok to this luxury apartment hotel and they were cat friendly. And it was this high society of Bangkok people with cute cats and cute dogs. In Asia, all the dogs are small. They like small dogs. I like big dogs, too, like you, Sam. And they walk around in the hotel and it's super cute. And they have cats and dog ice cream and stuff and food. And they have little beds for them to sleep in and stuff and everything is service. And that's another big market, I think, tech people with pets and stuff. They want to travel as well.

Sam Parr (01:03:44):
Shaan, have you guys looked into flying in America with an animal?

Shaan Puri (01:03:49):
Why do you think I don't go places, dude? What am I supposed to do with my dog?

Sam Parr (01:03:53):
Well, your animal's under 20 pounds, right?

Shaan Puri (01:03:55):
Yeah, she is, but that also means she's not tough enough to do all this stuff. We're like how's she going to handle this experience of going on a seven hour flight or whatever?

Sam Parr (01:04:07):
Yeah, but the dog's able to. I don't know if she's physically able to, but she's allowed to. You could put it in a carrier and put it on your lap or in the above whatever, the suitcase thing. And if you have an animal that's above 20 pounds ...

Shaan Puri (01:04:22):
Who's putting their dog in the above thing? You can put your dog down [inaudible 01:04:25]

Sam Parr (01:04:26):
It's not that fucked up. I don't know, dude. It's like putting a blanket over a bird cage. It's all right. I don't know. Or you put it underneath there, whatever you fucking do. I don't have one of these things, but that's what they say on the directions when you look online. If you have an animal above 20 pounds, you basically cannot. This whole emotional support animal thing, that's nonsense or that's getting phased out.

Pieter Levels (01:04:52):
Yeah, I heard about that.

Sam Parr (01:04:53):
You cannot bring an animal, a dog, on a flight. I'm always amazed that for popular routes they don't have a once a month or twice a month animal friendly route.

Pieter Levels (01:05:03):
Dude, it's absolutely going to happen. It's a huge growing market, I think, because lot of rich tech people are not having kids. Sorry.

Shaan Puri (01:05:10):
Right. I was going to say I read something that one airline is being like we'll fly pets. I think they do a lot of pets in the cargo or whatever because most airlines have been facing that out. And I think it's Southwest. I forgot which airline. Some airline is making bank because they take all the pets and it was a differentiator. It's like bags fly free, but it's like we let you fly your pet and everybody else is saying no nowadays.

Pieter Levels (01:05:32):
Man, I think you can do it. I think it's all about slowmading. So if you move, let's say, every six months, it's not that bad for the dog or the cat. And you give them a stable life in where you arrive and not too much chaos and stuff. I think it's okay. I think it's not okay if you keep moving every week or every month. That might be a little stressful for the dog and the cat, but six months, it's okay. And especially you get the ... What?

Shaan Puri (01:05:58):
You had a great tweet. It was if you don't have a dog in your profile picture on Twitter, are you even trying?

Pieter Levels (01:06:04):
That's a grow fact. It's the biggest grow fact, right?

Shaan Puri (01:06:06):
Sam has one, right? You have a Facebook picture, I think.

Pieter Levels (01:06:09):
Yeah, dude. This guy used this on Tinder, right? This was a Tinder dating trick because they swipe right for the dog, not for you, but they still swipe right.

Sam Parr (01:06:18):
I've noticed there's two hacks. When I was single, if I ever walk around with a niece or nephew or a kid, that's an automatic door opener to meet women. And then the other one was having an aggressive, but nice looking dog. It's like they're disarmed, we're good.

Shaan Puri (01:06:37):
And why does it have to be aggressive looking, but nice? Is that one of those things where it's like dog owners look like their pets? And so if your dog looks a certain way, they also think that about you?

Sam Parr (01:06:47):
They want to heal you. Women want to heal you sometimes. It's seeing a guy with sleeve tattoos who smoke cigarettes and a tattoo under his eye who just wants to spend time and cuddle. You're eclectic. I don't know, it just works. Don't ask me, but that just works.

Pieter Levels (01:07:11):
Dude, I love [inaudible 01:07:12] dogs, by the way. They're the big white polar bear dog. And I think it looks like me, but it's so fluffy.

Sam Parr (01:07:19):
That's a very Asian move of you. They're very popular in Asia, right?

Pieter Levels (01:07:23):
Yeah. I've seen them here, too, but yeah.

Sam Parr (01:07:28):
Is there anything that people assume about your life and your lifestyle and your businesses that you ... For example, with the hustle as well as Shaan's Milk Road, a lot of people are like, "That's it? It's just a fucking newsletter? You just write these words and you just hit send? That's so easy. Anyone can do it." And it's like, no, it's actually a user acquisition play. You know how to do that. And then it's also you're just not good at writing. You have to be good and that's just a talent. You either have it or you don't. And so that's some misconceptions about our businesses. What about yours? Is there anything that people always assume and you're like no? Because anyone can copy you.

Pieter Levels (01:08:04):
Yeah, I think generally people think that every website or app or company they're a customer of, that it's more simple than it actually is because you can't see behind the hood. And it's actually way more complicated than you think because there's so many edge cases in every business that you need to code if statements for or build little scripts for special features. It's much more complicated. And I think people realize that when they start because people always clone you. They make a copycat of your website and it somehow doesn't take off because they've been able to copy the outside of it, the aesthetic, but they don't know what's happening under the hood. So it's much more complicated. Dude, a job board is much more complicated than you think. Fuck, how do you explain this? There's so many little parts that especially companies want. They want invoices for every little thing they add.

Pieter Levels (01:08:54):
The price is dynamic, that kind of stuff. I changed job post pricing based on how many people post jobs on my site, for example. There's so much stuff happening behind the curtains that you don't see. Yeah, it's much more complicated. I also think the misconception about ... Yeah, sorry.

Sam Parr (01:09:09):
And a lot of your stuff is automated to where you don't have to be involved. It runs itself. You said everything's automated.

Pieter Levels (01:09:16):
Almost 99.9%.

Sam Parr (01:09:17):
And to post on your job board, it ranges from a $100 to $1,000, I think, whatever the huge range.

Pieter Levels (01:09:22):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:09:25):
I'm tinkering with something that costs many, many thousands of dollars a year. How would you figure out how to do that? And so in my head I'm like, "Fuck, I got to hire a bunch of sales people. That sucks." Do you think that you could automate most things even that are high ticketed items?

Pieter Levels (01:09:42):
For sure. Dude, I sell job post bundles for $50K via Stripe, which is amazing to me.

Sam Parr (01:09:51):
How do you do that?

Pieter Levels (01:09:52):
So you make a page, it's called buy a bundle, and you can go to remoteok.com/buy-bundle and you'll see a slider where you can make your own bundle and get a discount based on it. And it's all automated and you add your credit card and then you pay $50K or $40K, whatever.

Sam Parr (01:10:12):
And how many people do that?

Pieter Levels (01:10:17):
It's 30% of the revenue, I think, bundles.

Sam Parr (01:10:18):
No shit. So someone's using a debit card or whatever for $50K.

Pieter Levels (01:10:22):
Yeah, dude, these company cards. This is lagging information. People don't know the company cards have been upgraded, I think, because they're using it for much more these days. Really, it's a lot of money. And I have no idea. I never thought it. I'm not hiring people, I don't know how this works. I just tried. I think companies ask me, like, "Can we buy a few job posts for in the future?" I'm like, "Okay, I'll make this thing." And a lot of companies use this. So you figure out the features that people want based on talking to them, of course.

Sam Parr (01:10:51):
Dude, I'm looking at this sales page to buy bundles. So buy 25 jobs is $22,000. You do something interesting on your sales pages, is you just pack it with information. That's totally the right move, but you pack it with text. You use icons to break it up.

Pieter Levels (01:11:07):
The emojis. Yeah, I use emojis a lot. Yeah. No, it looks like a circus, but it works. It's not well designed. It's not like minimalist design. It's just I just add stuff every day and it just keeps growing, but it works.

Sam Parr (01:11:24):
What's the biggest purchase someone has made? I can scroll all the way up to ...

Shaan Puri (01:11:28):
I got another call I got to run to. Pieter, this has been amazing. I got to go.

Pieter Levels (01:11:32):
Yeah, nice to meet you, Shaan.

Shaan Puri (01:11:32):
See you.

Sam Parr (01:11:35):
What's been the biggest purchase that you've had? This scrolls all the way up to $150,000.

Pieter Levels (01:11:40):
I think $50K or something. Around $50K. Maybe $49K.

Sam Parr (01:11:43):
But that happens a lot of times?

Pieter Levels (01:11:44):
Yeah, via Stripe. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:11:47):
Dude, this is crazy. Yeah, I'm working on this thing and it's like $10K a year and I'm like, "Man, I'm going to have to get on the phone all the time," but seeing you is quite inspiring.

Pieter Levels (01:12:01):
I want to use these location service APIs to figure out where are people traveling to, for example. And it's always like you need to do a sales call, you need to contact us and stuff. And I get so annoyed with it. And I know people on Twitter get annoyed with it. They can't get a price directly and sign up. Yeah, I think it's much easier to do like this, like a sales flow.

Sam Parr (01:12:23):
I think it's easier. I would argue maybe [inaudible 01:12:26]

Pieter Levels (01:12:25):
It's easier for now. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:12:27):
It's easier for you, but I would actually argue there's a world where it's not as effective, though, because I'm in the same boat as you. I don't want to have to do all this crap and I'm not naturally a salesperson, but when I hired a sales team they were shockingly good at drumming up demand. And I remember a cool podcast with the founder of Squarespace, I think it was, and he was like you. He's an engineer. He's like I don't want to leave my room. I don't like talking to people. I like freedom, this and that. And he goes a huge mistake I made was I looked down on sales people and I looked down on this type of pricing where you get them on the phone,

Pieter Levels (01:13:04):
I think I got that,

Sam Parr (01:13:04):
Get them on the phone. But he was like I looked down on it and I was wrong. It was effective. They created demand for a product and that surprised me most. So I don't know. I think [inaudible 01:13:16]

Pieter Levels (01:13:16):
No, I think you're right. I think my problem is that it's very hard to meet good salespeople or to find them. And it's unclear for me how I can hire them. And how can I rate a person to hire them as a good salesperson? I don't know what's a good salesperson. And I've never done outbounds, almost never done outreach and stuff. And I'm scared that if I hire salespeople, I need to manage them. And then they might fuck up, they might start spamming everybody in LinkedIn. And then it becomes a screenshot thing on Twitter, like Pieter Levels is spamming with his website and stuff. So it might turn bad. And I think you're right. If you get to the right salespeople, it can work. I'd never been able to find those people.

Sam Parr (01:14:00):
It just matters what you're optimizing for. If you're optimizing for happiness and a good life, do it your way. Your way is working really well. If you want to grow at a certain rate per year and you want to really push it, I do think you do need a sales team, but that's not what you're optimizing for. You're optimizing for freedom and happiness.

Pieter Levels (01:14:23):
Yeah. And I also think there's different types of companies. For example, there's companies that ask for a lot of forms. They want a W8 form, the old US IRS forms and stuff. They want you to sign everything. They want you to sign an NDA and there's some companies that just enter their credit card on Stripe and it's done. And it's different customers. And the customers that ask for a lot of questions on email, they generally convert less for me to pay less money and they are more of a hassle to do customer support for and stuff. So you also get different types of customers. If you do it all automatic, you get more modern customers that are easier to deal with, I think.

Sam Parr (01:14:59):
Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about?

Pieter Levels (01:15:06):
No, I think maybe transparency. The reason I'm so transparent is, like I said, I think it's very important to be honest and to show other people that you can build a nice indie company like this by sharing every ups and downs of it. Everybody else is only sharing the good things and we're growing so fast and we're hiring and we're funded and blah, blah, blah. And I think it would be cool if we did business maybe in a more wholesome way, where we share everything and share the ups and downs. And maybe not grow super, super, super big, but more in a wholesome manner.

Sam Parr (01:15:50):
I like that, but I have a few critiques. So you remember Buffer? So Buffer, they did the whole shtick. They did it even more, equally as extreme as you, I would say, but they revealed [inaudible 01:16:04]

Pieter Levels (01:16:04):
They're one of my inspirations, for sure.

Sam Parr (01:16:06):
But they revealed everyone's salary. And I think they did it as a marketing shtick. They did it because they're like, "Our products okay, it's good enough, but let's come up with a cool schtick so we stick out and it aligns with our philosophy." It's great and it worked really well for them, but I actually think that it probably hurts them after a while. It's really hard to do that after 100 or 150. I don't know what the number is. Some amount of employees because you're like, "Dude, I don't want my all out there." And if I was you, when we sold our company, I didn't exactly reveal how much I made because I'm like, "Man, I don't want to be a target." I don't want people to take advantage of me. I don't want to be judged in a particular way. I don't want that type of attention, so I'd rather just say round whole numbers instead of exactly what I do.

Pieter Levels (01:16:50):
No, there's a real security risk, for sure. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:16:53):
You don't want to talk about where you are right now and part of it is because you're [inaudible 01:17:00]

Pieter Levels (01:16:59):
Yeah, for sure. 100%. Yeah, 100%.

Sam Parr (01:17:01):
So that's part of the downside, but at the same time maybe it agrees with your life philosophy and also it's a pretty sick marketing schtick.

Pieter Levels (01:17:13):
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's hard to stop it because I've been doing it for so long. It's become part of my identity. It would be hard to hide all this stuff now. And they're like, "Where did this open page go?" Why are you not sharing anymore? I'm like I'm just done with it now. And I do think it's this recurring marketing machine that I think is a big part of why my businesses work, became successful and why I got a lot of audience on Twitter, is because of this. I cannot deny that. So it's very hard to quit that once you've been doing this for so long.

Sam Parr (01:17:45):
Yeah, that's why I'm nervous about even doing it in the first place.

Pieter Levels (01:17:48):
Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:17:51):
I haven't gone hard on YouTube or any other social platform because I'm like I don't want a commitment. You got to keep with it.

Pieter Levels (01:17:58):
Yeah. Dude, I wanted to do YouTube, as well, and I have the same problem. Yeah. I'm like this is going to be a new recurring activity I need to do every week. I need to upload a video, make a video. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:18:07):
I think there's a world where you could do seasons, like a TV show has a season. I think there's a world where you could do seasons and do quite well, but the majority of people do it regularly. And I'm like, man, I don't want to get on that treadmill. That's scary.

Pieter Levels (01:18:21):
No, I think it burns you out. Look at all the YouTubers burning out.

Sam Parr (01:18:24):
They all bail.

Pieter Levels (01:18:25):
Yeah, it's extreme schedule. Yeah, I think it might be interesting if I just sit in front on the laptop like this and I just tell the stuff I know and I think instead of writing it down and just making little videos. Derek Sivers also did that. He makes little videos about small topics, five minutes, explain something and the next video.

Sam Parr (01:18:42):
Yeah, Alex Hormozi was doing it. He came on our podcast, Alex Hormozi. He's been doing it lately and he loves it. And it seems like a lot work, but not that much work. No more work in this podcast and I don't consider this podcast to be too much work, but it works well. Dude, thanks for coming on. This has been fun. I hope you will come on more often and we'll do a little more brainstorming next time.

Pieter Levels (01:19:08):
Yeah. Dude, it was super fun. Thanks for having me. Super cool.

Sam Parr (01:19:12):
You said you were nervous because we were going to ask [inaudible 01:19:14] I don't think we asked anything. We didn't ask anything crazy.

Pieter Levels (01:19:19):
Yeah, cool.

Sam Parr (01:19:19):
There's not much to ask when you tell everyone on the internet about everything you do.

Pieter Levels (01:19:23):
Yeah. This is always when the good part of the podcast starts, right? Because you end it and then the real shit.

Sam Parr (01:19:30):
Hopefully not. The real stuff I hope was going on the whole time.

Pieter Levels (01:19:35):
Yeah. No, it was great. Yeah.

Sam Parr (01:19:36):
Dude, thanks. This is awesome. Pimp out your stuff. So it's @levels?

Pieter Levels (01:19:40):
Yeah, it's twitter.com/levelsio, so L-E-V-E-L-S-I-O. And there's all the links for my websites there, so you can click from there.

Sam Parr (01:19:50):
Thanks, dude. Thanks for coming.

I was a guest on the Life Done Differently podcast with Neil Witten. I know him because he acquired Sheet2Site from my friend Andrey. I really enjoyed being on their podcast as it went way beyond the standard startup questions and delved more into life and philosophy of why we do what we do. I hope you enjoy it!

Here's the transcript:

Neil Witten (00:00:08):
Hello, welcome to The Life Done Differently podcast with me, Neil Witten and my co-host Ray Richards. Join us on our journey to find out what separates the doers from the thinkers.

Ray Richards (00:00:20):
Hello, and welcome to our conversation with Pieter Levels. Pieter is the man behind nomadlist.com, remoteok.com, inflationchart.com, rebase.co, and much more. Pieter, is hard to describe if you're after an old world description. He's most certainly a business guy and a software developer guy, but he works remotely. Sometimes he charges for his creations, sometimes he doesn't. He does his best to, in his own words, practice radical honesty with himself and others. He's unafraid to experiment, to play and learn as a student that doing something different can have unexpected and very rewarding consequences. He works with a few trusted friends, but creatively he's the man. Neil has been telling me for six months that a conversation with Pieter will be fun and interesting. He was right. Pieter is in charge of himself. He's not going with the flow unless it serves him. He's not short of money, but he doesn't own a home and his laptop seems to be as extravagant as it gets.

Ray Richards (00:01:29):
He keeps things simple. For someone so successfully immersed in the world of digital, he has a level of self-awareness that ensures he spends time IRLing. For the uninitiated, as I was before this conversation, IRL stands for In Real Life. That means no screens just doing stuff out there in the real world. Amen to that. Pieter seems to be on a quest to find the joy in life, but fully understand that what brings joy today may not be what brings joy tomorrow. It's all an adventure. Enjoy Pieter Levels thinking and doing for yourself.

Pieter Levels (00:02:16):
Okay, Perfect man.

Neil Witten (00:02:18):
Cool.

Pieter Levels (00:02:19):
Nice to see you guys. Nice

Ray Richards (00:02:20):
Nice to see you.

Neil Witten (00:02:21):
How are you?

Pieter Levels (00:02:23):
Really good. I just woke up so I'm having my coffee, so if my brain doesn't work yet, that's why.

Neil Witten (00:02:30):
That's all right.

Ray Richards (00:02:30):
I've been awake for a couple of hours and my brain isn't working.

Pieter Levels (00:02:34):
Yeah, it happens. It happens.

Neil Witten (00:02:37):
Pieter, what time zone are you on?

Pieter Levels (00:02:41):
This is Thailand time, so I think it's called in indoor China time, but usually I wake up noon or something. Today's late because yesterday we were late drinking mock tills in the [inaudible 00:02:52] bar, no alcohol, but still. Usually I wake up around noon or 1:00 PM or 2:00 PM or something.

Neil Witten (00:02:59):
Let's start here because it's really intriguing. Because you travel a lot, do you move into time zones of different countries or do you try and stay in a Pieter time zone?

Pieter Levels (00:03:12):
Yes, so the myth is that I travel a lot. I don't travel a lot. I'm a very slowmad, so I-

Neil Witten (00:03:18):
Slowmad. Love that.

Pieter Levels (00:03:20):
When I started nomading 2014, I did travel a lot. I was, every, sorry, I put the microphone a little bit closer. When I started in 2014, I did travel a lot. I was, I think every few months, maybe in every month in a different place and before that I was backpacking. Backpacking, only have one month to see 12, well that's too much. It's five countries, so you're going really fast from city to city. I think that it burns you out after a while because essentially you do the same thing in every city anyway. You sleep, you wake up, you have coffee, you meet people, you work a little bit, you see the city a little bit, you do things, but it starts getting the same in every city after a few years.

Neil Witten (00:04:10):
I've noticed that for some reason you try and find tall things to climb up when you go to new cities. Why do we do that?

Pieter Levels (00:04:20):
What do you mean tall things? What do you mean?

Neil Witten (00:04:22):
So you find tall skyscrapers, tall churches, tall buildings, tall hills.

Ray Richards (00:04:29):
I think it's just you, Neil. That might be just you.

Neil Witten (00:04:31):
Me, maybe it's me.

Pieter Levels (00:04:32):
I think it's just Neil. It is awesome. This is fake news.

Ray Richards (00:04:36):
Well that's much actually big fair. In Brighton we have the i360, which is the tallest thing in Brighton and that is the tourist destination. So maybe you're right.

Neil Witten (00:04:44):
Yeah, I'm sure.

Pieter Levels (00:04:44):
Yeah, same in Amsterdam. Man, it's always funny if this is not rude against all the UK and Europeans, but if you look how tall everything is in Asia and then I go to Amsterdam and they're like... The main tourist attraction is a building. I think it's the Amsterdam Tower. Let's see the height. It's 80 meters, 80 meters.

Neil Witten (00:05:10):
That's massive or the Netherlands though. There's nothing too apart, apart from the people. The people are the tallest thing in the world.

Pieter Levels (00:05:17):
No, no. The people are taller in that building. That's the problem. You don't fit in. But things are really tall in Asia. Generally, I like ground level because I grew up in a ground level. We all do in UK and Holland. I think we grew up usually grew up in ground level houses and it feels nice, but I don't really care. I like ground level also, but in Asia, the higher, the more status is. It's really very metaphorical.

Ray Richards (00:05:45):
Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Pieter Levels (00:05:48):
I grew up where my parents were... They didn't like flats, we'd call them. Maybe UK same, flats. They said it's good to have your own house on the ground and I was like, "Okay", but in Asia they want the top floors and that's status and stuff and I'm like, "Whoa, but you're stuck in this building so high. How do you get out?" I don't know.

Neil Witten (00:06:11):
Sure. We're going to pick up on a few more of these kinds of things. I think as you experience and live amongst other cultures, you start to recognize those things that make a lot of sense because they're everything we've ever known. Suddenly you go to another culture and it makes no sense anymore because it's the opposite. I wonder how much that might, if you've traveled a lot, how much that starts to change your mind, your perspective on the world.

Pieter Levels (00:06:41):
Yeah, I think it's a really good question. It's so interesting. It's a really a psychological journey too if you're always abroad a lot and you're nomading and stuff and you're not in your home country, not even in the west. I was really depressed and really anxious. You go through these years of feeling lost and what are you doing with your life and where are you because you don't have a geographical tie to your home country anymore where you grew up and stuff. For me it was like I lived in Amsterdam a lot of my life and it was my last city in Holland. It's psychologically really wrecking and transformative and destructive in a way because you rebuild as a person. I read on Hacker News, back in the day a few years ago, there was a lot of nomads who go suicidal. A lot of them would go depressed. Removing the ties from your home to then just go anywhere is very dangerous and it can be very intense emotionally, psychologically. Now I feel good and I think the reason for that is that nowadays I always travel with friends. We're always in a group and I make sure I'm never alone anymore. You need friends, you need a girlfriend or boyfriend or something. You need a partner, you need stuff to. So your identity I think comes from contextualizing your environment and stuff from the context of how do you fit in an environment. If the environment is constantly influx, you don't know. You only talk to strangers. You don't really exist anymore as a person.

Ray Richards (00:08:31):
So that's something about home, isn't it? Redefining home, Home can be a place, but it can be people as well. Is that what you're saying?

Pieter Levels (00:08:42):
Yeah. I think so. I talked to a therapist about it and she said similar where she said it can be people, it can be... She's like, "Bring some object with you that you put in your room or something to make it home." And I'm like, "Yeah." It didn't really work but I know what she was trying to say. I think you're right. The home can be redefined. I think that the jealousy of always people at home with a regular life is not completely fair because having home tie is really important. It's a different life and the safety and the comfort and the psychological comfort of a home is... You don't necessarily, but I think it is important to have something like that. Anyway, it's psychologically really, really challenging in the first few years for sure.

Pieter Levels (00:09:33):
Slowing down has to do with it also, you slow down because you want to create more ties. It's nice to live, for example, in two places. That's my plan now, live in Portugal and live maybe in Bangkok or Bali or something for the winter because Europe gets called a new winter. But that creates more ties. You have proximity in repetition and friendship and relationships need proximity in repetition. You need to be near each other and you need to repeat interactions. That's how you become friends. If you go to the same coffee shop every day, you will in inevitably, even if you're socially maladapted, you'll inevitably make friends after three months because you go there every day. That's how it works.

Ray Richards (00:10:11):
Yeah, well I think routines, when you are so repetition is routines and it's just so important. It's so important. Neil and I know each other through doing something different. And we've always been promoting the idea of stepping into the unknown, stepping out of your comfort zone and all that. But it has to be balanced with those routines because if you constantly have two feet in the unknown, it's chaos.

Pieter Levels (00:10:41):
That's a great statement. Yeah. Two feet, because you fall down.

Ray Richards (00:10:45):
Yeah, that's right. If you've got feet in the known, that's a rut. And what this podcast is actually about, in many senses is how to work that balance between having one foot in the known and one foot and the unknown. I think it's really interesting to hear you say that people get depressed and anxious and just the whole mental health can go in the wrong direction because there's no stability.

Pieter Levels (00:11:19):
The environment is influx and it's so difficult to explain to people who are new because a lot of people now want go nomad because of remote work and stuff. Obviously my websites are about it and I'm promoter of it but I've always tried to promote it in a realistic way, not this, because before Nomad List and stuff website, there was all these shady websites like Live Your Dream Lifestyle on the beach, all this bullshit and it's obviously not a dream lifestyle. It's obviously very challenging. Then when you get everything together, your friends are near, you have a relationship, you go to the gym, you eat well, you make enough money to afford a nice place, then you're like, "Okay now it works," and that takes years. It's so weird that it's painted as this Instagram dream lifestyle.

Ray Richards (00:12:09):
Do you think if you'd have had a conversation with someone who'd have shared what you've just shared with you back then, you would've understood that and taken the advice? Or do you think you just have to learn it for yourself?

Pieter Levels (00:12:26):
The funny thing is, I didn't know anything when I started. The only thing was, my friend told me because I graduated with master's degree in Rotterdam business entrepreneurship and my friend was like, "You know, you can work on your laptop because I had a YouTube channel for music and I was making $2,000 a month." And he's like, "Why don't you just buy a laptop and then go travel a little bit?" And I'm like, "Okay." I didn't know about diginomics, I didn't know about.

Pieter Levels (00:12:53):
I remember moving out of my house and my neighbor, this I think 50 year old guy was like, "Do you know Tim Ferriss?" I'm like, "No, I've no idea." He wrote this book about what you're going to do now. I'm like, "What? Really?" So I was like, "Okay." I didn't even read the book, just ignored it. I just flew somewhere. I flew to Bangkok actually and then I went to Chiang Mai in Thailand because I'd been backpacking here before and I didn't know anything. I didn't know even that there was any scene of people doing this. There was only 20 people in Chiang Mai back then and maybe there was 10,000 nomads in the world or something. It was very, very low. Anyway, I didn't prepare anything and it was the fun part about it. It was exciting because I have no idea what was happening. It was all new.

Neil Witten (00:13:44):
What were you searching for back then, Pieter, if you can remember. So let's go back to some of the stuff that was going on in your world and what led towards the YouTube channel.

Pieter Levels (00:13:55):
Well I think, so the channel was much earlier. It was 2008 because I had a music career. Actually I was in the UK a lot. I was doing drum and bass music. Drum and bass, maybe you guys know it.

Neil Witten (00:14:05):
We know it, yeah.

Pieter Levels (00:14:07):
Okay, yeah. So pendulum and stuff, [inaudible 00:14:11] famous classic. I was obsessed with drum and bass music and I would go to London to parties. I would also a DJ in London. I would DJ in Holland. I had my own club night and stuff. I produced genres. That was the point. I made my own music. So I stuck out from all the other DJs in Holland because they didn't know how to produce. I was good on computer so I could learn to make music on the computer and then I would play it in the club and stuff. And so I made my own album. I released it. People bought it, but it didn't become the world's famous super success I was planning to become so I was like, "Okay." What I did was I uploaded it to YouTube, my music and back then nobody uploaded music to YouTube. This was 2007, 2008.

Ray Richards (00:14:55):
Well why did you upload it to YouTube?

Pieter Levels (00:14:58):
For promotion because I needed to promote this album. I went to the factory and we got thousand copies pressed real CDs with the whole, I designed the whole artwork and everything and I needed to sell these CDs. I had some audience. I think I had a MailChimp newsletter or something, but I was like, "Okay, maybe I'll just upload it to YouTube." I knew Adobe After Effects, so I put it in Premier and I made a video. Back then it was really... Nobody understands this. Back then there was music files, MP3 or WAV files and it was video files and it didn't make any sense to put your music in a video file and put it on YouTube because YouTube was for home videos or viral videos and stuff and vloggers. Anyway, I did that and that was accidental success and it became the second biggest channel in Holland.

Pieter Levels (00:15:56):
It became this whole music empire of different genres, first drum and bass and dubstep, very important dubstep blew up at 2010. YouTube started paying me money first, a hundred dollars and thousand dollars, $2,000 at some point, $8,000 per month. I was a student at university. So I was like, "Yeah, this is great." I was studying business, so I was like, "Well this is a business now. It pivoted. It moved from artistic music to... Oh this is our music business on YouTube, making money to then graduating and then my friend saying, "Can you also make these videos on your laptop?" And I was like, "I tried to find a laptop that could render these videos." Yeah, that works.

Ray Richards (00:16:40):
Interesting, isn't it because what you did there was, you said it was accidental, but you were innovating, You were just thinking, "Well let's try this." Sometimes those innovations work and sometimes they don't.

Pieter Levels (00:16:59):
Yeah, but it's always for a different reason. You're doing it then what it turns out to be successful-

Ray Richards (00:17:04):
Yeah, that's right.

Pieter Levels (00:17:05):
The purpose was marketing myself, selling these CDs, these thousand CDs for $10 or something or $6 and it became something completely different. If I didn't make that CD myself, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you because all that stuff led to this.

Ray Richards (00:17:21):
You didn't know. You don't know. There might have been another route we'd have got you at some point.

Pieter Levels (00:17:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Neil Witten (00:17:31):
That's what I'm intrigued by. Ray's thinking in the same way that I'm thinking about this, that you described it as a happy coincidence because you put your stuff onto YouTube, but there was some reason why you decided to do that. It might have been because you had some skills that other people didn't have. But beyond that, you also imagine something about what that might lead to. And that could be a whole range of different things. There's some amount of creative mind that you're applying to something and then the other thing is that you noticed. You noticed a hundred dollars, then a thousand dollars, then $2,000 and you stayed the course long enough to see that to $8,000 where suddenly you then were able to recognize that there is a way of being able to earn money, create money that was less traditional.

Pieter Levels (00:18:23):
Well who would quit when you make more and more money every month? Who would delete this YouTube, right? Yeah.

Neil Witten (00:18:28):
Especially when you're student.

Pieter Levels (00:18:31):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was loads of money. It's still loads of money. One thing you said, Neil, about skills. Interesting thing was I was doing graphic design also. I was always doing stuff on a computer. As a teenager, when I was even 9 years old or something and I learned Photoshop first to do graphic design stuff and arts and then I learned After Effects, which was pretty much Photoshop for video where you could also have layers and you could move all these layers and you could do motion graphics. I was obsessed with motion graphics. It would look so cool like a camera. I wanted to become a motion graphics designer when I was maybe 14 or something I think.

Pieter Levels (00:19:08):
Those skills of After Effects I used later on YouTube. Most people didn't know how After Effects worked or Premier back then. Now a lot more. Nobody knew how video works. I could use that to render my MP3 files as videos with my photo on it and upload on YouTube where the only other content that was on YouTube, like I said, came from camera, so you upload from your camera to YouTube maybe. Right? So that's a skill that I had before and then it became useful again.

Ray Richards (00:19:38):
And that was making you stand out from the crowd?

Pieter Levels (00:19:42):
Yeah because other people didn't know how After Effects worked or even design with Photoshop, especially 2008. People were much less skilled at computer stuff than now. Now everybody can... Software is also much easier now but back then After Effect would Crash, the Photoshop would crash. It was all quite difficult. It's interesting how it all happened.

Neil Witten (00:20:08):
So let's go back to that moment where you decided that you were going to book your flight and go off and start nomading, not knowing what nomading was then. Can you tell us more about it? The YouTube channel was away, you were making some money, but at that point you were probably knowing it or not knowing. You're searching for something. Take us back there and tell us more about what was going on in your head? What was going on in your life? What do you think you were looking for as a next step?

Pieter Levels (00:20:38):
Okay, so I think my brain is like... I don't believe in ADHD or ADD, but people always say, You're quite hyper." Could also be the coffee. I do think my brain goes quite fast because the comments on my YouTube... I do this startup presentation sometimes on YouTube and the comments are always like, "Okay, you need to play it on 0.75 speeds for it to be normal." So I realized I go fast. I think fast at 1.5 times probably. I realized my whole life that I didn't want to have a big corporate life, like a nine to five thing. I was already making graphic arts about intense, but corporate enslavement. You see a guy in his suit.

Ray Richards (00:21:27):
Oh really? Wow."

Pieter Levels (00:21:29):
All these posters I was making at 11. I don't know where they came from, but there was something there that I was against big corporate and this managers and this office and this vibe. I was alternative kid kind. I was skater, so skateboarder. And I like, "Fuck the system, fuck the man."

Neil Witten (00:21:51):
Let me just ask the obvious question so I don't miss it, Pieter, but why study business then?

Pieter Levels (00:21:57):
It's amazing. Great question. You're smart guy, Neil. Because-

Ray Richards (00:22:00):
Well that question, you wouldn't base it on that question.

Pieter Levels (00:22:06):
He said it now. He said it.

Pieter Levels (00:22:08):
I wanted to... Okay, I'm not a communist, but I wanted to hack the system from within. That was really the reason because I knew that if I didn't make money I'd have to get an office job. So I was like, if I learned this capitalism and economics and business from within as artist guy, musician and designer and graphics and stuff because I knew artists would never get rich because this hardly happens, especially back then there was not NFTs. I knew that I had to learn the system from within to escape it and I really wanted to escape it. That's really the truth. At 16, I already needed to escape this system of going to office. Nothing against it for other people, but for me, it's not my thing. I cannot do it. It's hard for me to even sit in school with teachers telling me what to do. I couldn't do it.

Pieter Levels (00:23:07):
I did elementary school which was Montessori. My parents put me in Montessori and in high school was regular school and I hated high school because you need to sit in this fucking structure. Montessori is really a creative school where you sit in groups, not in a class structure. I think there's teacher and there's sub teachers and stuff and they just tell you what you can do, whatever you want to do, just go play with blocks or play with letters or play with numbers. It's really free and it's always, you sit in groups with four other kids or something and you have your own plants your water, and it's all really cute and very chill school. I think that has been important in how I became, because they let you make mistakes. If you do something strange with your blocks or whatever, they're like, "Wow, that looks cool" instead of "That's wrong." There was never that's wrong, and I think that affected me.

Neil Witten (00:24:08):
Have you ever spoken to your parents about the decision to put you into Montessori, but also the decision then to put you into a traditional school after that?

Pieter Levels (00:24:18):
Well, the high school was my own choice because my brothers were there, but the high school... There was a Montessori high school but it wasn't a good school and this school was the best high school in my hometown.

Neil Witten (00:24:34):
Your parents' choice to put you into Montessori originally?

Pieter Levels (00:24:38):
Yeah because you're [inaudible 00:24:39] you already starts at five or something.

Neil Witten (00:24:41):
Were they doing that because they valued the likely outcome or do you think they were doing it because they recognized creativity in you and thought that would be a better place for you?

Pieter Levels (00:24:54):
Well, I have two older brothers. They also went to Montessori, so we all went to the same school and same high schools. I think they did it because, maybe it's because...
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:25:04]

Pieter Levels (00:25:00):
... I think they did it, because... I mean, maybe it's because they also come from the hippie time, the '60s and stuff, and they're also a little bit like, "Fuck the system," and they're like, "You should think for yourself." It's a lot about upbringing too. "You should think for yourself. Don't trust if everybody like a sheep group all jump into the river. Don't trust them. Don't do the same. Just think for yourself. You're probably right." And that's really good lesson, I think. And "Do what makes you happy. Don't lie. Don't cheat people. Don't scam people. Always do good," ethics, moral, just those basics. And that's already enough kind of to...

Ray Richards (00:25:42):
And I think it's probably quite useful, I would imagine, to get both sides, the Montessori and the mainstream schools. Because if you just have the Montessori, you don't necessarily understand other people's...

Pieter Levels (00:26:00):
Yeah. That's a bubble right. Montessori's a bubble of course. Montessori, I mean. I think it's a little bit upper middle class people anyway. So it's definitely a bubble. And there was more exposure of real worlds at the high school, for sure, and there was even more at university. And then moving out of my hometown to Amsterdam, you're like, "Oh, this is the real world. This is completely different," and this hometown with these schools and completely different world. And then you go travel and you're like, "Wow. It's even crazier." Every time it gets crazy.

Ray Richards (00:26:34):
Yeah, yeah. Well, a friend of mine, I think I said this to Neil the other day, he said to me, he said, "You can only see what you can see. Imagine what else is out there."

Pieter Levels (00:26:44):
Yeah. 100%. And to offend all the American listeners, I tweeted yesterday about I'm excited about the time that Americans realize there's 7.6 billion people outside the US and that's there's a world there, because they're a little bit insulated, not everybody, but some Americans. And that's the whole thing. If you go abroad, if you travel, even to your neighboring country, you learn so much. It's...

Ray Richards (00:27:12):
Do you know what-

Pieter Levels (00:27:13):
Especially if you live there for a few months. Yeah.

Ray Richards (00:27:15):
Do you know what I think if you just go to a different part of your own town, you suddenly start to see. I mean, it's incredible. I mean, I've lived in Brighton for 25 years. I'm now in a different part of town. It's like, "Oh, wow. Oh, wow."

Pieter Levels (00:27:31):
100%. Every town has east, west, south, north, and it's completely different and there's different people living there and you just got to talk to them. And I'm not great at that, because you're right. I should explore my hometown more, but I'm exploring 6,000 miles away. So...

Ray Richards (00:27:47):
Yeah. No. But I think there's a time and a place for exploring far afield [inaudible 00:27:51]. And I think COVID has helped us all in a way explore locally, whether that being the streets around you, further afield in the town around you or your own just spent... When I've been away, I've been away in the UK. And do you know what? It's been absolutely fantastic exploring those places.

Pieter Levels (00:28:14):
100%. 100%. Yeah. I did the same. During COVID, I was in Holland and I explored my parents' neighborhoods. You talk to your neighbors and stuff. We went traveling through Holland. I saw nature I've never seen within Holland. Something called the [foreign language 00:28:31] which is... It looked like a desert with pink, purple grass and it looked psychedelic as fuck. Crazy trees. Crazy wind. I didn't even know that existed. So, yeah, 100%.

Ray Richards (00:28:45):
And I think the people that are listening have probably got their own experiences of that. Certainly when I'm talking to people around me, they've done exactly that. My friend, Nick, he discovered this whole area of woodland that is literally 100 yards from his house that he never knew was there.

Pieter Levels (00:29:02):
Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Man, I think that's a really fun, cute kind of angle of travel also. You don't need to fly really, really far to have a completely different experience. You can find it really close by too. It's all about your own mind and... Yeah.

Neil Witten (00:29:23):
Yeah. I was going to make the point that when we're talking about travel, we're talking about travel in a physical sense, but we could go a bit maybe spiritual and go, "Well, what about the travel in your own head?" And I noticed that you said it almost looks psychedelic. And it made me think and I'm going to ask the question. Have you ventured into any psychedelic worlds, Pieter? And if so, when? And how has that affected your perspective?

Pieter Levels (00:29:55):
Well, I'm in Thailand now, so it's very legal. But no. So I've done mushrooms in Holland when I was 16 or 17, which is really fun. But I threw up over the entire wall of my friend's parents' house. And then-

Ray Richards (00:30:13):
I love the fact that you threw up over into the neighbor's garden or...

Pieter Levels (00:30:18):
No. Into the living room wall. We were sitting [inaudible 00:30:21] and then I threw up next to the TV on the wall, like bleurgh. And then I remember it was with four best friends and we had to clean it, because it's like these fucking parents, they might come home or something. So we were cleaning it with towels, wet towels, and it was everywhere. It was next to the TV. It was there. And then my friend was cleaning behind the TV and he's like, "Pieter it's even behind the TV." And then I was like, "We are doing mushrooms and mushrooms hallucinate. How can vomit be behind the TV when I vomited there and the TV's there?" And I was like, "What if we're just hallucinating vomit everywhere?" And he's like, "Ah, interesting." because it was everywhere. And then after the whole trip, there was no vomit anywhere.

Neil Witten (00:31:13):
So you don't know whether or not that was part of the experience or whether you actually just did a great job of cleaning it up?

Pieter Levels (00:31:18):
Exactly. Maybe I just hallucinated everything. And I told my friends and then they hallucinated it too. So anyway, it was really fun. I did that. I think I did ecstasy, [inaudible 00:31:36] and [inaudible 00:31:36] speed, I think. So it's very... I got really paranoid. [inaudible 00:31:42] made it feel really fake. All these people were fake happy and hugging you at the festivals, like, "Oh, my God." And I met old classmates who I was never friends with and they were like, "Oh, my God. Wow. So great." It felt so fake. I was like, "This is bullshit. We're all on drugs and this is not my thing." And it almost felt also satanic where I was looked left and I saw 10s of 1000s people dancing on techno. And I love techno, but it looked like The Matrix, inner Earth, kind of satanic ritual. And maybe this was not good drugs. But then I did [inaudible 00:32:20] later. It was really nice, was happy.

Pieter Levels (00:32:21):
But I think this is a problem with me. This sounds arrogant. My mind is already quite open and I'm already radically honest to you guys now. I'm not really keeping secrets here. I'm just throwing everything on the table. And I think a lot of people use psychedelics to open up. And I think I'm already quite open. So even if I drink alcohol, I'm not that different. I just become more happy and I... Yeah. So...

Neil Witten (00:32:48):
Let's go back. So I'm just going to do a bit of a summary of some of the stuff we've touched on. So Montessori and then to a more traditional school. So there's an interesting yin, yang there. And then this kind of, "Fuck corporate world. Want to fight the system," so you go to study business in order to understand how it works so that you can break it from within. There's also this interesting thing going on between kind of art and science, because you are kind of gravitating towards artistic skills or artistic qualities but you're applying them in quite scientific ways. And then we were zooming in on this moment in your life where you decided then to go away. Let's go back to that time. And you were how you know that you think fast and you were talking about the stuff that was probably going on your head at the time or some of the feedback that you were getting from the YouTube channel.

Pieter Levels (00:33:58):
Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. I drifted off. So what I meant was that in university, in college, life is really fun, because everybody has a few hours they need to go and you don't really need to go to these lectures anyway. So you can hang with your friends all day. Always we would hang at each other's houses. We'd do stuff. We'd party. We'd make music and stuff together. I had rapper friends. Anyway. That all stopped when we graduated, because everybody had to get a job. And I knew this was going to happen. So graduation was my biggest fear, for me and for everything, because I knew everyone was going to change.

Pieter Levels (00:34:41):
And honestly what happened was, because everybody graduates kind of different time this year, next year, it kind of just already immediately started happening where the only time we had was in the evening because you have to work all day, and then people move in with girlfriend or boyfriend. So that takes some time. And then you see each other once a week and you get drunk because that's what people do in UK and Holland. We get drunk in the weekends. And I was, I think, 26 or something. And you get very drunk because you don't have a lot of time. You have two days to party. So you get really drunk. And I would only drink maybe once a month or something or twice a month, because I didn't really like it so much. But the point is life became so much more boring. It was so much more interesting in college. It was so fun and creative in college and then it just became... Everybody kind of hated their job. And it became first alcohol and then drugs. Love drugs, like Amsterdam, London, same, but in a really bad way.

Pieter Levels (00:35:52):
A lot of cocaine. Not me. I never did it, but a lot of people in Amsterdam do it. And that became the party scene because people wanted to go extra hard. So they would do cocaine, other stuff, I don't even need to mention, but it was like we have two days and then, fuck, Monday to Friday went to work again. So we need to go extra hard on the weekends. And I just didn't agree with that whole concept because I was doing YouTube channel and I had fun and I could work anytime. And I did have days where I had to work, but I didn't feel this was a healthy fucking lifestyle. It just wasn't. Just absolutely wasn't.

Ray Richards (00:36:26):
I think this is interesting because I think it's the same thing with... I sort of see a parallel with holidays. If people are looking forward to their holidays so much, what's wrong with their life? And it's the same with alcohol and drugs. If you really, really you smash it, there's something wrong. There needs to be more balance.

Pieter Levels (00:36:52):
Yes. That's the reason why people in... I keep saying UK, Holland, because it's a similar culture. We go to extremely hot holiday resorts or places where it's 40 Celsius. It's way too hot. But it's because it's a counterbalance to cold [inaudible 00:37:07].

Ray Richards (00:37:06):
That's right. It's reaction. It's a reaction. Yeah.

Pieter Levels (00:37:09):
It's a reaction, but it's extreme. They're both extreme. They're not balanced at all. Shitty, cold, rainy weather in the office and then super hot Magaluf. That's where all UK go.

Ray Richards (00:37:22):
You've been there too?

Pieter Levels (00:37:24):
No. I went to Majorca, also UK, but anyway. It's extreme. And I don't like 40 Celsius. I like 25. I like 20. You know what I mean?

Ray Richards (00:37:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Nice temperature.

Pieter Levels (00:37:36):
So that's lukewarm. Anyway, I think that's it, the same weekends. And [inaudible 00:37:41]-

Neil Witten (00:37:41):
Were you questioning your friends? Because you've got this sort, "Fuck the system," attitude to the corporate world. And at that time, it sounds like you're really experiencing it, because what you loved about your life with your friends being around and the creativity of college has now been taken away and it's been taken away by the system that you knew was going to show up at some point.

Pieter Levels (00:38:10):
Yeah.

Neil Witten (00:38:11):
So were you challenging it at that time?

Pieter Levels (00:38:14):
Look, if the whole city at your age does the same thing, how do you... I was the weird one. They were not weird. I was weird. They were not wrong. They just did what everybody did. And...

Neil Witten (00:38:28):
But were you in any way trying to show people that there was another way at that time?

Pieter Levels (00:38:36):
Well, the problem was that I always got invited to parties every weekend or something and I didn't want to go. So I would go once a month or twice a month. And usually I would just be working in the weekend on my computer, making music or videos or whatever. And man, I would mix. It was really fun. I would be working on making a new video for YouTube and I work on it later. So I'm working at 1:00 AM. It's so funny. Working After Effects, Premiere, whatever, or I was making music. And then my door opens because my roommate brought these friends home for the after party because after is a whole thing. You go to the club, but then people want to keep partying. Or maybe it was 4:00 AM. Anyway, they come in. And this guy comes in and he's completely spaced out of his head on lots of drugs. He's like, "Yo. What's up? Can I just sit here? Because it's 4:00 AM and I need to go work at 7:00. It's too intense in the living room. Can I just sit next to you?" And I'm like, "Yeah."

Pieter Levels (00:39:43):
So I'm just working and there's this is guy on drugs sitting next to me. Normal guy, not a junkie, but just normal guy but on the drugs. And he's like, "What are you doing?" And I'm like, "I'm just making music." He's like, "Whoa. Wow. You're making music. So cool, man. Can I just listen?" And he takes the headphones and he's just like, "Whoa." And he just sits there for an hour, kind of cooling down and quite interested in what I'm doing. Yeah. And so these worlds kind of mixed even. So...

Ray Richards (00:40:13):
Yeah. I think what you're saying is that you... Well, maybe you're not. I don't know. You can correct me. You weren't doing it for anyone else. You're just doing it for yourself. You were not going with the flow because it didn't work for you. And you wanted to find what works for you. And that may have inspired a few people and maybe it does today. But you were doing it for you.

Pieter Levels (00:40:37):
Yeah. Well, I knew where it was going to lead. I knew where this lifestyle was going to lead. It was going to lead to fucking nowhere. Because where does this stuff lead? Incidental psychedelic uses is good, but if you do it every week, it's not going to lead to... You're self-medicating some fucked up part of your life and it's not going to lead to nowhere. So I had to escape this shit. And that's what I did. And yeah.

Ray Richards (00:41:00):
And I guess you've continued to do that.

Pieter Levels (00:41:04):
Well, it's funny. I mean, radical honesty, you see a lot of drug users here too. You get invited to parties again with ketamine and stuff. And I'm like, "Sorry. I'm just not fucking into it. I don't want to do it. It's not my style. I'm not going to go to your party." I'm not anti-drugs. This sounds like an anti-drug podcast. I'm not at all anti, but I'm against self-medicating a shitty life, which I think this podcast is about. It's about doing life differently. And I've never talked about drugs so much on podcast, but it's interesting, because all your questions, it has been kind of thing that I've been avoiding. [inaudible 00:41:44].

Ray Richards (00:41:46):
But it's not drugs you're avoiding. It's going with the flow you're avoiding for the sake of it. Going with the flow sometimes is absolutely fantastic, but if it's not working for you and you're just doing it because everybody else does it and you're not thinking about it, you're not understanding how it's affecting you personally, you're just doing it because everybody else does it, because you haven't got your own mind, then it's a problem.

Pieter Levels (00:42:15):
Yeah. And it's a much more friendly way also to say. You're right. There's much less judgemental ways. Just if it doesn't work for you, don't do it. Yeah. [inaudible 00:42:23].

Ray Richards (00:42:22):
And I think in life generally, forget drugs for the minute, but in life in general, we all to some extent or another go with the flow and don't question whether it's working for us. We go with the flow in the sense that we work for a company 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever and just do our job because everybody else, that's what everybody else does. I don't know. We go to watch the football every week because that's what everybody around me does, or I go to parties, or I go bird watching because everybody around me does that. And...

Pieter Levels (00:42:58):
Yeah. That's fine. Yeah.

Ray Richards (00:42:59):
And I think we just got to take... All of us. All of us need to every so often just sort of really question, "Is this actually working for me? Because I'm not the same necessarily as the people around me. Or in some instances I might be, because I like playing sport, but other instances, it just isn't working for me." And it's hard because when you take a step out of your own comfort zone, you're forcing other people to question things, because you're not there and they want you to be there. They want you to be there because that's what keeps it the same. And that's...

Pieter Levels (00:43:39):
100%. That's why lifestyle change is the hardest thing, because your environment dictates your lifestyle. And that's why I think [inaudible 00:43:46] is [inaudible 00:43:46], because when you move locations, when you move to the other side of the world, it's a great opportunity to... You can choose the people you want to be with. You can create your own kind of environment and you can completely change your lifestyle. And that's what I did. And funny thing is you can even test different personalities kind and you can be in different cities. If you're introvert, you can try being extrovert. Because who cares? You don't know anybody here, that kind of stuff.

Ray Richards (00:44:10):
Absolutely. So we talked about this with Steph a couple of weeks ago, Steph Smith, who... I think you... Do you know Steph?

Pieter Levels (00:44:17):
Yeah. She's really cool. Yeah, yeah. My friend. Yeah. She's my friend.

Ray Richards (00:44:18):
Yeah. So we talked to her about this and she was talking about going to Sweden and as a student, her first sort of trip abroad. And the way Neil and I think about it is an opportunity to change, the best way to do it is to either go to a new place, meet new people or experiment with your personality. But when you go to a new place, you're definitely... Well, first of all, you're in a new place. Secondly, you're going to meet new people and a different culture, but also it's just such a brilliant opportunity to, as you say, if you're normally introverted, experiment with being a bit extroverted, if you're normally extrovert, experiment with being a bit introverted and just see how it fits for you, because it may be that the way you were behaving was just the way you were behaving because of the people around you. And it's just-

Pieter Levels (00:45:09):
Yeah. 100#%.

Ray Richards (00:45:11):
Such an opportunity.

Pieter Levels (00:45:14):
I have a friend who's gay and he came out as gay because he became a pilot and he was flying to different cities and he was always scared to explore himself and something in Holland, not because Holland is like Holland's [inaudible 00:45:27], just because it's his own kind of bubble. And he said because he could fly everywhere, he could explore this part of him and find out, "Okay. I'm gay." And we're like, "Okay. Cool. We don't care that you're gay. Nice." But you know what I mean? It gives you a way to test different personalities.

Ray Richards (00:45:50):
I think it's a license.

Pieter Levels (00:45:50):
License.

Ray Richards (00:45:53):
It's a license to behave differently.

Pieter Levels (00:45:56):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Ray Richards (00:45:58):
Because when you are back home in Amsterdam and you're, I don't know, just assumed to be straight, everybody expects you to be straight and it's more of a challenge because of those people around you and... Yeah.

Pieter Levels (00:46:12):
Yeah. It's also license to misbehave in Magaluf.

Neil Witten (00:46:18):
I feel like you're hiding something. You want to go to Magaluf, Pieter.

Ray Richards (00:46:22):
He doesn't. He doesn't. I'm sure he doesn't.

Pieter Levels (00:46:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. My best friend is Daniel [inaudible 00:46:27]. He's from... Where is he from? Somewhere in UK and he's my server guy. And we always joke about Magaluf. Yeah. We always joke about these Britishisms.

Neil Witten (00:46:38):
So let's go back to your YouTube channel, because it didn't start and stop there. So you went off, start exploring. Wasn't a plan, but you were looking for something else. Can you remember what you were looking for and then how it started to play out into the next evolution of you?

Pieter Levels (00:46:58):
Yeah. So I remember dating a Russian girl back then also. And I knew her from Twitter, from the drummer bass scene. She was a big drummer bass manager. And I was booking artists for this YouTube channel. And I would always talk to her. Really cool girl, Anna. And then really cute. So I flew to St. Petersburg. And I remember bringing my laptop also then. This was 2012, so before Nomad. And I was there for only a few weeks, I think. It was really fucking cold. It was minus 40 or something. And I was working back then on a YouTube... I was learning to code a little bit. I was working on a YouTube analytics platform. It was called Bear Stats, like a teddy bear and then stat. It was stupid. And I remember coding on that.

Pieter Levels (00:47:49):
And I was telling her, "If this works, I can make money with it and it's extra income next to YouTube." And it never worked. But that became one of my first products where I was coding something. And I was coding it because I needed it, because I had all these different YouTube channels and they all had a different login, username, password. And they all had a different analytics dashboard. And I had no idea how to sum all this data into one and see how much fuse I was getting and how much money I was making and stuff. And there was a lot of these YouTube networks back then. So I was like, "This could be useful thing." So I tried to solve a problem for myself and that became this analytics app that nobody... Well, nobody paid for it, but Vice Network used it even. Some big brands used it, but nobody paid for it, because I was not good at startups like that-

Neil Witten (00:48:40):
But you'd studied business and still in the back of your mind, you're going, "I want to break the system, but I want to hack the system." So you're looking for something that looks a bit like a business. So how were you thinking about that? Were you thinking about that as work? Were you thinking about that as...

Pieter Levels (00:49:00):
Yeah. So I think business is very different from entrepreneurship. Big business managers, suits, offices, corporate. When it reaches $1 billion, completely different. That's gets into the gray area, gray territory for me. Entrepreneurship feels like art. It feels the same as creativity, feels the same as Photoshop, After Effects, as painting, as skateboarding. It's fun. Entrepreneurship is just... It's so free and fun and not structured and do whatever. The bigger the company becomes, the more legal stuff, the more structured, the more organization, the more hiring, it becomes by definition rigid and boring. And there's exceptions. I think SpaceX is huge. They're going to Mars. Of course, that's not a boring company. And Tesla is also cool. But generally, big companies are... Everything needs four meetings and five-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:50:04]

Pieter Levels (00:50:03):
Everything needs four meetings, and five lawyers, and legal sign off, and blah, blah, blah, and PO sheet, and bullshit. And I just write some code, and it's already there within five seconds.

Ray Richards (00:50:11):
I think it's the difference between building something and maintaining something, if you can break it down. And you are not, and I'm not, and Neil's probably not either, that interested in maintaining stuff. To a certain degree, maintaining things makes things less stressful. But if you're spending all your time, maintaining stuff and not creating anything new, it can become very dull for people like-

Neil Witten (00:50:39):
It's a really good point, Ray. Because I've heard Pieter, you talk about your robots before. And I've noticed that when you talk about them, you talk about them not just in a playful way, but it's more than symbolic, the way you describe your robots. And you talk about the robots that are working for you, because they're so efficient and they're so effective, and you love your robots. But on the whole, I think you don't have people working for you, but many people who are in your position or would have-

Pieter Levels (00:51:08):
For some-

Neil Witten (00:51:09):
But maybe you haven't shaped it up into a traditional company, in the way that a lot people might have done.

Pieter Levels (00:51:16):
Yeah. I still do everything myself. I code everything. I design everything. I have a chat moderator for the community. I have a server guy. Only if the server goes down, he gets on, it never goes down. And customer support person, because I can't do that.

Neil Witten (00:51:30):
So to raise point about maintaining, so anything that has value requires some amount of maintenance. And I guess the more value that it creates, it's possible that, the more maintenance it requires. And that maintenance pushes you into a mode that is, moving you further and further away from creativity. But it seems like what you've managed to do, certainly more recently. It'd be interesting to know whether you've done this consciously or unconsciously, is get to a position where the maintenance side of things is so automated, is so invisible to you, that it allows you to show up creatively.

Pieter Levels (00:52:05):
Man, you're so good at these questions. Yes, that's exactly it. It surprised me too. Generally, reached a point the last year, where there's so few bugs. Because every single bug gets reported to me by the robot in telegram, in a chats app, a PHP bug or a JavaScript bug. If you open my website and there's a JavaScript bug, it sends it to the server and it comes to me immediately. There's so little bugs now, there's one bug a week or something. And it's some JavaScript, whatever.

Pieter Levels (00:52:39):
So usually people say, you need to maintain, and I think because their technology stack is so difficult and complicated. And technology keeps changing, these frameworks keep changing, like React few, Laravel, whatever, they're always changing. My code is all Vanilla, JavaScript Vanilla, PHP Vanilla, CSS, everything is vanilla. So is more simple than you think. And it's now quite keen as well, the code. Which surprised me that, because there's not a lot of dependencies to update, things generally don't really break anymore.

Ray Richards (00:53:15):
Yeah. I'm imagining when you do and there is a bug, maybe one a week. That's the creative process, trying to fix that.

Pieter Levels (00:53:24):
But the bugs take like two minutes to fix now.

Ray Richards (00:53:28):
Oh, right. But in creating those maintenance systems, that's a creative process, right?

Pieter Levels (00:53:40):
There isn't really a maintenance system. It's more, if you write really clean codes, it generally keeps running. If it's not dependent on a lot of other frameworks or services, the more self-contained you create codes, the less moving parts. The less moving parts in a system, the less it will break.

Ray Richards (00:53:59):
So for you, what is creativity? What's the creative part of what of your life?

Pieter Levels (00:54:07):
Making new stuff. So I make new products. I made inflationcharts.com, to track inflation because the government data is inaccurate, I think. I'm creating Rebase now, which is the first immigration as a service startup. So I've helped now over 500 people immigrate to Portugal from anywhere, from UK, from Holland, from Venezuela, from Syria, everybody's moving to Portugal. So that's stuff that's interesting.

Ray Richards (00:54:35):
And let's just take that as an example. Why did you do that?

Pieter Levels (00:54:46):
Similar to slowmads, the trajectory of a nomad is fast travel in the beginning, go everywhere, go crazy, then slow down. And then I realize, "Oh, I do need a residency. I need to have a personal residency somewhere, a tax residency. I need to pay tax somewhere. And it's not going to be my home country, I'm not going to go back to my home country probably. So where should I live? Well, Portugal is 25 Celsius. It's nice, it's affordable. Nice people, very foreign friendly, they're trying to attract foreigners." So that became a thing. And I'm also Portuguese now, that's the introductory for a nomad.

Ray Richards (00:55:30):
Okay. You just did it because you saw a problem in the inefficiency of the existing system, or because you wanted to help nomads, or?

Pieter Levels (00:55:44):
It happened during COVID. I went to Portugal myself, and I saw it on nomad list on my website, that tracks all the cities for nomads. That it was really high ranking, it was a lot of people moving there. Because Asia was closed, so Europe was booming and Portugal was booming, because it's much more affordable than Spain, for example. So a lot of people were in Lisbon, and I started meeting people there and living there, and talking to people. And everybody was talking about... I'm like, "Oh, you're just visiting here for a few months." They're like, "No, I actually registered now. I became resident." A lot of people just before Brexits, they all registered in Portugal to become Portuguese, so they could get [inaudible 00:56:22] and stuff. So I was like, "Okay."

Pieter Levels (00:56:24):
And everybody was talking about that. And then I tried it, it was really easy. And then I kept getting friends asking me about, "Can you tell me who's your lawyer, your immigration advisor? I need one to do the same thing." It's like 20 people messaging me over a month or something. So I was like, "Okay, maybe this is a business." And I asked a referral fee, and I made a little landing page, and that became a business in this span of a year.

Neil Witten (00:56:52):
I'm going to push a bit harder, Pieter, because there's something more here I think. Lots of other people who are in your position and at this time in your life, you had several online businesses that are making more than enough money. You are still slowmading. You've got a great network of people. You can do anything or nothing next, is my perception. So I might be wrong, but tell me if I am. You saw a problem, but I'm guessing you see lots of problems, but you decided to turn it into a business, that's the bit that's interesting. So you could help all of these people, because you could say, "Here's the details of the immigration lawyer." Or you could just give them a bit of information, or you could stick a blog post up. But you turned it into a business, "Or something that starts to represent a business." Why? What was going on in your head? What were you tapping into with that?

Pieter Levels (00:57:57):
Yeah, good question.

Neil Witten (00:58:00):
And I only say it, because most other people in your position wouldn't have done. And it might be that on the surface, because they were too lazy to do it.

Ray Richards (00:58:09):
Or they might have had the idea. They may have thought this is a possible business, but they wouldn't have done it.

Pieter Levels (00:58:20):
Sasha, the German friend, who told me about all this stuff in the beginning, when I met him in Lisbon. And he was like, "I wanted to do this business too." And I was like, "Oh, really?" But he's like, "I never really did it." I'm like, "Okay." So, that's exactly what you said. Well, I tested a lot of stuff. I tried new things. Like this inflation chart for example, is not a business but it's fun. I tried different parts to see if they stick, and I still do that. Same time last year during COVID, I made QRmenucreator.com. Because I was in Portugal and I saw QR codes everywhere as a menu thing, and now it's really common, back then not so much. So I made a side where you can make your own QR code menu and stuff. And now thousands of restaurants use it, and hundreds of thousands of people use every day, but doesn't make money. But the question, why do I... Because otherwise I get bored, so I want to do something that's challenging.

Neil Witten (00:59:25):
So just again, trying to get under the surface a bit more here, and also filling in some of the gaps of the story. So part of your evolution, was you did the 12 startups in 12 months. And I'm guessing that at that time, that it was quite premeditated. But it would partly to find something, and partly to finish your skills, and partly to generate PR. So it's a creative play, but that has lots of positive outcomes. And knowing what I know of you, since that time, you've found a handful of things that have become very successful, and you continue to ship. So you use that language a lot. And again, just for our listeners, by ship you mean deliver new, enhance, develop, create.

Neil Witten (01:00:15):
And don't just make it, but make it and deliver it to people, make sure that people get values from it. But you do that consistently. And again, this is one of the things that lots of people talk to you about and you write about a lot, the importance of showing up and consistency. But do you think that, so ingrained now that, that's what you do when you see something that potentially could be a problem? That you're just there, you're just showing up and that's part of the consistency, and part of the ingrained behaviors now.

Pieter Levels (01:00:49):
Yeah, I think so. I think that's exactly it. If you do something so much... Like in the beginning, it was because you need to make money, otherwise you starve. So I was trying to find stuff that made money and became started. But now of course there's enough money, so it's not really about money anymore. It's still nice if the money increases, if your revenue increases. I look at the numbers, it's important that it increases, but-

Ray Richards (01:01:17):
Is that because it's a game, money is points?

Pieter Levels (01:01:23):
But this is so bad to say, because money it's also the reason why people struggle. Money is the reason I wanted to escape this system. I don't like that you're born in debt as a human. Which is not clear true, because if you're born as an animal, you might get eaten. So we have society where we don't eat each other and fight each other, and it means that you need to go to the job, and make money, and pay rent. That's the agreement we have. Although, you don't agree to on that when you're born, but okay. I lost my train of thought. I don't know.

Neil Witten (01:02:06):
Let's just come back to the question. So there's still a reason why you saw the problem with Rebase, and then took it on. And it's cool, I can see the creative part of you and the trained part of you, is going, "This is fun. I'm just going to enter into this, and it's going to create value for other people. And I get to deploy all the skills that I enjoy using, which are creative skills." But there comes a point with it, where it becomes annoying. Or for lots of other people, it could get to a point where it becomes annoying, because it's more stuff. There're more things going on, there're more questions to answer.

Pieter Levels (01:02:43):
Yeah. So I think that's to do with the automation, because now my main projects are running smoothly and I need some new stuff to do. Because what, I just sit in my room, or go to cafe and just drink coffee and sit. I can talk to my friend, I do that already. My dad always says, when we sit in the kitchen, we drink coffee after one hour of talking, he's like, "Okay. Now enough talking, let's go do something." He doesn't want to just sit, he wants to do something. And he's always working on renovating the house and doing construction and stuff, really fun dad. But yeah, I need something to do. And I think there's also this... Yeah?

Ray Richards (01:03:29):
Well, I was just about to say, I think as somebody that has been always doing stuff and has recently tried to chill more-

Pieter Levels (01:03:48):
Yeah, me too.

Ray Richards (01:03:49):
Because I think it's okay if you're always doing stuff, because you really enjoy what you're doing, then that's different. But if you're doing stuff because you want to get somewhere all the time-

Pieter Levels (01:04:05):
No, that's just drugs. It's the same as drugs.

Ray Richards (01:04:10):
Exactly what I was going to say.

Pieter Levels (01:04:13):
I agree. I don't think that's it for me anymore, because I do chill more, I work way less. But I'm not workaholic anymore, but I've definitely been in the past for sure, for years.

Ray Richards (01:04:25):
Yeah. And I think it's back to that conversation we had earlier about balance. If you're just chilling all the time, it's a problem. If you're on it all the time, and you're striving all the time, that's a problem. And as with anything in life, it's is about finding the balance and noticing, what it is that you are doing. You're just doing all the time, for the sake of it. You're going with the flow. You're going with your habit, just because that's what you do. And you're not ever questioning, what it is you're doing. It's good to look at the... If you're always an extrovert, have a play with being an introvert. If you're always taking risks, have a play with playing it safe. If you're always doing things spontaneously, maybe start looking at planning things.

Pieter Levels (01:05:15):
I figure you're right. And the irony of entrepreneurs is like, "Oh, I don't want to get a normal job, let's build a company." And then they end up in some rat race again, because they're nonstop working, is bullshit. The point of entrepreneurship was, we're going to do our own thing, do something cool. And we'll have a little bit more time for our own life, than going to office.

Ray Richards (01:05:34):
Yeah. And you forget why you did it in the first place.

Pieter Levels (01:05:38):
Yeah, 100%. I think you're never in balance, but relatively balanced now, I can focus on the new projects and it's quite chill now.

Neil Witten (01:05:57):
Is there a different approach to with Rebase? I noticed some time ago, I think that you turned off new applications, because there was so much interest that you turned it off for a period of time. I'm wondering that, have you just reached a level of how you apply yourself to a challenge, like Rebase? Where you're doing it for others, but you're also doing it for you. So maybe a version of you 10 years ago, where you'd stumbled across Rebase. Wouldn't have switched off the application process and instead, stayed up two nights in a row and worked really hard and taken on all that extra stress to get through it?

Pieter Levels (01:06:39):
Well, Neil the funny thing is, I don't do anything with the applications. It's not a law agency, it's a referral directory for lawyers.

Neil Witten (01:06:50):
So you didn't turn it off for yourself, it was because other people were getting.

Pieter Levels (01:06:55):
I have a giant capacity problem with the immigration advisors. So the immigration advisor helped me also move... Well, that's not true. It helped a lot of my friends move to Portugal. And then I did Rebase, and their clientele number went up from, I think 30 a month to 300 or 400 a month. So 10X, it's insane. And the immigration advisor is close to burnout, because he's doing calls all day. It's funny, but it's also sad, but they're making a lot of money now. They're making, I think close to million or something, or more from all these applications. I just make a hundred dollars per application, and then I pass them on to them, and then they do all the other stuff. So the a hundred dollar is like a commission. So I don't do anything. I'm slowly automating the steps of the immigration process, that's what I'm doing.

Pieter Levels (01:07:53):
So I'm trying to make them have less work, and I'm moving further into the immigration processes, like signing all these forms. I'm now learning how to pre-fill a PDF from the Portuguese government, with the data from my database, signing it, and then sending it to the Portuguese government. That's a step you can automate, that was before took weeks. So that kind of stuff is fun to automate. And that's what I do, and it's all asynchronous. So, I never need to do a meeting. I never did a call with these immigration advisors, it's always over telegram. Because I told them I don't want to do calls, it's just calls are always chit chat and nothing fucking happens. Text is, "Okay, there's a specific problem with this form, we need to fix." "Okay, I'll fix the form."

Ray Richards (01:08:46):
Can I ask you a question, going back to a conversation around what I call behavioral flexibility, this [inaudible 01:08:54]? What do you think is your challenge at the moment, in terms of... Where are you testing your comfort zone, or where do you think you should be testing your comfort zone? Where do you think you could benefit from exploring a different part of your personality?

Pieter Levels (01:09:19):
So this is funny, because me and my friends we've worked really hard. I work a lot with Andre, and Neil knows Andre, from Sheet2Site.

Neil Witten (01:09:26):
Sheet2Site, yeah.

Pieter Levels (01:09:28):
Its public info, right? That you-

Neil Witten (01:09:30):
Yeah, he is. I love Andre, great guy.

Pieter Levels (01:09:33):
Yeah. Andre's amazing guy, he's my best friend. And meet him almost every day, we go to cafe and we drink coffee, and he works really hard. And he works in new projects now. And I've been trying to slowly work less, as Ray said, and do more IRL stuff. Like I went climbing this week. Bouldering was really fun. And that sounds really stupid, because why would real life be a challenge? Well, it's a challenge for a workaholic person, to go do stuff out of your comfort zone, where you could fall down four meters break your back. But you need to do those things, and I'm trying to do those things more. Sorry, it's not an interesting answer, but-

Neil Witten (01:10:23):
There might be more in the IRL.

Ray Richards (01:10:27):
You explain to me what IRL stands for, something real life.

Neil Witten (01:10:30):
In real life.

Pieter Levels (01:10:31):
In real life.

Ray Richards (01:10:31):
In real life. Okay.

Neil Witten (01:10:32):
Because-

Pieter Levels (01:10:33):
Especially we use it as a verb, like IRLing.

Ray Richards (01:10:36):
Yeah. Okay.

Neil Witten (01:10:38):
Because so much-

Pieter Levels (01:10:40):
[inaudible 01:10:40] generation is fucked.

Neil Witten (01:10:40):
Yeah. Because what's IRL going to be, what even is it going to mean? But what you mean by that is your-

Pieter Levels (01:10:49):
It means not on the phone.

Neil Witten (01:10:50):
Not on a screen.

Ray Richards (01:10:53):
Yeah.

Pieter Levels (01:10:53):
Because we're always on the phone, on a computer. So it's IRLing is out there.

Ray Richards (01:10:58):
And what does this count as? What does this conversation here, count as?

Pieter Levels (01:11:02):
This is a little in the middle, because it's social, but it's still in the computer. IRLing is like, we go to the cafe anyway, drink coffee. Tt's IRL, but you're still bring your laptop. So it's like, [inaudible 01:11:16]. But going to real activity, going to do some stuff, go hiking or whatever, activities.

Ray Richards (01:11:25):
Yeah. It's so crazy. Sorry, it's just so... We definitely need to do more of that.

Pieter Levels (01:11:34):
No, but I agree it's crazy. But I don't think it's a generation thing even, it's just like-

Ray Richards (01:11:40):
To some extent it is for sure, but-

Pieter Levels (01:11:44):
Yeah. I know my mom and dad, they're IRLing all day. They're gardening and working on the house, and then they check also the chats in the family group chat and stuff. But generally, and they read the news or something. But for sure, everybody's all day on their phone. Well, most are in the computer working, and then regular people, are mostly on their phone these days.

Neil Witten (01:12:11):
I'm just going to throw a few more pointed questions at you, if it's okay Pieter, just before we close out.

Pieter Levels (01:12:19):
[inaudible 01:12:19].

Neil Witten (01:12:20):
I want to just acknowledge your dad for a second, actually, because you mentioned him earlier. And I heard you say somewhere that you got some advice from your dad where, if you ever feel down or depressed, then go to the garden and dig a big hole, and then fill the hole in and then dig a big hole again.

Neil Witten (01:12:35):
I just wanted to acknowledge that, and just give you a moment to talk to about him, and see if there's anything that he or your mom has given you that's... Because you mentioned it earlier, you said there's something about having your own mind. And I don't want us to miss that, in the importance of the way that you think, and how you've been able to apply you to the world.

Pieter Levels (01:12:59):
Yeah. Like I said, they've always taught us to think for ourselves, to not trust the group opinion because it's often wrong, but it's very hard to go against a group because there's so many people. But I do feel groups are usually delayed in their ideology, because in a group something has to spread. So you're usually an early adopter if you're an individual. Like now nomad stuff, remote work is mainstream, so now the group was like, "Yeah, remote work is great." But 10 years ago, they said remote work doesn't work. But individuals said, "Well, it works for me." I think I do have a skill like early lobster, I can see trends a little bit early, and I think it's because I think for myself. And I try practice radical honesty. So I try not lie, it's not perfect, but I do my best.

Pieter Levels (01:14:01):
And if you're honest to other people, you also start being honest to yourself. Because your brain is constantly bullshitting yourself, you're constantly trying to avoid stuff. And a lot of things that you think for yourself that are... And you think, "I'm weird, because I think this thought." But then actually, when you speak it out, often a lot of other people think the same thing. Especially now with internet, if you tweet something that's outrageous, there would be a hundred people all over the world like, "Yeah, I actually have the same thing." So it's a great time for early adopter kind of thinking because of internet, because if you would say in your hometown like, "Oh, I love remote work, it's so good." Hometown would be like, "Nah, this is bullshit." But because of internet, you could connect to a lot of other people in the world who might agree with you. And then in 10 years, the whole world agrees with you. So-

Ray Richards (01:14:57):
Well, because you could go back... Not that long ago, if you were the weirdo in your...
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:15:04]

Ray Richards (01:15:03):
... not that long ago, if you were the weirdo in your town, you could have really got really quite down on yourself because you were just thinking in a very different way to the people around you. You might have thought you are the only one and you might have actually thought you really were a weirdo in the worst sense. I always tell my kids to hang out with weirdos. But these days, as you say, the world is much flatter and you can find other weirdos.

Pieter Levels (01:15:26):
Well, back then you would be persecuted by the church or burnt.

Ray Richards (01:15:29):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Pieter Levels (01:15:30):
Right. Witches and stuff in medieval time. But this is interesting because it's ingrained in our biology that you don't want to feel like outcast. You don't want to feel like a weirdo, when being a weirdo and outcast, I mean, obviously not all the time, but it can be beneficial.

Ray Richards (01:15:47):
Yeah. I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about how knowing what you want is a super skill. And I think that plays into what you're saying, because if most people don't know what they want, then they're going to just copy what everyone else is doing. If you know what you want, then people are more likely to follow. And there's more likely to be creativity applied to that. It's a different mode.

Pieter Levels (01:16:12):
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And you see this on Twitter. If you tweet something that everybody else tweets, and you see this all the time, it doesn't take off. And if you tweet, what's radically honest in yourself and you're an interesting person, you're a unique person. Then it takes off first. First you need to become a unique person.

Ray Richards (01:16:30):
The same as CVs. Me and my son's been sending his CV around. He's looking for work, and he's being advised to do it this way, because this is the way you do a CV. Well, you're just going to look exactly the same as everybody else. Create your own version of a CV. And then you never know somebody who is a little bit innovative might look at an innovative CV and go hang on, this one's a bit more interesting.

Pieter Levels (01:16:56):
I literally did this. I went into Photoshop. I made my own visual graphic CV with charts and colors and everything. And I tried to make into a business too, but-

Ray Richards (01:17:11):
[inaudible 01:17:11], of course, you did.

Neil Witten (01:17:12):
We never touched on that actually. Did you ever actually have a proper job, Peter?

Pieter Levels (01:17:17):
Yeah. I worked in a call center for, ING for the Dutch banking company and oh my God, it was so funny. I had to call existing customers. I had to call the ING bank customers and try upsell them insurance by the sister company kind of. And I had to do the script and I got paid, I think five euros per hour or something. And I would sit in these islands, office islands, kind of with other people and had a headset and I had to do this whole script, like hello, this Peter blah, blah, blah. And the script didn't work, but you need to follow the script. But the script didn't really work. Nobody told anything. They're like, why are you not saying anything? So I started changing the script, and this is interesting because this shows it immediately starts getting low in ethics.

Pieter Levels (01:18:09):
So I started asking, do you like your ING bank accounts? Do you have any problems with it? Trying to make a relationship first. They're like, yeah, actually this is okay. Interesting. Well, we can get a financial advisor to come to your house. Talk about it and also talk about your personal insurance situation. And they're all like, yeah, great. And okay, let's do an appointment. And then bam. And I would go up in the charts of selling and I would be setting like 10 a day, and everybody's like, wow, what the fuck? And then they ask me like, what are you saying? Like I say this to them. And they're like, okay. So everybody started using my scripts, and then the manager found out because they listen in. They found out after a month-

Ray Richards (01:18:52):
I know what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say. Oh God, God.

Pieter Levels (01:18:56):
And then the manager was like, okay, boardroom need to all come into the meeting. And it's like three of these kids, 18 year old something. And he's like, okay, you've all been changing the script. And you've all been saying some random shit, and it's causing us problems. And he was really angry and who started this? But I didn't say. Nobody snitched me. But that was the thing. That was my main job, so.

Ray Richards (01:19:19):
But then I think-

Neil Witten (01:19:20):
But the outcome was you've got to get back to the script?

Pieter Levels (01:19:24):
Yeah, exactly.

Ray Richards (01:19:25):
How-

Pieter Levels (01:19:27):
My script was a little bit dodgy though.

Ray Richards (01:19:29):
Yeah. But that could have been the fun.

Neil Witten (01:19:30):
But with some time, you would've found a good script.

Pieter Levels (01:19:32):
Exactly. Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:19:33):
That was the whole point.

Ray Richards (01:19:35):
I mean, but this is the problem really? And this is not about ING. It's not about call centers. It's just about, this is the way we do things. I was on the committee at the local Baton club and it's the same. It's like, no, no, no, we need to stick to the rules. I know. But the rules don't work. That's not the point. We need to stick to the rules and it's just not going banging head against the brick wall. It's just, oh. Anyway, sorry.

Neil Witten (01:20:04):
Yeah. A couple of other quick ones. So I heard somewhere, when you were talking about automation making more time, I think there was a question around, so if you had no time and you didn't have anything on, what would you do? And I think your answer was I'd go back to art projects.

Pieter Levels (01:20:24):
Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:20:25):
How are you thinking about that now? How are you thinking about your time in art and what art means to you?

Pieter Levels (01:20:33):
Yeah. I mean, art is kind of potential for, I mean, I guess more creativity and stuff. I think the web now is in a way, you know like the word multimedia. There was like a big word in the nineties, and I think it's still accurate word. It's like the web is multimedia. It's visuals, sometimes audio, video, it's everything. It's interactive. And in a way, it's like the coolest art form, like inflationchart.com, maybe a little bit like art project because it challenges the existing status quo of the government and stuff. It's visual, and it doesn't make money, but it's a little bit of, yeah, it's creative product kind and you could make graphic art. Now, I guess you could sell as NFTs again. But graphic arts is so limited. So like static, and YouTubers are in a way artists, they're very creative. They're making all these cool videos and explaining videos and stuff. So-

Neil Witten (01:21:37):
We normally start this podcast with the question, how do you describe yourself to people? So when you meet somebody new and they ask that horrible question, what do you do? How do you answer it? How do you actually answer that question today?

Pieter Levels (01:21:51):
It's so funny because in the beginning, you talk to taxi drivers and they ask what you do, and this whole fucking story about [inaudible 01:22:01]. And it's like this website. So it's [inaudible 01:22:04] and there's community and then there's meetups and blah, blah. And it's too much. So now I just say, I make a travel website, and I make a job board for work from home because that works with regular people. They understand immediately and like work from home. It's like, yeah, but I guess I [inaudible 01:22:32].

Neil Witten (01:22:32):
Would you ever describe yourself or think of yourself as an artist?

Pieter Levels (01:22:37):
No. Because artists is not like, if you're a real artist, it's not about money, right. It's about costly, challenging everything, challenging yourself, challenging the society, [inaudible 01:22:49].

Ray Richards (01:22:49):
But yours is-

Neil Witten (01:22:50):
Isn't that where you're at?

Ray Richards (01:22:51):
Yours isn't about money from, I guess it seems it's not now anyway.

Pieter Levels (01:22:56):
Well I charge money, right. [inaudible 01:22:59]

Ray Richards (01:22:58):
Yeah, but artists charge money.

Pieter Levels (01:23:05):
Yeah. I would prefer creative. I think like banksies artists. Right. That's like always challenging and stuff. I think that's real art.

Ray Richards (01:23:17):
Yeah. Okay. But you're a creative business, though.

Pieter Levels (01:23:20):
It is definitely kind something artistic. It's creative. Yeah. It's artistic, creative. And I think that's what I like. And what's what makes it really fun. And yeah.

Neil Witten (01:23:33):
Are you still carrying your laptop around in a carrier bag, Peter.

Pieter Levels (01:23:38):
Actually, this changed because of Andre. Andre, he couldn't take it anymore that I-

Neil Witten (01:23:44):
Please tell me that he bought you a bag.

Pieter Levels (01:23:46):
He bought me a backpack. But I didn't like this backpack. This is some low and it was too hard. So I was like, Andre, I don't like your gift. He's like, thank you for being radically honest. I said, okay, then he got it. And then I just ordered a [inaudible 01:24:02] backpack. But yeah, grocery bags are great. I was considering also making data business, left up grocery bags because it's kind of cool. It's kind of like a fascist statement.

Ray Richards (01:24:17):
Well, I have to say, I have to admit that I have my grocery bags from Amsterdam that I use all the time. Because you can carry them over your shoulder. Not the plastic bags that you carry in your hand.

Pieter Levels (01:24:27):
What do you call them? Girls always have these bags.

Ray Richards (01:24:31):
Totes bags.

Neil Witten (01:24:32):
Yeah.

Ray Richards (01:24:32):
Yeah. That's right.

Pieter Levels (01:24:33):
Tote bag.

Ray Richards (01:24:34):
Yeah, but that's great. Because when you've emptied all your stuff out of your bag, you can put it in your pocket. You can't do that with a rucksack.

Neil Witten (01:24:39):
Yeah. But when-

Pieter Levels (01:24:41):
I think there's something. Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:24:42):
No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Pieter Levels (01:24:43):
There's something cool about a grocery bag because it force you also to be minimal. Backpack feels again a little bit like corporate, you're going to, like in London, you always have suits with backpacks and such going to the HSBC office and stuff and who the fuck goes with a grocery bag? It's kind of like a statement. Obviously having a MacBook in a grocery bag is just as much as a statement as a Louis Vuitton bag. It's just a different statement. It's like, look, I don't give a fuck. Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:25:14):
Yeah. I like that.

Ray Richards (01:25:16):
It's probably better than having a grocery laptop in Apple bag though, isn't it?

Pieter Levels (01:25:22):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. True. Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:25:24):
Okay. My last question I think, you talk about, so you don't intend to ever buy a house. You're trying to be-

Pieter Levels (01:25:35):
Well, you can never know the future, right?

Neil Witten (01:25:36):
Never say never.

Pieter Levels (01:25:37):
It's like, yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah.

Neil Witten (01:25:39):
But your minimalist, you're trying not to make things about money particularly. And what I think about is what are your vices? What is it that you're going, I really do want that thing, but I'm not going to let myself have it. And I wondered whether the backpack might have fallen into that category instantly.

Pieter Levels (01:26:05):
I really want like two cats and a dog because my ex-girlfriend had two cats and they were really cute. And I want a dog, but then I have to walk the dog. So it's kind of like, I need to be settled down in Portugal or something. So maybe. I don't even like cars, maybe a Tesla. I don't even have a driver's license. So I can't even drive a Tesla. So I only buy MacBook. I buy a iPhone. I don't even like a DSLR camera because it's too much. Every device you buy, you have to charge it. I have a Kindle. I never use it. I always have to charge it.

Pieter Levels (01:26:47):
I really like spending on, for example, now I spend on a kind of hotel apartment kind of place here, which I mean the living room now, there's a bedroom. It's really nice, nice view. Like service kind of apartments. And it costs a little bit more than an Amsterdam apartment you would rent. It's quite expensive. It was like 3k a month. But you don't have a water pipe leaking and you don't have shit breaking. It's kind of like a service thing, kind of furnished, serviced. And it's really nice. That's stuff I like to spend money on. It's more like an experience to live somewhere nice. And [inaudible 01:27:33], yeah.

Ray Richards (01:27:33):
So it creates you time, it frees up time because you're not doing-

Pieter Levels (01:27:37):
Yeah. I think that's why it's worth it. And outside the air in [inaudible 01:27:41] is now quite bad. It's like 120 AQI, I think. And inside is filtered air. I have a sensor and it's like, AQI one. So the air is really good. That kind of stuff is how, oh yeah, actually steak, organic meats, organic vegetables. I like to cook and I like to buy good ingredients because I think it's important for health, like microplastics and stuff. And I don't like farm meat, like it's not nice for the animal, but that's definitely nice to spend money on. It's again, just spending money on experiences and not on stuff. Because stuff, you get used to it so fast, you buy a new thing. And within a week you're used to it. I bought this t-shirt four days ago and now I'm like, I'm still in the happy mode.

Pieter Levels (01:28:25):
This is a nice new t-shirt-

Neil Witten (01:28:27):
I was going to say, I really like your t-shirt.

Pieter Levels (01:28:30):
Thank you. But in a few days I'm like, yeah, who cares? So I've proven that things really don't make me happy and home ownership, a new house makes you happy. But then after six months, you're the same. Marriage, after 12 months, you feel the same. A car, three to six months feel the same. So I think this is absolutely proven now. And unless it's an object that you can use for an experience, if you are a good guitarist, you need a good guitar. If you're starting out, maybe buy a cheap guitar, but it's something you use that makes you happy and buy a nice pen to write with or something. But you see in Asia, especially because there's so many malls, you see how much stuff is produced in China and stuff and how much perfume and bags and all these Bluetooth speakers and this and that and all these stuff.

Pieter Levels (01:29:25):
It's absolutely we're in a consumerist addicted culture. That again, it's same with alcohol. People are bored, not happy with their life. And then you start buying shit to make you happy. You start filling up your house with stuff, you have all these people, these tech people, they always buy these lights, purple blue lights for their home. And I know these people and they always also have the special keyboards and they have the laptop stand and they're like, their work is not about their work. It's about, they're obsessed with making this room so perfect which is nice. But it's also not my thing. It's all about stuff. And then it never stops. You always need to buy more like, oh I need to collect my cables into a cable tube. Okay. But you know what I mean? Having just a MacBook forced you to and just a backpack force you to limit it and you cannot buy more because you have to carry everything. And let's, I think a really good benefit.

Neil Witten (01:30:27):
Create constraints. We talk about this a lot in our podcast. It comes up all the time actually. But the importance of having constraints, either you put the constraints in yourself or you just value the constraints rather than trying to push the constraints away.

Pieter Levels (01:30:41):
A hundred percent and constraints make you unique. And when I was making music, I had a really shitty computer to make music on and it was too slow. So I couldn't use all the channels. I had to use only one drum kit or something in the channel. And then my music became successful. I was on BBC radio one, I was on 1Xtra playlisted. And then I was like, let's use this money. I got royalties. I get registered at the British royalty agency. And then I used that money to buy a new computer. And it was the best spec out computer. And I could have infinite audio channels on it. And I think my music became worse from then. It was more real with the constraint of a shitty computer. And on this new one, I could do anything and it was not. So I think this is a real thing. And I think if you're honest with yourself, life is about experiences, about friends, about relationships, about meaningful work, about exercise, foods, being healthy and stuff. And if you prioritize those things, I think you care less about stuff because it doesn't make you happy and you don't need it because you don't need a drug or an addiction or an extrinsic thing to fill your dopamine. It's all about dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin and stuff, these hormones, and...

Neil Witten (01:32:20):
You need a good swim in some cold sea.

Pieter Levels (01:32:25):
Or a hot bath, it's also nice.

Neil Witten (01:32:27):
Or above. Yeah, exactly.

Pieter Levels (01:32:30):
I'm not into this whole [inaudible 01:32:33] Dutch guy method, but I take hot baths a lot and I love hot baths and sauna is nice. But yeah, I don't know. And home ownership is more interesting because I track the home prices and stuff and I know what's going on. And even with leverage of a mortgage, I think it could even be more beneficial to just put all your money in ETFs, in diverse market, index funds and [inaudible 01:33:04], and stuff.

Neil Witten (01:33:04):
For sure. I think academically or mathematically a hundred percent. But I think there's that other side, which is back to where we-

Pieter Levels (01:33:12):
Emotional.

Neil Witten (01:33:12):
... in the conversation. Yeah, exactly. It's back to, what do you need around you? What are our kind of instinctive needs and that sense of place there is whether that has to be manifested in a thing you own. I don't know, but a sense. [inaudible 01:33:28].

Pieter Levels (01:33:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the market is going to move towards more of that being in a rental Airbnb apartment experience for upper middle class, if you can afford it for tech workers and stuff. But I do understand the romance of buying a piece of land in Portugal on the coast and putting the foundations in and building a house. And I see my dad do it every day. So if you don't see it as an investment thing, for sure. Yeah. But then it's also this nice feeling to have all your money on your iPhone, in your broker app and a backpack and it's all in the market and yeah, it's all virtual.

Pieter Levels (01:34:13):
There's something good and bad about it. Something cool and not cool. And obviously if you do this minimalist, you're dependent actually on society to function properly. If the apocalypse happens, you're fucked because your apps not going to, internet's not going to work. Electricity's not going to work. And if you have a house, you can defend the house, and that's absolutely valid counterargument, I think. And obviously minimalism is, it's like a rich man or woman's hobby. Right. If you don't have the resources, you cannot be minimalist, it's pretentious in a way, but I don't do it for pretentious reasons. I do it yeah, just because it fits me. I think

Neil Witten (01:34:57):
We would normally at this point say, where do you want people to find you? But I'm wondering whether you actually do want people to find you. So I'm going to ask you if you want me to ask the question.

Pieter Levels (01:35:07):
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on Twitter a lot. Mostly twitter.com/levels. L-E-V-E-L-S, IO, levelsIO. And this is where I tweet a lot and my main websites are nomadlist, nomadlist.com, remoteok.com and my new immigration service. If you want to move to Portugal is rebase.co, so dot C-O. What else? Inflationchart.com where I track inflation, pretty much, but it's all my Twitter bio. So you can find it there.

Ray Richards (01:35:40):
So I'm hoping that we're all going to go off and do some IRLing.

Pieter Levels (01:35:46):
I'll [inaudible 01:35:48] Andre.

Ray Richards (01:35:49):
I'm off to do some IRLing and I never knew I was going to do that so.

Neil Witten (01:35:55):
I'm going to go do some IRLing as well. Yeah. Fantastic.

Pieter Levels (01:35:56):
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This is life coach. Okay. I'll go IRL too.

Neil Witten (01:36:00):
Would you say hello to Andre for me please? And say-

Pieter Levels (01:36:05):
Yes. Yes. For sure.

Neil Witten (01:36:06):
... say about how he featured in our conversation, which he'll appreciate. I'm sure.

Ray Richards (01:36:09):
Yeah. And we'll see him in [inaudible 01:36:11].

Pieter Levels (01:36:10):
He always joke-

Neil Witten (01:36:11):
Yeah. Yeah. That right.

Pieter Levels (01:36:15):
Neil, we always joke because during the acquisition, I think once you went to Lego Land and we're always joking, like, oh, Neil's always in Lego Land. Like meme kind.

Neil Witten (01:36:27):
Yeah. That sounds about right. I should go to Lego Land.

Pieter Levels (01:36:31):
No, but you're really, I think IRL and family focused and is a really good trade to have. And Andre was like, oh, I need to, because Andre has so much stress. He was like, because he's Ukrainian. I think it's like, he never trusts anything to properly work because in Ukraine doesn't work properly. And he was like, this thing is going to fall through and blah, blah. And he wanted to get it done as fast as possible. And you were like, yeah, I'm in Lego Land now. And it was the two things, he's like stressing. He wants to get the money and he's in Lego Land, like chilling. And it's like, it was so beautiful meme.

Neil Witten (01:37:02):
I think I can even remember texting him from Lego Land, but feeding a little bit of his stress because I was thinking, oh man. But I also felt like I wanted to do the right thing by him as well. It's really, it's amazing.

Pieter Levels (01:37:15):
Yeah. Yeah. No, you did super proper. And it's just really funny. Funny meme.

Neil Witten (01:37:19):
Neil from Lego land. Ah, that's great. I'm going to make [inaudible 01:37:22]. Also you should, if you haven't done it already go and get slowmadlist.com.

Pieter Levels (01:37:29):
Yes. Good point.

Neil Witten (01:37:30):
Because that's clearly going to be your next thing or someone's going to make it.

Pieter Levels (01:37:33):
Yeah. I think Rebase is kind of like slowmadlist. Yeah.

Ray Richards (01:37:35):
Yeah. Well it's becoming it. Maybe that's what it gets rebranded to at.

Pieter Levels (01:37:39):
Yeah, maybe rebrand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ray Richards (01:37:41):
Cool.

Pieter Levels (01:37:42):
Thanks so much for having me it. It was [inaudible 01:37:44].

Neil Witten (01:37:44):
Oh man. It's been great. We've loved it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thanks Peter. We got them in then. Well, I'll drop you a note on Telegram when we are ready to put it out. It'd probably be a couple of weeks or something.

Pieter Levels (01:37:54):
Sure man. Yeah. It was really, really, really new. It was really, really good questions. Really. You're really smart and yeah, it's really cool.

Neil Witten (01:38:02):
Thanks man.

Ray Richards (01:38:03):
Yeah.

Neil Witten (01:38:03):
We loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
That's it, folks. Show notes. Head over to the website at www.lifedonedifferent.ly where you'll find links, a quick summary and you can also explore other conversations. If you enjoying this podcast, then please tell your friends, give us a good rating and remember to subscribe. We're also really keen to hear your feedback. So please do let us know what you think and give us your ideas over on Twitter. You can tweet us at Lifedonediff, that's double F.
PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:39:00]

I went on the Building Remotely podcast with Sondre Rasch to discuss Rebase, my immigration service that helps people move to new places that are trying to attract remote workers.

Topics we discussed:
- The process and difficulty of building Rebase
- Major trends in the nomad community
- Working on a big vs small company (indie projects vs VC funded startups)
- The rejection of creativity in modern society.

Pieter (00:01):
In society in education, like the industrial society kicks creativity and kicks individual crazy, weird ideas out of you because you're being laughed at, in a group like, ah, what a dumb idea. When, if you don't laugh at it, if you let it kind of like evolve, it might become, you know, art, or it might become a company society's very scared of different thoughts, ideas, and you need to take the risk to be embarrassed and laughed at by people. To be honest with yourself.

Sondre (00:28):
Welcome to building remotely. Our goal is to create the world's first guide to building a remote company inspired by founders and leaders at remote startups. I'm Sondre the founder and CEO of SafetyWing the company, offering global health insurance for remote teams. Let's begin. In this episode, we are joined for the second time by Peter Levels. Peter is the founder of several projects for nomads and the remote work community such as nomad list RemoteOk And most recently, and the topic of this episode Rebase. Welcome back to the podcast. Pieter.

Pieter (01:01):
Thank you for having me again. It's really good to be back

Sondre (01:04):
Together with Pieter. We are going to talk about the migration of the new remote workforce Rebase why it's so hard to build and scale, and what's so great about it. And also we will cover inflation and what's happening with the great designation. With that, Pieter, last time we touched on, you know, remote towns, nomad visas, I feel like every time I talk to you, it's like a little peak into the future. You really have a good sense. I feel like of where things are going. Like the things you're interested in has this like caring way to it. I wasn't planning on starting with this, but I'm very curious. Like, do you have a self-reflection on like, why that is like why the things you're interested in tend to be real and not kind of fads?

Pieter (01:49):
Obviously, I don't know if I'm right every time. Right. But I do feel like, I think I'm honest with myself and I think I'm some kind of like proto user or adopter, you know, like they have these these personas, when you build a startup, they have personas in marketing, right? Like what's kind of user, I'm like my own persona for my own businesses. So what I feel, what I'm annoyed with or what I struggle with in my own life, because I do all this stuff with remote work and nomad stuff in my life too. I see as problems that might become a problem for more people after a while, cuz I'm kind of like an early adopter. And then like if you listen to yourself, like honestly like, okay, everything that's in your brain in your mind that comes up, you don't need to be embarrassed about it.

Pieter (02:30):
You need to think about it. Like, do you have problems with dating? For example, all this traveling around, for example long term, okay. Maybe slow down, go to less places. Maybe you can make a dating feature for remote works or whatever. Or there's like a recent problem with matching regular people who still have office jobs. And now a lot of people have remote work and they cannot hang out together because they're remote working people. They kind of work ay. And they can meet up on Tuesday and they can go for a walk. But the office people have to be in the office at Tuesday afternoon. Mm. So these people, there's a mismatch. That's another thing, for example. So there's always something in my life when a person life going on, where I'm like, ah, this seems to become a problem for more people in the next six months or the next few years. And it often happens because this is like a new movement still, and now it's going mainstream, but you can really quickly see these problems if you're honest with yourself, I think.

Sondre (03:20):
Hmm. I think that's perfect. You're you're an early adapter and you're honest with yourself, by the way. Why do you think, think a lot of builders, founders, you know, when they make these kind of products that are kind of solving problems for nobody. And I often find a sense that they're not honest with themselves, like why do you think it's so hard for people? Some people like to be honest with themselves,

Pieter (03:42):
I think it comes down to education where like, when you're kids, like this is quite common phrase. But like when you're a kid you're really creative and you draw and you play and everything's fun. And once you get older, well, no people start saying like, no, you made the wrong drawing. That's not how you should draw. Like people start telling you what to do. Right. And you're embarrassed by your true feelings or your ideas, your creative ideas, even your drawings, you're embarrassed. Like, oh this is not like my friend was colorblind demo. And he would always draw the sky purple. And the art, the teacher was like, you're doing wrong. The sky's not purple. And he didn't even know it, but that kind of makes him interesting person cuz he's color blind. And he thinks the sky's actually purple mm-hmm I think in, in society, in education, like the industrial society kicks creativity and kicks individual crazy weird ideas out of you because you're being left at it for, in a group.

Pieter (04:31):
Like, ah, what a dumb idea. When, if you don't laugh at it, if you let it kind of like evolve, it might become, you know, art or it might become a, a company it might become like I wanna go to Mars. Like Elon Musk probably said as a kid, people laugh at him, but I think society's very scared of different thoughts, ideas, and you need to take the risk to be embarrassed and laughed at, by people. To be honest with yourself on Twitter, social media, Instagram, or in real life even. And I try to do radical honesty where I try to be as open and honest as possible in my business and in my personal life too. And it has helped me a lot. I think you waste no time with lying or I'm not perfect. I also have lied. Of course, I've also done that, but you pursue a life of honesty and you hear a lot of philosophers or like internet philosopher. People also talk about like, don't lie, be honest and it's not easy, but yeah.

Sondre (05:31):
Mm. I think you're totally right. So people lie to themselves so that they won't get left at or rejected by society.

Pieter (05:39):
Yeah. Fear of rejection is huge.

Sondre (05:40):
Right? Yeah. It's terrifying.

Pieter (05:43):
The most interesting part of humanity is that every brain is different and you have these different experience and different ideas and that makes you beautiful. That makes you cool and interesting. That makes conversations so fun. When you go to the bar or something with your friends, some person will say something outrageous and you're like, wow, that's interesting why you think that? You know, and we're too scared to do that in general. I think it trifles stifles, is that the word? Innovation.

Sondre (06:09):
So I wanted to get into rebates, but first I wanted to just touch briefly on a topic that everyone is very interested in today. As headline inflation was announced 8.5% and you made a fun project by called inflation chart. So I was very curious to just hear your take, like what's happening and what will happen with inflation. You think like what's the facts.

Pieter (06:30):
Yeah. So I was noticing inflation about two years ago, I think, or maybe a year ago. And I was like, okay, what if we track prices ourselves? Cuz the government has these price indexes called consumer price index. And they're the ones telling you what inflation is. And it's always something like 4% or something. And you're like, Hmm, interesting. Cuz the rent is getting outrageous. The housing price is getting outrageous. Why is it only 4%? This was like a year ago. So I'm like, okay, I'll just start collecting all these prices like price oil, price of the S and P 500 prices of stock markets. I started tracking the money supply, like how many dollars are being printed. I started tracking food price index, worldwide. All these data sets are public. You just need to find them. And then you need to put 'em in a spreadsheet.

Pieter (07:10):
And then in a database I make a website and I made this site called inflation charts.com and you can kind of use two metrics. So for example, you can see the it's quite difficult, but you can see the price, the real price of a us home, for example, in the money supply, essentially it means you can track inflation. You can check the real value of the stock market and the real value of the prices. And what it shows is that the real inflation based on my data is much higher than even the today reported inflation, which is 8.5%. My inflation is around 17 to 18% per year. And that is based on that. I include housing rent and I also include real estate prices based on the average spending on those and the governments in general, European governments, the British government, us government. They generally don't include housing in the consumer price index, which is insane because that's usually the thing that goes up most like only recently it's food.

Pieter (08:04):
So I think inflation is a very hot topic. And I think that people forget that inflation literally just means if it's, you know, 10% or something or 8.5%, it means you get 10% poorer every year. And even if your bank balance stays the same, you have less money because you can buy 10% less than the year before. And your bank balance stays the same, but prices change. So it's hard to see that you're getting poorer, but you're getting poorer. And I think what's scary about it politically, where I just read the white house, made a statement that they call it the Putin price hike, which makes it a political thing. And of course it has to do with it. And let's not go too far in politics, but let's not forget that the us printed, I think 40% of the entire us dollar supply in the last two years.

Pieter (08:47):
And how can you not include that in your statement about inflation because of COVID we've printed our way into this problem. I think, and, and the scariest thing about inflation is that it hits poor people most. So if you're rich or if you're middle class, upper middle class, you can invest in the stock markets. The stock market goes up with inflation. Usually a lot of middle class lower don't have the means or even information to know how to invest. And they are not exposed to the stock market. They didn't even have the amount of money to invest. And all they see is that the prices go up and their salary usually stays the same. Yeah. Inflation is theft from poor people to, you know, upper middle class and rich people and to the government. And I think that's really, really not a good thing. Like it's not nice.

Sondre (09:33):
No, it's not like many things becomes really hard to do as well. We have a person in the company, April wonderful designer. We have, so she's from Argentina and there's like 40 50%. And she said the exact same thing. It's like, okay, here's why it's so hard. Your rent goes up, all food goes up, salary stays the same and you can't like make investments. Like she said, her dad ran this like machine rent thing and it's like, you have to change prices almost daily. And it just becomes so unpredictable. So you just end up not doing it.

Pieter (10:07):
Yeah. It's really bad for business, really bad for people. And it's very interesting. A year ago I was tweeting about this website and there was a lot of replies, like, nah, inflation is not a problem. Like a lot of people believe this, it was unpopular to talk about inflation. It was like not done. It was like, you know, it's not bad. Inflation is, inflation is healthy and now you don't hear those people anymore. And it's a little bit like vengeance again, like, look, we could have seen this coming and now it's here. And now inflation is for sure a problem. But yeah, I hope this website helps with giving people information about it. And hopefully it helps them also to learn to invest like in the stock market, in ECFS or something, because at least it keeps your money the same. Usually the stock markets go up with inflation and it protects you a little bit, but there's this quote about, yeah, I'll find there's a really scary quote about inflation.

Pieter (10:58):
I put it up, but it was too scary. So I removed it. The end game of rampant inflation is always war or revolution. Mm-Hmm show me a regime change and I will show you inflation when you work your ass off to only stand still or get poorer any isn't that promises affordable food and shelter for the unwashed. Masses will rain Supreme. If you're starving to death, nothing else matters except feeding your family. And it goes on, but it's it's about like, if inflation goes on too long, you get revolutions, you get unstable societies. It's in history. It's happened so many times. It's a real problem.

Sondre (11:30):
I do still think that the us will reign itself in, I mean they had like 10 to 20% inflation, like in the seventies. Right. And they were able to turn that around.

Pieter (11:38):
Well, it's about like, you need to raise the interest rates. Right. And they're scared to raise interest rates because if you raise them then the market crashes. Yeah. They're starting to raise it now. So that's good.

Sondre (11:46):
I think we're just gonna have to take a market crash now.

Pieter (11:49):
Yeah, I think so too. And it's well at least that makes the rich poorer doesn't make the poor poorer so much. Well maybe, also cuz you get fired, but yeah. Economics is so complicated. It's hard to see what does, what, and what's the consequence of what and yeah,

Sondre (12:03):
One last curiosity question before I get into to DVA, sorry, which is that if you were to kind of examine your own interest, whatever you're interested in, that seems like niche and weird now and you don't have to like expect that it becomes big, but it's like, what's something that you're like kind of interested in lately. That's niche.

Pieter (12:22):
I think a new thing and I've experienced it here in Asia where I'm renting instead of renting like a, an empty apartment, like in Amsterdam where you furnish it yourself and stuff. I rent now from hotels, which have switched to remote workers kind of. So you're talking about like big hotels, like Intercontinental, whatever they have these sub brands and they're starting to sell long term deals and they're also starting to install kitchens. So they're starting to compete with Airbnbs now for long term, staying people that want furnished and service apartments also for families like it's like two bedroom, three bedroom places they're changing the hotel format from tourists to more long term stay people actively because of remote work even for the local market in Thailand, in Asia actively for that. And I think that's very interesting and the prices you're talking about are like 1.5 to two times more than regular rent.

Pieter (13:12):
Like it's a little bit of skill, but I think you can get a washing machine, but you can also get the laundry done. For example, it's, it's more service where you can focus on your work and it's kind of like a living solution. They call it, I think. And that's getting really big here in Southeast Asia. And I think it might also be able to get big in, in America or in the rest of the world where what you see is hospitality moving into the Airbnb space and into the rental space, even. So you have regular housing buying a house or renting house. Then you have Airbnb, which is in those houses, you get your guest, a hotels and hosts and they're all merging into each other and competing with each other soon. Yeah, because it saves me so much effort because always in AMAM apartments, the water pipe breaks and you need to get the water mechanic guy to come and needs to fix this shit. And it's and always the heating breaks and this breaks and that breaks. And if something breaks here, like you get a new room, you get a new apartment or, you know, they switch you up. So I think that's also for families. I think that that could be definitely future.

Sondre (14:16):
Yeah, no, that, that sort of for term model is great. Like, you know, run the maintenance of your building in this like very customer service oriented way, as opposed to a lot of landlords who are just awful at customer service

Pieter (14:30):
Like European landlords are well probably American too. They're horrible. They're like they don't care and they never wanna fix stuff. I think the flip side is you cannot customize a furnace service apartments. It all looks the same. It's very uniform. Uniform is very accepted in Asia. Uniform is not accepted in the west. Everybody wants their own individual apartments here. Everybody has the same looking apartments, but it's a really good looking apartment. So it's kind of like less individualistic, but less struggle and less errands. And also like around here, for example, there's a really good supermarket, five minutes away. I can just walk. It's all kind of part of the same project and there's a really good cafe near here. Really good restaurants. And it's all in walking distance kind of a little bit like Chango valley also like Chango did it organically. Mm-Hmm here. They did it more artificially. It has its flip sides, but it's an interesting way to live. I think it could be, it could become a thing, especially with remote work

Sondre (15:24):
For sure. And you saw the, the Bryan ske put out that Airbnb data that now the majority of their revenue was 30 plus days stays. I mean, that's remarkable.

Pieter (15:34):
Yeah. It's gonna, I think flip the whole hospitality industry on its head. Like a year ago I started like investing in stocks or ETFs. And I also did like a mini ETF build myself about hotels. Cause I thought this was gonna happen a little bit. So I Googled all the big hotel change and I Googled remote work and see if remote work is on their website and how much, and I found it on the Marriot website, the hyats and the IHG into continental. So I bought those stocks. Yeah, just cuz I was like, they might get big with remote work.

Sondre (16:04):
So let's get into Rebase. Let's start with the beginning. Like why did you build it? What was the building process like

Pieter (16:12):
Rebase is the first immigration as a service company where it sounds really cool, but it means that before you had to go to lots of dodgy, weird agencies to, to immigrate to a country and I want to try and get it all online, where you just sign up, you pay money, you enter your details and you can move to a country. And a lot of people have predicted this was gonna happen. Like con companies are kind of starting to compete, just like the prediction of this book, sovereign individual from the nineties, like government countries are gonna compete for talent and stuff. So I thought, okay, I'll just build this. And during COVID I ended up in Portugal kind of randomly when COVID started, I flew back to Europe cuz I asked Twitter on a poll like, should I stay in Asia? Or should I go to Europe back then?

Pieter (16:56):
COVID wasn't in Europe yet. So it wasn't China. And they were like, well of course go to Europe because it's no COVID and you know, it's not gonna come to Europe. And of course was really bad in Europe, much worse than in Asia. So I ended up in Europe and I was with mark and we did kind of like a road trip with a lot of masks to see where we could kind of live long term a little bit for during COVID cuz we didn't wanna stay in Holland, both for our countries. And mark is my best friend and we we know met together. So I ended up in Portugal cuz it was really high on noit list suddenly. And a lot of people were, were there suddenly. So I organized a meet up and 40 people were gonna come and I had to cancel it cuz it was COVID.

Pieter (17:34):
It was like, I think December, 2020 and I had to cancel it cuz it was really dangerous with COVID. So we couldn't even do the meet, but it showed me like, okay you organize the meet up 40 people show up. This is quite exceptional. There's a lot of people for my website. So I was like, okay, Portugal's really popular. And then I spoke to people there and a lot of them said that they moved to Portugal. They became a resident and Portugal is very foreign friendly. They also had very beneficial like tax discounts for foreigners. If you come there and I was like, okay maybe I should try. So I got a lawyer, I got an immigration advisor and I did it myself. Cause I also was looking for a place to live legally and actually live, you know, at least half the year because I was still kind of roaming around the world and I had the problem that I couldn't even take out money from my company because I wasn't living anywhere.

Pieter (18:19):
And I left Holland officially. And if you leave a country like Holland or you know, Sweden too, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the tax authorities are really strict. So if you leave, you need to kind of find a new place to live and start paying tax there. And if you don't, it kind of falls back to Holland again. So I didn't take out any money for two years. And I lived all my savings and my savings ran out and I had to borrow money for my friends. Meanwhile, my companies were making lots of money. I would be tweeting about, look this new revenue milestone like $400,000. I couldn't even spend it. I was borrowing money for my friends. It was hilarious because I wasn't a resident anywhere. And then finally I came to Portugal and I became a resident and I pay tax and I can get money now for my company.

Pieter (19:02):
And, and I lived there and Portugal is, it's amazing. It's good air quality. It's on the coast. There are so many beautiful places. The beautiful nature. It's very calm. It's very affordable. It's getting higher. But the cost of living is about, I'd say Bangkok and Thailand in terms of like food and stuff. And it's really quite cheap. It's, it's one of the cheapest places in Europe and the people are the nicest people you've met. I think Thai people are really nice. Portuguese people are really, really nice. They're so friendly and hospitable and yeah. So anyway, so I ended up in Portugal and I found out about all these people moving there, all these nomads moving there, cuz nobody could go to Asia cuz of COVID cuz the borders were closed. So everybody ended up in Portugal and people started becoming residents there and I kept getting people asking me like, who's your lawyer?

Pieter (19:49):
Who's your lawyer. And I was like, okay, this and it like 20 times. And I was like, okay, let's make a little type form. So I made a type form, a moment list. Like if you wanna move to Portugal, I become a resident. You can do this. And it was like a few people signing up. Like I would say 50 people. Then I made a real website about it, like a real beautiful landing page with video and stuff. And I accidentally launched it cause I made a photo of my badge over my laptop, like with the landing page on it, which I was still working on. And I, I tweeted like just, I didn't meant it to go viral. I just tweeted like a POV working on my immigration as a service startup. And I went like really viral, like I think a thousand retweets.

Pieter (20:26):
And then people started going to the websites cuz I saw it in the screenshots and I started going there and website was of course already live cuz that's how I kind of worked. And they started screenshoting the website with all the benefits, nice country tax benefits that went viral by other people also. And hundreds of people started signing up and I think we had like 500 signups in one month of people wanting to move to Portugal and it was outrageous. And then I looked up the statistics of how many people moved to Portugal and it was like 60,000 a year by month. That's like, like what like 5,000 per month. So I was doing 10% of the entire Portuguese immigration markets within a month. So I was like, this is insane. Yeah. And my lawyer said, you need to close the applications or my immigration advisor because he said, you can't do this. This is too many, too many. He was getting calls, doing calls all day. These onboarding calls, he was going burn out. So we closed applications a little bit for now, but it's soon gonna open up again and I'm trying to automate all the steps to make it more smooth, kinda like Stripe Atlas, which is like a way to start a company. Yeah. Yeah.

Sondre (21:35):
Now I saw you commented. Actually I recall to that thread that you wanted to digitize the physical process of doing immigration, similar to how Atlas did it for starting a company hundred percent yet. I think that's such a great thing because so many processes when interact with government are so bad, but you can, you know, with a lot of patients automate some of that, certainly, you know, it's possible to fill out PDFs.

Pieter (21:58):
That's literally what I'm working on this week. I have a PHP module to pre-fill PDFs. Mm-Hmm you're a hundred percent right? The good thing about these forms, cuz a lot it's all forms, right? Like let's get to the practical government is all writing down forms and signing them. The good thing is these forms don't change. That much. Government is very slow mm-hmm so it might take five years for form to change. And in that case you do need to change the code and stuff, but generally it just keeps working. So once it's automated, it kind of runs and then you can submit it. You can even probably ship it via API to the government. You can even do signature, right? You just make a canvas and people draw their signature and then you put it in the PDF. That's what I'm gonna do.

Pieter (22:39):
The only limitations are like, for example lawyers say stuff like Peter, I don't think we can get the signature from a HTML canvas into a PDF. It's not really legal or something. And then you need to like figure out the legality, how can we make this legally defensible? There must be a law article that allows for this. So you need to find that it's a really different industry than just making a little SaaS app. It's really interesting. It's really different. And people are really grateful. It's so different than my other websites because you have people like go through this whole process and then they end up in Portugal and they live there and they live there with their family and you help do that for like a few hundred dollars or something. And you're like, wow, this is so cool. Like the other websites are also cool, but this is so physical. Like we have Venezuelan families now getting out of Venezuela to Portugal, like that's like Venezuela is, is a very country not doing so well, like Argentina. So it's a really cool business. It's really so different and yeah, you must have the same of insurance. It's a, it's a very different business than just a normal, you know, iOS app or something or website it's, it's much more it's about people's lives in your case is, you know, medical.

Sondre (23:48):
Yeah, no. And insurance is similar in both of the ways you mentioned there. So one is that you're dealing with people who have real personal catastrophe and it's also similar in the first way you said, which is that you interact with infrastructure that is pre-digital regularly. And you know, thankfully our co-founder and CTO, Sarah, one of her first jobs was that she built this automation for government agency in Norway. And so she built this like PDF generator that you're building this week, several things you know, it's like will come up pieces where we're interact with some entity that can only receive a form in this particular way. And the API project that's gonna take years. So instead we automate it by filling in the PDF and sending it off as the email, just like they received it normally

Pieter (24:38):
exactly. I think startup people think that it's easy to change regulation. They're like, ah, let's just, or they think it's easy to not follow it, but that's not at all. You can't, you can't really do that. You have to follow the law and it's much easier to just do what they want you to do, but in a very robotic way where like, okay, we're not gonna hand write these forms. We're just gonna put letters. And they'll say this form is not the handwritten. It's like, yeah, but it wasn't. Where does that say? It should be handwritten. It's really fun business because you know these other business, other websites, they get boring after a while a little bit. And it's fun to have something new. It's almost infinite because you also can go to different countries. So for example, we kind of wanna go to Spain now with the immigration advisors, Spain is extremely bureaucratic. It's like 10 times more bureaucratic than Portugal apparently. So it's kind of like scary, but I don't know. Maybe that's a nice challenge. You know, there's a lot of different countries and Andreas clinger keeps DMing me. He's always DMing me, Peter. This it's gonna be billion dollar company. It's so good. Maybe that's maybe I should give that secret, but, but he's really supportive. He's like you need to expand as fast as possible.

Sondre (25:44):
It's a hundred percent correct for people listening. I'm sure there are people listening who want to apply. If you could just give a quick walk through like how easy is it? What are the steps people go through?

Pieter (25:54):
The website is rebase.co. You fill out a form of your personal details. Stuff. Like I think like your income cuz there's income requirements, but it's not supervised like $15,000 a year by a Portuguese government. There's a few requirements. Depending if you're European union citizen or a non-European union citizen, or even American cuz American government is quite crazy with stuff. They still want you to pay tax. Anyway. Even if you're out there outside us, you apply, you do an onboarding call with the immigration advisors, which is one hour where they guide you through the steps of like actually doing it. And I'm starting to automate that call. Also, I'm starting to make it, you know, straight to this forums and pre-filling depending on the situation, you need to get a visa for Portugal. If you're outside European union use, you need to get a visa, which is a, I think a D seven visa, which lets you live in Portugal to get all this stuff sorted.

Pieter (26:44):
Then you fly to Portugal. I think you go to city hall, signed documents. After a while you end up as a resident, then you apply for the special foreigner benefits because they want to attract the foreigners, which is called NR. And then you get approved and then you live in Portugal and, and the cool thing is after five or six years, you can apply for a Portuguese passport. So it's really beneficial for people like from Venezuela or outside you that want access to you know, I mean European union passport is always great. And yeah, so if you have a stable life there, if you don't have a criminal record, if you make nice money, not even a lot, but just okay. You can probably get a Portuguese passport. It's really cool. We've, we've been helping a lot of Ukrainians. Also since the war, we already had a lot of Ukrainian customers and we refunded all of them because now the European union allows Ukrainians to just come and, and we're still helping them get all the benefits too, but Portugal's been very open for Ukrainian refugees and it's a great place. Yeah. You can just apply. I think it's like a hundred dollars to apply. And then the legal costs after are like, I think somewhere like $800, but it kind of depends. I don't know exactly pricing, but yeah.

Sondre (27:54):
Could I explore that choice with you about whether to build this into, you know, a billion dollar company or not? Yeah. You know, it, it has real trade offs and you know, it's like the upside is you get a billion dollars. The downside is it's like you sacrifice big portion of your life on the way there you take on a lot of stress. Yeah. And often, you know, when, when we go through these periods of, you know, raising money yeah. Like by the time this is live, you know, we've announced there's serious B so we're going the venture route and it's great. In some ways, you know, you can advance the scaling head of the revenue and you have a real shot at building like billion dollar company pretty fast, you know, a few years. But I'm wondering, how do you think about that choice? You know, it's always bittersweet when we raise those rounds, you know, it's like I do have this part of me, which is like, gosh, it would be so romantic to just only company a hundred percent. And , you know, just bootstrap and automate everything and have this people light company. I, I do find it more. There's something more wonderful about it. What do you think about that choice for rebates?

Pieter (28:57):
Okay. This is so radical, honest, right? I talk to so many founders like VC funded founders who talk to me in the and say the same thing after 10 employees, it gets really stressful after 10 people. And they say like, if I would do it again, I would probably do it with max 10 people and I would go maybe India and stuff, but you need to understand VC founders are also in a lot of stress. So of course they complain a lot about, and they look at grasses greener, like, oh, look at Peter levels with his little PHP scripts, making money, it's always grass green. I also have grass greener about VC. I'm like, you know, it would be cool to build this giant company. And it seems so much easier if I see these other companies. Like if I look at remote.com for example, and they're really VC funded and they're doing really well.

Pieter (29:38):
And I look at like, wow, this side, this landing page looks so cool. Cuz they have these designers, the logo looks so cool. And they entering all these different markets and it's like worldwide and blah, blah. I'm like, wow, it's cool. And then I look at myself, I'm like myself is kind of simple, kind of basic, but it also is really nice, but the, the skill is different and you can reach people's hearts and minds in both ways. Like I do think my websites do reach millions of people and then they also make millions of dollars now. So it's kind of nice per year. I do think it's less stressful than VC or than getting funded because you're always with this runway and you're always looking at what's, you know, are we gonna be on time for the next raise? And are they gonna, you know, what if the market crash, is there gonna be a next round or this stuff goes in your brain and it's difficult to maybe sleep with that, for example.

Pieter (30:23):
So the question is, would I do, for example, funding for rebates, I would do it if I was 10 years younger, cause I'm 35 now. And I already spent, you know, last eight years working quite hard on all these websites, cuz it was a really momentous effort as an individual. And it was really fun and really great. But I think it might be dangerous cuz a lot of my life is my work. Just like with you, right? We are those kind of type A people where we probably don't have a lot of hobbies next to this. This is our work and we, we, we sleep and we think, and we, this whole company, it dominates our life. When we shower, we think about it and less now for me. But a few years ago, this was everything always in my head when I walk, when I talk.

Pieter (31:04):
And I think the problem is after a while, if you do that for over a decade, you become a very mono type of person, like with a very narrow minded interest. I did some great effort with this company, but you need more than just a company you need...Maybe you're into pottery or whatever painting or some other stuff. And I think for me increasingly trying to spend more time on those things as my startups are now automated, increasingly more of a like balanced life and I've I have had a balanced life. I didn't work so hard, but as people think, but you know what I mean? Like it's still always about this company. It's always about this web. It's always about Twitter, you know, your identity, your personal brand on, on all this stuff. And I think if you do it for too long, you become that and that's, you know, dangerous maybe cuz you don't live forever. You know,

Sondre (31:55):
You wanna preserve the source of the uniqueness. Like you don't wanna become your work entirely and become this like flat person. Who's like yeah, perfectly optimized to the problem at hand,

Pieter (32:11):
Like startups is about money, right? Like you make a lot of money and you get these millions of dollars in revenue and that's a momentous achievement. That's like, that's a lot of money and you get millions of customers or users and that's so high in dopamine. That's why we like it. It's so difficult to achieve that. And it's so difficult to run that. And when it runs, you're like, holy shit, why we did this? This is amazing. Like this is miraculous. It's so difficult. It's like pro athlete stuff. And that's why it's so hard for that to compete with a normal life, like a normal personal life, like walking your dog or something or family life. A lot of entrepreneurs have difficulty, even family life, right? They're not there for their kids or something. I don't wanna do that because we live in such a capitalist society, which is fine with me.

Pieter (32:56):
But you start thinking, wow, this is so important cuz it's about millions of people and millions of dollars. But you know, what about your life? Like life is about more than money, more about success, more than about status. It's also about friends, barbecuing and not talking about work, but talking about like, you know, the sky is purple, but it's not cuz your color blind, but that kind of stuff, you know, it's it's, it's about more than that. And you need both of course, but it's really easy to get lost into entrepreneurship, into like this obsessive thing because it's so monumental. I think,

Sondre (33:25):
I think that's a great place to, end I'm gonna go for a walk now and reflect on that. Yeah, exactly. Don't worry, I'm definitely still committed to SafetyWing

Pieter (33:36):
Angry investors.

Sondre (33:37):
Thank you so much, Peter. I, I see we're coming up in time. I'll be respectful of your time and thank you so much for joining us. People of course can go to rebase.co. I believe it is. Is There any other of your projects you would recommend people check out?

Pieter (33:53):
Did I make something new? I don't think so. I think this is it. Yeah. This is all like Twitter, twitter.com/levelsio as always. That's where you can find all my stuff.

Sondre (34:02):
One of the best Twitter accounts in the world definitely check out @levelsio.Thank you so much. Peter, I always enjoyed talking with you and me too. This was definitely one of the best. Thank you very much.

Pieter (34:14):
See you next time.

Sondre (34:16):
You can also get more insights from other remote leaders on buildingremotely.com here. You'll find the first chapters of the building remotely book as well as articles and events relating to remote work. See you next time.

Tiago from Wannabe Entrepreneur interviewed about the origins of my bootstrapping and moving to Portugal (as he's Portuguese) and starting Rebase.

Tiago (00:00:00):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Wannabe Entrepreneur, the podcast about what's really like to bootstrap a company. And today I have a new person in the business, a newbie in bootstrapping. His name is Pieter Levels. What's up Pieter? Everything good with you?

Pieter Levels (00:00:17):
What's up, man? Thank you for having me.

Tiago (00:00:19):
Thank you for taking the time. I think, obviously, everyone that is listening to this knows Pieter, is kind of the person that started bootstrapping. We're just chatting about it off the record and he just said that now bootstrapping is kind of mainstream and everyone speaks about it, but when he first started, everyone was more into VC and startups and shark tank. And not a lot of people were actually speaking about bootstrapping. So, is the creator of Nomad List, Remote OK, Rebase.co, and I guess another thousand cool projects. And super excited to have a chat with you. And I guess we can speak a little bit about Rebase, about Portugal, about bootstrapping. I have a lot of questions. So super excited.

Pieter Levels (00:01:09):
Me too.

Tiago (00:01:10):
I always ask this to the people I'm interviewing, to introduce themselves in their own words. If you don't mind, would you do that?

Pieter Levels (00:01:20):
Yeah, sure. So my name is Pieter Levels. I'm originally from Holland, Amsterdam, I wasn't born there, but I lived there a lot and everybody knows Amsterdam. So it's easy place to say.

Tiago (00:01:33):
I love the city, man. It's such a cool city.

Pieter Levels (00:01:35):
It's beautiful, man. Especially in the summer. It's amazing. And so, I make startups, but not really billion dollar startups, but I mean, million dollar startups is good and they're indie, so I don't really raise funding for them, I just make it myself. I write code, I design, I make the logo, I do the marketing. I do pretty much everything. I make the database, I make the code and I made a lot of projects, over 70 projects, and a few became successful, like Nomad List and Remote OK, and recently, like you said, Rebase. And most of my projects now are about remote work. And it's my mission, is to promote the freedom of global movement that's enabled by remote work. And that's what I live for. That's what I want to do. And that's what I did for the last, almost eight years now, I think.

Tiago (00:02:41):
Why this motto? Why having this mission of allowing everyone to travel freely?

Pieter Levels (00:02:47):
I think it's something that... When I grew up, I didn't actually travel around the whole world. The first time I really went outside Europe was in 2009. I studied business administration in Amsterdam and they had a program, an exchange program, many people do it these days. And I went to Korea and I studied in Seoul, at Korea University. That's the name of the university. And it was life changing. I was like, "Wow, I'm on the other side of the world." And like everybody I think, I was scared of outside Europe and traveling and stuff and moving abroad, it was really scary. I was like, "What was going to happen? Is it safe and stuff?"

Tiago (00:03:34):
Especially to a different continent, right?

Pieter Levels (00:03:36):
Dude, a hundred percent. And it was so strange. It was such a culture shock arriving. We flew there with two Dutch classmates who were [foreign language 00:03:47], and still best friends, and we arrived there at the airport, and flying is already interesting, but then arriving in a place in the middle of the night, taking the bus. And we had no idea about how to get to our hotel, or our hostel I think it was even, at a shared six people dorm. And we were just in a random neighborhood in Seoul, and with neon lights everywhere. You know Asia, all these neon lights, just like in Japan.

Pieter Levels (00:04:17):
And we were so hungry and there was only this street food. So we eat these rice cakes in red sauce and it was super spicy and we almost threw up because it was just burning our throats so much. And then we ended up in some bar called the Sam bar, because Sam means tree. And we started drinking and asking them if they could help us find our way to our home. And they did. So we drank a lot there. And then we ended up in our hostel that night. And I don't know, that first night was already like, "This is so crazy." Other side of the world, so much adventures and stuff. And that expanded my whole view on the world. And everybody was really nice. Everybody was so nice to outsiders.

Tiago (00:05:05):
Europe is interesting because it's somehow its own country, a big country, because the culture is similar, right?

Pieter Levels (00:05:12):
For sure.

Tiago (00:05:13):
But the moment you go, for instance, to Asia, and my only experience in India was actually in India, because when I moved to Germany, I'm from Portugal, working in Germany for six years. I met a lot of people from India and I met people from all over the world. So this was really nice, to get to know other cultures, but Asia and India, it's such a different way of living. So different that you either love it or you hate it. And I was super addictive. And I just want to go back because this was so interesting.

Pieter Levels (00:05:47):
Totally man. It's also relative. If you grow up in Asia, then you have the same vibe that we have about Asia, as with Europe. A lot of people here are dreaming about Europe and they're obsessed about Europe. And I think it's kind of similar thing. It's just like, you grew up in a culture and then you go to another culture and it's just like... It's so exhilarating, because everything is different and you learn so much and also, you're forced to go outside and talk to people just to survive, cause you need to eat, you need to somehow order food or buy food and it forced you out of your comfort zone.

Tiago (00:06:32):
Are you the kind of person that likes to fit in or to bring your culture? I feel that when you're traveling, there's two kinds of people. People that love to be tourists and they say... We have this a lot in Portugal, by the way. And sometimes with my family this happened, I'm traveling with my family and we are in a beautiful beach and it's like, "Yeah, we also have this in Portugal." Try to bring the culture there. And then there's other people, like me, that are like, "I don't want anyone to know that I'm a tourist and I want to just fit in and to learn from them." Which kind of person are you?

Pieter Levels (00:07:04):
Well, it's difficult to not look like tourist because I'm blonde and white, and that's not people in Asia. But I think it's important that you try to match the culture, local culture level. For example, in Asia you need to be much more polite and you need to be friendly and talk softer because the closer you get to the United States of America, the higher the decibel of voice. Everywhere you go you hear Americans, always, like, "Louder! Louder!" It's just so loud. And then Europe is somewhere in the middle, and then Asia just speaks soft. So you need to match the culture and you need to be respectful. And then, of course you bring your own culture, because that's you. And it's always a mix of...

Pieter Levels (00:07:56):
With COVID is very different, because it's hard to now meet people. But before COVID, it's a mix of generally you hang with locals and you hang with other foreigners in a place, and there's exceptions to that. But there's also, places like Korea don't have a lot of foreigners living there, so you hang more with locals. Places like Bali, Canggu, that's definitely a resort town. So it's mostly foreigners living there and the restaurants are ran by locals and it's good. The money flows to locals. It's probably harder to hang with locals there because it's more of a resort town. It's always a mix and everybody should do what they want to do. And if you want to be a tourist, that's fine too.

Tiago (00:08:46):
When you go back and visit your friends back home, people that didn't travel, did you feel like that there is a difference in perspectives? Can you still identify with your friends back home?

Pieter Levels (00:09:00):
A hundred percent. Honestly, the friends I had when I graduated are very different than the friends I have now. When I graduated university and then started traveling and living abroad, are very different and I still love those old friends. I don't talk to them a lot. I talk to the friends that went the same way as me. Also went traveling and remote work. I'd love to have a more diverse friend group, but it is difficult, because you change when you go abroad and people that stay in their own country also change. And people become more set in their ways.

Tiago (00:09:47):
It's funny to see that normally... This is my experience as an expat. The first one or two years, it seems that every time you go back home, nothing changed and you changed so much. But then after three, four years, I started noticing this. It seems that they moved on, they have their life. And then I feel, and it's an interesting thing now that I returned, because I have a lot of friends that I met as an expat and I really identify myself with them. And now I'm back, and my friends here, it's hard to reconnect even though I like them, but-

Pieter Levels (00:10:24):
No, it really sucks because you had a lot of shared history and there's nothing negative about them. There's also nothing negative about us. And I think it's natural that the people in your life changed throughout your life, and it's not a bad thing. It's a real challenge to have a very diverse friend group. And honestly, I think the people that go abroad the first time in [inaudible 00:10:48] and stuff, the first two or three years, they're insufferable, that's the word. They cannot stop talking about, "Oh my God, everything's amazing abroad. And oh my God, I went to Asia, and I went to Latin America and blah, blah, blah." So that's really annoying for people that stay at home. But then it's also annoying because I do think nomads and people abroad they get over it and they're like, "Okay, it's not better or worse. Just different."

Tiago (00:11:14):
It's a different lifestyle.

Pieter Levels (00:11:16):
But I do feel like maybe the people that stay at home, they do get threatened by, if you make a different life choice than them, because they want to have a cognitive confirmation that they made the right choice. Because if they made the wrong choice for them... If things work out for you abroad and they think they also could have done it, then maybe they made the wrong choice.

Tiago (00:11:44):
Easing out.

Pieter Levels (00:11:46):
So then, the easy way is to attack it. And that's what I do. Especially, I would say 2014, 2015, I had a lot where I would talk to people in Amsterdam at home when I was flying back and they were like, "Pieter, this doesn't work. You cannot do this. People need community. You need roots. You need to be in one place and remote work doesn't work. You need an office. You need people, colleagues and stuff," and all this stuff. And I was like, "Yeah, but also..." All my friends were doing it differently and it's going well, we're working remotely or we're building companies. It wasn't going extremely well, but we were making our own money from it and it was going okay. And then, now with COVID, everything changed. Because remote work is mainstream. Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, just tweeted, "We're all going to become digital nomads." And suddenly it's mainstream. And there's a certain vengeance aspect to that, "Look, I was right." But also there's the realization, I think that you should be open for different ideas, but you shouldn't think that your lifestyle is better or their lifestyle's worse. I think it's good to respect everybody's lifestyle and I guess learn about it.

Tiago (00:13:10):
What did your family say when you started this life of living the digital nomad? First of all, did they want you to be an full-time entrepreneur? Or were they worried that "Okay, why don't you just get a job and get on with it?"

Pieter Levels (00:13:25):
Dude, my parents are amazing. My mom and dad are... Now I realize more and more, they're really amazing because the only thing they always said was, "Beat as long as you're happy." And I guess also don't hurt other people that were happy for you. Just do whatever makes you happy. And they never told me what to do.

Tiago (00:13:47):
Are they also entrepreneurs?

Pieter Levels (00:13:49):
No. My dad's a doctor and my mom is a lawyer, but she didn't really work. She just raise kids. My dad always wanted to become a filmer. They grew up really poor, and this was after the war in world war II. So he was born just after that, 1948. And the city he was in, Rotterdam, was completely flat bombed by the Germans, was gone and the whole country was in ruins after the war and everybody was poor. So my grandmother told my dad... My dad was like, "I want to go to film school. I want to become a film director." And my grandmother was like, "No, you're not going to become film director. You're going to become a doctor." So, I think you see this a lot with families in Asia, also where the parents tell you, "You need to become doctor, lawyer or something."

Tiago (00:14:39):
I mean everywhere, in Portugal is the same. Everyone wants you to become a lawyer or a doctor, because they make money.

Pieter Levels (00:14:44):
Exactly.

Tiago (00:14:45):
Or a politician.

Pieter Levels (00:14:45):
It's a way out. So it sucked because he wanted to be... And he did a lot of film. Now he's retired and he studies film history and stuff and he's doing a PhD in film history. Amazing. [inaudible 00:14:58]

Tiago (00:14:58):
You think you are an inspiration for him?

Pieter Levels (00:15:02):
No, I think he's an inspiration for me. My parents are, because... Well, I know what you mean. He always told us to do whatever we wanted to do because he was forced to become doctor. And that was a big lesson for me, this is also a point of luxury because if you grow up middle class or upper middle class, and Holland doesn't really have poverty, honestly the country has a lot of social welfare systems. So most of the country's middle class, which is really good, but my point is I had the opportunity because if I was his generation, my mom would've or my dad would've told me, "You need to become a doctor or a lawyer." So I was the second generation of that cycle. And then you have the opportunity to become whatever you want. You can also become very lazy, I guess.

Tiago (00:15:55):
So where did the inspiration come from, to become an entrepreneur? What were your idols?

Pieter Levels (00:15:59):
Man, so I come from music. First, I was doing graphic design, when I was 12 years old on the computer. Photoshop stuff and art, visual art. And I was in all these online communities. One was called Now Go Create, the other one was called Yayhooray, I think Yayhooray still exists. This was early internet, like 2003 or something, way back. And we'd always download illegal software. We download Photoshop, the warez websites. And we download Photoshop, we download other premier to make video, like After Effects. I made a lot of graphics like that, video graphics. I wanted to become really good at this art stuff. And then I went to a festival in my hometown, annual festival [foreign language 00:16:41] for this big event we have, and there was a guy with a laptop in this little, really small show. There was really big shows.

Pieter Levels (00:16:48):
Music shows, all these really small shows and this guy was doing glitch music. He's IDM, intelligent dance music, very pretentious. Anyway, he had a laptop and he was making music. I was like, "Wow, I have a computer." So I went back around the stage and I looked at his laptop, which was the software. And then my brother was like, "That's Reason." So I downloaded this program, Reason, of course I downloaded it illegally, didn't have money. And I started making music. And then first, I made IDM and then I made drum based music. And then I started DJing and my own songs, in Holland, and I started doing my own shows and stuff. And I even played in UK. I went on the radio in UK on the BBC. I was play listed with my music and it was going really well. But mostly I learned from making my own CD. Cause everyone-

Tiago (00:17:43):
Making your own music, you didn't do remixes.

Pieter Levels (00:17:45):
No, I made my own music. That was the special thing. Because most people just DJ. I made my own songs.

Tiago (00:17:51):
See, that's what I find really interesting already, because I really love music as well. I'm not a musician, but I play the guitar and I'm actually making an album, but just for fun. But I find it as the ultimate creative art. I don't know. I feel the same with coding. I started coding because I found a way to transform my ideas into reality with just a laptop. And it's the same with the guitar. You can get your thoughts into a song that makes sense and touch people. And it's really a great way to explore your creativity. Is that why you like music so much, too?

Pieter Levels (00:18:33):
Well, my dad was also very creative and he always supported us to make all this stuff. All the computer stuff was new, but he was smart enough to think, "Okay, this is the future. So let these kids play in the computer a lot, make whatever they want." My brother made 3D models, 3D animation with 3D studio max, back then, when he was a teenager. And my other brother was doing more hardware stuff, electronics and stuff, but we were always creating. And my dad and my mom always supported us to not go... We couldn't ask for PlayStation or something, but we could ask for painting tools or a guitar or something. They really, I think, purposely pushed us towards creative tools to use, and I would do the same thing, but of course music, but every expression of creativity is just pure and magical. And if it's visual art, graphic design music or writing, even, or websites, I think they're entrepreneurship. I think this is the big thing people not in entrepreneurship and not in business they really misunderstand, entrepreneurship is way closer to creativity in arts than to corporate big business. I studied business, so I studied corporate stuff.

Tiago (00:19:58):
You did an MBA, right?

Pieter Levels (00:20:00):
So my bachelor's was business administration and my master's was entrepreneurship. So, I learned both things. And I think entrepreneurship is way closer to creativity and expression than to big corporate business, because business is about wearing suits and it's management and it's also interesting in its own way, but it's more like MBA theory comes from the military actually, comes from 1950 US military management theory. And entrepreneurship comes from creativity, from arts. It's completely different.

Tiago (00:20:38):
I've been trying to find, with all the interviews I've done, I'm trying to find what is an entrepreneur? What is the core of being an entrepreneur? And one thing that I've noticed, is that most of the people I interviewed, is they want to create their own thing, and they might be really happy with the company that they are working for. But the only problem that people normally find, and I say these other times, is that it's not their company. And if you compare it with, let's say an artist, a painter, you can clearly distinguish the difference between painting someone else's painting. Someone tells you to paint something, you just do it, or painting your own art. And it's exactly the same for entrepreneur. You can have some fun working for others in the project that you believe in, but it's completely different than making your own company.

Pieter Levels (00:21:29):
A hundred percent. And I think part of it has to do with autonomy. Autonomy is a word we don't use enough, I think. Autonomy, my friend [foreign language 00:21:41], he's a Dutch writer, also makes startups now, but he writes a lot about autonomy. And the concept is that, having the power over your own decisions, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're egoistic or something, it means that you have your own authority over your own decisions and you choose. And if you choose to do things for other people, that's also autonomy. It's like, it's not egoistic. It's more like you set your own environments. You have to control

Tiago (00:22:12):
You have to control for your own life.

Pieter Levels (00:22:14):
And of course, this all comes down to philosophy. This is a choice that probably has a lot to do with individualism, hyper individualism.

Tiago (00:22:24):
And psychology too though, because I feel that there are people that are not comfortable with taking their own decisions so much and they prefer being guided. And then there's people that like the responsibility of taking their own lives in their own hands or even being a leader.

Pieter Levels (00:22:44):
Well, this is a controversial theme, but if you look at kids, when they grow up, how they're playing creatively with their toys and drawing, every kid's drawing always. They're really creative and they're really autonomous. And they are very excited about a lot of stuff. And I feel that the education system doesn't give you... Many people say this, but they removed this autonomy and this creativity out of kids at a very early age. "No, you did it wrong. No, that's not how you draw a tree. What if you draw a tree in a more interesting way?" It's like you have to follow by the rules. And rules are, of course, they decimate creativity because the best creativity is unbound. You know what I mean?

Tiago (00:23:39):
I think, we are definitely getting very philosophical here, but I would also argue that, to live in a community, you need the leaders and the creators, and then you need the people that also fall in line. So, I don't know if this is not just a survival thing, when they say, "No, this is not how we do it. We do it like this." And then-

Pieter Levels (00:23:59):
I think you make an assumption that I don't know if it's true necessarily. Because you make an assumption based on this industrialist capitalist hierarchy of a percentage of top leaders and then some followers and stuff. I don't think this is necessarily... It's just how we run things now, but if you look at the future, this is not necessarily how we run things in the future. Look at the rise of crypto and decentralization and stuff where... And again, autonomy over your own accounts, your money, stuff, accounts that get frozen. I think the trend is not towards hierarchy. The trend is towards... More people have a voice, look at YouTubers now, that get more views than media channels. Media channels were hired-

Tiago (00:24:48):
Is it more people that have a voice or different people that have a voice? I don't know, because now, if you're a YouTuber, you can get a voice and maybe before you couldn't, but still, it doesn't mean that everyone can have a voice because not everyone can become a YouTuber.

Pieter Levels (00:25:04):
No, everybody can have a voice because everybody can upload a video on YouTube.

Tiago (00:25:08):
But it doesn't mean that people will listen to it.

Pieter Levels (00:25:11):
True. But you have to define what it means having a voice, before you couldn't even get on the TV, because of the gatekeeper and now it's all open. I think that's less [inaudible 00:25:24]

Tiago (00:25:23):
The potential is there, right?

Pieter Levels (00:25:26):
Having people listen to what you say, that's never guaranteed. That shouldn't be guaranteed, but you should be able to have a voice. I think we are going away from hierarchical structures, not towards it. Of course, you're right, history is full of hierarchical structures. Looking at 12th century or something like the feudalism, people who own the land and rent it out and stuff, it's definitely of old time. You're right. But I don't think it's necessary.

Tiago (00:25:59):
This is a very interesting topic. I totally agree with you, but I tend always to question everything and understand if the reason why we're doing it in a certain way, is it the right or wrong, but in the end there's no right or wrong.

Pieter Levels (00:26:15):
It's an interesting topic.

Tiago (00:26:17):
Going back a little bit to entrepreneurship, even though I would speak about this for hours. You had your masters in business, but you also mentioned quite often that you learn most of your things by doing. And I'm very curious about what have you actually learned from your studies that it would be really hard for you to learn by just doing.

Pieter Levels (00:26:40):
Great question. So, I did my master's in business and my master's in entrepreneurship. And my bachelor's... I tweeted this whole MBA thread, some years ago, with everything I learned, all the theory and stuff. And business theory is interesting, but very limited because it's all these conceptual frameworks, like Porter's Five Forces and stuff. It's like these people, "I think we should categorize things in this way." And you cannot test these things. This is social studies. You cannot test them scientifically, like you can test in biology or chemistry. So it's all quite subjective, but I think basically [inaudible 00:27:20]. I think it's barriers to entry. Being a market with high bears to entry, so it's hard for competitors to get in. You need to differentiate as a company, as a product. That kind of stuff is interesting.

Tiago (00:27:35):
So these are concepts that you learn in your studies and are crucial for building your products as well.

Pieter Levels (00:27:42):
Well, I don't even mean crucial. I think, honestly, if I was 18, I wouldn't go to university. I would just skip it now. This was different than two years ago, I think. But now things are changing so fast. I think the only reason to go to university is to show you have the discipline to sit through four years of coursework and write a master thesis or something, or bachelor's thesis, and show that you have the discipline. I think it's a discipline test. But I just don't think the connection... I think that world changing so fast now that there's no connection necessarily. Especially with social studies like business, there's no connection with the current reality of the world and what you learn in school. It's just all outdated within a month.

Tiago (00:28:28):
So you think you could have had the same success you had with your projects without going through your studies?

Pieter Levels (00:28:36):
I think yes. When I talk with my dad about it, he's always like, "No, well, Pete, you learn a lot of integral academic fundamentals, blah blah." And I'm like, "Mm," because he's really about this academic, but I'm like... I don't don't know, man.

Tiago (00:28:48):
It's hard now because you went through it. You would need to find examples of people that didn't go through it.

Pieter Levels (00:28:54):
Well, I know from my peers. It's always good to compare yourself to your peers, my classmates and stuff. And most people didn't start a company. And most people just went to become employees and stuff. Man, the amount stuff I learned in the reality and practical from doing things in the last eight years would be... Nothing bad against my university. I think it's just all universities, but something like a thousand times more than stuff I learned in university. I know it's unpopular opinion.

Tiago (00:29:30):
Well, I totally agree. And in the end, of course, is one person that decided that for you to be called an engineer, you need to study these subjects. But in reality you need to learn much more, or just different things, depends also on what kind of engineer you want to become and so on.

Pieter Levels (00:29:46):
Hundred percent.

Tiago (00:29:47):
It's the basis. And you get the time also to go in depth into things that might not be super relevant, but it's also important to know. Let's say mathematics, you probably don't use mathematics in your daily business, but knowing it, it's also important somehow, because it trains your mind to maybe think in a different way.

Pieter Levels (00:30:14):
Obviously, I had a lot of problems with mathematics, cause I'm not good at it. So, I think I got kicked out of high school for my mathematics grades was too low. And I had to get back into university by doing all these tests for statistics and mathematics. And I studied all summer, for months in the attic of my parents' house. Just learning this math stuff was so difficult, but then, honestly-

Tiago (00:30:44):
[inaudible 00:30:44].

Pieter Levels (00:30:45):
No, it was just very difficult for me. Dude, integrals, [inaudible 00:30:51] formulas and integrals are insane. You need to-

Tiago (00:30:53):
They're insane.

Pieter Levels (00:30:54):
You need to take a formula and then expand it into what it was. It's so difficult. But I barely use that. In my coding, I do plus, some form variables. I do sometimes statistical tests, but that's just easy stuff. You just search how it works. You install library like P-test, T-test and stuff, significance.

Tiago (00:31:23):
That's important.

Pieter Levels (00:31:24):
Again, it's more about discipline. It's showing that you can go through it. I think the social part of university is very important. Meeting people, dating, going on dates and stuff, parties. It's very important. It's extremely important, I think. But if you're 18 now, and I keep meeting more and more of these people that are 18 and they just skip university and you just go nomad. And I think I would do that. I would go nomad, start businesses and stuff, try a lot of stuff. That's the most exciting thing you can do now with your life. And right now, it's probably as interesting and probably more interesting than university. I wouldn't say this two years ago, but things have changed rapidly.

Tiago (00:32:07):
I totally understand an I see your point. I also think that people shouldn't rush too much to start their own company. Just now, someone was talking with me on Twitter and asking, "I'm 18. I need to start my company right now. Otherwise I'm losing time." I'm like, "What?"

Pieter Levels (00:32:26):
[inaudible 00:32:26]

Tiago (00:32:26):
"Chill. There's so much to learn." And I don't think that there's a need for that stress, just out of the bat.

Pieter Levels (00:32:35):
No, but I think it's natural. I had to stress, in my twenties. And it beat at 27 or something, where I just had mental breakdown. That's also why I started traveling, but just this stress of like, "Oh my God, I'm going to be 30. I'm not successful. Blah, blah, blah, blah." And I think becoming successful and then therapy helps a lot of that.

Tiago (00:33:05):
How do you deal with that? How do you deal with this, getting 30 and not being successful? How did you overcome that?

Pieter Levels (00:33:12):
So relative, successful. Because life is already great, but when you're 27, 26 and you're from Holland and you're a middle class kid and your dream is to do startup and stuff, and then, of course, your definition of success is getting a successful startup.

Tiago (00:33:31):
But what is successful startup? It's like a million, is it a thousand?

Pieter Levels (00:33:38):
The definition is very vague. So that's why you also go into therapy. What does that mean? What does it mean success for you?

Tiago (00:33:45):
Is this something crucial that people should define before starting?

Pieter Levels (00:33:51):
No, you just go with the flow. But I think it's natural that people at late twenties have these breakdowns. Everybody has it. It's called Saturn Return, where the planet Saturn returns to the same place it was when you were born. I don't believe in astrology, but that's how they call it. And it usually happens after you graduate. And you're like, "Wow, is this it? Is this my life? I have a job now, is this it? Almost free, am I going to die... In 50 years, is this what I'm going to do?" And after 30, you become much more chilled, at least I had that. And also with my business now doing well, it really helps to become more chill.

Tiago (00:34:30):
Interesting.

Pieter Levels (00:34:31):
I don't need to impress people. I don't need to... I can be very autonomous. I'm much more relaxed. I was very not relaxed.

Tiago (00:34:42):
It is stupid stories of Facebook and so on. People are like, "Look at him. He created Unicorn with 22." And you only hear about this because it's the survivor bias. So you're like, "Oh my God, what am I doing? These people are so famous."

Pieter Levels (00:34:58):
And the odds of you starting building on a company are so small, but the odds of you starting... That's a good bridge towards any, but the odds of you starting a million dollar company are very reasonable, absolutely reasonable, absolutely possible. Because a million dollar company, what does that mean? It means five to 10x valuation of revenue. So a million dollar, what's that? That's 200k... Or 100k a year. That's completely in reach, to make a little app or startup or product or website.

Tiago (00:35:31):
Let's get into that. Because it seems to be in reach, because you see people doing it. But, for me, a bootstrapper that started this seven months ago and I'm making less than a hundred bucks a month. It seems very, very far. And I was a software developer before and I was making good salary, especially in Germany. And now, for me, it seems impossible to get to this salary as a bootstrapper, even though it's my purpose and I totally love it.

Pieter Levels (00:36:03):
What were you making in Germany before?

Tiago (00:36:05):
60k.

Pieter Levels (00:36:06):
That's a lot. Takes high. But that's also the problem, because the longer you wait... Is called golden handcuffs. The longer you wait, the higher your salary becomes and the harder it is to leave, because when you quit and you make your own money, it's much harder to make 5k with your own business than to do it as employee. Imagine you make 10k, it will take years to get to 10k with a startup. So it just gets hard and harder to work for yourself.

Tiago (00:36:37):
And this is actually one of the questions I had here. What should one do, should you start something as a side gig and still have your job or should you just go all in?

Pieter Levels (00:36:52):
No, I think a hundred percent side gig. I did the same thing. So, I did my music stuff and then I started uploading it to YouTube and I accidentally built a business there. I became one of the biggest electronic music channels networks on YouTube back in 2008, 2009, 2010, because nobody else was uploading music on YouTube and I was one of the first. And I got all the big DJs and artists on my channel, in drum pace, house and a lot of other genres.

Tiago (00:37:18):
But if you are making music, then you are already an entrepreneur.

Pieter Levels (00:37:24):
The thing was, I was making money with YouTube because not just my own music, but also other artists came on. I was making money with ads. So my point is, I was making $1,000, $2,000, sometimes $8,000 per month. And this gave me a side gig. This... Sorry, this gave me a main gig, so I could do side gig. So I could go travel after studying, because this YouTube channel was during my study days. And when I graduated, my friend [foreign language 00:37:51], the guy from Korea, the Dutch guy. He was like, "You can also do this remotely on the other side of the world. Why don't you go travel with your laptop and just make these YouTube videos, if you make money anyway." I'm like, "Cool. I'll do it." But the point was I had money flowing in already and that gave me... I left in April, 2014, went traveling and the first money I made was August, 2014 or something. So it took over a year get to any money.

Tiago (00:38:22):
I think you definitely need to have some savings. So, that's what I've done. I got some savings. I'm actually getting unemployment money from Germany, which is amazing.

Pieter Levels (00:38:33):
That's nice.

Tiago (00:38:33):
It's really nice. But I still quit any job. So I still add to my savings, I have this money coming in. But I'm doing a hundred percent because it's so much work. It's so much things that you need to learn so much things you need to try that I cannot imagine how people can do this and still have an eight hours or nine hours job on the side.

Pieter Levels (00:38:57):
That's life. Life is sacrifice. And entrepreneurship is sacrifice. So, if you want to do entrepreneurship, you need to sacrifice a lot of things. Again, this is the barrier to entry. If it would be easy to do it, everybody will be doing it. Everybody would be successful at it. So, I think entrepreneurship is one of the hardest things to do in life. I think, this is maybe biased, but I think it comes close to being a-

Tiago (00:39:24):
Definitely in the professional life, I would say.

Pieter Levels (00:39:28):
Being a Olympic professional athlete is also really hard and I think it's very similar. It takes so much of you, especially in the beginning, when things don't work and it's emotionally so exhausting that nothing that you do works. And by the way, same with artists. Again, it's the same thing. You make all this music and nobody likes it. For years, nobody likes it.

Tiago (00:39:55):
For me, being an artist is being an entrepreneur.

Pieter Levels (00:39:57):
Because again, it's the same thing. But all the other things, like a normal job, it's so different because it's not... Well, it's exhausting in a very different way, but it's not exhausting in that, nobody pays you money. You immediately get $2,000 a month, you get paid your salary from day one. It's so different. And that's why, I'd say the earlier you can get into entrepreneurship or becoming an artist or whatever, the better because you get so used to the golden handcuffs again.

Tiago (00:40:29):
You get used to-

Tiago (00:40:30):
Interesting. I didn't know that concept.

Pieter Levels (00:40:33):
Not to judge your personal choices, but I would recommend other people to not quit a job and go live on savings. Because that gives you a limited runway. I would maybe work part-time or something, and I know it's hard and you need to sacrifice. So, when I did it, I was single, I didn't have a girlfriend much of the time, so I didn't have kids for example. So my point is, there was a lot of time, like in university, there was a lot of time to work on stuff for example. University is a great time to work on stuff because you barely need to be present at these classes. I would let my classmates sign for me, so I didn't have to go to classes and you have a lot of time to work on stuff. That or having a main gig, and then working on the side, I think is recommendable, because you don't want to run out of money and then you have to go back and it's just depressing.

Tiago (00:41:32):
Definitely. And I'm in that position as well. Or I might be in the future, that I would have to go back, but I still think it was worth it, to be honest, I've learned a lot and not having a gig and having to rely on yourself only... I don't know. It's a different perspective. I don't know if you've ever heard this theory that the Vikings would burn their ships before invading new land.

Pieter Levels (00:41:56):
Exactly.

Tiago (00:41:57):
And I understand it doesn't work for everyone, but if you have some savings, at least for me, it worked. I also obviously agree with what you have to say.

Pieter Levels (00:42:04):
You have unemployment money, that's pretty much the main thing. How much is that? What you get?

Tiago (00:42:13):
It's a lot. It's $1,700.

Pieter Levels (00:42:14):
Perfect. Then you don't need main gig. Then you made the perfect choice. You don't need to go back. This is enough money to live on. And also, the nomad thing ties into this. A really good trick is to use this freedom to go live in a cheap place, move to somewhere where it's affordable. It could be in your own country, move somewhere more rural, small town. Because most of the day you're going to sit inside anyway on your computer, so why do you need to live in Berlin or in Amsterdam? When you can live in somewhere small.

Tiago (00:42:46):
True, true, true.

Pieter Levels (00:42:46):
You could save a lot. An Amsterdam rent would be probably 1500 euros a month now, or 2,000.

Tiago (00:42:51):
Absolutely. Absurd.

Pieter Levels (00:42:53):
Absurd. But then, a small town could maybe be 200 or 300. So, that would 5x your runway, so you could... Or something. That kind of stuff is interesting. And that's also what I did with nomading, back then, I went to check my... Where I rented the hotel room, I talked to the manager, I think I paid 200 a month for a hotel room, just very small with the bed. And the food was... It was like 50 cents or something for a rice and chicken or $1. And my spending was quite low and that gave me a lot of runway to work on stuff.

Tiago (00:43:35):
Definitely. If you get that possibility, I think it's totally worth it. And if you are willing to do it, I think, some people might not be.

Pieter Levels (00:43:43):
Sacrifice, man. Life is sacrifice. If you want one thing, you won't get the other thing.

Tiago (00:43:47):
Going back to Rebase, because it's also a bit connected with this, the possibility of helping people to move to different destinations. So how did this idea came to be?

Pieter Levels (00:44:05):
Really interesting. So, before COVID started, this was December, 2019. I was in Chiang Mai, with Daniel John from ghost. Daniel's my server guy. Andrey Asimov, the indie maker guy. A lot of my... Mark from BetaList and Whip. A lot of these famous indie people, a lot of my friends and a lot of nomads. And we were all in Chiang Mai and then COVID hits. And I think we flew to Malaysia, went to Penang. And we were in Penang and COVID was in China and was starting to spread to Malaysia, at the Thailand. And we didn't really understand, was this going to be big? Were it small? Was this nothing? People immediately started wearing masks, in Asia was really good. And I asked Twitter, should I fly home? What if this thing... Because it went exponential. What if this thing gets worse in Asia, maybe escaped to Europe. And it was like, "Yeah, go to Europe now." So I flew home, around early February and I went quarantine immediately. I went to the airport hotel in Amsterdam and I went there for 10 days and everybody was laughing at me. My parents were laughing at me. My friends were laughing me. Why would you quarantine? Man, this was before-

Tiago (00:45:23):
Are you volunteering?

Pieter Levels (00:45:26):
Quarantine didn't exist. This was nothing. We were on Telegram groups with... We knew everything. There was so much information that wasn't on mainstream. The delay from our Telegram groups about COVID and to the mainstream media was four months, it was insane, or three months.

Tiago (00:45:43):
Which groups are those?

Pieter Levels (00:45:45):
Just friend groups. And then there was specific COVID groups. Everybody already knew what was going to happen with COVID on Telegram in January, 26.

Tiago (00:45:55):
In Asia.

Pieter Levels (00:45:57):
No, worldwide. We already knew what was going to happen, because you could look at the statistics. It was already scientists studying everything. Anyway, my point is, back then nobody knew anything. So I flew back. I was in the quarantine hotel, and this is in the airport hotel normally, voluntarily quarantine. Then I went to my parents' house and I stayed there. I started buying food. I bought a thousand euros of food at the big supermarket, because we didn't know if this was going to be a crazy pandemic killing everybody. Or it was like... Well it turned out to be pretty bad, but still.

Tiago (00:46:31):
I did the same. Did you also buy toilet paper?

Pieter Levels (00:46:36):
No, no toilet paper. I stocked up my food, somewhere in February two or something. And my friends also did and I was wearing a mask. There was a guy who coughed at me because I was wearing a mask, February five, in the supermarket. This was all before everything.

Tiago (00:46:53):
Dude, in Netherlands, it was really hard to convince people to wear a mask. I've been there and no one was wearing a mask, even in [inaudible 00:47:02]

Pieter Levels (00:47:02):
It's horrible. Dutch people are a very interesting group of people. It took nine months for the Dutch CDC director, who's an idiot, to admit, "Okay, masks work." Like he said, "Don't wear masks." But anyway, let's skip to the stuff. So, I was in Holland for six months, close to my parents. It was also, I wanted to be near my parents because this COVID was especially more vulnerable to older people. I wanted to be close in case something happened. And I was also just paranoid. I was scared that it would get to me as well. And then, after six months, Mark and me left Holland, Mark was also back home. Mark from Whip, battle list, indie maker. And we went traveling. We went to Berlin and Prague, because I was getting really depressed. I was getting really anxious. I had a long-term relationship and she was in Korea and I was in Holland. And it was not going well cause we were far apart and we ended up breaking up after, but it was all very depressing and psychologically exhausting for everybody, it was the whole COVID lockdown and stuff.

Tiago (00:48:11):
Definitely.

Pieter Levels (00:48:14):
So I started driving with Mark, started feeling better again. And then, on Nomad List Lisbon was starting to rank really high. And so, Mark and we were like, "Okay, let's fly to Portugal." And we ended up living there for I think eight months or something.

Tiago (00:48:29):
Really?

Pieter Levels (00:48:29):
From September to April.

Tiago (00:48:32):
In Lisbon? You lived in Lisbon city?

Pieter Levels (00:48:35):
I lived in a coastal town, but I was in Lisbon many times because there was... Lisbon was bustling, a lot of cool people. And my beach town was really chill cause of COVID, because it was outside air. You could go for walks, Mark and me would go for walks a lot. It was COVID safe and stuff, and it was in nature.

Tiago (00:48:58):
It is super nice. I really like it too.

Pieter Levels (00:49:01):
It's magical place. It absolutely changed my life that place. The sunlight and the air, we started looking so good in the mirror. Our skin was glowing and there's something about... It's so healthy to live there. I don't know what it is, but the sea salt maybe, but we felt so good. We invited friends over and they were the same. They came from this psychologically stressed, depressed vibe from COVID and then being in a beach town and going for walks and eating nice food and seeing the ocean and surfing, as well. So, we ended up there and I kept talking to people, foreigners there also, like nomads, and they kept saying, "Yeah, I'm now a resident in Portugal." And I'm like, "What does it mean?" They're like, "Well, I moved here and there's a lot of benefits foreigners to move here." And I was like, "Okay, interesting." But I wasn't really that interested, but it kept coming up. And then, I was looking for a place to live, as a base, also for taxes because I have a company, but I also need to be... If you're nomad, you need a legal place to have a bank account and to spend money and stuff. And so, I was like, "Okay, this kind of makes sense for me, [inaudible 00:50:22] Portugal."

Tiago (00:50:24):
A lot of people ask me this. So, what is the best legal setup for a nomad? So, you need to have a base and then you pay taxes in that country? Is that it?

Pieter Levels (00:50:34):
I think you need to talk to a lawyer. It's really personal, your own situation, but the point is, if you live somewhere over six months, you need to pay tax there. That's the concept. That's the most important concept. And if you don't live anywhere over six months, then there's an international law that usually falls back to your citizenship country. So, if you are German and you German citizen, which is different than residents. So citizen is where you're born, where your passport is. And resident is where you're registered. So, if you're German citizen and you fly around the world and you live nowhere and everywhere, then generally you're still taxable in Germany because it's a fallback rule.

Tiago (00:51:19):
Got it.

Pieter Levels (00:51:20):
But if you move to Portugal and you're there, you register as a resident, you're still German citizen, but you register in Portugal. And generally, if you're there six months in a year, now you are Portuguese resident and a Portuguese taxpayer and Germany doesn't care anymore. As long as you're not making money in Germany. So, this is like a minefield, you need to really do it properly. And Portugal is very beneficial because it gives you a lot of benefits, tax benefits, but also they're very pro-foreigner, the government wants to attract foreigners. They're waiting with open arms to attract foreigners. There's no tax on crypto right now, that's, for example, interesting.

Tiago (00:51:58):
And one thing that also didn't know, there's no tax on foreign income. Really? You can make money from outside and then there's no tax on it.

Pieter Levels (00:52:07):
So there specific cases. So, again, I'm not lawyer and that's why I cannot disclose any legal information about the stuff. But you need to check your own personal situation, but there's specific cases where Portugal, once they track foreigners that have, for example, retirement money or death savings, or they have foreign dividends for example, which are then not taxed for 10 years. And the reason Portugal does this is because they want to attract foreigners to spend money in their country. So, imagine you're Portugal, which has a brain drain, which is losing population every year now. They just had largest decrease in population in 50 years-

Tiago (00:52:47):
True.

Pieter Levels (00:52:47):
... last year. So, everybody's leaving Portugal, or a lot of people are leaving Portugal, because there's not a lot of opportunities for Portuguese. And Portuguese companies, they don't pay a lot.

Tiago (00:52:56):
Paychecks are shit in Portugal.

Pieter Levels (00:52:58):
The minimum wage or something, or the average wage, is something like 700 euros a month. If you look at the comparison with the rest of Europe, this is a East European country level.

Tiago (00:53:08):
I lived in Germany, and coming back to Portugal, that's the biggest pain , for sure.

Pieter Levels (00:53:13):
It's really bad. And there's a lot of reasons to go into why this is the case, but it comes down to that Portugal needs foreigners and the government has stated that vividly.

Tiago (00:53:26):
So, you realized that the government was... One, foreigners, there were people setting up their base in Portugal. And then, what did you decide to do, did you try to see, "Okay, I want to do the same."

Pieter Levels (00:53:39):
So I set it up too. And I was really scared. This is going to be like a legal minefield. I got a lot of lawyers, immigration advisors, tech advisors, to all go through my setup and they were all like, "Yeah, this is legal. This is good." And then, I kept getting people asking me, "Hey, I also want to do this. I also want to register Portugal. I want to move to Portugal." And I was like, "Interesting. This has a little bit to do with COVID." Because it was hard to go to Bali. It was hard to go to Asia, to all those places in where nomads normally go, like Thailand and Bali. It's hard to go there, because COVID was... All the borders were closed. So a lot of people that usually go to Bali, Asia, Thailand, they would end up in Portugal. Second, new kind of scene of nomads.

Pieter Levels (00:54:25):
So I was like, "Okay, maybe I can make a type form and try resell these services or refer my immigration advisors to these people that wanted, for some money." And made this type form, got some customers. And then, in November, I made a whole landing page for it and I launched it. Well, I accidentally launched it on Twitter. I just made a photo of my laptop, on my bed, working on it. I wrote like POV building immigration as a service startup. It went viral, and everybody suddenly signed up, and there was 500 signups in a month.

Tiago (00:55:02):
All right, so this is something that I really need to ask, because for me it's amazing. So, I understand the idea phase. So you identify a problem, a problem that you own, you have yourself. So it's much easier for you to understand the problem and how to fix and so on. And that's definitely a great way to bootstrap a project. But then the launching part is something that I don't fully understand because you add the same, for instance with digital nomad... With the-

Pieter Levels (00:55:30):
Nomad List. [inaudible 00:55:31]

Tiago (00:55:31):
With the Nomad List, you just decided to, "My website then was up because of some NGNINX config and suddenly I add thousands of people." I was like, "No, that's not how it happens to me for me." For me, I will share it with thousands, or in Reddit, everywhere. And I didn't get enough people. And I was reading your book and I can see that you focus a lot on launching. And you say that launching is overlooked. So, what is that? What is the difference between your launch and my launch? Why does it yours work so much better than mine?

Pieter Levels (00:56:04):
Well, so people say like, "Look, he already has followers." And I think it's true, but it wasn't true in the beginning. And Nomad List also went viral. So, I think it might have to do with the topic remote work and digital nomad stuff has been hot since 2014, it's an exciting topic. And so, there's this thing with, you have reality and you have things that are happening, and companies that are being made now. And then, you have people's brain, and their secrets, and their insight of their brain, what they're actually thinking. And you want to be in the time where a lot of people are sickly thinking the same thing, but they're not saying or doing it yet.

Tiago (00:56:50):
How do you know?

Pieter Levels (00:56:51):
Well, exactly. I have a lot of times where I'm in a group setting and I will be like... For example, your... Meaning, all these people, you're having dinner and stuff, but you're really tired, for example, you're tired of walking all day, but nobody says that, everybody's kind of... And then I say, "I think I'm really tired.q Maybe we should just chill somewhere or I should go sleep." And everybody's like, "Yeah, actually me too." Many times... This is really bad example, actually. Many times I feel like I think things, and because I try to do radical honesty, I try to just say what I think, it comes out and then suddenly people are like, "Yeah, I wanted to say the same thing, but I was scared." It was too crazy or something. I think, moving to Portugal, it's kind of crazy in a way. Let's move to Portugal and register Portugal and pay taxes there.

Pieter Levels (00:57:46):
And with Nomad List was same. Let's move to all these cities in the world and just go live there for a while. So I think the trick is to... Because with Nomad List, I was observing that this was happening already. I was in Chiang Mai, and I saw 20 to 30, 40 people, 40 nomads there, living there. But it was very small, now it's thousands. But I was observing that people were already doing something and I was working for them, but they were not normal people, they were a little bit weird people. They were strange. I'm strange, I think. And then, you need to observe, you need to try, is this a fringe, is the word? F-R-I-N-G-E. A fringe thing, a new thing that's frowned upon. And then many times -

Tiago (00:58:37):
This is where intuition comes in. And I know that you believe in intuition.

Pieter Levels (00:58:42):
God, intuition. Because many times when you think something, everybody else is thinking the same thing, because we're all on the internet and we're all reading the same shit. And we're all... Everybody watches porn, everybody does things we don't talk about or reads articles... Actually, we have a collective brain, but people are limited by the constraints of acceptable society. You cannot just move to Portugal. It's outrageous. You shouldn't do that.

Tiago (00:59:10):
Most people will think about it, but say, "Okay, this is impossible."

Pieter Levels (00:59:18):
Man, I would love move to Portugal, but it would be unacceptable because I have my friends here and I have my job here. How would my boss react? My boss doesn't accept that I work remotely, all these things. So thinking like this is quote, "What people do on the weekends, or what nerds or someone, do on the weekends, everybody else will be doing in the week 10 years later or something," is a quote. So, if you are doing something special, new... There's a lot of examples of this, like indie games. People that were making indie games in 2010 or something, and then it blew up. But if you're doing this, this is the problem also I see in every scene, music, start, everything. People are always doing the same everybody else is doing. And it's going to give you horrible results, because you need to be on the edge of something new.

Tiago (01:00:13):
So, you think that your edge, when you're launching something is not really your technique of launching, is more the product and the audience.

Pieter Levels (01:00:23):
No, I think it's the market. I think it's the-

Tiago (01:00:25):
The market.

Pieter Levels (01:00:26):
You need to be tapped into the vein of people's brain.

Tiago (01:00:30):
In the exact right time, as well.

Pieter Levels (01:00:33):
And obviously, that goes wrong, because I've launched over 70 projects and only three, or four, or something, worked out. So, most of the times you're wrong, but you need to try. And sometimes you're like, because I didn't expect this Rebase to blow up like this. Now it's getting like 400, 500 applicants per month. And then at this rate we will have 10% of the Portuguese immigration market. All people moving to Portugal, 10%.

Tiago (01:00:59):
You will have 10%? That's absurd.

Pieter Levels (01:01:01):
Because 60,000 or 50,000 people move to Portugal a year. So, it is crazy. So my point is-

Tiago (01:01:07):
Did the Prime Minister already reach out to you?

Pieter Levels (01:01:09):
No, everybody asked me, but these governments are so hard to reach, but it's okay. I don't care.

Tiago (01:01:15):
There's elections now, it could help.

Pieter Levels (01:01:16):
Well, I hope they don't change the rules. They would ruin my business.

Tiago (01:01:23):
That would be-

Pieter Levels (01:01:25):
TLDR. Most people are probably interesting and unique, but again, the same thing with kids in education system, it removes their creativity, same thing with people. If you say something crazy in your friend group, I had the same in Holland. I would say crazy stuff that I felt. And they're like, "Pieter, don't say that. What the fuck are you talking about? That's not normal-"

Tiago (01:01:47):
Acceptable.

Pieter Levels (01:01:48):
"... thinking," or something. Acceptable. And you need to let your brain think things, because they are interesting and they might make great arts, they might make great businesses. Think differently is the whole concept, think differently.

Tiago (01:02:06):
Don't be afraid of think differently. And if you take also another example, which is Elon Musk, and-

Pieter Levels (01:02:15):
Same.

Tiago (01:02:16):
I know a lot of people might not like it, but-

Pieter Levels (01:02:18):
No, I love Elon Musk and I don't understand why people don't like this guy because he's going to Mars.

Tiago (01:02:22):
That's exactly it.

Pieter Levels (01:02:25):
It's a very, very, very strange side, guys, now, that people don't like Elon Musk. It's very strange, man. It's it disturbs me.

Tiago (01:02:31):
I think when you reach a certain point, you always have haters, but my point is that, he thinks, "Okay, how cool would it be to have a really nice electric car?" And everyone's like, "Yeah, that's impossible." But he thinks, "No. I mean, how cool would this be? Yeah, it's cool. Let's make it." How cool would it be to click in a button, move to Portugal. And everyone like, "This is impossible." No, it's super cool, right? Yes. Then let's build it.

Pieter Levels (01:02:57):
I didn't even know this was possible. So you need to... Man, how you explain this? So you have all these immigration advisors, and they're doing everything with emails and invoices and bank wires and stuff, and it's all really slow. And you need to have some assumption like, "I think, let's just do this through Stripe. Let's just do all the forms digital." You need to have some naive perception that this is going to work out and that these immigration advisors or some of people you work with are going to accept that you're doing all this stuff, because they live in a completely different reality. And it's just, you need to jump in the pool and try. And it will probably not work out, and sometimes it does work out. And that's also the thing with people trying any startup stuff, is they try once, they will work on a project for a year, and then of course, it doesn't work out, because the odds are like 3% or 4%, if you're doing really good.

Tiago (01:03:55):
You need to try multiple things.

Pieter Levels (01:03:56):
You need to try, man. I think you need to try 20, 30 times.

Tiago (01:04:03):
Also one thing, and from your book, we can really see this. You really know how to launch in each platform and how it works, how each platform works. Reddit is different, and Hacker News and Product Hunt and so on. So, I think it's also really crucial for people to study the platform before launching, understanding the people they are launching to. This is also [inaudible 01:04:24]

Pieter Levels (01:04:24):
Also true, but-

Tiago (01:04:25):
... but it's really crucial as well.

Pieter Levels (01:04:29):
My biggest annoyance is people that are thinking you can just write a tweet and then you can post on Instagram and you can post it on TikTok and you can post it on Reddit. This is bullshit. They're so different. Something that works in Instagram, doesn't work on Twitter, doesn't work on TikTok, doesn't work on... Reddit is completely anti-spam. So, the only way to leverage Reddit is to give value, to be a beneficial community member. And then, you might be able to get them to use your thing and asking for feedback for example, but you cannot just come in with, "Look, I launched a startup." Nobody cares you launched a startup, "Average launched a startup." Nobody cares. It's not interesting. It's annoying. It looks like spam.

Tiago (01:05:18):
It's funny, because we live too much inside of our brain and we are selfish by design. So, we think that we are... We all think that we're at the center of the world somehow. And we all think, "Everyone will care that I launch a startup," but then, put yourself in the other person's shoes. If someone says, "I just launched a startup, whatever." Would you actually care? Would you click? I try to always do this exercise, but it's very hard.

Pieter Levels (01:05:40):
This is great exercise. The best thing you learn is like that. People who say, I meet lot of those people, "I'm going to build a billion on a company." And they're so confident their own thing. [inaudible 01:05:52]

Tiago (01:05:52):
And what is the idea? I'm not telling you the idea.

Pieter Levels (01:05:55):
That stuff. And then they launch and it completely, nobody cares. And it barely goes, but this is good. This is a reality check, because everybody thinks they're actually special and it's not, you need to get stuff out the door. So, your first product will fail, probably. And your second also may fail also, but this gives you a reality check that what you make should actually be somewhat interesting, better or cheaper. Needs a better product or it needs to be cheaper products.

Tiago (01:06:27):
And can you now, better distinguish if a product will or not succeed before starting it, with your experience?

Pieter Levels (01:06:35):
I focus a little bit more on... Not necessarily, but like Rebase, I know it's a money opportunity. It could make a lot of money.

Tiago (01:06:43):
So you start thinking about monetization immediate [inaudible 01:06:47]

Pieter Levels (01:06:47):
Also, no, because I make enough money. Now it's something like two to three million a year. So I don't... Crazy amount of money, by the way.

Tiago (01:06:57):
For you, almost. You don't have a lot of expenses, right?

Pieter Levels (01:07:00):
Exactly. So, it's insane money and I barely spend it.

Tiago (01:07:04):
It's crazy.

Pieter Levels (01:07:05):
It's all invested.

Tiago (01:07:06):
You should not say this.

Pieter Levels (01:07:08):
Well it's on the fucking Twitter. It's on my... It's open. So, it's more like a challenge to make a cool new startup that works, but I also still make projects that don't have any monetization. Airlinelist compared airlines, HoodMaps also, and recently-

Tiago (01:07:27):
This is fun because, are you afraid of flying, or not?

Pieter Levels (01:07:32):
No, but... Well, I say a little bit. I'm not really super comfortable. I'm more comfortable... I know the odds of-

Tiago (01:07:41):
Crashes.

Pieter Levels (01:07:42):
... crashes flying is really low, but I'm more comfortable, for my own irrational fear, if I'm in the safest airline with the safest plane.

Tiago (01:07:50):
I was super afraid, actually, now I'm much better. I kind of overcame it. But when I was super afraid, having this filter that you have in your website, like "Safe airlines, no crashes," would justly make me so much more comfortable.

Pieter Levels (01:08:05):
But it's so irrational, because I drive a motorbike here in Thailand, and it's like one in 80 or something you die. And then flying the worst airline, I think is Nepal airlines, and it's like one in 100,000.

Tiago (01:08:16):
Exactly.

Pieter Levels (01:08:17):
And if I go on a motorbike, I'm not scared at all. So it's completely irrational, but it's nice to fly with Singapore airlines, Emirates, Qatar, with Airbus A350. Airbus A380 is great. 777X, honestly it's not great and it's still a weird thing.

Tiago (01:08:36):
Is that the one with the crashes?

Pieter Levels (01:08:36):
And it's still, it's not... The plane doesn't fly without software. Airbus planes also not, but this whole plane is wrongly designed for eco purposes. It's just not a good plane. I don't think anybody should fly on it. Allegedly, I don't want to get sued.

Tiago (01:08:59):
So you build a website to show how to turn this.

Pieter Levels (01:09:03):
But this website is not monetized. The monetization aspect is more like... I do think more about in the concept of serious companies, like Rebase for example. But I also think about the impact. Now with Rebase, we have Venezuelan families, and Venezuela country is quite in ruins, in terms of the money and society and stuff.

Tiago (01:09:30):
I had a friend from there and it's crazy. Told me it was robbed 18 times at gunpoint.

Pieter Levels (01:09:36):
It's insane.

Tiago (01:09:37):
How is it possible? It's absurd.

Pieter Levels (01:09:40):
So it feels nice to be able to move people out of there, help them. And that, I think, I'm the most proud of in the last year or something. This product is... I don't know. It sounds so cliche. It sounds [inaudible 01:09:55].

Tiago (01:09:56):
But not cliche. It might be cliche, but it's really important.

Pieter Levels (01:09:59):
It feels really cool to... It's not about money anymore for me, but it feels really cool that this is a website that I made, a PHP script, index.php, is saving people from Venezuela. [inaudible 01:10:12]

Tiago (01:10:12):
That's amazing. That's the beauty of tech, I would say. I totally agree.

Pieter Levels (01:10:16):
Because you could do so many bad things with tech, look at Facebook, all this data stuff, but you can also do really good things. And you can do it alone, solo on your laptop from the bed, that's what I do, and with coffee and I'm still doing it after eight years and you can change people's lives and you can leave the world better than you found it. And that's also my mission.

Tiago (01:10:39):
Is that your mission? Is it like your purpose somehow? Life purpose.

Pieter Levels (01:10:45):
It sounds, again, so cliche. I'm also not perfect. I also make mistakes and I also... You can get rich, but then you die. You cannot bring your money into death. So it's all doesn't really make... It's not useful. Legacy is also not that useful, but... I don't know. It's a nice purpose to have, to leave the world better than you found it, and that's my role as a human.

Tiago (01:11:04):
I totally agree with you. And it's the same. I wrote something similar in Indie Hackers recently, because that's also my purpose. Are you religious?

Pieter Levels (01:11:14):
No, I guess I'm agnostic. My family's like... Well, we're not practicing, but we grew up Roman Catholic. Weirdly, I keep meeting a lot of Roman Catholic people, even in Asia, the people... The girlfriends I had were Roman Catholic, but not on purpose and the friends I have, a lot of them are Roman Catholic. And man, Roman Catholic is a minority in Christianity, most are Protestant, also in my country. So, it's something with Roman Catholic.

Tiago (01:11:42):
Is Portugal Roman Catholic? Do you know this?

Pieter Levels (01:11:45):
I think so.

Tiago (01:11:45):
I think it is, right?

Pieter Levels (01:11:47):
I think UK is Protestant, tolerance Protestant, but we were Roman Catholic. But I'm agnostic, I don't know what there is after death. I probably believe in that... Because I did mushrooms, and also the things you learn that everybody's connected and that maybe we're all one person and one consciousness. And I think that's probably true or something.

Tiago (01:12:14):
Wait, but now I didn't understand. You did mushrooms and you came up with this?

Pieter Levels (01:12:21):
The feelings you have when you do... The feelings of connectedness, but I do feel the feelings of connectedness anyway, so I really need drugs to open up so much, but... I don't know. We're all probably the same person, the same consciousness. It's sounds logical to me.

Tiago (01:12:39):
It's a very interesting video about from Kurzgesagt. I don't know if you watch it on YouTube. And they have a video just about this theory, that in the end we are all the same person. It's a very interesting theory. I've never...

Pieter Levels (01:12:51):
Maybe-

Tiago (01:12:51):
... think about it.

Pieter Levels (01:12:53):
Maybe we're all one person and that's God. And then, you also get to simulation theory or multidimensionalism, where-

Tiago (01:13:00):
I hate those. I don't want to speak about that. Freaks me out.

Pieter Levels (01:13:03):
Where there's infinite dimensions with different realities. Man, and if you start thinking about it, it feels kind of lonely. You're like, "I'm in my own dimensions stuck now."

Tiago (01:13:13):
You know Rick and Morty, on Netflix?

Pieter Levels (01:13:17):
Yeah.

Tiago (01:13:18):
It's amazing. They explore exactly this. Everything becomes pointless because there's infinite use.

Pieter Levels (01:13:25):
Exactly.

Tiago (01:13:26):
So you are agnostic, and you think that maybe there are some things, maybe there isn't. The reason why I ask is, again, I also very similar grown Catholic family. They don't practice that much.

Pieter Levels (01:13:39):
Interesting,

Tiago (01:13:39):
But I slowly lost my connections with religion. And I think that unfortunately there's nothing after, well I'm also agnostic, but I don't know... But that just gives me more purpose of actually doing something that goes beyond having money. Actually doing a little contribution to the world is something that really motivates me. And it's not cliche, actually. I think it's a great mission for life.

Pieter Levels (01:14:12):
I mean a lot of cliches are just true, I guess, because they're simple, but you need to do something with this life. You could sit in your room and do nothing.

Tiago (01:14:21):
Why do you need to?

Pieter Levels (01:14:25):
It's all meaningless if you start thinking in that way, but I get happy from being active, doing stuff. Also I go to the gym, for example, that makes me happy. I see friends. I like to be in a flow state where I work on things that makes me happy, but everything is the same value. Everything is, everything is valueless in a way, but maybe in a good way, it's all the same, money doesn't exist. You know what I mean? There's no better and worse, it's all nothing. Because entropy will destroy everything in a billion years and the sun will explode. So, nothing matters and everything you build up goes away. Every relationship you have is not permanent. Everything dies.

Tiago (01:15:19):
We are getting super dark.

Pieter Levels (01:15:21):
No, but it's also really not dark, because that shows impermanence, and impermanence, if you accept that, it's quite beautiful and you shouldn't fight it, you should just embrace it and that's reality. And that's also, I guess why people start living in a moment, because they realize impermanence. Eckhart Tolle is like Power of Now, that's it just power of now. History doesn't exist, future doesn't exist, just now, you're here. You're here now. I think, Ramdas the Buddhist or the Yogi, in India says that, "Be here now," that's it. Power of now, be here now.

Tiago (01:16:05):
Do you think that this is the mentality that also helps you succeed, because allows you to think outside of the box and say, "Okay, let's move to Portugal, because I'm doing it now or let's go-"

Pieter Levels (01:16:14):
I think in a way because if you cling to permanence and to things and to people, you cling to everything, you try to hold everything tight, so you don't lose it, you're scared of loss, fear of loss. And that's really an unhealthy thing because it's trying to give you certainty. Cling to people, cling to things, cling to buying a house, cling to all this. And it's essentially, probably your fear of death, I think, which we all have, is normal, but it's fighting impermanence. I'm going to collect all this stuff and hoard it because then I can keep it permanently, forever. So, moving to another place, you're a nomad, you learn a lot about impermanence because you cannot carry a lot of stuff. You have a backpack, you cannot buy a lot of stuff.

Tiago (01:17:07):
You understand what it's really important, this minimalist approach, right?

Pieter Levels (01:17:13):
And impermanence just like that. And it gives you more flexibility to change up your life, I guess. And I also think it gives you more healthy approach to relationships, because a lot of people are stuck in relationships or marriages which don't work anymore. And if you believe in abundance and impermanence and you're okay, you accept like, "Okay, this relationship doesn't work anymore." It's fine. It's healthy to end this.

Tiago (01:17:38):
Think people are also very afraid to leave their comfort zone.

Pieter Levels (01:17:42):
That's the whole thing.

Tiago (01:17:43):
Because you don't know what's in the other side. You leave your wife and maybe you find another wife that is better-

Pieter Levels (01:17:51):
Or husband.

Tiago (01:17:51):
Or husband. Or you just can be lonely forever.

Pieter Levels (01:17:57):
I think a lot of men and women, after divorce, at 60, or 70, or 50 even, they also go nomad, you meet them and they have a very healthy mindset about this stuff. Just like we just talked about, this kind of impermanent mindset. And I'm not saying you... Of course, you should be in relationship as long as you can, of course. But the fear of loss is not a good thing.

Tiago (01:18:23):
Definitely. We are running out of time here, and I think we could definitely speak about this for a long time and I think it's really interesting. I love to get more philosophical.

Pieter Levels (01:18:33):
Next time we can do three hours.

Tiago (01:18:34):
Yes, we can do this-

Pieter Levels (01:18:36):
Like Joe Rogan.

Tiago (01:18:36):
Exactly. Joe Rogan.

Pieter Levels (01:18:38):
It's perfect.

Tiago (01:18:39):
Think about everything, but I think there's a lot of things. We got to learn more about your mindset, your philosophy. You gave some cool lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, as well. We end up not speaking that much about the effect of Rebase in Portugal, which is something that is really interesting. So we could speak about this maybe in another session. As the last question. What are the technologies or markets that you're most excited about?

Pieter Levels (01:19:04):
I'd say, I don't think the whole decentralized stuff is interesting, like crypto. Actually, I think most of it is, but I think there's definitely fundamental concepts that really will be the future. Decentralized concepts seem... Like censorship resistance stuff. Look at social media posts being deleted everywhere and censored. Look at people's accounts being frozen and look at the overreaching arm of countries like United States that just they want to remove Russia from international banking via SWIFT and stuff. This is all not good and it shouldn't be power like that existing. And I think people... Again, autonomy, autonomy is really big trend, I think. And it also has to do with decentralization. So, I think definitely will be interesting. I really think the technology is absolutely not there yet. Bitcoin is great, it works really well, but the smart contracts are way too slow, too expensive and stuff, but it is very interesting technology and it will definitely only improve, I think. And there might be some bubbles and some bursts, but in five, 10 years, I think a lot of stuff will be decentralized.

Tiago (01:20:16):
I'm also super excited to see what is going to come up from there. Pieter, thank you so much for taking the time. I will link Rebase and I guess your Twitter profile in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. It was really nice.

Pieter Levels (01:20:33):
Thanks for having me and see you next time for the three hour episode.

Tiago (01:20:34):
Yes. You heard him. There will be a next interview to go deeper into this philosophical and bootstrapping topics. If you are new to Wannabe Entrepreneur, this is the podcast about bootstrapping a company. I narrate my own journey and interview other entrepreneurs from all walks of life, all levels of scale about their own journeys. And I've been learning a lot and I'm sure that you will too. So make sure to go to wannabe-entrepreneur.com and check out all the other interviews and episodes I have for you.

Tiago (01:21:07):
I don't do any advertisement. So if you want to support this podcast and you want it to continue, you can buy me a coffee, the link will be in the description. Or you can join our virtual coworking space for bootstrapers, a place where we basically hang out. We are all entrepreneur friends, like-minded people and we help each other build our own projects. So, I would love to see you there. It has a cost of four euros or $4.60 per month. Besides that, giving a great review, sharing this with your friends, it would really take this podcast a long way. This was another Wannabe Entrepreneur. See you next time.

You may have noticed it's practically impossible to contact me. I did that on purpose so I can spend my time how I want to spend it. I don't really use email and I have my private message inboxes on every platform closed. And they have been like that for years.

I do read public tweets sent to me, and try to reply, but don't take private messages.

Most stuff about building startups I learnt by doing and I brain dumped everything I know in a book I update about every few weeks.

If you're low on time (like me), here's quick answers to most questions.

Otherwise, keep reading why I made myself unreachable.

There's 24 hours in a day
I've tried to figure out and this is kind of a normal day for me:

+ 24 hours in a day
— 8 hours of sleeping = 16 hours left
— 1.5 hours of showering, cleaning up, coffee = 14.5 hours left
— 4 hours of managing contractors, firefighting and fixing bugs = 10.5 hours left
— 1 hours of groceries or errands = 9.5 hours left
— 1.5 hours of gym or going for a walk = 8 hours left
— 1.5 hours of staying in touch with friends/family = 6.5 hours left
— 1.5 hours of cooking and eating = 5 hours left
— 4 hours of deep work, building new features/products = 1 hours left
— 1 hours of sex/hugs/love = 0 hours left

It's all pretty tight. If I start answering everybody's messages, doing calls or taking on other people's projects, I wouldn't have enough time in the day.

I'd start skipping the gym, skipping going for walks, skipping sex, and not being able to do deep work anymore. My health, relationships and work would slowly start falling apart. I know this as it's happened loads of time before. This schedule works for me and I don't want or need to change it.

(And no, I don't schedule it exactly like this, I'm not a robot; it's just an example of an average day.)

Deep work

If I keep getting distracted with messages/calls I can never get into flow state and my creative work will suffer. I have most of my notifications off and my devices are perpetually on Do Not Disturb mode from 00:00 to 23:59.

A lot of my new ideas slowly boil in my head over weeks, months, sometimes years. And undisturbed thinking and working time helps me get into that state. That's why I like to lead my life async.

You don't need my feedback

People want my feedback on their startup but what they really need is feedback from customers. 99.999% of the times I'm not their customer.

You don't need me to figure out stuff

The most important skill I learnt is how to Google things and figure things out fast. If you always ask other people how to do stuff you'll never learn that skill. There's a lot of power in being able to operate autonomously and independent, it makes you an original person which increases the odds of you coming up with great ideas.

Internet famous weirdness

It's hard to imagine what happens when you get internet famous but imagine when 50 people per day send you a message:
1) asking you to work with them,
2) asking you to promote them or their app (or hunt it on PH),
3) writing giant multi-page dumps of their life stories irrelevant to you,
4) sending you unsolicited advice you didn't ask for,
5) getting angry with you because they used your site and didn't like it,
6) getting angry with you if you don't reply,
7) sending you abuse and/or death threats,
8) stalking you and your friends (also in IRL)

All because you make websites that people use and you tweet/write about it. At some point you just realize it's better to shut down the inbox and focus on work.

Many of my famous friends have the same problem, people more famous than me have proportionally crazier stories. Tim Ferriss wrote about his experiences too, and they're fucking crazy.

With an open inbox I'd get a lot of weird messages and making it impossible for people to message me helps because otherwise they start thinking you read what they send. Now everyone knows: no I won't read your message or anybody else's message.

Most people can't behave in private messages, especially not with anonymous accounts, which is sad because there's a good % of messages I would get that'd be great.

I don't have the time to reply

If I'd reply to the ~50 messages I get per day, and spend 5 minutes per message on them, it'd take me 4 hours to reply to everyone. No time for deep work then.

Even my startup idol Derek Sivers who legendarily would reply to every email stopped doing so recently and now just shares his knowledge as books instead.

"Answering people’s questions was taking up all of my time. So I quit." - Derek Sivers

My other startup idol Patrick McKenzie also closed his DMs recently. And my other inspiration Yongfook seems to have the same problem.  

My email and Twitter inbox is absolutely full of people asking things like:

- how did I do XYZ Javascript effect
- what website builder am I using? (Hint: I’m not)
- join a podcast
- thoughts on their MVP
- thoughts on an idea
- collaborate (ie build their startup for them)

— Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) March 28, 2021

Life is short

Our days are numbered and like you I want to spend my limited time in the best way. Ruthlessly cutting out distractions helps.

Prioritizing responding to DMs from strangers if my girlfriend is sitting next to me and wants a hug, or my friend wants to go for a walk, or I haven't called my parents in a week, or there's a critical bug on my sites. It'd be stupid to.

❤️ Life-Work Balance: The rise of remote will lead to people re-prioritizing what is important to them

Organizing your work around your life will be the first noticeable switch. People realizing they are more than their job will lead to deeper purpose in other areas

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) March 26, 2021

What I'm not interested in

I'm not interested in collaborating, I like to work alone. Or with people I hire. If I hire people I find you, you don't need to message me.

I'm not interested in doing client work for other people, I never did, and my goal was to never have a boss and I'm difficult to work with anyway, and I make enough money so I don't need to.

I'm not interested in fixing your printer or WiFi router.

I'm not interested in doing press anymore, because I've had so many bad experiences where the journalist took my words of context, and turned what would be an interesting article into a hit piece to cancel me or my business. I'm not the only one that's happened to, it's how the media makes money these days.

I don't do support for my sites, instead I've made most my sites self-serve and hired customer support people. I do product development only.

I'm not interested in you translating my sites or book, or making an audio or paper version of my book, or re-distributing it. I work alone and happy with keeping 100% of my revenue. Google Translate works fine and paper is dead.

I'm not at all interested in doing calls, or podcasts, or joining Clubhouse rooms. Unless it's Indiehackers or a podcast I listen to myself like Joe Rogan.

Talk is cheap and ineffective while creating something is much more challenging and effective to make change in the world.

"A little less conversation, a little more action, please" - Elvis

I'm not interested in VC or angel investment, my companies are healthy and I have enough money to re-invest. I also don't want to become a $100 million or $1 billion company. I'd just be diluting my 100% ownership and probably make less than I make now. Also even if you sell, what the hell would you spend $100 million or $1 billion on? A boat? Okay and then? It sounds stressful. You're not a normal part of society anymore. Everybody will bug you for money. No thanks. I'm happy with where I'm at now.

I'm not interested in proposals to buy my companies. 99% of proposals are not serious. I went through one 6-month process of due diligence and the acquisition bounced off as it was a trick to get a list of my customers. I'm not doing that again. Nor do I need to sell. Why would I throw away a high margin cash flow that keeps me happy by working on it every day for a lump sum of money to then do nothing? Meaningful work makes me happy. Not doing anything doesn't. If I ever sell, I'll find a buyer myself through FEI or Empire Flippers (not affiliated but they're nice).

I'm not interested in traveling to places to do conference talks or workshops for 300 people when I literally reach 1,000x to 10,000x as many people by building a new product or feature, by writing a tweet or blog or by making a YouTube video. It's not worth the effort. I'd make an exception for a big conference like TED, but that's about it.

But what about meeting people and making new friends? I already have a close knit group of friends that have my back.

What I am interested in

Spending time with people I love.

Spending time with people that spark my curiosity.

Spending time on my health like cooking nice food, doing fitness, sports, etc.

Traveling to new places and exploring them alone or with my girlfriend or friends.

Hacking on creative projects, reading about stuff I'm curious about, or working on new businesses I'm passionate about.

Inspiring people to create stuff by sharing what I make and writing about it on here and Twitter.

Sharing stuff with my followers that sparks my curiosity.

Doing anything high impact to
1) accelerate the freedom of global movement enabled by remote work
2) accelerate society towards async living
3) normalize transparency in business by open startups and open salaries.

Maybe you don't need to be reachable either

My situation seems different because I already have successful companies but maybe it's not that different from yours, because regardless of that, this applies to you too:

Most things are a distraction, especially in the startup and tech world.

If you get to the core of building companies it's about creating a great product that gets customers that pay for it.

If you get to the core of life it's living an existence you're proud of with people you love doing the things you like while minimizing suffering.

None of these two involve being available for endless chit-chatting to billions of people in private messages. Everything from everyone all the time is too much.

It's okay to say no, embrace the silence and find your focus.

It's been almost a decade now that we've all been promoting the benefits of remote work and location independent living.

With the pandemic suddenly shooting remote work into the mainstream, it seems like people are finally starting to believe the merits of remote work. Most people don't want to go back to the office and I strongly believe most people won't go back to the office after the pandemic ends.

We now have millions of people working remotely but most still have to work at specific hours, be on standby, take calls and attend virtual meetings.

What's the next thing after remote work is now mainstream? I think it's async work.

What is async?

Async is short for asynchronous and in this case it means being able to work without having to wait for someone else to answer.

With async you decide when you work, you're autonomous and the only thing that matters is if you get your work done. There's no manager looking over your shoulder, and you don't have to be on-call. You get a lot of responsibility and because of that you make sure you actually do great work. Because if you don't, you lose your job. But evaluating your performance stops being about showing up, it starts being about the quality of your work.

Many of us who have been working remotely for the last decade have also been async because they go together well.

Async is life changing

Async for sleep

Studies are increasingly proving people have different genetically predisposed chronotypes, meaning some people naturally wake up early in the morning, while others wake up closer to noon. Since the industrial revolution, we've been living in a society dominated by early birds while night owls have been getting a bad deal.

If you work async, you can work at the most optimal times for you.

Async for location independence

Having to be on call at specific hours means you won't be able to travel or move to and live in different timezones. It's difficult for Americans to work from Asia (8am in New York is 8pm in Taipei), and it's difficult for Europeans to work from America (8am in Amsterdam is 3am in New York).

If you work async, you're unrestricted by timezones and can live wherever you want in the world

Async for deep work

While sync work is littered with distractions of people who want your attention. Async work means you can be alone with your own thoughts and go into a creative flow state also known as deep work:

Cal Newport in Deep Work: "the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive."

This means that increasingly async people will be able to output work of higher quality than sync people.

Async to avoid crowds

Maybe the biggest superpower of an async work life means you can do everything outside of peak hours.

You can drive when roads are empty.

Go to the beach when everyone else is working.

Go to the gym mid-day when all equipment is available.

Go to the supermarket when there's no crowds like after 5pm when people get off work.

Book fun travel trips in the middle of the week when hotels are cheap and there's no crowds like in the weekend.

Off-peak, you get everything almost instantly.

Async for health and happiness

I think all these things culminate in lower stress, better health and increased happiness for asyncers.

Being able to live a more balanced life where work doesn't dictate your daily life structure, but you yourself choose it, seems like a much more healthy idea.

The async-sync divide

This is such a big advantage that I believe we'll see an increasingly big divide between people who can work async and those who can't.

Those who can (the asyncers) will be able to have a more free and peaceful life with less stress, less crowds, more focus on high quality deep work, more opportunity for fun, as well as being able to live wherever they want.

Those who can't (the syncers) will remain stuck to working in archaic Monday to Friday 9 to 5 hours, being distracted by coworkers, with mediocre work output, while living their leisure life in the weekends, paying the highest prices to spend in crowded places with other syncers while getting stressed from being stuck in traffic and standing in lines everywhere, and being tied to a single timezone for work.

The dividing factor is that syncers disrupt the life of asyncers because one doesn't have the same freedom. The asyncer will have to limit their life to the syncer's work hours. Eventually a smart asyncer will decide either the syncer has to become async too or the asyncer calls it quits.

I believe that's why asyncers will congregate to each other. It's a better life.

The next frontier to fight for

I believe async work is at the same place as remote work was just a few years ago.

Most people are not convinced it works. But all the smart people are already doing it.

I don't know what it'll take to convince everyone of async's merits but I hope this blog post helps. And I believe we should fight to make async work the default, because as you see it will probably improve the life quality of millions and maybe billions of people. As the rise of remote work is doing now for so many.

The future is async.

Well, I hope.

Thanks for listening. ❤️

Here's a list of my sites, apps, side projects etc. I make a lot of stuff so it's fun to keep track. I'll try to keep it up-to-date from latest to oldest. I see this as kind of my resume. It also shows the incredibly high failure rate with any project I do. Most things I made never succeeded or made money.

Last updated: September 2022.  Todo: add pic and blog post for each project and add more stuff about historical projects.

2022-09-06: An AI modern architecture house generator called This House Does Not Exist

2021-11-01: Rebase, immigration-as-a-service that lets you get legal and tax residency, and work permits in countries that want to attract high-tech remote workers. The first country it launched is Portugal.

2021-10-08: The State of Digital Nomads, an always-up-to-date research report on digital nomads and remote workers based on live data from tens of thousands of Nomad List members which makes it the biggest study on real digital nomads ever.

2021-09-08: Remote OK in Microsoft Word, Google Docs and VSCode, I made different fake layouts so that people can browse remote jobs in the office without their boss finding out, it went very viral

2021-04-18: Secret Project, to be announced related to above ^

2021-03-24: MAKE Book NFT, after passing 10,000+ sales I'm making a special gold NFT edition of my book, it's for sale on OpenSea starting at 1 ETH and will be on auction for a month.  5% goes to CO₂ removal.

2021-02-14: InflationChart, the stock market adjusted for the US-dollar money supply (formerly M1Chart), to show the rapid devaluing of our money by central banks; blog post

2021-01-10: Rebase (test version), immigration, residency and visa services for remote workers, alpha test version to see if there's enough demand

2020

2020-10-21: QR Menu Creator, a site that lets restaurant owners create mobile friendly menus that customer can open by scanning a QR code on the table, to avoid Coronavirus; Product Hunt

2020-09-06: IdeasAI, an OpenAI-powered GPT-3 business idea generator which uses artificial intelligence to come up with new businesses; Product Hunt

2020-08-18: Remote OK Workers, a remote freelancer directory for companies to hire workers from directly; Product Hunt

2020-05-22: Airline List, a comparison of airlines, airplane models and airports based on service quality and safety rankings

2020-01-20: Nomad List Climate Finder, pick a temperature and time period and find places that match based on your desired climate; Product Hunt

2019

2019-08-05: Bali Sea Cable, monitors Bali's undersea internet cable performance; blog post

2019-07-29: Nomad List 5, explore the world while working remotely; blog post

2019-01-01: How Much Is My Side Project Worth?, a calculator to estimate how much your app, startup or side project is worth when you'd sell it; Product Hunt

2018

2018-12-01: Maker Rank, an index of Product Hunt makers ranked by upvotes; Product Hunt

2018-09-27: No More Google, privacy-friendly alternatives to Google that don't track you; Product Hunt

2018-04-30: MAKE Village, an MVP test to see if people would be interested in living together in a place, ~500 people showed interest; Results

2018-03-26: Nomad List FIRE Calculator, a calculator to see where and when you can retire based on your current savings and income; Product Hunt

2018-03-12: MAKE Book, I wrote and self published a book on building startups without funding in public, it has sold 10,000+ copies; Product Hunt

2018-01-24: How to Build a Startup Without Funding, I did a presentation at Dojo coworking space in Bali about bootstrapping startups. I think this is my favorite presentation I ever made as it quite clearly lays out the fundamentals of how I build my projects. It's essentially a summary of my book MAKE; blog post

2017

2017-12-11: Nomad List 3.0, the third big version of my platform for digital nomads and remote workers; Product Hunt

2017-08-30: Nomad Gear, a crowdsourced index of the best gear for digital nomads; Product Hunt

2017-08-09: Mute, a crowdsourced list of words to mute on social media; Product Hunt

2017-08-26: Hoodmaps, a crowdsourced map to navigate cities based on hipsters, tourists, rich, normies, suits and uni areas; Product Hunt, blog post

2016

2016-10-11: Virtual reality, I spent some time learning virtual reality development to make my 3d modeled scene into a VR game

2016-09-22: Bootstrapping Side Projects into Profitable Startups, I presented at Growth Tribe in Amsterdam about bootstrapping startups

2016-07-04: Places to Work, an app to find the best places to work near you

2016-05-19: From web dev to 3D: Learning 3d modeling, I tried to learn to make a 3d scene in 30 days, Hacker News liked it

2015

2015-10-25: 1 Billion Digital Nomads, I did a presentation in Berlin where I predicted the future of remote work and digital nomads based on data

2015-07-16: Startup Retreats, find remote work retreats for you and your startup

2015-07-05: How Tech Is Shaping Our Future, I did a presentation in Budapest about how technology is pushing money towards to extremes, big companies and individual creators

2015-07-14: Taylor Bot, a personal travel assistant bot on Telegram that tells you where to go and who is near you

2015-06-14: Nomad List 2.0, the second version of my platform for digital nomads, Hacker News, Product Hunt

2015-02-22: Remote OK, a daily remote job aggregator which would pull jobs from other non-remote job boards if they were remote, this later merged with Nomad Jobs to become its own job board; Hacker News, Product Hunt, blog post

2014

2014-10-30: #nomads, a Slack community for digital nomads, now part of Nomad List; Hacker News, Product Hunt, blog post

2014-10-03: GIF Book, make animated GIFs into paper flip books; blog post, Hacker News, Product Hunt

2014-08-31: Nomad Jobs, a remote job board for distributed/remote startups, and the precursor to Remote OK

2014-07-29: Nomad List 1.0, the best cities to live and work remotely; Hacker News, Product Hunt

2014-05-31: Tubelytics, a real-time analytics dashboard for YouTube creators and multi-channel networks

2014-04-20: Go Fucking Do It, set a goal and a deadline and if you don't reach your goal I charge your credit card; Hacker News, Product Hunt, blog post

2014-03-09: Play My Inbox, a site that pulls music links from YouTube and SoundCloud from your email inbox (which your friends would send you) and plays them in a nice interface

2014-03-01: 12 Startups in 12 Months, to fight my depression and decreasing income, I decided to build one project per month for 12 months to see if I could get traction with anything

2014-01-23: How I went from 100 to 0 things, I was robbed of all my stuff and wrote about it and it was on Hacker News

2013

2013-10-19: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day, I wrote this and it went viral on Hacker News

2013-10-12: Bootstrapping Startups from Thailand, I wrote a blog post that went quite viral on Hacker News and showed how it was possible to work on your startup remotely, this seems normal now but was quite new in 2013 even for software developers on Hacker News; Hacker News thread

2013-04-14: Reset Your Life, after graduating uni, I sold 99% of my possessions, bought a laptop and a backpack, moved out of my apartment in Amsterdam and flew to Asia with ~$1,000 in savings. I started building startups and blogged while doing it to try get on to Hacker News. This was really the start of a fundamental change in my life. Which later on resulted in Nomad List and Remote OK which in turn changed thousands of other people's lives. It all started with this single blog post.

Todo: <2013

I'll be adding more older projects slowly here with the goal of going back to my childhood drawings :D

2012

Write about my How To YouTube network I made with my friend that failed

2012

Todo: write about producing hiphop with RASA and dubstep with FML and making music videos. And HotForYou, a missed connections dating site for college campuses that failed.

2010

Todo: write about my Uber clone for Netherlands that I tried to raise money from rich famous people in Amsterdam who never invested, showing the ridiculousness of the angel/investment/startup scene in Netherlands in 2010.

2009

Write about studying abroad in Korea and going backpacking in South East Asia. My first time outside Europe which changed my life permanently to become international/global thinking.

2008-2012

Todo: write about my electronic music YouTube channel network

2006-2012

Studying international business administration as a Bachelor and Master at 3 different universities.

2003-2008

Todo: write about my drum & bass music career, with producing, DJing, radio playlisting and club events organizing and publishing my album

2000-2003

Todo: write about my Photoshop art / design career, NowGoCreate, Qantas Design Award etc. NoPattern. And spray painting.

1993-1998

Todo: write about Addo Stuur books "Windows for Kids" etc and learning to code with SuperLogo as a kid

Many tried to build coliving startups from 2014 and most failed.

Real estate doesn't scale like software so doesn't work w/ VC funding.

Giant supply of hotels/apts everywhere already. Many reinventing themselves for remote workers.

Book with/near friends = solved coliving. https://t.co/NWyoUnuPpl

— ؜ (@levelsio) March 8, 2021

Many tried to build coliving startups from 2014 and most failed.

Real estate doesn't scale like software so doesn't work w/ VC funding.

There's a giant supply of hotels/apts everywhere already. Many are reinventing themselves for remote workers.

Booking accommodation like hotels/Airbnbs with or near your friends = coliving, but better and cheaper.

Coliving economics don't add up usually because you're going for people who have max $1000/mo to spend on rent, or $30/day.

But you're competing with hotels/apts/Airbnbs while incurring coliving costs like community management, activities, dinners etc.

Colivings end up being either subsidized heavily by VCs, or charging $100 to $200/night (like hotels) which becomes $3,000 to $6,000/mo

That's why the people you meet there are a combination of 25 year old trust fund kids or 45yr old bizniz travelers.

Who else can afford it?

Coliving economics get worse: most attractive remote worker hubs are naturally more affordable (like Mexico, Spain/Portugal, Bali, Thailand)

This is because cost of hotels/Airbnbs is 2/3/4x of the price of a long term rental

If someone has $2,000/mo to spend and goes remote/nomad and then books hotels/Airbnbs, they'll NEED to move to a place where cost of living is 2/3/4x lower just to afford booking short term accomodation

That means you have $100 to $200/night coliving (if not subsidized by VC) compete with $30/night hotels/hostels/Airbnbs that offer the same

The only thing diff is the community, but from staying in colivings, people just pass through so value of community is questionable

Hostels do offer community and many are pivoting towards remote workers now, which is super smart. That will make the market position of colivings even worse though.

Selina is heavily funded and subsidizes cost of staying there and uses volunteer staff just to make it work

TL;DR coliving economics don't make sense, it's a somewhat solved problem by hotels/hostels/Airbnbs especially if you book with or near friends.

The only way it makes sense if people start offering the entire daily consumption of remote workers in one place e.g. shelter, food, drinks, leisure, even then no regular person will be able to afford it

TL:DR I made a site called InflationChart.com to see if stock markets actually grew when you discount for inflation by the Fed printing record amounts of money from thin air.

This week I kept looking at the M1 money supply chart on the Fed's website:

M1 roughly means the U.S.-dollar money supply consisting of physical currency and what's in bank accounts. There's a few more measurements like M2 and MB, which is the total Monetary Base, e.g. all the U.S.-dollars in existence.

Quantitative Easing

As you see, since the 2008 Financial Crisis the supply has grown a lot, this means the Fed has essentially printed money and injected it into the economy (usually by investing in the markets).

This is called Quantitative Easing (QE) and is a way to keep economies afloat if they go through bad times.

COVID money printing

Since the COVID19 pandemic started, the printing has gone to a whole different level though. The M1 money supply has almost doubled since. What that means for inflation is heavily argued about by different sides. The economists say it's fine. The intelligentiae, libertarian and crypto people say this is causing inflation (your money becomes worth less).

Did my stocks actually go up?

Thinking about this I wondered if my stock and ETF investments actually went up this year. Or was it just the printing of money and actually the numbers went up but the intrinsic value stayed the same?

Let's find the data

I downloaded the data from the Fed and put it in a Google Sheet:

And make a site

Then I made a site around it called M1chart.com (and now renamed it to InflationChart.com). It imports the data from the sheet into a SQLite db and puts the data in a ChartJS page. I made it very simple inspired by Stonks in BTC.

The top boxes are select boxes and you can adjust what you want to see and it live updates. You can choose between M1, M2, MB and adjust the S&P500, the Dow Jones DJI, etc. and adjust the length of time the chart goes back.

The visual above is already quite telling, if you adjust for M1 (the red line) the markets have crashed early 2020 when COVID hit. Then they didn't recover. Instead we're almost at the lowest point since the pandemic started.

There's lots of caveats to this project. M1 is a limited measure as it only includes physical money and bank accounts. So I've also added M2, MB etc. Even with those you can see the effect though.

Launch to HN

I submitted it to HN and it went to the front page:

The reactions

As always HN'ers had were very opinionated. Two of the top comments are interesting:

and my favorite:

Wealth inequality

My conclusion is, adjusting the stock market for the money supply doesn't tell the whole story, but it does tell that there's a lot of money printing going on and if that continues we're probably making a lot of people poorer. But it's complicated matter so we're not sure.

By investing in the stock markets, even if there's lots of inflation, at least my money stays the same value. Many people who don't have access to, or the knowledge or time to invest in the stock market and they'll feel the biggest negative effects from inflation. And that's probably people who are already rekt. So it probably increases wealth inequality.

What can we do about that?

Well, we should probably educate people about inflation with projects like these and help them invest in long term diversified portfolios so their money stays the same value or grows in value. Like ETF index funds. And maybe 5% of BTC/ETH/crypto.

We should also argue for having people's income/salary be adjusted for real inflation numbers (e.g. 10% per year), instead of the government's Consumer Price Index based inflation (e.g. 2% per year) that doesn't tell the whole story.

What can I do about it?

I like to have skin in the game so I've gone ahead and will give my contractors for Nomad List and Remote OK a minimum of 10% per year increase in income, starting with this month.

This week I did a live AMA with Twitch celebrity @roxkstar74. We talked for 4 hours about startups, life, drugs, hiring and pretty much anything else you can think off.

You can read it here or watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKxyHAB948s

We should be going live now. So people should see us in just a couple seconds here.

Oh my, I'll check Twitch.

Oh, yeah, let me know. Hopefully, chat if you can hear me, if you can hear, do you prefer Peter or Pieter?

Peter or Pieter?

I said Peter, Pete or Pieter, but that didn't--

Oh, Pete. Oh yeah, dude. No, it's funny 'cause in Dutch, yeah, exactly. And then it gets to like, people, like my friends would say Pete very, but it's, I don't know, my mom told my dad, my dad called me Peter. And then my mom said, we're not gonna call him Peter 'cause then his friend's gonna say Pete. And Pete, she felt was like, kinda like a cheap name. She wanted like Pieter. So I guess Pieter works, yeah, but.

Gotcha. I can actually relate to that. When I was a kid, so I go by Dan most of the time. When I was a kid, if anyone called me Danny, my mom would scream at them and say, "That's not his name." And just knock it down. Yeah.

Amazing. Okay, let me check in and follow, if I could see your live.

It looks like we're up. I am seeing people saying yo. All right guys, how's the stream delay? Are we okay? Can you guys hear Pieter over here as well as--

Excuse me Dan, Dan, Dan. Fuck, let me check Twitter. I'll retweet it anyway 'cause then people come in. Okay.

Everything's good. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah I got--

I'll look, so yeah, of course.

Yeah, I gotta, yeah, you already retweeted it. Appreciate that by the way.

Yeah, see wassup, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beautiful. Cool, cool.

Can I make you bigger? Full screen. That is cool. Cool, man, yeah.

Cheers.

Nice. Missed the Dan and the man. Oh, shit, I shouldn't say Dan, I should say Daniel. Daniel Pieter.

No, no, no. Well, okay, if you wanna do it that way. I go by Dan these days. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, appreciate it.

All right, on here I go by Rox, but yeah.

Cool, man.

Yeah, they have a lot of names for me. They made a command that just randomly goes through things. Should we stay in Sci-Tech or just chatting? Ah, I think let's stick in Sci-Tech. I think this counts as science and technology given who we're talking to of course.

I don't know, what's your optimization strategies for Twitch? I used to go and just chatting 'cause more viewers, I think. When I code, it's more in Sci-Tech but maybe it changed. I'm gonna need to know more about this.

My niche within Twitch is startup stuff. So generally I get all the coders who like startups. So this ends up being the category, but yeah, I've been told and I did an unnecessary amount of research on this for no reason, but generally, just chatting is actually like the hack when it comes to Twitch.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, , heck yeah.

'Cause people always think that it's meaningless, but once you have a following, then it's people getting to talk to you. And so it kinda like separates you from the work and that's what kinda gives it an edge over stuff like YouTube in a lot of ways.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Super interesting. All right, cool. Hello everybody. Hi guys. Welcome. So yeah, I imagine most people already know what we're doing here today.

Yeah, so what's your experience? So a few, I think it was a few weeks ago, I was on CM Griffin stream, like just chatting in the chat books. And then I said hi to CM Griffin. And 'cause I watch his stream a lot cause he's life coding and stuff and it's fun to watch. And then, I don't know, it is like in evening. I will go on Twitch 'cause I don't watch TVs, I just see what's going on. It's nice to see people making stuff. And then CM Griffin, I think said he went into your stream, Dan, a Roxkstar stream, yeah. And I think he said like, "Dan is a fan of you." And I was like, whatever. And then I went into your stream and then you had like a breakdown 'cause I said hi in the chat, and there was guy, some fan or something. And then he started crying and apparently he cries a lot, it was really funny and I clipped a few of them, but it was really funny. And yeah, and then we talked and then I asked, do you want me to be in your show or something? So maybe it's fun. I don't know if you have people in your show. Maybe this is the first time, but.

Yeah, no, very, very rarely. I've had other streamers on. Sometimes we'll do like combination things. Normally, I keep it primarily educational, but honestly not too long ago I did actually ask around and see, would people be interested in hearing from other startup people, other hackers, if you will. Pretty much got a resounding yes. So this is something I've been planning on doing for a while and never really got around to. So when you asked, I was like, oh man, this is perfect. And of course, my community is now very familiar with you as I have sung your praises so many times on the stream and will continue to do so.

Yeah man, thank you. It's very cool 'cause your community seems cool. Cool audience, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's truly an amazing thing. Never would have expected that live coding on Twitch would have been such an amazingly wholesome, exciting thing.

Yeah I do. But just to slower you, when you were saying like in the last, that stream was like, you moved to, was it Seattle or Detroit?

Yeah, I moved to Seattle for about a month.

Yeah. And you were like alone in Seattle. You didn't have friends I think. And it was really difficult to ground there. And especially with corona 'cause you cannot go outside and stuff. And then the thing that got you true was Twitch 'cause you had this, all these people, you started streaming and you started getting all these friends on Twitch or people watching you and you were like, wow, this is like really helping you, yeah, like socialize kinda in the corona times, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's been unreal. And I think that's kind of the wonderful thing 'cause people say, once you get to a certain scale, you can't be so close with everybody. Like the community itself becomes more of, you become almost a TV show for lack of a better word.

Yeah, dude, so Twitter is like the kind, it's very difficult.

Yeah, yeah. I saw your Twitter and at one point when you were like, oh just tag me to ask about the AMA. I was like, I wonder how many tags he gets a day. And I just started scrolling and I was like, oh, there's no way he'll ever see this.

Well, it's kinda good and bad because like you'd naturally grow. I mean, that's an interesting question, but then you get all the weird shit from having a lot of followers or like being mini internet famous in like a niche. Like it's nice, but then you get all the weird stuff, you get weird messages, you get a lot of haters. But you always remember the haters, you remember the negative more of course, but you gotta love the good stuff too, but you don't even see it because you get good stuff. So it's just like, you see the 5% like people really hating you and everybody gets that when you get to a certain level, you have the same problem. You maybe you already have one hater in a few, in a year, you'll have like 100. But that's part of it. And then, so it's really good and bad. It's really, it's exactly like everything alive. It's kinda like pros and cons, but like you cannot keep your DM open because the messages you get is too weird. You get like, you cannot share your location too much because you might get weird shit IRL. So at this stage, it gets really weird. So I'm kinda like, okay, maybe I'll just tweet a little bit less because I don't need it to grow much bigger. I just relax a little bit. The coolest thing is that you can meet all like you have, like you can meet all these people on the internet that are cool, to do similar stuff as you, and they can help you, teach you stuff. For example, like, yeah. Like when I was coding, Twitch people on chat would teach me stuff. Like they would tell me what to do, give me tips on the graphic design and stuff like border radius, I'm at a book shadow, all this stuff. So yeah. But you're right, man.

Yeah, I know. Especially with front-end, whenever I'm having a struggle, somebody in chat always knows. That especially. But yeah, I mean, when I was coming back into JavaScript after a while, coming back into node, I mean my first project, I was so out of my own environment, all I knew was the language. And I was like, I need to build an email scraper somehow. I don't really know how, but we're gonna kinda figure it out. And so people gave suggestions, gave insight, gave all of these concepts and then like even lines of code. Someone in the Twitch community actually made an extension for VS code where Twitch can highlight a line for you and say, there's an error on this line. Yeah, yeah, its--

A blank text, what the fuck!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy, the stuff that people in this community make.

People are so much faster than us 'cause like, or I don't know you, but when I'm coding and I make so many mistakes and then they see it immediately. Like the moment I type, they're like, oh dude, you forgot the trailing bracket or some shit. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, so it kinda saves time actually to code live.

Totally. Yeah, I know. I think the thing is it's always, the more generic role of the people who are less in the moment, the people who are more outside watchers will always be able to see the details better.

Yeah it's like the duck, what do you call it?

Rubber ducking.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's what I'm sending. Dude, I do it myself. Like when I have a problem while I do rubber ducking, but I also like give myself advice as a friend, in any matter, I will speak up loud. I think it was you speak to, you speak up loudly to yourself. Like when you have a problem. And then you give yourself advice as if you were friends. And it's kinda interesting 'cause you get out of your brain and you give completely good advice that maybe you wouldn't have solved their problem if it was only in your mind, you know?

Totally. That was a lot of how I got started on Twitch. Was I was struggling to like even stay productive. And so I told myself, well, if I had to say out loud everything I was doing, maybe I'd be more productive. And so I came to Twitch and there was nobody watching me. But I was just saying everything out loud anyway. I was just saying like, okay, we're gonna have to do this, let's look over here, let's go here, what's next? And I had to ask myself the question, which meant I had to answer it. And that ended up leading me down a really good path. And then, got very lucky and ended up here.

That's so good, man. And dude, I mean, I have so much respect 'cause I've done it too. I did it this, no, last year, yeah, the 2020 during corona. I also streamed a little bit more and I've been streaming all enough. Like not like amount you did, but like since 2016, I think. And the amount of stress, people have no idea how intensities you put the stream on and people could see your whole screen and they could see what you're doing, they could see what you're coding. And then, you know when you code normally without stream, you code a little bit, like I code a little bit and then I go talk to somebody, I walk around and I lie down. Dude, lying down is really important. It's like, what the fuck? And then you come back. And you go shower over there, but you go outside, walk the dog or something. You can't do those streams. You sit there, and because if you cancel the stream, you lose all the viewers. So you need to keep going for like four hours at least, I guess. That's usually how long I would stream. And then dude, I click the stop streaming button in OBS. And dude it's like, my head is like, dude, I thought it was the labs, but my head is like flushing after a stream. It's like, this call would be, is like 0.1 intense. But like streaming like one like full 100%. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a lot. I think part of, at least I've tried to tell myself, part of doing a good job is not freaking out all the time, but I've had to like accept a lot of things. Like I've had to accept not like not being perfect. Everybody always says like accept good enough. So I try really hard for them good enough content, especially because unfortunately my streams aren't always going to be that interesting. 'Cause startups aren't always that interesting.

The same with most of my stuff I do is really boring. It's like moving a CSS red circle and call them after thing. So, I don't know, that's what I'm making now, a red bubble. So, yeah.

Yeah, sometimes it can feel like, if you're like stuck on something like that for like 40 minutes. Well, normally you would be annoyed, now you're anxious. Now you're worried.

Yeah, but you see the viewer, well, I had the viewer widget thing or I would check it. And you see the view is dropping when it's not like . Like in the beginning, when you make a new project or new feature on the stream, everybody's watching like, 75 people are watching whatever. And then once you get to the noise, do the work, or I say do drop off. So it's just true. So yeah, people like to see quick, fast development, but I mean, we are already fast compared to most people and even, we're boring.

Yeah. I think the thing that gave me the most anxiety in the world was I was watching like how to like run a good stream, like tips for streaming, all of these kinds of things. And somebody said, audio is the most important. Like, if you have 10 seconds of dead air, you will start losing viewers. And that gave me so much anxiety because I was like, you know what? I think you're right. And I hate that you are, it's brutal, yeah.

It's super and I guess awkward. I had that, I was playing a YouTube video. It was something about like the history of remote work, I was like, guys, you need see this video. It's about like the Intel CEO in 1981 talking about remote work and we're all gonna live in everywhere. I was like, let's watch it, but let's stream. But then, you're sitting there and you're watching a video and I know Twitches do that, so it's fine. But it's just awkward when you just sit there you're just like, that was a good video. It's just like silence, it's like awesome cringe. It's just cringe alert, you know?

Yeah, oh God. Feeling like you're cringe is the worst.

Yeah, yeah.

Like just sitting in the moment and be like, I am actively producing cringe. This is my nightmare.

And there's like 50 people watching you making cringe content and yeah. Its, yeah, it's funny, man.

At some point, you just gotta embrace it. I think that's--

No, but I mean cringe is part of life, like this video years ago. But all the cringe moment, a Korean series and it's like, yeah, it's part of life. It's just, it's crazy as good, it's crazy as authentic I guess, but this is cringe.

Yeah, I know, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know, honestly, everything is. Like if you can't get past those like small moments, you'll never get around it. And I think the cool part is like at some point, and this is an interesting take I've heard is to some extent, you are the content more than the content is the content. And so what's interesting is you say like, okay, obviously, you play a YouTube video. You're not doing that much. It feels like a lot of drop-off and it is, but what's even more interesting to me is that a lot of people actually still stay. A lot of people actually still do.

And I think that core part is more important to appease to, in the long term, because that core part of like 20 people can become like 2000 people later on who actually care about you and your stream. And if you keep trying to maintain this like 100 people, it's gonna be in your, you're like trying to keep their focus and you might be developing the wrong audience.

Yeah, yeah.

Right? It's like trying to appease to the masses, never really works. It's better to have less viewers than yeah.

Yeah, it's like what a lot of people talk about with the difference of top of funnel, bottom of funnel. Are you just acquiring people or are you keeping them? And you care much more about getting one person in the bottom of the funnel than you do about getting 100 at the top. 'Cause if 100 people come in and watch this stream and then zero of them come back tomorrow, then this was great for today. But it hasn't changed my channel at all. But if I do something very solid, if we keep this very engaging, if I look at chat and I'm very careful with each of these things, if I get 10 people in, but five of them stay, that's huge. 'Cause even when I'm at the scale of 20, 30 people, if I got one new consistent viewer every day, I'd be huge by the end of the year I think the stats go, if you have 100 consistent viewers on Twitch, you're already in the top 1% by far. Yeah. So Twitch is still a relatively small platform against most people's beliefs. And we're lucky science and technology is a relatively underserved community. At least with like--

And dude, life is still shit, right?

Yeah. It's okay, but it's just not the same. I think like we said.

I think that the biggest red flag I have of streamers when they stream, they do the multi stream. They stream to YouTube live and Twitch and Periscope. And I'm like, dude, you don't understand it, all these platforms are clearly different. They've clearly different people. And Twitch especially is very unique with their memes and their like culture and stuff and stickers, you can't just multistream, it's not gonna fly man. Like, and I think Periscope just shut down. So yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's actually really interesting because there's a trade-off. It's a question of, so when it comes to content, there's like parallels to marketing and then there aren't, but with content, the idea is like, there are some people on YouTube who will never come to Twitch. And if I never put out anything on YouTube, I've missed all of those viewers forever. Without a doubt. Now, if I only stream on Twitch, I'll only get Twitch viewers, but I can do a lot more there. I can build a stronger community but you still want to have people coming in from all sides. So how do you even that out? Some people recommend just like putting out content--

Yeah, clips, right? You can take clips from streams, put them on YouTube. 'Cause that's kinda what YouTube is good at. Yeah, I think that works. Yeah.

Yeah. That's like the start of it.

But dude, it's kinda annoying, there's all these bathrooms. Like you kinda just wanna have your own site with your own RTMP stream, whatever it's called. And like, yeah, then you have to build all of that stuff again. It's just annoying. Like, I mean, I make a platform too, like for nomad. So, I do the same thing, but like, philosophically, platforms are really annoying. The fact that you're tied to a company that they can do whatever they want. Like I'm tied to Twitter. I have a love for audience in Twitter. I cannot move Twitter to Instagram. I can't move these people. I can't move them to YouTube easily. I need to let you ask them like, hey, go subscribe to my YouTube or whatever. So it's like, it's kinda annoying. I think they want it. They're trying to push a law now in America so you can like transfer your social graph to different platforms or something. That's kinda nice, but yeah.

Yeah, it gets very confusing. And I've heard that's simultaneously the pro and con a lot of the time. Is like take your story, take product turn. On one hand, a lot of your growth early on was tied to that.

Yeah, 100%.

Which is really good in that it gave you that opportunity and really bad in that it might've enforced that you have a very specific subset of people who might've had very specific needs that might not be representative. And so like people who use Twitch a lot, might have different needs than the generic viewer.

Oh dude, it's clean to front. Twitch is, that's why it's kinda fun to be on Twitch also. It's completely different people. It's like, and you realize you're only known in a subniche, like you've known him on Twitch, I've known him on the start in Twitter a little bit, but it's like only in there. And there's millions of these niches. So everybody's kinda famous in some niche somewhere. It's super weird. And, yeah. Although I do feel Twitter, I don't know, Twitter is so weird. Like most people I know are on Twitter but it's because I'm on Twitter. Most people I meet like normal people, I guess, what are normal people? But the people I meet randomly, I'm like, do you have Twitter? They're like, what? This like really old, like Twitter is like people still use Twitter, like nobody's on Twitter. It's like.

Yeah, there's this sort of discrepancy. I think this comes back to like weird psychological concept, but people tend to view the world only as they see it. We kind of all have our own bubble. And so like, if you only use Twitter and you never use Facebook, I would very much expect you to say the phrase, who's on Facebook? No one uses Facebook anymore. Because like human beliefs is like, I am everyone, is the unfortunate reality. And so I think that's the case. I didn't use Twitter for the longest time. I only made it like, I think a couple of years ago. And I ended up really enjoying it. It's my favorite social media now.

Dude, me too. I started like, dude, I wasn't on Twitter until like 2008 with my YouTube channel. And I used it in a completely wrong way to do that. Automated tweets. So a new video would get uploaded, I'd automatically tweet, I'd automatically retweet shit. It was all like just dump a link here of a new YouTube video and that's it. I think I bought followers then to about like 10,000 followers on. Like fuck it--

You beat me.

Yeah, and it was a pandemic show and dude, and then I don't know what happened in 2014, I did the startup thing. So I made my own personal thing. And I would tweet my blog posts and stuff. And I would wanna go back in a time machine. Why did I go on Twitter? I think Hacker News, because Hacker News was on Twitter. Like I remember Dustin Curtis, D. Curtis, he was famous and he was on Twitter. And he wrote at the end of his blog posts, like I'm on Twitter now, blah, blah. So I picked it and I'm like, okay, I was going to be in Twitter. And I don't know. But I never even knew why I was on twitter. It was just like, it wasn't planned or anything. It was just like randomly going to Twitter, and yeah.

Yeah. It's really interesting to find how we join these networks 'cause you're always aware, but the actual process when you're not just like being marketed to like, it's not like I clicked an ad to get to Twitter.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. And then like once you get big of a platform, then I'm thinking back about joining it, like how did you think it was gonna be? Was that the purpose? That usually is not the plan. Usually when somebody gets big, it's not the plan. It's really random Because if it was plannable, everybody would be doing it. It's kinda like, yeah.

Yeah, well, I think that's where you get the magic of execution is the only thing that matters, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But I like Twitter now 'cause it's kinda like, we had the whole politics stuff and then I knew everybody who wrote politics on Twitter. I also banned them from my websites now, politics people. Just left and right, you can both fuck off. 90% is in the middle and we just wanna chill. I've done the same on Twitter. And now it's just like everyone is posting updates, like the things they make. Like I think it started last two years. People just share what they're making and it's really healthy and fun. Kinda like a change log, you know? Or like arts and crafts class where people just share, look, I made this button, look, I made this drawing, look, I made this CSS thing And yeah, it's super chilled. Like I don't even see any, I don't see, well, I just said haters, but this is kinda years ago, but I don't see so much negativity on the timeline at least, I just see people making cool shit and stuff. So that's nice.

Yeah, I think that's something one has to do intentionally.

Yeah, actually, filter man, yeah. But then it can get better, yeah. I think chat has some questions, right?

Yeah, yeah. I have my mods writing them all down, was waiting for a good lull here. But yeah, I remember when I joined Twitter, it was because I was going to GDC that year, Game Developers Conference. Only year I ever went. Yeah, 'cause I studied game dev back in college. And yeah, fun times. But I remember, I was just told by one of my friends, he was like, game devs are on Twitter. I was just like, okay.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. And then that whole scene became extremely political as well. And then the UX design scene became extremely political. And then you have the indie makers who are pretty chill in generally, like the indie entrepreneurs are just like, okay, I'm making this thing and yeah. They're chilled. Somebody in the chat, politics is why I left Twitter, but I'm considering making another one blocking politics. Yeah, so I have a little trick for you, which is, well, there's only few people I can tell my secret. So I made a script so you can mute people on Twitter. But then there's something in Korea, I'm in Korea a lot. And in Korea they have Twitter too. You use Twitter a lot because the character limit is much longer. Even when the character limit was 140, one Korean character would also be only one character in those 140. So Korean and Japanese Twitter, you can write almost like a mini blog post because one character contains like much more letters. So Korean Twitter has a thing called Blunble. So you can block a person, then you unblock the person and really quickly, they automatically unfollow you. So if you have a hater or people that are a negative and they keep going on every update you post, you do block, you do unblock and they're gone. And they don't see you anymore. So what I did, I wrote the script that when you mute people, it downloads the mute list, people that are muted and then it blocks and unblocks them. So all I have to do, if there's some negative stuff, I click Mute and they unfollow me and I never see them again. And they never see my content again.

That's huge. That's amazing. Yeah, I've gotten very into slight hacks on social media. We've written quite a number of scripts on here to forcibly do things the APIs won't let you.

Yeah.

Truly. So we got a question here earlier. Are there ever fears?

Yeah, and it works in US too, it works anywhere. It just works in Twitter, yeah. Block, unblock, called Blunble, B-L-U-N-B-L-E. So I wrote a guitar script for it.

Oh, nice.

I can put it on the--

Yeah, yeah, feel free to post in chat.

Sure.

So our first question was, are there ever fears that someone who will use your product will find out who you are, see your stream and think this is so boring, I'm out, or think, how is this product ever gonna get completed or how will it ever work? So ever worried people are gonna watch you and then kind of judge your product based on your build of it, think that they're gonna think less of it?

Well, yeah, no, of course, yeah. No, so I tweet more than I Twitch. I hardly Twitch now, but I usually tweet like even source code and stuff and updates. And yeah. And I think I made it kinda like my joke thing where people on Twitter, like I will self deprecate that I can't code, that I'm pretty bad and I'm not great, but I will exaggerate how bad I am just for effects, just to make the point that it's not about the code, it's about the market fates or the entrepreneurship parts of the company. Like you started demand for the product just to show that everybody's too much in their own ass with being in enterprise code or like you need to code it in the proper way. And then, so I leverage kind of that as marketing in the last few years to show that it is not important. Like I have this tweets about Remote OK. Let's see, it's called like in extra PHP. So I wrote Remote OK as a single PHP file for a very long time. And, dude, it's just mainly on Twitter with this tweet, but this went really viral because people are like, like this is pretty much showing how bad it is. And then using it as marketing. But people fall for it 'cause they people to go through the website and then I post a job and then I make money. So it's all like a marketing scheme.

Yeah, what's that old saying, all PR is good PR.

Yeah, 100%, yeah. And most people in the tweet are pretty positive. Like yeah, cool, good job.

Yeah, truly. Yeah, I definitely think we've embraced that a lot. I think one of the most fun things for me is when I show somebody one of my websites and they're a dev. And they just start saying, this isn't aligned, this doesn't work. Like that's not beautiful. And I'm like, hey, I made this in a day and I am never touching it again. It's perfect just the way it is 'cause I needed it to just say those words and look kinda good. And it looks kinda good and I just 80-20 rule it. 'Cause I can spend 20, like several more hours getting the CSS perfect or I could not. And that's something I think I really appreciate.

But dude, I tweeted today about it even. I feel it's way more, what's the word? Dark or predatory or conspiratorial than we think, because all this stuff about development, you have to do it a certain way. It has to be complicated. Design has to be perfect. It has to look like Google or Facebook. It has to look perfect and stuff. All this stuff is keeping individual small indie devs down or any designers, any entrepreneurs. It's like saying, if you open a bank, for example, banks may be bad example. But if you open a bakery, you start small, you learn how to make bread and stuff. If it's pretty much on developer, Twitter and the internet, it's like, you will show your breads. And people are like, low, what the fuck? Like that's not even bread, like at expensive bakery on 45th Street in Manhattan or something. It's like, people are comparing everything with the big companies, big tech. And that makes everybody like, we have probably elephant skin, but most people don't, the first thing they make, it just gets shut down because they used the wrong code, it's the wrong design, it doesn't look professional, blah, blah. Man, that's not how you do it. Like if you look at the first page of the first version of Google, it also looks shit. So all the first versions look shit. So everybody's trying to make their product or website or whatever, the first version look like a big company, website or product. And that's not gonna fly. And I think that's secretly kinda not on purpose, but kinda like to keep everybody in the enterprise working or freelancing for clients so they can never get out because they never develop the skills or focus of entrepreneurship. And the skills are focusing on entrepreneurship. It's much different than being a freelancer or enterprise because it means not looking at engineering, but looking at the customer side, like what should we build? How are we gonna get market fits? How are we gonna get the customers and users paying money for this product? How are we gonna get revenue? And with enterprise, it's clearly different. It's like, how am I gonna get, follow this back or something, right? Like it has to do this, this, this, this whole list. It's nothing. The customer is very far away from there. The customer is like... Like maybe you're making the dashboard for bakeries. Okay, the actual customer is like very far. Now the end customer is the person buying bread. So they're not even involved in the dashboard for the bakery. I'm going too far, but you know what I mean? You're very isolated. So it's very different enterprising and being solo entrepreneur or being an entrepreneur in general. They're completely different things. And just because we code and we design, doesn't mean that we are engineers or, you know what I mean? It's a different thing.

My entire, we built a whole app, React Native, worked on it for months, basically chucked to the whole thing. Rebuilt a crappier simpler version in a week. That version uses not a single library. It is quite literally just JavaScript. I think we used some bootstrap and that's about as far as it got for like six text boxes.

Dude, that's how I code, that's how I code. And like right now, I'm building a instant messaging feature for Nomad List. And I built it in like three hours, the basic version. And it works. You can message people and people can message you and it works. And now I slowly improve on it. And it's just AJAX. I'm not saying that's the best way. I'm just saying it's the best way for me to keep it simple. And, yeah.

Yeah, I think, going back to your bread example, if you start a bakery with bread, here's the thing. If people want bread, if people really like your bread, they will come to your crappy shack. They'll pay in only nickels if that's all you accept. They will find a way to take the thing that they like from you. And then you can get--

Especially if it is artisanal.

Yeah, and you can get a cash register later. You don't need the cash register. Every other business can have a cash register, but you know people are coming for your bread and they will take a little bit of the pain on the way of the annoyance and still say, holy crap, this tastes so good at the end. And that's how you know you have something.

Yeah. Exactly, and the rest is aesthetics. So the nice front porch of the bakery logo interior is still aesthetics and you don't need those aesthetics, you need the core product, which is nice bread. And even the aesthetics of the bread itself can be shit like artisanal breads might look really funky, but that's, in a good way, it looks real, it looks weird, it looks non-manufactured. And that's the whole beauty, what people like, and artisanal websites, people like too. They like weird small team solo devs websites, like look at my website. They like that. And they pay for it. And companies like it too. Companies like to have a direct line to the person making a website. Like people posting jobs, for example, my Remote OK, my remote job boards. They really like, they can go to way bigger boards, like Indeed or all those big competitors, but they still go to mine because they can email me like, hey, this feature, can you make this maybe? Or can you make like a, like now they want like a dashboard where they could see all their jobs. So I need to build that. And I guess sure, I'll go think about that and build it next month and they're like, wow, super cool. Because they're used to corporate where if you ask them, like, sorry, sir, at this moment we will not be blah, blah, blah, blah. Or maybe in Q five, we always joke about Q five 'cause it doesn't exist. You know, like Q four, like the fifth quarter.

I know, that's great.

But, so yeah, people hate, man, people really dislike corporate. And of course we all use corporate products. We use Google, we use the big grocery store, but our artisanal is make that your unique advantage, 'cause yeah.

Yeah. I think, and a lot of the time, I think what you're kind of touching on is like sort of a white glove service combined with like the ability to move fast. Like, you can cater to a need because A, things are simple and therefore it can move quickly. And B, you're willing to cater to them. Both of those things are false for any giant company. And so you don't need the giant front end. You go to a restaurant, nobody says, let's go to the fanciest, most dollar signs looking restaurant. They say, let's find the hole in the wall with a menu made in Windows Vista.

Dude, this is so true. And that, man, you're right, there's so many parallels to life. Like if you go on a date, yeah, you can go to Michelin star place, but it's actually fun. It's kinda like more like kinda like, what the fuck are we doing here? Like the most fun date is like pizza, sitting on the floor with a shitty bottle of wine or something. Like the most authentic cool experience are kinda usually very simple, like on decorate. So what we do with my friends now when there's a birthday, we make a drawing, but we're all like, a bar now corona. So we make a drawing online on something called aggie.io. Aggie.io. So it's kinda like Photoshop, but you can draw, everybody has their own letter. So we just make like really cool drawings for each other's birthday. And it's like, best gifts we ever got or given, or write a bullet or more, Just something real like people, I think, everybody's desperate for authenticity. Twitch is the same reason. Like you crying in Twitch is the same reason. People are desperate for, everything is fucking, here we go. So, I'm cursing, but everything is I think fake and everything's manufactured. Sorry, I'm European, so we say fuck more than Americans.

You're more than welcome to go for it.

Okay, yeah. Every fucking thing. And people are really still like clamoring for authenticity and radical honesty and like, yeah, I think that's the starts ups in life. Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. And I think the real thing is like, the fact of the matter is like authentic or not, it's just about people actually like what you have. If the food's good, the rest didn't matter. You went to the restaurant because you wanted good food, you got good food and you'll be back. Right?

Yeah.

They might get a few less people, but every single person that gets there is gonna sing the damn praises because it's the best steak they've had in years. And I feel like you have to view products like that. It's either like they love it or they don't. And that's just reality. And if nobody loves it, okay, then you know, you didn't invest in it.

My friend told me this about dating . He said, 80% of people don't like me or something, but the 20% that does like me, they really, really like me. They're like, you know, the same thing. It's like, don't try to appeal to everybody. And yeah, I think there's one caveat which is like artisanal products. Once the founder has been doing it for like 10 years, they get sick of it and then they need to sell it to private equity or they need to exit. They need to grace anyway, IPL, or just like, after 10 years people get bored. So, the artisanal breads use these stats showing up in Walmarts, And then it becomes packaged. And now it's not artisanal anymore. And that's just the product life cycle or business life cycle. And I think that's part of it. But that's another good trick I think, because you need to realize that everything that's big now, that's in a supermarket so that's a big service used to be small ones. It used to be small in indie and artisanal. It didn't just start big. Like, unless it's Amazon and starting a new Amazon AWS service. If it's something else that like Whole Foods started really small. Whole Foods was like in the '60s, it's like a hippie store, they only sold vegetables. It was like a vegan store. And then they started selling meat too, blah, blah, blah. So everybody started small. So if you wanna get big, you need to start small.

Yeah, I always think of like Coca-Cola as a company. You think of them. Yeah, yeah, there you go. You think that they only sell coke, but then, oh, they also sell Dasani, they also sell Sprite. They also have all these things.

Yeah, you use conglomerate, yeah.

Yeah, but then you start to look into what they really own and you'll find they own like very obscure sodas that you would never have heard of. And every time that they get one new kind of soda that exists, that's like, some specific like from some other like, it's still like some soda from Africa? That's like pomegranate flavor, that's very common there, but we've never heard of it. And they'll buy one local brand of that because they agree that this is a segment and they're gonna win way faster because they just trust that you're right. And so the thing is like, you have to be right at the small scale before anybody's gonna be right at the big scale. And then you either just win on being authentic and the best, or you went on just selling out and saving somebody else a bunch of time and letting them fill in the blanks.

Yeah. Yeah, totally man, yeah. I think what Coca-Cola does smart day, they buy a brand cause they know the brand's juicy also own like vending machines or something when they supply to them. So then they can take over the vending machine instead of like, Coca-Cola, Dasani, vitamin water. And they're like, okay, now it's kinda, it's like buying access to the market, but yeah.

They make you sign contracts too. Like most big companies have a contract with either Coke or Pepsi. And they're not allowed to have the other ones.

Of Coca-Cola, I can't talk about it. Represents . Nice

Amazing. That's like almost sign language. Yeah, cool. All right, I'm gonna pop back to--

Hey what's up, Milky Dev, I know you.

I see comments here. Oh, you know, Milky now, good, good. Milky is wonderful.

I've been a follower of Milky Dev.

Good, good. Yeah, Milky is amazing. A wonderful guy. Easily, basically my brother in streaming. He and I have done a ton together. Super, super great guy. He's getting into startups soon.

Cool, yeah. Lemme switch my AC 'cause it's getting too hot.

Go for it, go for it.

This place is getting very warm.

All good. Astro, do we still have a list of questions? Have I missed anything? Let me see. Somebody said, I stopped streaming my live code because my Twitch audience didn't align with my side projects, audience slash customers.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, I wouldn't have actually, at least in my experience, I wouldn't worry about that at all. Because I think in general, the reason most people come here and my stream like working on helping local businesses, I talk about referrals and all this stuff for posters. But nobody particularly comes because they're like, oh, holy crap, I love local business. Like, oh my God, gotta save this one next door. Most people come, you know, I'm in Sci-tech. They come because they're programmers and they kinda just have interest in startups. So I wouldn't view your content or like your public profile as being so tied to what it is you do explicitly. I would tie it more towards what you do generically. Like, you all don't only talk to nomads and remote people, you also just talk about startups.

Yeah, man, you're right, man. I've had this before and I think actually does it to, like , this other entrepreneur guy, he told me like , you have to reinvent yourself. Because early on, when I got famous a little bit on the internet, it was because I was no, like I was teaching nomads and I made Nomad List and stuff. And then I became some kinda nomad's famous person. And dude, it felt so cringe that I was that guy 'cause the digital nomading was cringe in itself. Just like it was too weird. And I didn't even wanna be that guy, but I became that guy. And then you have no choice. So it was like, how can I get rid of this thing? And the only thing the way to get rid of it is by becoming something else. So it's like, okay, I'll just go share about entrepreneurship, like an indie solo development and solo entrepreneurship and stuff. And then I did that and then was in protocol lab. Then I became that guy. So then I overrode the nomad thing with the indie solo developer thing. Yes, so you gotta keep reinventing yourself, keep changing, yeah.

Yeah, it's such a weird progression, but I think it is really interesting because like you said, it's like we were talking about earlier, sort of that progression of like the people at the top versus the people at the bottom. Like the cringe is mostly at the top, but once you get to the bottom, like you just have real people and then nobody actually cares too much. And then you actually have like a community of people who get to know like you for you, get to know you for like the things that you're actually good at, the things that you like, the things that they like. And so, it's a tough start. But I think you win once the filters finish. You win in the long term for taking the pain in the short term. It's still so weird that nomading was cringe, but I definitely know what you mean. It definitely was like a weird concept.

It was just bad, when I came into that scene, I made the website because it was cringe. I was like, ah, I can fix this because it was all these blogs and these courses about like how to move to the other side of the world and live your dream lifestyle on the beach. It was just total bullshit. I knew it was fake. I knew it was just not gonna make you happy. And I knew those people doing it. And it was all like, dude, it was a whole Ponzi scheme. It was like a pyramid MLM scheme of people selling courses. And then they would discourse with teaching some more courses. It was fucking insane. And it was all this, and all digital nomad was dead. People promising fucking fake dreams to everybody and making money on it. Dude, but absolutely not my people I wanna hang with. And I actually, I was about to quit. I flew back home. I was like, yeah, this is just, this is not my kind of people. And it was not many people back then either, it was like 40, there's like a few 100 maybe in Asia, it was just like Freddy and John , Thailand or something. Maybe there was like 30 Mexico or something. It was very small. And then I flew back and I saw a guy called on Instagram. He was a Singaporean British guy. And he was making his own SAS service. He was making money with the SAS service like really cool. And he was traveling with it and I was like, wait, wait, I did that last year, but you're doing it like in a really cool way with making cool products and stuff. And I was okay, I'll just go back and I'll try it again. And I'll try develop cool companies and make startups. And yeah, so he kinda inspired me to go that route. And then funny thing is he quit nomading, he got a day job for two years, three years. And then he got inspired by me and he started doing the 12 startups that I did. And now he has a successful business, new business. And he is in nomad again. So it's kinda like, in both ways, we inspired each other, but yeah, it was a lot of cringe back then. And I hope I reduced that a little bit. Cringe seems to be the keyword in this conversation. Yeah, interesting, I don't know.

Yeah, I know. I think it's a really interesting story. I think part of what's and I don't know, you know better than me, but I think at least the , is part of what attributes to the like cloud that you've gained over time is not only that, like, obviously you are founder, engineer have done all these things, have built Nomad List and have built Remote OK. But also like the interest in that industry, like a lot of it just comes to you.

It's all super personal man. It's all like, dude, like fundamental personal problems. Like if you travel, it's very lonely. So how do you solve that? Well, you can solve it by meeting people, but how do you meet people? And nobody else is doing remote work and traveling as a remote worker? Well, then you can make a website that promotes that. And then more people will become it. And slowly, this literally what it is like a lot of my friends became nomad through the website. And then now they're my friends, because before there was no people, there was not a lot of people doing it. And my website is not the only thing that's pushed, but it pushes a lot of people into it. So it's a personal ego thing to like, I wanna have friends when I'm living somewhere remotely. So it helps that. So it ties very much into personal things. Yeah, for some philosophy.

Yeah, I know, I think you in and of yourself have contributed to the growth of that industry. A significant--

Yeah, I'm still, yeah.

Yeah, super interesting. I think it's a thing with a lot of people. Yeah, yeah.

Well, who would have though it?

In good and bad ways.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it was super interesting. I found when talking about like the nomad stuff, where it was traveling isn't a great idea, but being home all the time on your laptop is. And so it was like almost halfway there. So if you could find a safe way to get somewhere, or at least somewhere where you could like quarantine for a while, then you could totally pull off nomad. But like, they were like, in the US like, we're not allowed to fly anywhere.

Dude, I track everybody's, well this sounds Zuckerberg, but I track the movements on Nomad List. Like I see the general movements. And dude, all the Americans, they moved to Mexico. It's the same, they moved to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico city, Puerto Escondido, Tulum. And then all the Europeans, they move to Portugal. What'd you call it? Like the Mexico of Europe. And that's why where I am now, they almost list amount of stuff. And then, well, Asia was closed. So the Europeans and Americans, they would go to Asia. Definitely a lot of your Europeans 'cause it's so close to Asia. Who would be in Bali now or in Thailand or whatever, Malaysia, they're now in Portugal because all the borders are closed. And then also a lot of Americans started moving to Texas because from California. So there's already this huge relocation wave going on just in front of us. And that's exactly what I've been thinking about for the last six years that would happen. So it's super cool.

Ahead of the game.

It's just absolutely, yes.

You called it more than anyone else could have called it. Yeah. And now you have the data. I'd be interested to hear actually, this is a question I wanted to ask you for a while. Do you do anything with your data? Are there people that ask you for that? Like are you working at a scale that that's, like, you just made two statements, I don't think most people would be aware of.

Yeah. Okay, so I have, like, I think big data was bullshit. But I have like about 140,000 trips. So people have entered, it's 140,000 trips over the last few years. So if you go to Nomad List, and like, I just added the feature, you can go to the trend step on every city and you could see, like, I could show you on here. Trends. Or do you have a screen shared on this thing?

I believe so.

Or do you have at your screen?

Yeah, go ahead.

So if you go to nomadlist.com and then you go to Canggu, for example, Trends, you could see a chart. Most interesting thing is Playa Del Carmen. I think it's the sixth. Yeah, and then there's Trends. Let's see. Fuck, why is it so slow?

That's because I'm streaming for me if you're looking at my streaming.

Really, your internet gets slow from streaming? Okay, yeah.

I can tell you the whole story, but it's actually just a CPU thing.

So it's not my website.

No, no, no, it's not your. I haven't set up a bio yet. I'm not gonna be able to, do you want me to share your screen on whereby.

Oh, fuck, whatever, yeah, anyway.

Yeah.

Who cares? Yeah, so you can see like I have it here. I can switch my screen. Yeah, here.

Nice.

So this is Playa del Carmen. So you can see, like this is 2019, there was a drop here 'cause of corona. And then now it's like bigger than ever. See, so.

And what's the scale on the left for this? Like how many trips is that? Is that 10s, is that 100s?

It's the estimated.

Oh wow.

It's 1400 arrivals this month.

Wow.

It's estimated nomads. Then this one. See drop corona and then back up. Bali is opening up again, so see here. So we're going back up.

So is this public data?

It's public. Yeah, so public, it's on the website. Yeah, so you can, so Thailand is still not recovering because they didn't open their borders yet. A lot of people are going to, I think South Africa. But look, just before corona, everyone was going to Cape Town for some fucking reason. I don't know. So yeah, there's definitely like data. Is pretty close, but they're slowly opening up a little bit now with special visas. So yeah, especially this year or last year, it's very interesting to see the data being affected by like real world stuff, right?

Right.

Yeah.

That's insane.

Yeah, so that's like 140,000 trips.

Interesting. And so do you do anything with this data, or just leave it up there, it's on trends and you never really touch it, nobody's offering to buy it?

Yeah, I also made like a page like fastest growing places, which in Nomad List. Let me just show you. Great. Yeah, so fastest growing remote work hubs. And the table is kinda fucked. Let me do dark mode. Dark mode is okay. Dude, dark mode is such a pain to make it like make your layout look good now in both light and dark. So you have like fast-growing remote work hubs now. So 2020, growth is kinda fucked because it's only the 1st of January. So it estimates it. But here, you see the growth over the years of all these places.

Amazing.

So you can pretty much like, so Medellin is doing really well now, Canggu, Playa del Carmen, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Cape town. This place went down like Ho Chi Minh. I don't know, it wasn't popular anymore. It went down, now it's back up. Yeah. So I pretty much like I try to, I guess, instead of like doing some kind of big data research, I just make a page in PHP and just like share the data quickly and with calculations. Life with the live data. And I mean for nomads, I can predict where the nomads will be in which month based on their planned trips and based on the trips from last years. So okay, if you wanna be in a busy place with a lot of people, you can socialize with like remote workers in February next year, or well, February of this year, sorry. In a month, then I can say okay, let's see, you can do, let me show you again. You can go to Filters, you can click February. And you see in February, there will be, nomad scored 90%, so there will be a lot of people. Yeah, you can kick like Warm. Many people in February, fast internet. Yeah, many in people February, so here. So now you have 23 nomads checked in, in February expected. And because nomad is like only like 5% of the user base of the entire nomad market because 94% doesn't pay for our websites. It's just like how it works. This is just like an estimate. But this means Bangkok's pretty busy. Medellin, Singapore. See Mexico city, Ho Chi Minh. Yeah, so I can pretty much tell people like where to go and where they're gonna meet like other people like them, like remote workers in their place.

Interesting. Weird question, do you have a newsletter for anything like this?

No, because I hate email. That's kind of personal. So I do subscribe to some newsletters but like, they're really good. Like Scott Galloway's newsletter. I really like it. It's that NYU professor, Scott Galloway, Professor Scott Galloway. And he makes a cool, interesting newsletter, but I don't know. I wouldn't know what to sent, what to email, I guess like top places.

Yeah, I think it would be interesting only because you have this data. I subscribed to a lot of like marketing trend emails. And that's very interesting for me because I do marketing stuff for all of our stuff. So I always want to keep up on that. I feel like it would be interesting that you have the data, so it might be very trivial for you to make a very short newsletter. That's like places to look at this month and you can just plot down the top three and their stats.

Yeah, I've read a ton, yeah.

There you go.

Okay, nice Newsletter, top places. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really alerted to emails. So I'm like, okay. People that are my users most of them so, like they don't wanna get too much email, but yeah.

For sure.

I was thinking of doing like a sub stack type newsletter. So right now I have, I moved my blog to ghost. And when I write a blog post now, I can sent it out to my subscribers. So I have like, I think 9,000 subscribers and I sent out like blog posts. And so that's what I do, do now. So that's kinda nice.

Interesting, cool. All right, let's take a look. Astro, if you're still here, can you give me a post of the questions that we have so far?

Do you have to have a grid of the, or a sidebar to work on for streaming start doing it? I'm asking this because we have day jobs. You might have never very good in getting ready for project audience wise. I mean, bad idea is good too. Anything, yeah. Taking actions is always good.

Yeah, half of my stuff is completely random nonsense BS that's like only adjacently even related to my project. Sometimes I'm just like, let's go scrape some Instagram accounts or something. And then it's just an hour and a half people making jokes where they're like, oh, is this just how you fill your funnel for your dating profiles? And then that's it, that's the whole stream, but it can still be entertaining. And I find, especially in Sci-Tech, a lot of people just come 'cause they like code. As long as you can be educational and explain what you're doing, really doesn't matter what you're working on honestly. People watch--

I mean that's why I watch CM Griffin because I still have a clue of what he's doing, but it's always some interesting stuff. And then there's a race card on a screen for some reason, he has a race card, he's programming. I have no fucking clue what's going on, but it's just fun to watch. And actually I figure out what's going on and maybe I should share my websites here so people know what the hell I make.

Yeah, I sent along your Twitter, which I believe has most of them in the top. But yeah. Cannot hurt.

Yeah, do we have more questions?

Yeah, do you work in big spurts or do you do a little bit of work every day?

So it really depends if it's a new project or a feature like existing project. So with existing probably like Nomad List, Remote OK, I do like little features, I work a little bit. You know like daily bug fixes, like a bug report or there's an error and you have to check and you have to fix. But if it's a new website, I go into these long, yeah like eight hour or whatever, just I'll drink coffee or go stay up at night is what we used to do way more, because you could go on this hypermania creativity, motive nights and just create crazy shit and have crazy ideas that are, your brain is blocked anymore by reasonableness. So, any idea flies and you make creation. That's creativity I think at night, and evening and night. So it depends on nature of the work. So bug fix and maintenance stuff, that's like very short. You'd take like 10 minutes to fix a bug. Usually five minutes, but new features, yeah. New products, yeah, like long, like you have to go really deep into the problem, but once the problem is already solved, it's just like shaving it. Like what do you call it? Like a diamond, like just like etching it.

Right.

Yeah.

Interesting. And now do you have any tools in particular, like websites that you use to sort of keep track of what you're doing or like things you couldn't live without, anything like that?

I've tried to reduce the amount of tools.

Really?

So I used to use code kits and code kits is average automatically minifies like, I think everybody else uses Webpack or stuff. I don't understand how it works, but I use code kits and it automatically minifies, compresses and compiles my JavaScript CSS. And then my friend Marc from WIP , he said, why don't you just use Cluster? Cluster could do this for you. Like cool. So now I just use that. I use blank texts. As a code editor, I know everybody's on , but I like slammed texts. I tried the other day and it's nice, but I can't switch. I don't know, it just feels weird to me. I finally used GigNow since last month. So I used to do FTP for six years. Yeah, it is crazy. And I find these Gig and I have all my sites on GigNow. What else? Yeah, really cool, I had photop.com. So I really don't like Adobe anymore. I used to use loads of Adobe products. I'd always Photoshop Premiere and After Effects. I've ditched all of them. I think it's a really bad company. And their software is really annoying. Like all the subscription stuff and the bullshit they do in the background. So now I use a web app called photop.com. It's literally Photoshop, it's free and it works the same. And it takes a week to get used to it. And then you don't need Photoshop anymore. And we only use Photoshop for small little things. Yeah, Web chat. Hey, it's Danny. Danny is my server guy.

Oh, I'm not sure.

And my BFF. TweetDeck, no, I don't use TweetDeck. I'm trying to stay off Twitter more. I'm trying to reduce the amount of interactions on there. So yeah, I don't know. TweetDeck would be like too intense, like all these decks to follow all your meds and stuff. Like I would do that maybe a few years ago, but not anymore, just now I need to reduce the in boots and yeah.

Interesting.

What else do I use? Let's see what I have opened, Sublime, Telegram. Telegram is very important in my life. Telegram is where all my friends are, I know in America, everybody's on iMessage or WhatsApp. And Europe, everybody's also on WhatsApp, but a lot of the kinda more nerdy scene, more rebel scene is on Telegram. And not because encryption, nobody cares about the encryption anymore. It's about the interface, it's just really good, it's really fast. They have really good stickers. Sticker is really important. The feature sets just really, like the app is way better than WhatsApp. It's just, yeah, I would recommend everybody to try Telegram. Telegram is my life. All my server alerts, I get through Telegram. So every error that happens, PHP error, goes straight to Telegram. So yeah. What else?

Do you use any tool for that? Is there like like a Zapier?

Telegram has a web book. PHP like file. File gets contents. It's like a URL, to open URL, and it opens the Telegram URL with an error in a message. And then the message goes into the check group where I can check it and then I can fix the error. So that's the whole error reporting system. It's like few lines of code.

It's just Telegram. That's like your whole--

Yeah.

Amazing.

And then JavaSript errors, they get caught by window.onerror in JavaScript. They get sent as an AJAX to the server, which then again redirects to Telegram, to web book. So.

Amazing. And so up until now to clarify there, the reason that works is because you are the pretty much only developer on all of this outside of maybe a few people maintaining servers?

Yeah, but the error is actually. So Daniel in the chat, he's in a group too, and he's the server guy. So like part-time. So if he sees a lot of errors, he jumps in and he does a quick fix when I'm not available or something. But I think error reporting doesn't have, like, I used to use , but it's got really tedious and too complicated and stuff, and I think there's nothing wrong with just a basic, for the area you get in just with the PHP to a chat service and you get it in the group, like what's wrong with that? Like good enough for me. I think it would be good enough for a team too. So, yeah.

Definitely. All right just a sec, I got our questions list up here in a second. I got something.

And this name is a hacker, amazing.

Yeah, hackers are good.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll my inbox, you're right.

Yeah. Hacker is always around--

I promise you now I'll get like message him with Telegram group. Like yo, what's up? I'm a hacker.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna just start throwing it, like throwing errors in the console on Nomad List. I'm just gonna be like, hey man, how's it going? How've you been? Hope things are good.

I mean, dude, the 100%, all these things are true. And that's I guess, I mean, that's I guess why companies go from artisanal to corporate. Because you get so many hack attacks or legal attacks or attacks in general. So yeah. It's true.

All right. Any comments on visas with the whole nomad? Is that a thing that you have to worry about? Is there like a--

Yeah, so I'm in a good space now because I'm in Europe and I'm European and Europe is just like US. You can move to every State. So every country in Europe is pretty much like a US state now. So we live in the United States of Europe. And you can work in any State and you have people working at any country. You don't need or even. So you're legal, you can stay forever. The borders are open. They've been open I think since 99 years .

Still there, Pieter?

Oh, sorry, yeah, . Yeah, I'm here. Do you hear me? Yeah, we're back, okay. So Europe, you can move to everywhere if you're your being so you can live everywhere, you can work everywhere, so you don't need a visa, that's nice. And I don't think enough Europeans take advantage of that. I mean, now you shouldn't maybe, but after corona, you can live anywhere, you can work anywhere. So yeah, so I'm a legal resident in Europe. So I can stay forever pretty much as if it's a situation.

That's honestly magic. You can't really do a ton with an American passport these days. And actually--

Well, inside Europe, you can. Sorry, inside America, you can have in any state. You can live in 50, 51 States.

I guess that's yeah, that's the comparison. I used to be like super into like travel and like credit cards and everything, I still am honestly. And there's like this whole tier list of which passports are the most useful and like which citizenships get you the most places. Super interesting.

Yeah, but dude, US passports is on the top. Just like European passports. Yeah, so you can go anywhere. I mean, now it's fucked, but .

We lost hard there, yeah. 100%.

Usually you get 90 days, I get 90 days. And I think in terms of like remote work, governments are starting to, I think they have been talking about for ages now, they're finally starting to do a little bit, like there's all these little countries that are doing remote work visas like Bermuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Georgia, not the state, but the country, all these kind of countries are starting to get remote work visas. Portugal is attracting a lot of foreigners like Americans do with something called the D7 visa. It's gonna make it very easy to move to Portugal. So it's getting easier and easier to relocate or to move definitely for tech workers. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure, and that's gotta be a huge thing for those smaller countries, especially, like country of Georgia getting a remote work visa. That's gotta be like nomads coming to them I would imagine is a non-trivial amount of tourism.

Yes, spending man, it's so much money. And like, I spoke to a guy from Spain here who said exactly that. He lives in , which is like these islands off the coast of Spain, very popular for tourism. And they calculated that they get 20 million tourist visitors a year. They calculated that for the same one I'm spending, it's 20 million tourists or it's 100,000 remote workers. So they could have 200 times less people going to them and making the same amount of tax money as tourists with 200 times less of the annoying stuff of tourism. Like people were rolling suitcases, people were partying, drunk or whatever. Like there will be 100,000 remote work people to do maybe other stuff, but it's 200 times less people with more money for the government. So man, that's huge. That's like, economically, if you think about that, that's gonna change some stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it literally comes back to what we were talking about earlier. I mean, even with your company, you look at the top of funnel, but all that really matters is who's at the bottom at the end of the day. And even with--

Low voice, high quality.

Yeah, they're high quality people.

I don't think anybody likes to wear as many more. The classical tourism is it's just very damaging to places. I know 'cause I'm from Amsterdam and the entire center is fucked by tourism. It's just not, it's like, I don't know about America, like it's Times Square. Everything becomes Times Square, same happened in Barcelona, same happened in London with Leicester Square and stuff. So that's not interesting. That's not what travel should be about. I think more and more people wanna, like Airbnb pushed us. They wanna live like a local, I think that's the future. Like being part of a local environment, even if it's for like a month or two months or three months, but not like a two day weekend trip to Barcelona for $10 in an airplane in Europe, It's low quality, low cost tourism, but there is a much higher cost. Ecological costs, cultural costs, that's just not good. Yeah, it's just not good. It changes places in a bad way. And I think any foreigner you will have in a place will change it, but having people that can work from other, for example, going to a place because it's less volume, will change it less. Yeah.

Yeah, it was very interesting to me when I started moving around towards the beginning of quarantine. And I was just moving between Chicago. I think I lived in like four apartments.

Yeah, that's pretty fucked, yeah, I remember.

And even like just getting to live there for a month, I ended up being surprisingly able to get to know places, get to know people in the area, like got to know like a bunch of the restaurants. Like I became friends with the owners and everything. Like, people were sad when I left, And you couldn't have done that in three days and you couldn't have done that from a hotel with a bunch of luggage. It's just like, I think the difference is you had to find that lower half of the file.

That's like a dehumanizing aspect to that where you see people as like, okay, you're in a new place, you're just a few days. And as the service people, we'll give you food and blah, blah. But man, there are people you can talk to them. You can get to know them, but you get to know them only exactly after like you stay there for a month for longer. And that place really become interesting. And I think that's really the cool part about, like that's what digital nomaders should be not these goats, some are really cheap and like all the bad stigmas, but the good thing should be like living like a local and being part of community Skynet and yeah.

100%. The tough part is that's idealized, but I think it's gonna take time before that actually becomes the reality for a lot of people. 'Cause I think for a lot of us right now, like, well, even when I was nomading, granted it's quarantine, but I moved around areas and then I still sat in my room.

No, but everybody does. I mean, this is another like a stigma where it's like, oh, you're supposed to go outside and like see everything. It's bullshit. No, it just lives somewhere. And then you realize that living, like I could live in Seattle now or in Chicago, or you could live here in Portugal. Dude, it's the same thing. Like I woke up, I make coffee, I sit on the couch, you sat on the couch, you sat on that chair. And then I met a friend, we had some food. So does it really matter where you are? It's all the same pretty much. So don't feel guilty about that. Yeah, it's just, yeah.

That's a good note. It's a good note.

What's your, I'm curious, what is your time spent look like right now? You mentioned, you've reached like pretty big milestones recently and everything. Is it a lot more emphasis on Nomad List these days? Are you still working on those projects?

So I promised Daniel, he's my server guy and like best friend here. I promised him that I would start working from 1, January on Nomad List. I failed because I was just sitting on the couch. It's like, what am I gonna do with my life? Like, there's nothing I can do. 'Cause you can't go anywhere 'cause there's corona. And then, like my friend Marc was working on his laptop. So I was just like, fuck it, I'll go work on my, but then I committed to code. And then Daniel found out, he's like, "Dude, why are you committing code? You're not supposed to work. And I'm calling out Nomad List, but I'm gonna finish Nomad List. Like it's almost done, the instant messaging stuff that I'm building on now. And then I'm gonna focus on Remote OK. And I'm gonna try and hire a developer. Like I told you, I'm hiring a developer for those websites to develop new features, but also for like fix the bugs and stuff. So I can stay away from those websites because I feel like they're kinda done maybe. And I feel like I need to go away from them to come up with new ideas for like new businesses. But if I always stay in those businesses, I'm never gonna get like the radical new ideas. So I feel I literally need to not touch them anymore and have a developer touch them instead. And then, I don't know, do some stuff in my life, like go skydiving or go do something, do something good, get that new experiences, like traveling is very difficult now, but just lots of other stuff you can do. Learn to make sushi or whatever, but I need to do other stuff to figure out new problems, to become a different person and then build new products. And I built a few new products last year, like a QR menu, a creator, ideas, AI based on GPD tree. So generating business ideas. So I do build new stuff, but I think if they're not the ones that I wanted, the big ones, yeah, they're not, like it took me years to make Nomad List, for example. So it might take me another few years to make something again that's really cool. So, but I need to get away from the code.

Yeah, so that's an interesting question. What would you say are your goals like coming into this year? Are you just looking for the next project and you wanna just move everything else to sort of maintenance mode or kind of offshoot it? Like, do you want to keep growing Nomad List? Do you view this as stopping that?

Yeah, I think it can naturally grow now 'cause everything is kinda like you just sign up. So there's a few things that need to be fixed. But generally, the site works. Over 800 people a month now sign up paid, which is a shitload. And it used to be like 200. For a very long, long time, it was 200, and I was like 800. So, I think that's the first nomad way of starting. I think people can do most of the things they wanna do on the sites and it kinda functions. It doesn't break apart when you do something. So that's good. So yeah, I think it can keep writing if you put a dev on it. Yeah, pretty much. I think it can keep running. And because the market grows, it just automatically grows with it.

Right, so you're not looking to buy yourself, put in more to try and actually grow it? Like, I know that you're generally a fan of never market anything, just let it be kinda natural and organic. Do you still stick by that?

By Facebook ads.

Yeah, honest question. Like have you bought Facebook ads for this? Is that something that you'd ever do?

Yeah, we tried, didn't work. I can try again. I think you get the wrong users. Like we got really shitty users. Like I have to size the community. So the membership is like, you can go through the site, you can see all the places, you can filter like where you wanna go, where fast internet works. A lot of people whereas the climate that you like, and then you can go there, and then you want it not be lonely. So you go into the community, you chat with people like who are there, you meet up in real life. Like we did over like 400 meetups or 500 meetups or something in the last few years. Like 100 meet ups a year. So people go for drinks, people go for dinner, people meet their boyfriend, girlfriend on the site, all that stuff. They make friends. I believe that part of the site works. I forgot your question.

So, for you, is this is--

I figured that. I just figured that. Sorry yeah, so you get the wrong users. Because right now, you get like organic users who come to the site and they pay. And if I put more people into it, it's like Facebook, like apart from ads, but Facebook in general has kinda like groups. So they solve as kind of by putting everybody in different groups maybe, but I don't have that. I just have my site. So everything gets dumped into the same slack chat, into the same community. So, which is already a lot of moderation work. Like I have a paid moderator to keep them friendly and not fight about Trump all the time. It's a bad growth now on my side, Trump. Yeah, because I had both people that either they shouted about Trump, anyway, it doesn't matter. But if you get more people in there, you get a lot of randos. And I feel like for community, that's very dangerous randos. You kinda wanna, yeah.

I see, that's super interesting. So your community is so tight knit that you actually can't afford to have bad users?

Yeah, it's hard to scale community.

Yeah.

That's the problem. So the only scalable part of the website is the, so I have two membership now. Premium membership, which is like the community and the site. I have a light new membership. I added like during corona 'cause I was like, okay, nobody could travel. So they just wanna like maybe filter cities for in the future when you wanna travel. So I made a light membership without social features, which sells really well too. So that part I could scale maybe. So yeah, the site is almost like a chime mirror. Like it's like two things. It's like a database and a community and the community. But the thing is the community makes a lot of money in terms of memberships. Like people like to buy the premium membership and they like to join the community and yeah. 'Cause it's a hard thing to scale, like it's much easily to scale like a job board, like Remote OK, like on the site. It's much easier to scale 'cause you've been probably by B2B, Facebook ads or something for that. So, yeah.

And so how do you decide, like if you're gonna focus on growing a current project, if you're gonna go start something new?

I think it's just like how I feel. And like we all have, like how do you feel about your website? Like how do you feel about, I think what you saw was like, I think it was the cycles, like economic cycles and then it's like psychosocial cultural cycles. For me, 2014 was a big year. Like a lot of things happened. Like I launched all these websites and I got famous on the internet. And so that's like about seven years now. And I think things do go in seven year cycles. And I know like a lot of other people that started back then, they are now kinda like either selling their website or just shutting it down or in a . And I feel like you need to have a really long breath to keep going. I have the long breath for sure 'cause I don't wanna give up and I'm really happy. And dude, it's never made enough this much money, it's never had so many signups this month. So it's like, that's a good thing. And we're just on the edge of corona ending. And then the , wherever like shitloads really gonna relocate. So I kinda just get the fuck out. I need to kinda stay on, but I think the site is ready for that. But, yeah.

All right. So as far as you're concerned, you're just kinda letting the growth come and moved it from there?

But I think I need a break to find new ideas. I think you have the same trap you have with nine to five jobs where if you get stuck into something, it's very hard to get out of it. So, yeah.

It's in your nature. I mean that's how you got to where you are now.

Dude, I'm kinda hyper guy and I wanna like, I think ADHD is bullshit, but people will tell me, oh it is. I don't think it exists. I think it's a big pharma conspiracy, but I think people just have creative rings, but it does mean that I need to, I get bored quickly, so I need to make a lot of new stuff. And that's, a lot of conspiracy like to make new stuff. It's the most fun part. Growing stuff's kinda boring to be honest. Like it's not that fun. Like making new stuff, it's really super. You know it, it's super exciting. Like making something out of nothing, it's just wow, it's like one of the best things in life. It's like creativity at a score, at it's maximum expression. Like you have so many in your brain, you can put it on paper or on a website or on the, you know like you manifest something, it's fucking insane. It's magic.

I quote on this channel so often, people would come up with these like super, super complicated ideas. And these things that will take a year to do. And I will yell at them until it's a two week version of the same thing. And just MVP it down because it's so much more satisfying. And that's my biggest concern for people. Well, there's a lot that says launch on BP early, it's better for your company and totally agree, totally subscribe to that. But I feel like motivationally, is the much more interesting way to look at it. And if you don't launch early enough, I feel like you start to wait too long to see anything satisfying and you'll fall off on the project.

Yeah, but I think it's fear or failure. And it's, I think planning is procrastination. Planning is procrastination. Thrilling task but I think it's true for many times and everything you're scared of, you're gonna like try and prepare more for it and like, ah, I'm not ready yet, I'm gonna launch later. No, just launch, now you realize it's shit, and then you need to do it again. And as everything. Everything in life is like this, every skill, it's just your shit in the beginning. And you're gonna read everything about it to figure out like, oh, if I just read every article about this, maybe I'll be really good, but you won't until you do it, but doing it is scary. I know 'cause everything I do is scary and I'm still bad at it. So, you know, yeah, fear. Fear is life and planning is procrastination.

There you go. If Pieter Levels is afraid of starting something new, then you can be too, and it'll just be okay. Someone asked, why don't you stream more?

Yeah, so dude, the streaming thing, very interesting. I felt it was so intense to do, but it was really, dude, it was super fun. I loved streaming it, but it was so intense to do. And I felt like I couldn't have a personal life anymore. So you can't have, like if you're streaming, like you need to ask your girlfriend, is it cool that I stream? 'Cause today's my stream time, I need to stream for four hours . Dude, your girlfriend's woken in the back. Now she's also, her privacy's fucked too 'cause 100 people are watching here. So that's not respectful of her privacy for example. But let's just add like, what if you are streaming, but your friend wants to meet or something? I don't know, it becomes like a job. Like I think the whole, it's not a criticism of you 'cause I love watching streaming. It's just for me, I like to have the freedom to just lie on the couch and then do some codes and then meet a friend and then, do fun stuff. And I feel like, maybe the pay off of streaming right now is not high enough. Like I already have an audience. I already make enough money. I'm already famous enough for what I want, didn't really wanna be famous, but okay. So I already have all those things, so what am I doing for intrinsically 'cause it's kinda fun. Yeah, but what am I doing? Like, yeah. You know what I mean? What's the core motivation here? Maybe a stupid question, I don't know.

I mean, I think why is the most important question.

Yeah, yeah.

Without a doubt.

I think it makes, dude, it makes 100% sense for you. So I don't know, you're always true, but I know you're building startups and stuff and you're, I don't know your revenue, but I assume that you're using Twitch also to market your startups and your apps and to get them more used and more revenue. And then it makes total sense. I think so, yeah.

It has. I'll say this much. The funny thing I've learned about Twitch is that the benefits end up being all the things that you don't expect. And very few of the things that you do expect. So I wouldn't say Twitch has gotten me customers. I wouldn't even say Twitch has gotten me very many users. What Twitch has gotten me is very interesting connections and very interesting conversations. And a lot of just generic support. Like I went and posted on Product Hunt for our product. I wouldn't have suspected it would do very well. It's a very generic sounding product. And there's a dozen of them that have gone on there, but it got 200 plus up votes. And the reason that happened is because like five of my other streamer friends who are like on my stream team only devs, all and everyone in discord, just tagged everybody and said, hey--

Nice voting ring, Dan.

It goes for you.

Yeah, yeah, I had an incidental voting ring. But like, without Twitch, never it would have happened. I would have like had to go pay for some votes or some other nonsense and it wouldn't have worked. But I had never--

Yeah, don't do that, don't pay for followers.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, never pay for followers at all. It's all bad news bearers.

That's what it means. Exactly, that's what it means. So then it makes sense. Yeah, then it makes sense, I think.

I think it's just support. People care about you doing well. And that's normally not really true. Normally, it's just you and your laptop, but now there are--

No, 100%. And I actually really had this audience that like they go, they've been on your journey for years and they know who you are and what you're doing and where you came from. And exactly, that's the same reason I'm on Twitter and stuff. Dude, I love Twitch. It's just, it's so much effort to be on a camera for hours. It's so difficult, man. That's why I respect you so much, it's so difficult.

It doesn't have to be as much as you're making it. I will tell you that for sure. A lot of the biggest Sci-Tech streamers, stream for, I wanna say maybe two hours about once a week.

That's it?

That's it. A big thing I read, biggest tip--

I thought daily, I thought you need to do 40 hours a week.

Opposite.

Like Andy Milonakis.

Exact opposite. You will watch any video that's like top 10 tips for streaming, and they always say, Twitch is not a game where you grind. You don't win by grinding. You win by doing the exact opposite 'cause I'll tell you this much. Here's the thing about Twitch. You don't get Twitch viewers from Twitch. Twitch is very, very bad for discoverability.

No, I tweeted, so then I got viewers.

Exactly. So you got viewers from Twitter. They're gonna come for that hour and they're gonna enjoy it. And then you can hang up and they're happy to see you. There's this guy, Coding Garden, very, very popular Sci-Tech streamer. I think he does twice a week, couple hours. And 250 people show up every single time, every single time. And you know why? It's because he's got a crazy YouTube following and a very solid Twitch following and a great community. And you have those things, maybe not as concretely, but you can stream for an hour and a half. Hell, you could stream for 45 freaking minutes, and people will absolutely come show up because you have people from Twitter or something.

I averaged like this year, last year, like 75 viewers or something, it was pretty good.

You're already in the top 1%, you've never been on Twitch. That proves that it wasn't Twitch.

Yeah. Interesting. And What's the objective of this?

That's like the interesting part for me is actually--

No, it was social media. So weird philosophically. Like, why are we on social media? Do we do it for the likes, the views or the money, is it marketing, is it to make friends, is it to meet people, is it to get famous, is it vanity, what is it?

I think most things are vanity, hot tape perhaps. I think that's like the true answer. But you know, I live by the view of the contribution system, which is that most answers are not a single thing. It is the amalgamation of many things. I think the reason I came to Twitch at first was productivity. Now, the reason I stay is because Twitch makes it fun to do boring things.

True. Good point. Good point, dude, that's a really good one. Yeah, 'cause I'm like, if I'm fixing some bug, like it's kinda boring, but then if I Twitch, it makes it a little more interesting. Yeah, that's a good point.

Suddenly we're all solving a problem together. We're all excited about it. We're all, I make a mistake and everybody just starts yelling at me and it's like, we all get to laugh about it. When you're sitting down by yourself, doing nothing, you don't get that laugh. You're just like, oh, I'm dumb.

Yeah, man, that's it, yeah. Good point man, yeah, very interesting.

That's probably the biggest reason I do it.

I think for me, like I had a therapist, I have a therapist now like last year and we've been talking a lot. And I think for me it was, I wanted it to be successful to solve my insecurities. Like thinking like I'm not good enough. That's very common for entrepreneurs. And now at a point where I'm like, no, I'm good enough, like, intrinsically I don't need to have achievements. I'm intrinsically good. But that makes you way less ambitious 'cause you're not trying to solve this insecurity. Look at how much success I have. Look, I'm actually a cool guy. Like no, if you're already feeling you're happy, you're cool. Then you don't need all that stuff anymore. It's almost like, yeah, I knew this was gonna happen. I remember this saying that as like 20 year old or something like I'm not gonna get a therapist 'cause it will my fuck ambition. And I think, man, it's true. If you're ambitious, you're a little bit fucked up.

There's a very destructive irony in the fact that diamonds only come from demolishing carbon with an astounding amount of pressure. And the thing is, not all carbon survives. Not all of it becomes diamonds. Most of it just gets demolished. I try very hard to push people away from the like what I will call a toxic ambition. Oh God, please go to therapy. Oh God, please go to therapy, guys. Jesus Christ. But no, there's just, so I used to work. I worked for Microsoft and then I worked for Facebook. And I felt that when I got to Facebook, because it was like, I started to feel like I was good enough, like first time in my life.

Cause you worked for Facebook.

Well, anyway, no, but I finally felt like I was good enough. And then I didn't know what to do next because all of a sudden, like there was no strict next level up. Like normal company.

Dude, Amsterdam, it's so common.

And so, that was why I got into startups. 'Cause I was like, all right, I need to feel insecure again. I need to like be mad at my success again. And you know what? I feel like crap like a lot of days now, but I'm probably, I'm inching so much closer to things I would never have achieved, but I don't think that means I need to feel like crap. I think that feeling like crap is just probably a sign that you're in the right direction. And so you just gotta learn to deal with that.

Suffering. But like if you don't have suffering, if you constantly get depressed, it's also a thing, you need suffering. Like suffering, very relative suffering. But here in Portugal, we go, like me and my friend, we go for a walk like every second day and we go to the gym every other day. So we'd lift weights and stuff and we go for walks. And we just went for a walk today and we were walking up, this is Portugal, this mountain and stuff. We were walking up these mountains, and were like, oh fuck, why are we walking? This is horrible, I hate this. As like very relative suffering, but that makes sitting on the couch so much nicer. But if you only sit on the couch, you're gonna get depressed 'cause like you're not gonna enjoy the couch anymore. It's just very simple. But yeah, it's exactly the same thing.

Yeah, it's a huge thing. I found that working on startups makes you like really, really, really, really self-aware in like uncomfortable ways where you start to recognize stuff like that. Like you notice very quickly like, oh God, I'm comfortable playing games for four hours again. Like, oh God, if I don't go to the gym for three days, I'm okay with that. That shouldn't be a thing. And all of a sudden in time.

Yeah but, all these tech people, Sci-Tech people are like also self-development people. They're all like tracking and everything. Yeah, it's considered a territory, which is another hole like rabbit hole of like, that's not gonna make you happy either. But yeah, go to the gym or do sports every second day. It is gonna make you happy here.

Yeah, you gotta find ways.

Exercise is very important, yeah. And dude, I'm not a sports guy at all. I've never done sports much. So doing like gym stuff, it's really good for my brain.

Yeah, well the mental health gain, like it's so nice--

Dude, that's the best thing. Well, you do it, 'cause you look in the mirror like damn, look I have muscles. Like, yeah, I'm sexy. But like, the real thing is like, your brain is healthier. Yeah, your brains and also sex here, I guess. So, yeah.

Yeah, I know. I definitely stand by that. I'm definitely, I still can't tell to this day if I'm doing it because I want to be stronger or if I'm doing it just because it makes me feel better. But yeah, I didn't go to the gym for like 18 months I think. And then I moved into this new place because there's a gym on the seventh floor and that was it. I was like, that's what I need. Is I could just go downstairs, go to the gym, come back up.

I know that 'cause I watched the stream. I watched like a clip in Chicago I think. Or it was in Chicago I think, I watched your stream. I don't know, it was a video of you, but I think it was a clip with you showing Chicago like the towers.

Yeah, that was my old place. I was at a higher. Confirmed fan, congratulations. What a concept. Yeah, I know, it's a beautiful city. And that was like really, I realized very quickly like the effect that it had on my mental health. Being able to look at something beautiful every night, like watching it--

In Chicago or Seattle?

In Chicago, I also was in Seattle for a month, but now I'm in Chicago again.

Do you like being on like really tall floors? I mean like high floors?

Yeah, it is pretty nice. For me--

I was living very high in Korea, like also like kinda skyscrapers. And I was like, it's a little too high. Like I wanna be nowhere to the ground. Like, so if there's a fire, you can jump out.

I don't really mind which floor it is. The higher floors have better views so I prefer that. But in general, I really just cared about this because it was quarantine. And I was like, I haven't gone to the gym in forever. And now quarantine is gonna make that even easier. If I wanna go to the gym, if I wanna like be able to play pool and have a nice time during quarantine, I'm gonna need stuff being in the building.

Dude, yeah, and you know what? Maybe this is boring for your fear is congratulation. But like the gym being far away is actually kinda annoying 'cause you start skipping more. I also have a gym in this building and it's way easier if we just go. And having a friend that goes with you is very important. Like, 'cause then you have accountability kinda. 'Cause yesterday, he didn't wanna go and I was like, dude, come on, don't fuck up. We've been going every second day. He's like, okay, I'll go. And then next usually it's me, I'm on the couch like I don't wanna go. But yeah. But even the mental health part is really, yeah.

Yeah, environment too. Like having a friend, having it in the building, I find that like, and that's another reason for Twitch, accountability and environment. I haven't even given myself a schedule on Twitch 'cause I've been too scared to do it. But I did the research, I figured out what time of day would be optimal to get the most viewers, to do whatever. And my day is very whatever, but I really like know that I need to do that because the accountability is gonna be huge. But like your environment is so non-trivial. Like if you don't have a place where you can be productive, this place has co-working spaces. So if this environment ever becomes unproductive--

Dude, that's like the modern shit, man.

Grab my laptop, take it downstairs. It's just a normal high-rise.

And it's like a private apartment. Private company doing apartments.

Yeah, it's just a normal, high-rise apartment in Chicago. I mean, there's a reason I live in the freaking living room. This is my mattress.

Wait, you're still in Chicago or you're in--

I'm in Chicago, yes.

Not Seattle?

No, no, I was in Seattle for a month. That was just October. Yes, I know I'm added in Seattle for a month.

Okay, now, I get it, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. So like the only reason I'm willing to have a freaking bed in the living room, like me and my co-founder, we live in a one bedroom apartment. He has the button.

Oh, you live with him now?

Yeah, yeah, he's in his bedroom right now. And I live in the freaking living room. But it's still so much better than any other living situation 'cause I have a nice kitchen, I have a dishwasher. So things that I don't have to worry about. Like we can cook easily. There's a grocery store, a four minute walk away. And there's a freaking gym in the building. There's a pool table in the building. There's working space in the building. And these things like add up so, so, so quickly. And I'm not paying, like the reason we did two people in one bedroom is 'cause I'm not paying much more in rent than I was in a crappy basement apartment with two roommates and one bathroom with no dishwasher. I read, I don't know if you read a lot.

I read a hacker news.

Oh, you're a hacker, there you go. I read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. Yeah, classic. And he talks a lot about that.

Should make systems.

Yeah, yeah. But also just environment being a thing. And I try to really like respect that, which is why like me clicking Start Streaming is the environment. Now people are watching me, now people are talking. And I have a to-do command on Twitch. Whenever you come into my stream, you run the to-do command, you find out what we're doing that day. And if I forget to set it, somebody runs it and I go, "Oh crap, that's for the last stream, hold on. And then everybody knows what we're doing. And now I've like committed to that. It's probably not even up to date for this conversation.

I used my friend's site. So my friend who is here, Marc, as a cycle dip, wip.co, which is like a community for, it's purpose is for Nomad List, but for indie makers to track their progress together. So it lets you like slash to do, and slash done, it's the same thing, wip.co.

Sorry, just lost you for a second I think.

Oh yeah, yeah. I said wip.co. It's his website. But it's like indie maker community with the other one. And Marc is in the chat.

Hey, nice.

So you can pretty much see what everybody's shipping and stuff. Can I see it on the stream? I don't think you're sharing the browser on the...

Oh, sorry, hold on, I have it on the wrong monitor. Shared. Come on. This is why I gotta do one, Pieter. There we go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

Dude, this dark mode is bullshit. Office website.

Well, I have an extension as well--

So, if you go to home, so you can see all my tasks, but if you go to a home, you can see everybody's, it's like, yeah, maybe dark mode off.

Sure.

Dude, this guy's kinda famous, Swizec, maybe you know him. He's kinda--

I'm gonna get a lot of crap for this light mode, but it's okay, we'll keep going.

Yeah, this is what it is, light mode, yeah. So this is pretty much like a community, it's based for communities. It's not very expensive where everybody's like, if you scroll down, you see what everybody did today. So it was like a share to-do list. You scroll down, fuck this shit, yeah. You see all the time, like everyone is building, like make their stuff like two hours ago.

Oh, that's so interesting.

And it's very granular. Like even the smallest tasks I log, I also log on life tasks, if I go work out or work or something. I can see what I'm doing, I can see what everybody's doing. Andrey Azimov, my friend. Yeah, so this is what I'm working on for example. Or this Marc's team, but you see what I'm working on.

Yeah, yeah, super interesting. Oh, this is the Sheet2Site guy.

Yeah, Andrey is my friend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is like to this day. Funniest thing I've ever seen. I love that thing. It's such a, oh yeah, yeah I know, I like this a lot. This is like get commits for your life, but it's also public.

Dude, yeah, well also for startups, it's mostly, Andrey use rules for life stuff, but mostly it's like get committed for startups. But like nothing good.

Beautiful, yeah, I know, that's--

Do you like comments on what you're making, do you get like help and stuff? I know, kinda similar to your to-do commands.

Yeah, yeah. It's kinda like a forcing function. Yeah, I love things like this. I find that they're so hard to actually get to commit to, but it's always about commitment. I think like what you said.

This is all in the chat. So it's like, it's personal Telegram. So it's like, if you're already in a Telegram ecosystem, it's just like, it's a bot and you do switch it on and it automatically puts it on the website. So in that respect, it's very easy to commit to it because you're walking outside, you just do a slash done, or you make a feature, slash done. And there's a Telegram desktop app, which we use. So you just use slash done there. But yeah. It's just any, just like for you Twitch, we have this. Kinda keeps you accountable.

Yeah, no, productivity is the biggest problem in the world, but everybody's got a productivity app.

Yeah. But I think the community aspect of productivity is saying, so just like you with Twitch, with an audience, just like this thing where if you ship together, you motivate each other. Just like, me going to the gym with Marc who made this website together, keeps us both accountable. And yeah.

No, it's a huge thing. That's actually part of what I've tried to push as like where I hopefully see this community going in Twitch is I try and say, what would I do? Like a big stream like this. I always say like, look, if you're working on startups, if you want to be working on startups, if you want to have conversations like this, if you need suggestions, you need excitement, you need productivity, whatever. Like just come to discord, talk about it. And we'll be there, we can talk all the time. Start your own freaking stream. Like the amount of people that I have that are other streamers that I'm like, please come into my discord and talk to people about what you do. Because more people will come to you and like raids on Twitch or another huge thing. It's a lot of that community stuff like you talked about earlier.

Well, that's how I know you. I know you through CM Griffin.

It's really funny how that happened 'cause CM Griffin, like Chris didn't know you. I knew you, you tweeted about Chris on a day when I happened to be showing my friend your tweets. And I was like, "Oh dude, holy shit, Levels is on Twitch?" That's insane." And then I told Chris, I was like, "Dude, do you know fucking Pieter Levels just tweeted about you." He's like, "Wow, who's that?" I'm like, "What do you mean? Who's that?" And I like went off on him and he was like, "Oh, that's cool." And that was the whole conversation. And then like, a month later, one of my mods, Astro, God bless her. Was like, Dan, emergency. Peter's in Chris's chat right now. And I was like--

Dude, I always feel weird about like being here, IRL. 'Cause now I break the illusion.

Yeah, now, everybody's gonna know that you're only so cool.

I'm just a normal guy.

Heaven forbid. No, I knew this was gonna be great when you started coming into chat once in a while and you were just like post something at all, caps, run the cry command, and then just leave.

I came in and you were like, you were reading out baby oil ingredients. So I was like, and they wrote about baby oil is used for what? For your body. I was like, no, it's for .

Yeah, I remember you said that and I was like, "You know, this is gonna be the greatest day of my entire life." Like this is just gonna be--

I still don't know why you were reading baby oil stuff, but cool, man

Yeah, I know. I have a, so like some of the stuff that you do to keep engagement up, like they get channel points. So for like talking in chat a lot, being around the stream a lot, they just get like arbitrary points and I can give them things they can redeem. And so one of the things they can redeem is a dramatic reading of their choosing as long as it's not like complete garbage. Yeah, so that was that. And then we did one on our cool theory and some other stuff, which was pretty fun. But yeah, that comes into like the, we were talking earlier like that sort of the just chatting side of things. Where like you have to just be you sometimes, just present a personality as opposed to just a product. And that's what a lot of people, that's what gets you that bottom of the funnel. That's what gets people to say like, oh, okay, you know. I like to think of a lot of people come to me because it's me unless because they're particularly interested in local business, which is probably better for me 'cause that means I can move to another project, people still be there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree.

Cool. So daily schedule wise, like is your day to day consistent? You okay? Everything exploding.

Yeah, sure, one second. Where's my fucking phone?

Aren't I on the phone?

Oh, it's fucking on the computer, yeah, yeah. Dude, I was gonna give you subs, but my credit card bounced. I was secretly gonna gift you subs.

It's okay.

And then it says like, oh, you need to verify the $2 payment. Twitch changed their payment methods. So I now need to verify it on the bank, but they don't understand, this is not a normal bank. This is a Bank of Singapore. This is gonna take three days for this $2 thing to show up. So now I cannot gift you subs. I was gonna gift you secretly subs. Oh my God. These fuckers.

Man, I appreciate it. But absolutely not necessary then. Your presence here is . Yeah, surprise. Hey man, you being here is by far the best surprise I could have asked for it. Like I've been following you on Twitter for like so long. Literally, I want you to know, the reason I saw your tweet for Chris, one of my very close friends was like really deep. We got into this really deep conversation and he was like, "What do you want to do with your life? Like who do you want to be?" And I was literally trying to think of someone, oh, fuck you, fuck that. Oh my God. I feel so attacked.

It feels weird to hear 'cause it's nice. But I was like, I'm such a fucking imperfect person to be. I guess it's just the illusion of internet.

Well, I think you misunderstand my view. Like I know that I went off on this whole , and I was like, here's why this guy is so cool. But it's like, we're all just people. And like I never said, I don't wanna be a person. I never said I wanna be this perfect guy. I don't expect you to be the guy who has 18 energy drinks and codes for 16 hours a day. I expect you to be a guy who--

Oh, I take the energy drinks, fuck sugar.

Of course, classic. But no, I was literally like, you know who I would wanna be. It's like, I love what this guy does with projects. I love this guy's--

I agree, I know, I know, I was just being ready to almost like, it sounds so weird to hear those things. But yeah, I understand. I had the same thing, I had with Patrick Mackenzie, way back, Zac, and it was 2011, he would require updates about his business, appointment or reminder. I mean, that was like, dude, that was like a small scene like the bootstrapping scene in 2011. Was like, MicroComp this conference. Like Rob Walling, Patrick McKenzie. He works at Stripe and . All these people were making small apps when it was absolutely unpopular to do that. And I was looking up to them like crazy. I was like, wow, I wanna be them. And they're so cool. And yeah, just insane that, yeah.

Yeah, and it's not to say like so much like, oh my God, I want to be everything about this man. God, I need an EU visa.

Which means like you wanna have your own business. Yeah, exactly.

I subscribe to a lot of the beliefs that you have that I don't think a lot of people do. Like the way that you talk about becoming more interesting, I've never seen anyone else in the world say that. And I think it's 100% true. Like one of my favorite takes in all of life. And if people don't like it, like you shouldn't have to do marketing if it's right. Like organic is proof that you're right. And a lack of organic is proof that you're wrong. Like these are the kind of like things that you--

Yeah, feed back, yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And the reason I say, I wanna be like you is I'm like, oh man, I want to implement those beliefs in my own life.

Exactly, yeah.

And sort of like view those things there. And a lot of people don't. And I'm in the other side of startups. I'm in a fucking accelerator. Every single day, people tell me to go raise $2 million. And I hate it. And I'm trying every bone in my body not to do it. We're doing like fucking pitch competitions at this point to like get money just so we don't do that. Well, hey, we just won a couple of days ago, we won like a grant from YC for doing their build sprint thing. Hey man, free money.

But you don't need free money, you can get revenue.

That's true. That's the sentence.

Get out while you can. Kick it out. You can own 100% of your company in 10 years and you'll be a millionaire. But if you don't, you're gonna have to raise more and more money and you can't get out because you gave away the shares of your company. You only own 10% and now you're fucked.

Yeah. That's the magic of the pitch competitions. Is it's just--

Do you want to be rich? You know, like.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird thing. Like a lot of people are millionaires on paper and have $0.

Oh man, yeah. So many circles out here. Man, I cannot even name names, but of course I'm not gonna name names, but a lot of people you know that are famous in startups, they're absolutely not rich. And that's why they're still active on Twitter and on social media and doing stuff. Because if people disappear then you know they're rich because they don't need to do anything anymore. If they're still built, if they're still actively, yeah, I mean maybe 'cause everything is fun or they want more money, but a lot of people are just not, it didn't work out because they made the wrong choice. And a lot of that as related to venture capital choices, which is raising money, being acquired, but not actually making money on paper because you get stock and stock is useless. Like people try to acquire my company so many times with stock, that's unsellable. So one company wants to acquire me for $8 million. Wanting to acquire Nomad List. And for stock in their company. But you can't get rid of the stock. I was like, can I sell it? Girl in my bank, they're like, well not right now. Maybe on the second market or something like NASDAQ, whatever. Second market like not the public market. So, bullshit. So don't trust them and don't trust, yeah, I think, yeah, you don't need , man. You have Twitch. You don't need, you know, I mean, man, just, you know, I hate all these people projecting, but I think I'm just right with this. Like you don't need to raise money, man.

No, yeah. I don't think you need to. I think it's a tool that a lot of people use and I think it kinda comes back to what we said earlier. Like--

Only eight million, yeah. Only eight millions only. Yeah, it seems it's a small amount of money, dude, what the fuck! The average savings in America is negative. It's like minus 5,000 or something, dude.

I guarantee you just can. But dude, I'm just being trolled.

Yeah, you are being trolled.

I'm totally . Maybe I'm so used to Twitter saying that kind of stuff, but yeah.

No, no, no. This is a very, very--

No, I'm just sensitive, I'm just so used to getting bated and I always buy it. So, yeah.

Yeah, now, this is a very, very, another great thing about Twitch. Everybody's pretty positive. And if they're not, I have a ban button and then they leave forever. And it's super great. And I have like several months

Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Ian, and thank you, guys, I appreciate it. Yeah, that was the old meme. Was raise money via Twitch subs is the .

No, but really, you could do that. Like it would actually be a cool idea. If you really need money, I don't think for your money, you could just get your audience to invest in some way. I don't know how, but here in America. So there's new laws now, it's much easier. You can even do in AngelList. Something, , I put something else. Displays. There's crowdfunding websites for investment.

Exactly. Yeah, you can do that. And I still don't think you need it. And yeah.

Yeah. Again, I think it's vanity. I think it really is.

Dude, you mean raising money's vanity?

Yeah, yeah. Dude, 100% I've been saying this like, I think Angel investing is vanity. I think Angel investing is a social amazing signal that you're rich. Is it socially acceptable? Because people put it in a bio, like I'm an angel investor. And it's like, oh look, I'm rich. I mean, which angel investor is not rich. It's like, yeah.

Yeah, it's always been a weird feeling. I think, you know it always amazes me. I will talk to someone that will have no revenue, no real concept of what they're doing. And then they will say, I am halfway through a $750,000 seed round. And a long time ago, I was like, that is amazing. Like I imagine being that successful, that's like so huge. That's life changing. And now I look at that and I'm like, like you have achieved something that could very well amount to nothing.

Yeah, but it's not your money. It's money of the business. You can't spend the whole shit, you can't buy a hot tub. You can't buy a house from it. It's your business money and your business is not yours anymore. So it's not your money, it's their money. And you can spend it on the business. It's like, if I give you like a suitcase full of million dollar notes, but with like a birth cage around it with a lock, you kind of use the money. It's like, oh look, you're a millionaire now. No, there's a million dollar in your house, but you can't use it. You're gonna use it for business stuff. And you're only gonna spend this on Facebook ads anyway, like these days, over half, it goes straight to Facebook ads, that's it. It's insane.

No, 100%. I mean, literally we got that small grant from that YC competition and immediately I was like, all right, well, founders expenses plus marketing. This is a few months. And that's literally what it's gonna be. And now granted that's because when we're not perfect with organic we're more committed to this one idea. So we play the game of, okay, prove my landing page conversion rates, prove each number along the way. And that way I know I can prove mathematically. Okay, I'm good. And at that point I can pour money on, but so many people will raise so much on like an idea. And then it's just like, you have a bunch of probably nothing. Hold on, my headphones just died. I gotta go grab a new battery.

Yeah. Cool, what's up Twitch? Now I need to attend you. Cool emojis. Five, yes. Let's go, welcome raiders. Oh dude, give me raiders. Dude, you've been raided I think with . Holy shit.

Oh my God, hello.

They've raided you.

It's definitely Prime. There's no chance it's not Prime. Who is Prime?

Who's Prime? Prime is basically--

Sorry man, I'm from Twitch.

Prime is the only reason. No, no, no, Prime is the only reason I'm a streamer. The Prime Agen is one of, yeah, yeah, I actually, I have a command dedicated to him. I wrote that command.

His username is what? Prime?

The Prime Agen. So it's T-H-E, the, Prime, P-R-I-M-E and then A-G-E-N. Yeah, I recommended him to you last time you were here. Dude, thank you so much Prime for the raiding.

This one follower and it's me.

P-R-I-M-E and then A-G-E-N. Yeah, he spells it wrong. it was like the enemy in some video game from like 2018. And I think--

Dude, I know this guy. Yeah, he works for Netflix or something.

That he does. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I watch him too, yeah, super cool. Yeah, I love The Prime Agen. And his school keyboards.

He does have a cool keyboard.

And he's super hyper, which is nice.

Yeah, no, my first two day streaming, what just happened here, happened. Prime raided me when I had zero viewers and dropped 100 people on me on like my second day I was streaming for a project.

Prime's a cool guy.

He is quite literally the only reason I'm here. I like it.

Wow, super cool guy.

One question.

Thank you, Prime Agen. Thank you for raiding.

Yeah, seriously, man. he's been the source of like all of my motivation, encouragement.

Dude, look, I know, dude, look, man, I played two of the dinosaur game. Dude. Yeah.

That was, yeah, I did cry that day. That was the first cry. Also, thank you all.

I had like a 3D effect graphic card . And was attached to the card, like with the .

That's amazing. Yeah, he was the source of the first cry, which was day one. By the way, thank you guys for the follows. I do see them. It's much appreciated, everybody. Yeah, really quickly, for everybody just coming in who doesn't know. Thank you, Prime. Yeah, this is Peiter Levels. Founder, creator, engineer, extraordinaire of Nomad List, Remote OK. And many, many, many--

I'm typing in the chat so people can see.

Other things, yeah.

Yeah, I made like startups without funding. And now I'm on a dance stream because I was in a chat and then you went crazy and now we're doing AMA.

So yeah, Pieter and I have been a big fan for quite a while. And so now we're doing this AMA and getting to talk to somebody who is where many of us could only hope to be. But I mean, Pieter has written a book.

And you all will be very soon.

There you go. Pieter wrote the book.

Bitcoin's gonna go up.

Dude, it's unlike 35 grand.

Dude, It's insane.

It's nuts.

No, but that's really the problem. I think we're all gonna be rich with Bitcoin not off of our startups. It's like the joke of it.

Every time I see Bitcoin and people start talking about it again, it's insane. But yeah, no, for anybody who just coming in, we've been gone for quite a while, probably still will, we got a still a number of questions. Let me know if you get tired at any point by the way.

No, I'm cool, man.

Yeah, yeah, me too right here.

I'll get some water okay, I'll be right back.

Yeah, yeah. So Peter is the author of also the bootstrappers handbook. He calls it make, you can run the make command in chat. I would super, super recommend it. We read it on stream a bit, but this guy is absolutely amazing. A personal hero for quite a bit of time. And so having him here is such a treat. Basically, the authority on all remote work, the authority on all digital nomading and founder of most of the companies that have anything to do with that. So we had some interest from chat on hearing from people. Never expected to have someone so cool, but here we are. Welcome back.

Thank you.

So I'll pop back to our list of questions here. This is probably a good one for new people coming in. So I mean, you're all over the place. You got the gym, you got everything going on. Yeah, man, listen, I'm sitting on a fricking yoga ball right now. So my everything is killing me. Yeah dude, I live on the yoga ball. I'll just put it to you this way. I get a lot of very specific comments from new people to the channel.

Dude, I literally get this comment from Marc, my friend when we go to the gym. I also sit in a yoga ball like that. It's just nice to sit like that.

Yeah, it's very comfortable. I bought it for nomad.

Okay, if you're confident of your masculinity, then.

Extremely confident. Every time somebody--

I'm for it.

Yeah, that's all you gotta have is that confidence. Every time somebody makes that joke, I just put on another button down and shave a little bit to feel better about myself. We're good.

You wear a wig, just being more comfortable. Wear a dress.

Yeah when in doubt. Yeah, for fun. For fun, for masculine reasons. I actually bought it because it was a chair that I could put in a bag because nothing has failed. This was actually for the whole nomad strategy. 'cause I was moving around so much. It was tough having furniture. So I just didn't, so this was my answer to a desk chair.

Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, it's very Google 2005.

Yeah, yeah, I feel like--

, He's good, yeah.

Yeah, all right. Thank you so much Prime again. Best of luck, Prime and his wife. And I think his kids as well all have corona.

Jesus Christ, man, dude, get well soon. What the fuck. Fucking corona.

Supposedly they're doing all right, thank God. And his parents are around helping them out, but yeah. Pray for Prime. Hashtag pray for Prime. But you know--

Prime lacks manners.

Prime lacks . Amazing.

There's a question here. How do we do a main project fatigue? That's a good question. Yeah, so we kinda talked about it. Like I could do my project for like five, six years, like Nomad List. Remote OK is like four years or something. And yeah, you get fatigue after many years. And it goes kinda up and down. And I think if money is a very good to keep working on something because if you see the money going up, you're like, fuck, I hate this site, but it's making shitloads of money. So I'm gonna work again on it. And then you love the site again. But that's why I think open source projects and like projects that don't make money, they just die off 'cause money is a really good intrinsic motivation to keep working on stuff. If you see money rolling in, you're like, fuck it, I'll keep working on it. I think that's why capitalism works because intrinsic motivation is very limited. Dude, that's like six months. After six months, you hate everything you do. And you know, you need to have some reason as you're still working on it. And if you have paying customers, if they're paying your bills, then fuck it, I'll go to work, I'll fix this bug. But if they don't pay me, dude, I'm not gonna fix this bug. 'Cause I hate this website 'cause I worked on it for six months. But then when you're working on it again, you can get motivated again. And yeah. And then after five years, six years, you can, or area, you can hire people to take over from you. Like I'm doing that now, I'm hiring a developer. I just hired a customer support person. So I don't have to do, 'cause I hardly had customer support, but I still have some left. So hiring people or sell, you know you could sell your company. You can sell your company for about usually four times the annual revenue or profits, I think profits.

It is revenue actually. Yeah, 'cause a lot of companies definitely don't have profits.

Well, I think the venture capital startups, they sell for like, the IPO for like 20, like the profit equity thing is like 20, 40, or something. I don't know. But anyway, if you have a bootstrap startup, you can use it and sell it for four times annual. I've heard five. Yeah, I mean the best way, but like more realistic is actually two not five. Like if you go to empireflippers.com or if you go to FEE international, like the biggest startups of companies or websites, dude, you'll get two or three. Like they give me like something like 3.7 times annual revenue or something. So it's very low. These boottraps companies, five is honestly ordinary.

I've heard as high as seven or eight when you're talking for valuation, but not for actual sales that have happened. So I think it definitely depends on how you view that number. If you're looking for literally, what am I gonna sell this for, then I think you're much more correct.

Yeah, I think it depends if you're a venture capital If you sit back, you can go 10, 20 or something. But if you're a bootstrap company, four times, .

It just bubbles like crazy. It's absolutely insane. But yeah, for motivation for, I think on the smaller scale, you won't have that external motivation unfortunately. A lot like, 'cause if no money's coming in, where do you get it? And I think, and this is the thing that me and my teammate talk about a lot. You have to be able to make what you do exciting. And there are a lot of answers to that. Twitch is a big answer that I found recently, but something that I've done recently or like a mental model I've tried to apply that I've heard is you have to treat yourself like the main character. And if you're the main character, everything you do is hyped up. Every meal you eat is the best meal you've ever had.

Oh, like a movie.

Every feature, exactly. Every feature you build, changes the world, changes the game.

Yeah, I've been doing it for a year or two. I do crazy shit , but yeah. 'Cause I'm like, it's a movie. Also, it's like a simulation anyway. I'm getting more convinced simulation is all fake. So that helps a lot because nothing is real.

There you go, There you go.

There you go.

Really happy with that blue pill. But I mean, things are just hard in here.

Yeah, but I think, yeah, I don't know, it's just, the older you get, the more it starts feeling like a dream. Or I'm going insane, but yeah, I do think life feels more and more like a dream. Yeah.

Yeah, I think also like, and part of that is like making little wins, really big wins, like got your first user, got your fifth user, got your 10th user, finished work for the day, achieved all the goals that you set out. And like really fricking read atomic habits. Like they will always talk about like reward systems and everything. Like you can make your brain, make it a big deal, but like here's the thing, it's not just like celebrate small wins. Like pretend every small win is the biggest fucking win. Like everything, like literally we got $10,000 from YC a couple of weeks ago Thank you, a couple of days ago. Sorry, I've been corrected. And we like, got some nice meals, went downstairs, grabbed some candy. it felt pretty happy about it. And that was like a big deal. And two weeks prior, we had like something really cool happen where like now we have a standing meeting monthly with the head of admissions at YC. And like these are big wins. And so those are easy to celebrate. But what was harder to celebrate was like MVP is done. What was harder to celebrate is like finish the experiment we were currently running, but you have to choose to make a big deal out of those things. Because if you don't, then they won't be a big deal. And so you literally have to like trick yourself.

So I used to do lists for that to trick, like I used to do like the the yellow Post-it Notes and I write a task and I put it here and I have this whole grid of like tasks. And then I put it on my laptop and I work on it. And then when it's done, I do this and put it here. And it's like done. And that's like the feeding and I wouldn't even finish the task because of the task, I would finish it because I wanna have like a stack of yellow post-it notes as done. And it's the same way I use this WIP, W-I-P site. I do like stage done just to get like the dopamine feeling of like you finished the task. I don't care about the task itself. I care about the feeling of finishing a task. It's like a heck.

Yeah, totally. And you have to like, as cringe as it sounds, you have to like hack your own brain here. Like you just won't, like cause you are asking unreasonable things of yourself. Like you are asking yourself to work for extensive periods of time with no real encouragement and no real external motivation. So you have to fake that until it just works. Like you have to just pretend that it's there and convince yourself that it's there. My brother used to, every time he took a sip of water, he would audibly say the words, "Water is delicious," until he stopped drinking soda.

Wow, water is delicious.

Water is delicious. And you just gotta keep that. Maybe not cocaine, but thank you, Chad.

Okay, I thought of getting bubbled water like sparkling water, it's actually nice.

Tastes like acid to me.

It depends on which one you get.

They're all bad.

We have so many. No, yeah, no, Perrier. Maybe, I don't remember Perrier. I haven't had one in like years.

It's too expensive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when I worked at Facebook, they had like coconut water and I don't even like coconut water. I don't think anybody does, but I would drink like four of them a day just cause I knew they were like $3 a carton. I wanted to feel like I was getting my fill.

I have diabetes.

Yeah, there you go, whoops, have us in the best of us. No, but it's tough. And so I think that comes into like day to day a lot. It's like, you have to like, I forget what, oh, here's what my brother used to say. This is like either Garden Coding saying, or my brother just said this piece, said, "Motivation is like showering. If you don't do it every day, you start to stink." And yeah, I really respect that perspective. And you have to treat it that way. Like you can't motivate yourself once in a while. You can't like be like, oh, things have been hard for a bit. I'm gonna take a day off. Like, that's good, but that's not consistent enough that you're really gonna feel it.

So Andrey Azimov, the SheetSite guy, he's my friend. He calls it muscle. So for example, we were in Bali like a year ago and we were at some party. Some cool like techno party and some big beautiful dude is saying like beautiful villa. With lights and like rice fields around us. And I think the team was like ropes. So everyone was like beautiful Japanese ropes or something. I don't know, it was crazy shit. And I was like dancing and he's like, dude, you're dancing muscle. I'm like, what are you talking about? It sounds really weird. And I was like, he's like, dude, you forgot how to dance. Like you need to train your dancing muscle. Yeah, your party muscle. Your party muscle is gone. Because you didn't train your party muscle. So it causes muscle. So shipping muscle, party muscle, these are all muscles. They atrophy when you don't do anything, it's all like a muscle.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's actually an even more key point. Is that like, it's not just, it gets stronger when you work on it. It gets super weak very quickly if you stop.

Yeah, but also it gets really quickly strong. And if you start, like you can reactivate the muscle relatively fast. And then as the, I think the compounding effect where if you do something more and more, it starts compounding. And yeah.

Yeah, that's part of the reason like that comes back to what I was saying earlier. Like that's why I try and yell at people to come into my discord because part of the benefit of community is you can become each other's external motivation to some extent, like getting all like, yo, let's go. Like, that's huge for you. Like hell yeah, man. Super proud of you. Like that feels really good. And so you can just say like, hey, I did this today. And then we can be like, yes, that's amazing. You know like, a hype squad.

And someone says, negative people group. We were like, when something good happens to you. They're like, fuck you. And this is very common. And it's like one in 10. People are like, there are not positive people in a group achieving something. Often, it's like your old friends. Your old normally friends who are like, you're like, dude, I reached this thing. And they're like, whatever, fuck that shit. And you need to get rid of those people.

Yeah, I think that comes back to the like, and this is a much harder thing to talk about. But like I found that, it's obviously, it all comes back to, they're like some amount of jealousy.

It's harm sent. They're not happy with their own situation, but they're not gonna improve it with that attitude.

Yeah, I think, and this is like a weird hack. If you wanna get over that imposter syndrome for yourself, like if you find yourself, cause it's a very human thing. Like a lot of times you hear that your friend did something very successful and your first thought is like fuck. And that is terrible.

I only have them with things where I'm not improving myself in that arena.

Exactly.

So like, if I'm really bad at cooking and I hate that I'm bad at cooking. I'm not improving about it. And then somebody cooks for me and be like, fuck you, you know, 'cause I'm jealous. But if I know that I'm either don't care about cooking or I'm improving with it, then I'm like inspired by how did you do that? Like they teach me how to cook or something. You know what I mean?

Yeah, so there's only two ways I found that you can take it, which is either fake it till you make it. Where whenever somebody does something really impressive, you say to yourself, I could do that. And you believe it to be the case. 'Cause if somebody's done something like three, five years ago, if somebody told me they were working at Facebook, I'd be like, oh, holy shit, fuck you, man. Like, that's insane.

Yeah, I also would be, fuck you, but for a different reason. Fuck Facebook.

There you go.

No, exactly, yeah.

I agree.

But now that I've been there and I can say that I've done it, now I have no imposter syndrome about it. So people are like, I just got to Facebook. They're like, hell yeah, dude. But the thing is you have to fake it before you've actually done it. So before the day I got to Facebook, what I wish I had done is convinced myself I could, because if I believed that I could, I would see other people doing it as validation that it's possible. Instead of other people succeeding where I failed because if you haven't failed, you're just not there yet. And you're going to be. And so when somebody cooks some amazing dish, you're not gonna feel as bad if you say to yourself, oh man, you know like, I can totally cook that.

Yeah, and dude, if somebody wins around you, you can ask them, do you know how you do it? And they're probably gonna tell you, they're gonna tell you how to get there too. You can share this experience. So it's like, but if you're gonna be negative, dude, you're not gonna learn from that. And you're not gonna get there ever. So, if somebody, yeah, be inspired and ask them for help, ask them how to do it too.

Yeah, it can be really tough. Like imposter syndrome is like beating your own brain and shit like this is near impossible. It's such a Herculean task. And it's trivial to say right now like just think differently.

No, no, no very difficult, but yeah, you can. You know who did, Andrey. Andrey came up to me and started like, how the fuck do you do all this stuff? Like, how can I do it? I was like, I don't know, like make a site. He's like, I cannot code. Like I need to learn to code. So he started learning to code from scratch every night in Bali, in a co-work space with coffee. And we sit there and he would ask us some questions, but mostly he would just figure shit out himself. And he made his first site in like a week. And we helped him a little bit. But he did. And now it's like what? Two or three years later? And he makes $10,000 a month with his own business. So he was never jealous. He was always like inspired and wanting to do it also. And now he did it. So yeah. Super positive.

Yeah. So I wanna jump here just a little bit. I wanted to ask earlier because this is something I've always been curious about. So you're nomading around. And like, we talked about like daily motivation. We talked about, what kind of--

Yeah, , I think it's a misconception. And it's like a public misconception with nomading that people move really fast. I think it doesn't exist. Like people do it in the beginning. When they start traveling, they go for like two weeks or two weeks somewhere. But mostly now we stay like for months. And like last year I stayed for eight months in Korea, for example. And for two months in Chiang Mai and two months in Bali. This year was weird with corona 'cause you had to move kinda, we were tryna flee corona in Asia and then it came to Europe and then we tried to flee it in Holland. We moved South, but generally it's very slow relocating. It's very much like, okay, maybe based on the seasons, like where's it warm? Where is it warm in the winter? There we wanna go for example. Yeah.

All right. So then your schedule is probably more consistent than most people would expect. Like at this point in your life, what is your day-to-day look like? Like where do you actually spend your hours?

So I have an interesting sleep cycle. I wake up like around 11 or noon and I go to sleep around three to 4:00 a.m. And it doesn't matter where I am. Like if I moved time zones, I will slowly again deviate towards that or deviate, I would say converge. And if I don't find it, I've had it my whole life. And I realized it's just, like the study is not as sure as genetic predisposition. That different people have different sleep cycles. So some people are more like early birds and some people are night owls, but the night owls get a really bad rep in society for it. But the shitloads, there's enough, just as much night owl as serious as early birds. But the early birds are like, wow, so good for you. Like amazing. You're so motivated that you wake up early. It was bullshit. Like the night I was at work until evening into the night, they do usually creative work. And then they go to bed four or whatever. So if you're a night owl and you're watching, it's fine to be night owl. It's perfectly fine. And if you can make your own hours, as a freelancer, if you have your own business, that's optimal because it will increase your life expectancy even. Like living in the wrong, waking up in the wrong sleep cycle, that's not good for you, it means you have consistently bad sleep. Consistently, you're tired. Consistently, your body cannot recover. Consistently, you have higher odds of disease later in life, including dementia and Alzheimer's. So this is like crazy shit. So yeah, that's a big part of my daily routine is waking up. And I don't wake up with an alarm. I don't have an alarm, I just wake up whenever I wake up. And so that's very nice. So I wake up, then I have some coffee, I shower, then I have some coffee and I don't have a schedule. So this thing was like on my schedule. So I set like an alarm. Like I need to go in the Twitch thing. I don't really have calls, everything's on chats. I drink coffee. And my friend Marc, seriously, we hang out a lot. Like this morning, he was like, you wanna go outside? I'm like, cool, let's go. So we walked outside and we went for a walk to downtown. And we keep having to dodge like people with corona, well, we might have corona. So we have to mask and we try to like run away from people and not go too close, but we still go downtown and stuff. This is like a small little beach down here. Kinda like San Diego. It feels a little bit like San Diego, yeah. Or like Venice Beach kinda. So we walk around, we just chat. We still don't work. We both have the work done. And then today, we went to a restaurant here, which is logged on. Cause corona, only hotel guests can go here. So there's nobody, so it's safe with corona. So we sat there and we did some work. I worked on my instant messaging feature for Nomad List and he worked on his stuff, I don't know what he does. And now I'm doing this call and then after this call, I'm gonna do some more coding, listen to music. And also, yeah, we do. We on voice chat, on Telegram, we sing songs to each other with all of our friends. We are like making songs all day, it's very strange. It's hard to explain, but we sing songs in Dutch and we sing songs in English. That's the day. So that explains the guy on the right. I'm the Levelsio. The other guy is Dan.

Hello, I'm here every day.

Marc, we look similar. We look genetically homogenous.

Oh yeah, definitely.

And it's weird, right?

Yeah, I just cut the beard down to this length too. That's really funny.

Dude, me too, yeah. I was like, I grew a beard 'cause I'm in the Mediterranean and I'm like, you need to have a beard here or you don't, you're not bars the seniors. So I normally don't like beards, but yeah, I need to. I need to take it seriously. But anyway, so my daily schedule, there's no schedule. It's pretty much just like very free. And when I have an idea, I think it's great for idea making like you walk around, just do random shit and then either you just call me, you go to your laptop, open it up, start coding quickly. It's very unstructured. Super unstructured.

Really quickly. That's honestly amazing. I appreciate that so much. I think honestly I relate a bit 'cause I only have like maybe one or two meetings in the morning just 'cause I also have a team that I need to sync up with. But outside of that, pretty, pretty flexible, which is why I'm able to do Twitch a lot, which is really helpful. Really quickly, I think we got some new people in. I gotta run to the bathroom for two seconds. Do you wanna just give everybody a quick overview again of your background?

So my name is Pieter Levels. I make indie start-ups, which means like making a company, a website or an app, whatever, but not raising venture capital for it. So I don't have investors, like they're all my own websites. I code everything myself, I design everything myself, the logo, the layouts, the backend to front end. And I code everything in vanilla PHP, vanilla JavaScript with jQuery, no frameworks, SQL lights. And to get my websites. They have like millions of users a month of traffic. Billions of billions of, I don't know, is it assets requests, or cloud, what the fuck, who cares? Anyway, I make all these little startups. And my startups are kinda in the niche of remote work and nomading. So people, if you're a remote worker, if you can do your work remotely, you can also do it from home, but you can also do it from the cafe. You can also do it from a different town or a different state or a different country. So I'm predicting that a lot of people in the next 10 years will start moving to different states or different countries, relocating. And that's kind of what all my websites are about. Like Nomad List is a ranking of all these places where you can go based on like the weather, based on if this fast internet or not. Remote OK is like a remote job sport. So you can find a remote job. And like all the big companies use this board, like Stripe to Amazon, Microsoft or Shopify, Airtable and stuff. And I've built all these websites myself like my hands. So it's kinda like artisanal. Yeah, that's it. Oh yeah, I see a question. My paranoid Android . Pieter, how do you handle the cost of the lifetime membership? Is there a specific time range for users to stop using Nomad List, or it's a different approach are you using for this? Okay, so this is a really common question I get. The problem with nomads is that they usually do it for, they try it for like a few months or they like kinda wanna be nomad where they sign up. And like the splash of excitement, like, okay, I'm gonna be a nomad, like I'll sign up and I pay money, but that maybe a lot of them don't push through with it. So they might cancel and usually they cancel about around like the fourth month or fifth month. So what I try to make sure is that the lifetime membership is higher than the expected value I get from a monthly membership. So monthly membership, I think $30 a month. And I think they stay on for like three months. So that's $90. So usually, the lifetime membership is $99. So it's $9 more than the expected lifetime value of the customer. But right now it's like since black Friday, I think it's like $75. So yeah. There's not a lot of logic in my brain about pricing. I just try to, my main logic about my pricing is to get the highest revenue possible. So to me, it's like if I price it at $100. No, if I price the membership at like $300, I know there will be like 50 signups. So 50 signups times 300, times 300 is $15,000. Okay, cool. So right now I have 800 signups times 75, 60,000, yeah, it's much more. So I try to optimize the revenue as much. And I didn't really believe so much in recurring revenue for Nomad List because like I said, people are nomads temporarily usually, or they never actually become a nomad, but they just are part of the website. And I think it's much easier to get the lifetime money, but I don't know. Maybe I'll change it this year. I don't know, it depends. The problem is I've tried. I have monthly and yearly plans too, but it's very hard to keep people on with nomading. It's very difficult. So I'd rather just get the whole money quickly in the beginning as lifetime . Yeah, it's difficult.

Sorry about that. Yeah, that's super interesting. I think there's actually like some economic theory about that where it's the maximal point of revenue is--

Yeah, there's lifetime value.

Yeah, yeah, like it's the point at which like... Like how many people will pay more or how many people will pay up to a certain price and then like the moment that--

Price sensitivity chart. The price price elasticity.

Yeah, and so there's some point where you win.

And you can try it. Like I have enough traffic so I can change the price. And within a day, I see like for example, if I double the price, my sales will go down like over doubled, like triple or something. So that implies that there's some kind of sweet spot of pricing where I can set it, that I have enough, I optimize the revenue and I do that all the time. I change it all the time to see did the market change shit, are they finally prepared to pay more? And then no, still not. Okay, let's put it back, put the price back down.

Yeah, I mean, you could even pull it off like 5% a day.

Yeah, the problem is the psychological barriers like $99. If you go over 99, there's a big drop-off. People are like, I'm not gonna pay over $100 for a website, B2C. With B2B, with Remote OK and my job boards, dude, the sky's the limit. You can charge crazy amounts of money and they generally keep paying it because they use the business cards. They're not consumers. So like, I charge, like every week, I charge like $1,600 for a job post. Which is insane, all this is the SQL inserts. And I don't mean it in a smart way because it's a business. So it's worth it, people pay for it. Like a recruiter costs like $3,000 often to hire, to get somebody placed, they get $3,000 for it. So it's worth it. But it's a lot of money compared to a B2C business where people will complain that something is over $99, which is understandable. I do that as a costumer, but yeah, that's difficult at B2C.

Yeah. That's gotta be tough to get around that psychological barrier because that probably means the distance between like you paying 99 and you paying like 150 is very different than one would think like 99 to $100. If you see that huge drop off, that means that you staying at $99 ends up being way more efficient for much longer.

Exactly, yeah. And all they can do is wait for inflation to make $150 the same psychological vibe as $100. And it's gonna take a while. Or you can improve the website and that's what I'm doing. Of course always, make it more valuable. And then, yeah, I feel now it is kinda like a lockdown effect where, or lock-in effect kinda where I have a really high quality group of, and high amount of people, members on a website and very high inflow of members, like 800 a month now. Where it feels like okay this is a community, more and more people are willing to pay for it. It's almost like a perpetual effect. Like a lot of people are paying for it. So the more valuable, so more people will pay for it. And just like stuff like making friends when you wanna work remotely dating. Does a dating app build into Nomad List like kinda like Tinder. And people are using it to find girlfriends and boyfriends and stuff. So that's really cool. And I think that's actually really valuable. Like this is like life-changing. Like finding a partner is life-changing. And you can pay a website to do that. And you can't do that in Tinder because Tinder is, you cannot see if somebody is in nomad or remote worker. And it's so integral to dating that you kinda, you're in the same place. So that's like one of the really big problems with nomads and remote workers, that they want the same kinda lifestyle. So, okay, now you have the website where you can find those people. Okay, that's money, just like yeah. People pay for that.

Do you charge extra for the dating service?

No, it's all in the premium membership, yeah. But maybe we need a third plan. Maybe we need to suck more money out of it, yeah.

Tinder gold, but Nomad List gold where you get boosts, you get all these things, that's amazing.

No, it's actually good, .

I think there's a, like one of your talks I watched was like the concept of take the thing that like starts being successful, and then branch off of it. Like the fact that you've built a dating app into Nomad List is just so like, it's just such a quintessence of exactly what you're talking about. I think that's such a perfect example. Do you do anything to like maximize, actually getting stuff done? Like are you a big productivity, hacker, everything, or does it just kinda come easy to you?

I think, this year was really difficult 'cause I lost, I got depressed and got anxiety and I lost all the motivation to do anything. I think a lot of us did with corona. And then doing therapy helps, keep going to the gym helped. But I feel there's intrinsic excitement I have, when I have it, like now I have it, because I'm happy and stuff and I feel good. There's intrinsic motivation to like I just love like making stuff, like I come from music, I used to make music. I was an electronic music producer. So it's just so fun to... Man, and also in Twitch you see people making music or making start-ups or whatever. They're making something, illustration. It's just so, like it's almost envious. You could envious how, they don't realize how great it is that they have the ability to have a passion for something. That a lot of people don't even have a passion. And you know when you're depressed, you're lost. All your friends are like, oh, this is how it feels to not have a passion. Like nothing is exciting. But if you have passion for something, it doesn't matter what it is. Especially if it's creative, dude, that keeps you alive. That's like, what are you doing today? You eat, you go to the toilet, you sleep, maybe you have sex. You work, you do errands. Maybe you raise kids, all this stuff. I don't know, the magic in life is creativity, I feel like. And if you can, like I said, manifest something from your brain to assist and being in the moment doing it, it's just, you lose sense of time and reality. And it's just super exciting. It's doesn't matter if it's gold or music or whatever your passion is fucking clay, I don't know. I have a friend, Strange Parts, like streaming now, Strange Parts. A. Scotty from Shenzhen is an American guy or Canadian guy, I think. And he lives in China and he makes, I guess, live now I'll show you. He makes electric ship stuff. And dude, he has this passion that's just like beautiful. Kinda famous guy, he made his own iPhone in China. This guy, Strange Parts. So that's his whole, where like his whole, what do you call it? Like a workroom.

Workshop.

Workshop, sorry, yeah. And so now, I think he's just gonna make a robot today. He has a camera just like this. So you can see the electric chip when he's working on it. But yeah, he's live now, Strange Parts. Super cool guy. And so this second example like he sold, like I watched him like, why you doing this? This is the same that you do. It's because he likes doing it, that's all. And this is beautiful. I know it sounds almost cliche, but this beautiful creativity thing. And I think that's, if you get in touch with that, we all get in touch with that as kids. As kids, we're drawing, we're playing with clay and stuff. I think that's sorry, very long answer. But that's a core intrinsic motivation. Just expression, just making stuff. It's just super fun.

Yeah. I think that's like part of the really interesting world of software is that you kinda get to the point where a lot of people feel, like a lot of companies will ask you to be passionate about what you do. Just the level of making it, which when hiring for a job, kinda ask. Kinda super ask. But when actually doing stuff for yourself has such absurd benefits.

Dude, companies are psychopaths. They are completely sociopath, sociopathic, psychopathic. Like I know 'cause I went to business school. I have an MBA there. They don't have any loyalty to you as a human, especially on an America where there's less labor protection done in Europe. There's no loyalty from companies. So why should you be loyal to companies? Fuck companies. Man, you know what fucked me up about it? Like American corporate culture is a startup culture. It's this whole, we're family, we're like happy family, team photos, team activities. Dude, that's really creepy, that's a lock-in gimmick. Because if you get fired, you lose your whole social life. That means you can't negotiate salary because you have no negotiation power anymore. It's a reductionist negotiating power because you're too locked into the company through a company culture being so good and stuff. Dude, companies are sociopaths and you should treat them like that. They pay you money, you work for them. That's it. And man, in startups, they really try to abuse that and feel like, and it's very dodgy and dark because nobody talks about that. They don't show that. It looks all positive, but it's not positive, it's kinda creepy. Company is not your family. Company, they pay you, that's it. Unless you're an owner, you get shares because it's co-op. And yeah, right?

It's interesting. 'Cause like, I don't know, it's such a great line. 'Cause ideally--

Well, it's so good marketing like, oh we have like amazing Skippy balls. You can sit on and you know, whatever the fuck with ping pong tables. And I know that's two for the sake. There's more shit now. Benefits are good. Health care, dental, but yeah, they do try and lock you in and you should be passionate about your own career trajectory not passion for the company. Who cares about the company? Like, I mean yeah, you should do the things that are good in your job, in your job description. But I don't know, yeah. I'm not a communist, but I do believe in co-op and the concept of like that there should be some kinda like shared ownership and revenue share, profit share or something. It's unfair that a capitalist owner, and I'm a capitalist for sure, but that a capitalist owner, capital owner and a company owner takes all the, reaps all the rewards. They should reap a lot of rewards because they did all the risk taking as entrepreneurs for sure. But once employees get into the picture, I believe it's fair at a day, reap also the rewards of the results of the company, not just salary. I would be for a system where you can get less salary, but you can get shares in a company or something. I mean, that's what startups do. That's kinda like equity, but you don't see it in normal jobs. Like you work in supermarkets, you don't really get ownership of the supermarket. I don't know, I feel it should be more fair.

Yeah, I know, my brother is a game designer and he works at a company that does profit sharing. So everybody gets a cut. So how successful the game is directly influences how much they get bonus wise.

Yeah, cool, yeah. Yeah, that's nice.

It gives them much more ownership over what they do. And I think--

Then it makes sense to say, okay, are you passionate about the company? Yeah, I'm passionate because we're gonna make money. I'm gonna make money too.

I think the thing is, the question is always, how do they make you care? And that's the big thing. And some people will care on the mission. Super ideal. But a lot of people that talk to me, talk to me because they say, well, you're working on local business. I'm passionate about local business. I wanna help you. And people offer to do stuff for free for me all the time because of that. But ideally, if I were to hire somebody, I would want someone who gives that much of a crap 'cause I know I'm gonna get way better work out of them 'cause they're going to feel that--

That makes sense. But I mean, they don't have passion for your company. They have passion for that general industry.

Exactly.

But that's fine. Especially for remote work. So yeah, that's fine.

And so I think that's like the more ideal version of it where you want to care about the company only as much as you care about the problem that they solve.

Yeah, and that means you can work for whatever, Nomad List, and then if you don't like it anymore, not that the same stuff, but you can go to . 'Cause they both got in the travel space. That makes sense. So it's good for your career. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, dude, nobody should trust companies, please, please put it in your head, don't trust companies. They're not loyal to you. They'll be loyal to them. And I'm a company owner. I say it is. I hire people now. So I don't give a fuck about you. I just want my work to be done. And I think that's a very healthy relationship. I don't give a fuck about you. I pay money. It sounds very European rude, but I mean it in a good way, like it means that no, there's nothing hidden. It's the transaction of work for money. That's it.

Super interesting. Yeah. It's really crazy how this stuff falls through and the way that you see bigger companies like taking advantage of that culture. But I think there's a right way to do it or at least a more ideal way to do it, but it's definitely harder. So I'm not surprised that anyone does it any particular way.

Someone in the chat, Astro Kenyon now says, it's actually a super tactical like if you immerse yourself in a family culture, you will feel weird calling out shitty behavior. You'll do more for less because you're afraid of disappointing the people on your team. Yeah, 100%. Your negotiation power goes down.

That you care differently. And in a--

, if you can have fun with your coworkers. For sure. Yeah, nobody says that. Nobody doesn't say that. I think it's the requirements of care was there's nothing wrong with caring. Yeah, I agree, yeah. Dude, being of course a little bit exaggerating extreme. But just to make my point. Even if the company succeeds, if the company feels risk is only for a business owner. If you're working in the valley, if the business feels is working, you could just join another company. But the business owner's whole life is a business. This is true, yeah. But that's the, man, but I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm happy to take the risk because my personality likes that. And I also like to reap the rewards, but then if you hire people, they should also reap the rewards I feel like. The broader point if the company's being psychopaths is obviously correct. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the classic saying, HR is not your friend. Like that's the classic version of that.

Oh, true, HR is evil. Like if you go to HR, you should go to an external party. You should sue them.

Always sue.

Always sue, always sue.

My friend got laid off from his job and then he was talking to his friend and the friend was like, "Dude, you should immediately sue." And I was like, what? Like why? He was just normally laid off. This is Europe. In Europe, you're immediately, yeah, it's very pro-labor, so that's kinda good. Also not good, but yeah.

Pros and cons. Well, I think also like, your company is still mostly you. So I'd be interested to see if you're able to like implement those theories 'cause like you said during this call, like I think it's tough to do it right. Or do it in a completely positive light. But I think that there's also like a unique sort of privilege in that you're so small still and like it's still you mostly so that you can very much hold to those. I'd be very interested to see if that continues to be the case as your projects grow larger.

Yeah, me too. I think automation is very useful in scaling, so you don't have to hire necessarily much. And I think that people that are higher, I wanna give them the life that I have. So I wanna pay them well, I wanna pay them a lot of money for not a lot of work so that they have a lot of freedom to do whatever they want and they can still work, but they also have got the freedom of like living however they wanna live. And yeah, so paying. So I would say I pay probably double or triple what the market rates are just to give people to like chilled life. I think that's much more useful than a free laptop or a team retreat, or this and that. Or like, you should lose money, go do something with it and yeah.

Yeah, 100%. The best job I ever had, I still feel like to this day was when I worked at Intuit and my boss said, "My goal is not to keep you working for this company. My goal is to get you wherever you want to be and help be a part of your growth." And so when people said they wanted to leave the company, he said, good, where do you wanna go? Okay, you're going to need to know these things. Let's change up your job so that you're working on that stuff. So you're ready for your next adventure. And that was huge. And so like we had an intern who wanted to work on PM stuff like through some college program. And I brought him on his marketing and he was like, clearly only somewhat doing what he wanted to. I met another friend who was working on his own company who said, I really need PM help. I said, would you take an intern? He said, yeah, I'd take any help. And I literally went to the kid, still working for us as an intern. And I said, I'm literally going to help you get a second job right now, if you can take the capacity, because I know that this is what you care about. And I don't want you to feel like you're only working here for us. I want you to feel like you're working here because it's going to help you get where you are. And I know that's gonna help you get where you are. So I'm going to help you get that position. And he's been doing it for like two months. And I still feel like, it was a weird decision and a rough decision.

Yeah, it feels good, man, though. itfeelsgood.exe

Yeah, dot JPEG--

Dude, do you know Ghost? Ghost.org, the blog platform?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so this is my friend, John. He made Ghost. And for some reason, we're friends. I don't know why he's friends with me, but he missed me and we hang out. But humble brag. But, so my server guy, Daniel, so John was looking for a dev ops guy or something, a girl or whatever on gender. And I said, why don't you ask Daniel? And then I told Daniel to message John. And then he applied and John rejected him. And then I think he tried again and now he's the dev ops guy or something for Ghost. And he met me through Twitter at the end, like five years ago. So he was a little British kid from a small town university who Dmd me some codes to fix my bug. I had no idea who it was. And then we Skyped. He was this little baby kid in uni. Then he graduates. Then he became a nomads and then he worked for me. And then now he's working for Ghost. He's the dev ops guy for Ghost. So this is crazy, it's exactly the same. Yeah, it's all like helping people around you. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it sounds kind of obvious for everybody else, but it just felt nice. It feels nice to do good things. That sounds so bad too but you know what I mean? It's nice. If people they work for you, you help them.

If you don't say it, it doesn't happen. So, you know what? Even if it's obvious, it's worth saying every time. Also somebody said, hire me, with a laughing face. For reference, our friend, Pieter, over here is actually looking for a new dev.

Yeah, I'll put the job post.

Yeah, do you have the link?

One sec. It's on my own website.

Of course. What was that? RemoteOK.io. Hhere you go. So feel free to apply there. If you want a personal introduction. If I know you, feel free to DM me on discord and I will manually forward your resume over.

Yeah, so I'm looking for like a generalist developer who can do, as Danny always, he's still listening. So I'm looking for a developer who can do PHP, JavaScript, some CSS, pretty much just like generally you need your pen tester. So generally you could make like basic, like you could make new features, you can fuck who, Jesus, you could fix bugs, not fuck bugs. Different. And yeah, just read the job description and yeah, I pay well and yeah, that's it.

There you go.

And you can work on cool websites. So I had millions of users.

Very cool projects. So I've heard at least.

Thank you, man.

No, but I mean. Would definitely recommend. I have a couple of people I'm gonna send your way afterwards.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, we will see. All right, I wanna be sure that we get to some of these questions 'cause we have--

Yeah, let's do some questions--

Our list is growing. So I'm gonna--

80 people are watching still, nice.

Oh, yeah, yeah, people are hanging out and thank you for everybody who's followed. Thank you for the everything.

Dude, I need to get more water.

Go, go, go. Yeah, thank you guys so much for all of that. I do see it. Trying to focus on the AMA obviously, but does mean a ton. Yeah. We are big startup nerds here. Thank you guys. Thank you everybody.

I need go to the toilet, I'm so sorry.

No, no, you go, you go. Oh, should I go again? I've been drinking so much water. I'm gonna pee again. I'm gonna pee again. On a scale of one to 10, oh, should I go to the bathroom? Maybe I shouldn't go to the bathroom. Oh God, so many messages, it's a great stream. Great guy, you're brought on. Thank you, yeah, no, this is literally. One of my favorite people on the planet. A scale of one to 10, how good has the last three hours felt? Solid 10, a nine at one point 'cause I really had to pee. I still have to pee. Even though I went, I already have to pee again. Let's go, let's go. Should do more of this, thank you. Don't know Todd Valentine, but I will happily look them up. Pee in the bottle on stream. That does not feel like a good move. Where am I based? I'm in Chicago. I forget where Pieter is right now. He moves around too much to keep track of. He told me earlier, he might be in Bali. Now he was in Bali, I don't remember. He's based in the world. He's in Portugal, that was it, thank you. Yeah, we do have all the questions in a list. So we do have everything ready to go in just second here. I'm gonna pee very quickly. Yeah, just 'cause this is the only chance I probably have where it's not gonna . Nobody leave 'cause we have like 10 questions in a row that we're gonna ask pretty soon. They are all really interesting. Astro, if Pieter comes back before I leave or before I get back, feel free to just tag him and then tell him what the next question is. I have it highlighted. Even if it's a little bit of meme release the crack and never say that again. I'll be back in two seconds.

Well, we're both gone. Fuck, we're gonna lose all the viewers. Oh my God. Okay, what's up, Twitch? What's happening? So what's going on? Let's read the chat. Yeah, it's being recorded I think. Bottom stream if you can't decide. Dude, if you wanna know a cool story, Google the fortune pee bottle story. I think pee bottled date things story. Do you know dating codes, oftentimes you just look like similar mannerism. Fuck, I need to do the switch. Oftentimes. Me or him? Or he does have a weird face. I kinda have a weird face too. Interesting. Rox, you're doing such a great job. What else? Salary range. Yeah. Well, I pay really good, I pay well. Kind of selflessness that Daniel's boss did is what really counts. What the fuck? Is that John or Nolan writing on anonymous accounts? What's the stream about? Is the AMA with me and Roxkstar? Flake Webby says also with most startups fail. I think it's like 99% of startups fail. So as a business owner, the risk is exponential. It makes sense for you to be the one to get the most rewards. Yeah, that's true. I agree. What else? I started the business degree before I became a developer and one of my professors did his PhD thesis on corporate . How the corporate structure forces companies to behave in a psychopathic way to earn the highest returns across. Wow, super cool, yeah, 100%.

Sorry about that. I also took the opportunity to go to the bathroom again.

Nice, yes, if you have to? I don't think you should say I don't give a shit about you, you just need to give enough motivation . Sorry, I'm Dutch. You know what I mean? Non-native English speakers will say extreme stuff not because they mean it, but because they have not the ability to speak proper English. So it's harder for them to do nuance I think. And then Dutch people are really blonde. So putting those two together, you get kinda extreme expressions.

I think it's funny honestly. I love to hear it, but yeah, that's good. Everything with a grain of salt for sure. All right, let's see, what was our next question? Oh, did you answer the psychedelics one yet?

Psychedelics one.

Do you believe in doing microdosing of psychedelics?

Yeah, it's interesting, so I've done mushrooms. Can you talk about that on stream I guess?

Yeah, you can talk about your experiences.

There's this site called .org. Where they're not legally allowed to talk about the case or they say like the person that's not me and it's like an acronym, and they keeps saying, the person that's not me did mushrooms last week, but it's them. So they don't wanna admit because then the FBI comes.

Oh my God. That's a really funny.

Yeah, yeah, it's like the TPNME, I don't know, it's some acronym. Yeah, I did mushroom. Mushroom is really interesting, really fun. I did throw up on the wall though, and then there was vomit everywhere, but we were loosening the vomit, so the vomit was behind the TV, but how can you vomit behind the TV when I vomited there and TV is there? but my friend was like cleaning behind the TV. So there was no vomit, we just hallucinated vomit. But now we don't even know if I actually vomited. Dude, it's like. Yeah. I think what's, I think the psychedelics most interesting with therapy now. So if you do like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy or something, with your therapist, and then I think you do and and psychedelics. That's interesting 'cause like going through, for example, I had therapy and it was like about insecurity. Where does your insecurity come from? You go back to moments in your childhood or whatever, when you were a teenager and you go through those moments again to rewrite it, to re-experience them kinda. Just like thinking about them and then, I don't know, writing it down, like really slowly going through that. And yeah, that's not . No, I know. And then using psychedelics 'cause a lot of people have a hard time opening up and then if you use a glaze to open up, that's probably a good strategy. The microdosing, the supplement stuff, I don't know. I think it's kinda, it's again, it's like it's the same as venture capital and the same as like artificial engagements and artificial stuff. Like the best thing in life is pure intrinsic motivation to do stuff. So you could, like I know a lot of people take Adderall to code and stuff and work, but if you need Adderall to get motivated by your project, maybe you're working on the wrong project. You know what I mean? It's again, that feedback loop and same as buying Facebook ads. If you could use it from Facebook ads, but not organic traffic, maybe your price is not good enough to survive without Facebook. You know what I mean? Maybe it's artificial growth, maybe it's not real growth. Just like if you have a farm with cows, if you inject them with steroids, they're gonna grow maybe more. You're gonna get big cows, but are they gonna be good for you? Are they gonna be healthy? You can also make a pure, nice farm with nice, happy cows and the meat's gonna taste better. So I'm generally more of the non-microdosing, non-supplements thing. So, yeah.

Yeah, I'd definitely subscribe to that. I try to even avoid caffeine in and of itself.

Yeah, no, that's 100% of drugs. So yeah, I'm not consistent here, but I need coffee. But I don't do a lot of coffee. No, I do like one or two a day.

Sure, do you do anything to like, I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit. Do you focus on productivity at all? Like do you do any hacks or anything or does it for you just really come down to simple motivation?

I think automation is a huge hack. Like automating anything in your startup from the smallest things, just make everything so you don't have to do manual stuff anymore. So I don't know, automatic invoicing, automatic user deletion, automatic moderation, automatic, anything you can think of, automate everything. And have checks that check if the robots are doing the right work, and when they're doing it and everything, but that means you can. And if we make an MVP, we're essentially already automating from the start. We're already making something automatically that runs automatically. So going from there to full automation is not difficult. Mostly, everyone can be like a page with a button and a Stripe integration where you pay. So like if you saw a lot of ads on your website or these app packages, like I made like an advertise page where you can place your own ads. Last week, Shopify used it on Nomad List. Shopify placed their add on Nomad List and also Remote OK. But also on Nomad List, and it paid like, I don't know, $1,500 in this little page, we have a strap checkout book. So, automate everything. Like I could also do it over email, but then it would have taken like 10 emails and a PO order form or whatever, you know? So yeah, automate everything, I'd say.

Yeah. So do you struggle to get work done in a day? Like, the number of hours you put in or anything or is it all pretty trivial for you?

No, not really. No, I mean, unless if I'm depressed, which I was like last year. Where it's really, but even then I shipped like, even then I shipped. So even if I'm fucking depressed, I'm like, I know that I need to do something to get out of this depression. I need to feel better, I need to do something. And so I will still, I think that's why I get out of the depressions because I keep going even if I really feel really fucked. So I still try and ship like a few features, like tree task or something. 'Cause I know that system, that kinda like atomic habits, that system keeps me on the rails. And if I get off the rails, then I'm not gonna get back on easily. So yeah.

Right. Do you keep up with like current events at all? Like, are you watching news? Like with all the nomading things, do you keep track of like different countries and everything?

Yeah. So I'll Telegram all these groups where like channels where they post often. Like there's one like, dude, Telegram is such a weird place. It's like hard to explain. It's like this, there's so many weird chat groups on all the political spectrums where you can just go in and you can look a little bit. It's like going into a bar and just see weird characters and weird things being posted. And you're like, okay, this is crazy, I go away here. So I love there. I check Dutch news, really like I'm not in Holland a lot, but I check this way, I'm born this way, I grew up this way, I studied like this way, I've been like 27 years, 28 years. So which is kinda weird like I think it's different for Americans. But like if you're a non-native English, even if you go abroad, you'll still, I mean, no, 'cause I have friends in for example in Asia, Americans and they still check the American news, but the whole world checks American news. So that's a hard question, but like I will check Dutch news for some fucking reason, even though I don't live there, but just like, okay, what's going on in Holland? Like to still feel connected or something, it's weird. It's like weird thing. Experts, do I feel like news is a very bad, especially these days. News is a pretty bad influence. And it's built to make everybody angry. It's divisive. It makes political left strong and political right strong, but there's no center anymore. So I think if you can, don't follow the news, like just absolutely don't follow the news. Like why would you, like, yeah. It's entertainment and it's not written for your benefits, it's written to make you consume more, to make you buy more, to make you angry and then buy more and to make you depressed. It's absolutely not good for you and you don't need it. You absolutely do not need news. Like what's the things you would've missed if you didn't follow the news in the last 10 years? Like what's something that really would affect you that you would miss? I think corona. But then you would see people walking in mask. You're like, what the fuck is wrong? And somebody would tell you. So news will arrive at you anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, no, 100% agree. Although I've been educated slightly on that concept, which is that it is in and of itself a privilege to ignore the news because generally the privileges that it doesn't affect you at all. And like with politics and all of that. So I also don't pay a lot of attention to it, but I think it, I do wanna add the caveat that it definitely depends on who you are. Like I know that I've never been affected by like anything at all, but like some of my friends--

I disagree 'cause if there's a, let's say you live in South America in a favela, and there's a flood coming, you will learn about this flood, not from your smartphone, but from people around you saying there's a fucking flood coming. I think it's not that different, but yeah, that's probably a political conversation, but I think that the privileged word to put in there is it's too easy of a cop out to say like, I think news everywhere . Doesn't matter which political, which social stratum you're in, everywhere it's abused. Even in lower income areas, news is even more horrible than for privileged people in the West. Look at Myanmar, there's genocides happening because of news. Because of news being spread. So I think generally just news is a net negative. I think having objective neutral reporting, like Reuters or associated press, that's okay, that's good. 'Cause they tell what's really the story. I think that everything is an op ads. It's very, it's one of the biggest now. Every article is now an opinion. And that's not good, man. Yeah.

Yeah, it's--

But it's scary to even speak out about it because people will get angry on Twitter and stuff. So I've tried to avoid even talking about, but you asked about news, so I'm like, yeah, I'll answer you about news. I think news is net negative, I feel we don't need it.

Yeah, it's a hard game. Like anything with an opinion is like by definition, like propaganda or with some message and then just like fake news, it doesn't have to be fake. It just has to have an opinion. And then it immediately is bad for you. I had a lot of conversations about that one. Like what is true anymore? Like associated press is as close as you may be.

That's cool, yeah. And I checked who owns Reuters and it's Thomson Reuters and they're owned by a family. I think the Thomson family or something. And they are generally loaded as fuck. They don't have a lot of influence in the state. It's almost like, what do you call it? Samaritan task for them to bring news. So I feel like they are pretty objective.

Right, yeah I know, that's definitely a thing. Yeah, I can go super deep on that one, but yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a lot of the reason I don't keep up with it is 'cause I just don't trust any of their sources. And so it results in a zero sum game. So yeah, I agree with you. It's never gonna bring you any joy, that's for sure.

I also read The Economist. The Economist is kinda like long form articles. Feels quite neutral. So yeah.

That's a good one. I think I've heard you talk about this one before jumping to another question here. What are your thoughts on just like education in general? Do you feel like it's worth it to go to university? I know you have strong opinions on bootcamps. Should people be quitting university to just go full time and learn everything on the way? What do you think?

Okay, so I'm generation, I'm millennial. So I'm not Generation Z, but so you should always doubt what people older than you say. And I'm talking to probably Generation Z that go into university and Generation , soon going to university. It's generation A, it's crazy. You should never trust what we're saying, but what my dad said was that university is mostly about discipline, like showing that you have to discipline to follow through in something. Like it's not about the content so much, it's about that you can have a dedicated effort of like four years or three years or wherever, like in Europe, three years as a bachelor and then with one year or two years for a master's degree. So it's not a post-grad, it was like a, yeah, undergrad and master. But having, even if it's all bullshit, it's probably always all bullshit content, but just having the discipline to go through that and be able to finish that. I feel it's a stunt, but like okay, you can finish something. And I got kicked out of high school and finishing stuff was really difficult for me. So that's why it's funny that I'm doing, that's why I had to do these start-ups because I couldn't finish, I had the same problem as everyone else. So I think it's good for the goal set, and good for like social, like, dude, dating, like as a guy, you learn how to date in university. Like you're dork in high school and then you learn to go on dates and ask people out. I think that's really important. And which is funny. A lot of my nomad friends are like Generation Z. This guy, Lynn Nielsen is 19 and he already has, he's a Ruby freelancer, and he makes I think 10k a month. And Travis is a nomad and he already has investments. He has ETFs, he has Bitcoin. You guys, whole lives at the stage of like a 35 year old and he's 18 or something, 19. And so I feel like, and this guy never went to university, but he's got everything done, but then I'm like, wow, this is crazy. So it's possible. It's solely. So, man, I don't know. I say, if you don't go to university, do something as just as impactful, which probably for me, it would be traveling. Go traveling for four years or start a business, but make sure that you do a lot of crazy experiences. Yeah, they make you unique.

I think that's a really good take. I like that a lot, 'cause I think that that's, like college teaches you how to be a person. And so if you don't go to college, you have to find that elsewhere. So the right answer I would never say is like, don't go to college and then sit in your room and do free code camp for four years or even like a year. But I like that perspective, go elsewhere, go somewhere.

Yeah, dude, but go travel and go date people, go swimming and do skydiving. I don't know, what the fuck, do whatever. Yeah, but you know what? The beautiful thing about what I remember about university is that you have this student's room or you're on campus, like, dude, I studied at a lot of different university. I studied in Korea for half a year. I studied in Amsterdam. I started in Rotterdam in Utrecht. So in four different cities, two countries. I went to like study trips to Eastern Europe and crazy shit. I was partying in my suits with the owner of the stock of shades of Bulgaria, just crazy shit. That's what you do when you're in university. You do dumb shit like that. But mostly what I remember is that like, you have a lot of free time and you're sitting on your couch and you're probably hung over from last night and you're sitting on your couch with your roommate. And just like, yo, what are we gonna do? Like I don't know. Just like this kinda stoner vibe. But then this vibe is so pure, man. It's so like, it's such a good place to come up with new ideas or do something like rebellious, I guess the system in terms of ideas. Or like entrepreneurship or it's just, man, it's an out of society kinda environment where you can come up with crazy shit. It's very hard to do that once you're in society. Once you're in the real world, it's very hard to get out of the real world. You know what I mean? It's like, 'cause you need to show up every day somewhere and you have a job. If you don't need the , like, do you really show up at your lectures? Dude, I didn't show up at the lectures? I just, I didn't even show up at the group classes. I just stayed home a lot of times or was doing something else or we were organizing a party or we were building a YouTube channel or whatever the fuck, we were driving on a car and a hike somewhere with rented chickens. And we got fish, we were making a music video and we got a octopus. Just like crazy shit. We need to do all this crazy shit that you should in days and feel like. And to get out of your system. And also... There's less acceptance of crazy shit in the real world.

Yeah, that's a very good way to put it. Like, it's a microcosm of no one cares. So you can just kind of do anything. And you can get a lot done. Like you can be, like I, within the same week, was pitching my startup at startup competitions at my school. And then going to like random events where I was riding around in a shopping cart for like three hours, pushing friends around and like staying up until 5:00 a.m. Talking about complicated, emotional struggles. And you can't get that on free code camp.

Exactly, staying up until . Yeah, exactly. And that's it. I just wanna say, yeah. You know, there's a difference, so actually in high school, I was kicked out of high school. Then I had to finish to get a shitty high school diploma at another school. And then one year I took off because I wanted to be a successful music DJ and producer. Didn't really work but I had this music career. I felt the difference between being not in university and just being like a human in society living somewhere, but not having a job. And my friends were at university. And dude it's like, I felt like I'm like a loser and I felt like a deadbeat. That's the word, deadbeat. And if you're a student and you're fucking around and people say, why are you fucking around? And you say, I don't care, I'm a student, I'm studying. I'm at university, so I can do anything. But if you don't have anything to show, it's kinda difficult. Like you are kinda like, it feels like a deadbeat. That's what I remember feeling. And that's what I mean with university. You literally, yeah so Michael calls him and you have like a wildcard. So I go to university, so it's cool.

You can truly get through, do anything. And I think that that's like--

Who can hate the university people? Like the old people, grownups cannot say like, why don't you get a job? It's like, no, I'm at university. So I'm sitting in the shopping carts, driving through the streets. I'm at university, I can do.

I think it's a very big trivialization. And that happens a lot in software to just say like, you could learn that all online. And you're not wrong about the material, but you're wrong about the humanity.

Dude, if the philosophy behind and your identity, like, what are you gonna do if you don't have a successful business? Now you make a million dollars. Okay, now. Like, okay, what are you gonna do? You have an identity? That comes from philosophy, that comes from your university days kinda. Yeah.

I think you need that time.

Yeah, I think it definitely shaped me, but it definitely shaped me, but I do feel that the content was absolutely bullshit, but who cares? It was a little outdated content, like I did business school, it was all outdated. It was all like, yeah.

Well, that's a whole other thing.

I had no idea about business, but yeah.

Yeah, right. No, it's a whole thing, but yeah. At least for me, I definitely recommend going to school. Just 'cause like I'm a completely different person now than I was four years ago. And I don't know if I can call myself a successful entrepreneur by any means of the word, but I can at least say I am way, way, way better off than I ever would have been because I went. And I learned so many more lessons than free code camp could ever teach you. So yeah, I would say to go for all the other reasons.

I would say go to uni or travel the world with your laptop and try and build little startups and learn free code camp or whatever, and meet a lot of people. Talk to a lot different people. Be open and it's normal to feel nervous. It's normal to be socially awkward. It's normal to be scared of everything. But have a lot of different experiences. And I'm still trying to do that. But man, it gets harder when you get older, your brain starts to avoid newness. And there's a psychological trade called openness to experience and that's reduced with age. So you need to actively train it. And it's so easy when you're 20, it's harder when you're 30. So yeah, have fun. But you can go anywhere. You can go to Uganda, you can go live there. You can go live in Japan or in Uruguay or Chile. Or if you're a European, you go live in New York. You always wanna live in Brooklyn, go live in Brooklyn. It's fucking expensive though but yeah, try. I lived in Brooklyn just to be able to say I live in Brooklyn. Like it's so cool. You can go, you can live anywhere. And everywhere is kinda same. You have the internet. Most places you can now live $4,000 a month, not the big cities, but a lot of other places outside American and Europe, you can live for $1000 a month. The world is your oyster. What a time to be 21.

For real. No, it's amazing. All right. We got a handful more questions still on the backlog here. Main project fatigue. I think you talked about that. Starting to work on these things--

By the way. Just so people can--

Yeah. We got a command that we've been posting. All good, all good. No, no, shout yourself out 101 times. We're here to talk to you. Someone asked if you use Vim or anything other than Vim, you said you are a Sublime guy, yeah?

Blank text, Yeah.

Do you do any marketing?

Yeah this, this is marketing, yeah.

There you go.

Twitter is marketing, but the marketing is not marketing. So marketing that looks like marketing is bad marketing. And marketing where you don't realize, that's the good marketing. But it's not even sneaky. It's just like, yeah, I'm telling you now that this is marketing, like now you know me, now you go to my website and you'll tell somebody about it. And now this might be a new chain of like 1000s of people finding out because it's like . So that's how it works, yeah.

There you go, yeah, I know, I definitely, I think I have personally been responsible for probably a dozen people buying your book at this point, just from the stream. 'Cause I talk it up all day, every day. So you mentioned you're hiring one dev, are you're hiring anyone else, are you like building a team. Like, are you hiring marketers or anything, or is it really just this one person?

Yeah. First there's the dev. Oh, I'm hiring yeah, but that's very different. I'm hiring immigration lawyers. So my new project for this year is called Rebase. So I have the domain in rebase.two. And rebase, Marc came up with this, Marc from Web chat. Rebase is where he came up with the name. So a lot of people with remote work gonna want to relocate, but they need the legal stuff to really get like being able to live somewhere like an American who's trying to move to Portugal or an American trying to move to Bali. They wanna work there for legally. Then how do you get a work permit? How do you get the residency stuff sorted out? So I did that for myself cause I'm Portuguese resident now, and now I'm resetting the lawyer. So kinda like I got a fee, but then there's next plan is like to make kinda like Stripe Atlas for relocation. So you do everything online. You pick the country you wanna I relocate to and you fill out the forms online. And we take you through your process or I take you through your process, but with a lot of automation. Automatically fill out all the forms, put the lawyers in between there and then get you a residence permit, a work permit or a visa, all that stuff. So pretty much like an immigration agency for the 21st century for the remote workers. But I'm hiring lawyers for that, like immigration lawyers.

There you go. I might know a couple of those 'cause my co-founder has needed some visa help in the past. He is actually . One of my teammates is currently in Spain. Cause his paperwork was wrong. Yeah, he had to head out of the US unfortunately, 'cause it was a day late and some paperwork.

And he's Spanish?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tough but there you go. So it's a big problem. That's an interesting one to solve. Do you read many non-fiction books?

I barely read, yeah. I was reading about, I read the book, "Feeling Good" about CBT this year 'cause I didn't feel good. And it's like by the guy who I think he invented almost like cognitive behavioral therapy. Which is just like you have your worrying thought and you try to fix it with a better thought, alternate thought or anything. Like I'm a loser. Like what's the evidence that you're a loser? There's not a lot of evidence. People think you're a loser and I'm not really okay, then alternate thought, I'm not a loser, I'm pretty cool. And then you override it. So I read that book. I read a lot of books about philosophy and stuff. I read books about death last year. But, generally, I don't really, yeah. I feel like secretly, nobody really reads. Everybody's just virtue signaling that they read books. It's so hard to read these days 'cause everybody's attention span is like fried. Like I can barely read five pages, three pages. So I'm just honest about it. Like yeah, it's hard for me to read books.

I'm a 100% the same way. I literally tell people I can't read. Which is funny because then people think I'm dyslexic, which is not true. But yeah, I know, it's really, really tough. The only thing I can even get through is audio books. And even then, it's only if I listen to them while I'm doing other things, so I will listen to audio books while I work out. And I've done that like once or twice. Yeah, yeah, that's the only thing I can make.

Why don't we just admit that book suck?

Book suck, yeah. It's really hard.

And most books are just not interesting enough. And most books are just way too long. And most books already say everything they wanna say in the first 10 pages.

The TLDR is the magic part.

Yeah, dude, there was some statistics about e-books. Like it's really dire, like only 5% of books are read. Like after five to 10, it's crazy. It's very low, people don't read the books. And then people are like, refinishing books shouldn't be the point. No, I agree. But come on dude. Like also with the Zoom calls, everybody has these books. You can buy books, buy it full now. There's a company.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was the New York times article this week that shows like it's just for virtue signaling. It's just like, look out how read I am. Like, fuck off. Like no, I don't read books.

Yeah. That's my virtue signaling, is I have my posters in the background that are my own company.

I think if you read a book when you need it. Like when you want something specifically, read that book. I would do that, but yeah. And I understand people that read fiction books, like fantasy and stuff. But I don't know. I played Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia last night. But even that takes effort for me to keep playing. I'm like, is this useful? And then I told my therapist, like I can't play Cyberpunk 2077, she's like, but you feel better, you've relaxed from it. You feel better. You work better after from playing the game. I'm like kindness. She's like, okay, that's a good reason then. So you should keep playing this game. So I have to force myself to play games. So, you know what I mean? It's fucked up this brain, but yeah.

No, it's totally real. I mean, I might literally. Christmas gift, I gotta switch. It's still in the box.

Oh, dude, see. We're all fucked, I haven't opened it.

Yeah, I know, but it's like, ah, the guilt.

I seriously say, YouTube. Like I cannot play games anymore. And there's shitload of videos about it. Like with tragic music. Like I used to be so obsessed with games. It was my whole life. And then one day I'm just not phased by 'em anymore. I don't see the point. Like yeah, kinda.

I had to change the kinda game I play. Now, I only play games that are basically like, the joke is a walking simulator where it's basically like TV. Like you're kind of walking through a story. Maybe you make decisions, but like, that's it. And I can still enjoy that because that feels like I'm . Exactly, but I can't like go play fricking World of Warcraft anymore. I don't have hours and hours to dedicate to Super Smash Bros. anymore.

I think that's it. I think when your real life becomes more interesting or interesting just more valid or something, then games become less like, we would play when I was a kid. And you would fly a helicopter. You had a helicopter in your villa and you'd fly the helicopter. But now, you can like potentially rent a helicopter. Maybe you could actually fly it. But when you were a kid, you could 'cause you had to ask your parents. They're never gonna let you fly a helicopter. That has a money for it, you can't fly a helicopter, fuck off. Shoot with kids. I think that's the difference.

Yeah, no it's been very successful for me too. I feel much better playing games like that because it doesn't feel like I'm putting in just arbitrary hours. Like with World of Warcraft, when I was fricking 14, I put in a 10 hour day running all of these daily quests that were exactly the same thing I'd done the day before. No questions asked, and a bunch of the same raid. Yeah, you would grind. I can not grind at all anymore. I used 100% arbitrary.

What's the point?

What's the point? Exactly.

So you go up in the ranking. Look, I think the difference, if you do a company, at least when you grind, there are some chances you'd make more money, your company gets more successful. So you get money and you get status. That's why you do it for you. You become more successful as a person and you make more money and you have impacts, cultural impacts. And that's kinda like exchangeable into, you can buy fluids, you can go to a nice restaurant or you can buy a nice TV or something or status. Status helps in everything in life. Maybe you can do dating better. You're more attractive for example. This job works. There's real returns there. And with the video game, dude, I love video games but it's hard to convert those returns to real worlds. Like it's really nice to lose yourself in Minecraft, making beautiful city. I do that. But then the city doesn't exist. I mean, I love it. But it's, yeah.

Or like lack of permanence is much more prevalent now. And I think that's why part of it is like, I need to only view it as momentary entertainment as opposed to progress. Like this has to be equivalent to me watching a YouTube video. And if it feels that way, I'm totally cool with it 'cause I'll never feel bad about it.

That's it. But I do miss the vibe where like if you gave me Cyberpunk 2077, like when I was a kid, that would be my whole world. Like school would be this much. And then this would be Cyberpunk 2077. I need to go back home to play this game. And now it's like, Cyberpunk is this and this is my life. And I'm like, okay, a little bit of Cyberpunk, drive around a little bit and I can shoot some people and then I quit again.

Dude, I got 175 hours into fallout for. But I haven't played that game this year. I haven't played, like I've probably played less than 175 hours of all games combined in the past 12 months. It's such a difference. And I really can't. The grind is only a thing when you don't have that satisfaction elsewhere. And when you start to find that satisfaction in any other place, and we start to feel good about working on projects suddenly, like games just kinda suck.

Dude, that's a positive angle. Like I did, I really felt bad about it. I was like, fuck, I can't play games anymore. You're right, it's a positive angle. Yeah.

Yeah, no dude. You're just too happy. Like real life is making you so satisfied that now you can't lose, like video games are built to try and simulate what you actually have now. This is a win. This is a huge win when you get to that point. When you say the phrase, I'd rather work on my side project than go play Minecraft. Let's go, like that's a high five moment. That's a big deal.

Yeah, you're right. But that means I should fly helicopters more then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or go into a helicopter. I don't know about that one. I'm not the biggest helicopter guy.

You're right. This year, my plan was to do more IRL activities. I mean, and it's just difficult with corona but yeah, I went carting last week. It was fun. I flew out of the , I was like . And then there was mud everywhere, so that was nice.

Yeah, man, that's definitely--

I finished last.

It's not for the place though. No, I think that's probably the only reason I do a lot of stuff. It's like, I like to view my life as I'm in the business of opening up doors for myself and I just want to become more capable of doing things or having opportunities placed before me. And like, that's the reason I was so excited when like we got that monthly meeting with the like head of admissions at YC. I know how much like you don't like them, don't wanna do it.

No, dude, I love YC. I'm critical of venture capital, but I love YC, Y Combinator is I pretty much do everything that Paul Graham pushed in 2005 to 2010. Like there was like a legendary time in startups. And the whole bootstrap community follows that, which is Paul Graham is in intrinsically very bootstrap mind and very indie-minded. Like the amount of funding they gave was very low. It was 25k, 47%. It's very low compared to everybody else. They're very lean operating. That was the ball gray mindset.

Yeah, it's a lot more now.

No, I mean they're great, yeah.

So like when we got that monthly meeting with the head of admissions at YC, like that was a huge moment for me because it meant that we had without a doubt opened up that door. It meant without a doubt, there is now a reasonable expectation that I could end up in YC. As opposed to being a pipe dream, it's a thing that I can do. Actually streaming. Even this conversation that we're having right now, the moment that you said the words, can I do an AMA on your channel or whatever? I was like, this is potentially something that will open up the door for me as someone who could actually become successful as a streamer. Because like, and I've had, I've been so lucky here. And I've gotten so much farther than anybody could, but like, I told you earlier like that 100 viewer goal, like hitting that 1%, it's obviously gonna take a lot of force. And I told you, Twitch doesn't do it by itself. But I also don't have a lot of time. And so I could go off on--

But dude, do you know why you win? Because you're a nice guy.

Well, thank you.

No, 'cause you're a humble, chilled, nice guy. And it's very likable. And that's because of your personality, which you've developed yourself and like we've all done. And that's very unique. So if you're likable, you get a lot of stuff. Everybody wants to help you. People wanna help you that are above you. Wanna give you a hand. If you're arrogant ass hole, you're not gonna get anything. If you be arrogant and negative, dude, you would be nowhere. No, it's all with your personality. It's you're authentic and real. And it's a very important thing, man. And yeah.

I appreciate that. That means a lot, especially coming from you. But like the, I guess what I mean to say is like all of those things could be true, but I could still have a Twitch stream with zero viewers. Like being all of those things doesn't mean that I inherently am going to succeed at such things. It doesn't mean that I'm going to magically garner viewers.

Oh, no, you need like shitless persistence and lucky timing and stuff. This is the thing, you need so many things stacked to get anywhere. And yeah, my life's difficult. Like you need to get anywhere. You need to, yeah, do a lot of things and be a lot of things and have timing and luck and try a shitloads of times, yeah.

Yeah, but like, the fact that we're even talking, like the fact that we are having this conversation, it was a moment for me where I said, okay. Maybe there is a non-zero amount of me that could actually be some amount of a person in public. Some amount of a person that people care about talking to at all. And it's not that I never thought that was possible, but it wasn't a reasonable expectation. It wasn't a door--

Yeah, but it's nice, man, it's nice to do it as . It's nice to, I don't know, maybe it helps you. And I never, I don't say yes to infuse anymore. And my inboxes are closed. I don't do it anymore because I hate people asking me for it. So if you would've asked me, maybe I would have hated it too. So it's better to not ask for stuff and then you get stuff. I feel like, and the, dude, there's an archetype of people who try to career their way by asking everybody for shit. Like really persistent, like whining, like, come on, I'll interview you, , come on over. Really annoying people. And they don't succeed a lot 'cause nobody wants to give them stuff, they take stuff. They only take, take, take. And man, it's a lot of people like that. And yeah, you're not like at the school.

I wouldn't say I'm 100%. Not like that. That's actually something I've had to learn to do. It's like, ask when I actually do need help. 'Cause I'm so used to no one asking.

But it's fine, yeah. But whining to get stuff is unacceptable. And a lot of people do that. And like whining in famous people's DMS and stuff. I don't know if that works out. Yeah.

But like, I've been lucky enough throughout this, like effectively over the course of the past month, Twitch bought me a new computer.

Yeah, that's amazing, man.

Which is insane, like absolutely unprecedented. And it took like months of convincing for me to ever even say the words like, okay, I need help getting a new computer. And like actually put that as a goal.

So that's like 3k a month.

Say again.

So that's like $3,000 a month.

What is?

What you made with Twitch.

Oh, no, no, no. So it's not like consistent revenue. It is purely like when you gift subs, that's very much a one moment thing.

The last 30 days was like 2000, 3000?

I was trying to raise 1000 for the computer. And then I ended up getting like 1400. So I got 1400 within like the month of December, I guess.

And the ads and stuff?

Ads, nothing. It's basically all donation. Like it's until you're very big, there's no real concept of revenue. It's all just people being kind. And even then, it still is. So in terms of actual, legitimate, monthly recurring revenue that comes from actual subscribers, I have maybe 25 or 30, which is like 25 or 30 times 2 1/2. So I'm making less than $100 a month consistently. But inconsistently, there are some crazy months.

You know, it'd be cool, so what would I do a lot for reviews, I share my revenue on my website so you go slash open on my websites. I share the full charts user growth live revenue straight from Stripe, which is a marketing tactic. And also it's nice to be transparent because it's all like smoke and mirrors and other companies. It would be, I don't know, it would be interesting if you would share on Twitch, if you go through your revenue, I think it's a nice marketing trick, it's nice for transparency. I don't know, it's kinda like my, we're in different scenes, but I'm kinda in the indie maker scene, and I mean the open transparency scene where we will share our revenue in Twitter. You could try to make them Twitch too with your startups, with your, like just everywhere, all your revenue together. I don't know if you know Ali Abdaal. He's a YouTube guy. He's a medical doctor from UK. He just shared his revenue, like he makes 25k with being a doctor and training. Peanuts for doctor and then he makes like 300k for courses, 150k from YouTube ads. Anyway, he puts it all on the video and stuff. And then the video gets a million views again. Then he says like, I share this revenue because I want more views. So I'm gonna share my revenue. So it's kinda like honest, but it'd be cool if you would do it Twitch maybe, just a suggestion. Yeah.

Yeah, I know, I've actually been thinking about specifically that a lot because I saw all of your open pages and I thought that was very interesting. And it's the only reason it's weird is because my numbers aren't revenue, they are effectively donations. And so it feels like a weird number, like emotional-- Yeah?

Yeah, people would buy him like he said, you could buy me noodles like ramen. And you had like ramen or something. Yeah, so it doesn't really matter.

Yeah, I think there's something I'd like to do. Yeah, I know, it's definitely, that was, I think the computer was the first time I started doing that. Where I wasn't like leaving subs or bits or anything untracked, like I literally had for an entire month in the top left corner, here's exactly how much money I have been given this month.

Yeah, I think that's much more powerful than the subcount, 'cause I see someone like, so that's like 2000 times five divided by Twitch fee, like fuck that. Just, yeah.

Yeah, for reference on Twitch numbers, the easy way to think about it is every sub costs five bucks and you get half.

Yeah, 250, right?

So you get 250 for pretty much everything. Bits, donations, everything else, you pretty much get 100%.

It's so small, man. Like I see streamers that I watch like music streamers as well, like DJs and stuff. And then they make like $1,500 a month, which is nice money, but it's like, for all the work I do, I'm like, holy shit, like you only have 300 subs, no, 600 subs. 600 subs is $1,500 a month, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it's kinda low.

I mean, I think that's the interesting part is I think I'm uniquely positioned where subs are just bonus points because majority of my content is just my work. And so I don't really give up anything to stream. I don't really give up time, I'm not really putting in work. The work I'm already doing is inherent. So all Twitch is just like bonus points. Now granted, does it pay for my food? Yeah. Did it pay for my new computer? Yeah. And did it pay for like--

Dude, you're getting there? So I think you're underestimating the potential maybe, but yeah.

It's weird. I have a very small, very kind community. And I think I'm very lucky in that. It feels weird when I think about growth though, because it feels like--

Your community.

No, I feel like such a prick. But yeah, that's why I like never asked for anything like that, but most of it.

Do you have like a discord?

Yeah, yeah, we have a discord.

So my thing started kinda similar. Like this was way before discord, this was like Slack in 2014. Slack had just started then 2015. And I made a Slack for nomads for my friends 'cause we were traveling as nomads. And I had made Nomad List also, and then I put a link on the site to join the Slack and then should those people come in and then people started spanning. So I charged money to voice spam. I charged $1 in a typeform and then $5 and then $25, $50 and then became the nomads' membership. But it was first, it was only access to this like Slack, like a discord. So I don't know if that's I don't know, maybe there's a different way maybe because that's like six years ago and it feels kinda weird to monetize your audience like that. I think there's better ways to do it, especially because people are more about like donations and veterans style, veteran style stuff, then pain to exit community of a stream, it doesn't really work. I would say, ask your audience what they would wanna pay for. That's what I do, . I ask like, what would you wanna pay for? And they're like, well, I wanna get a visa. I wanna move to Portugal or something. Okay, you pay for that. Maybe just a product.

Yeah. I definitely, some people have approached me about like doing like some lessons or like educating some on like, having conversations or like doing, like, 'cause I used to do like interview prep streams to help people get big tech jobs 'cause like I worked there. And so it's like that doesn't help me at all anymore other than like content production. But like that was something I considered. But I don't know, it's always felt like a weird thing. Like I'll say this much, I am very open with the stream about how much I make. Like as of right now, I get $1,200 a month from my company. And I live off of that. And that pays my rent and that pays my food. And it's even lower right now because we signed a lease where we get three months free. So I actually have, I'm not paying rent for the next three months. So now I only get--

It's because of corona.

Yeah, they have like some better deals right now, just in general. And so like I'm not paying rent for the next three months, which means I just don't get that money now because that's how companies work when it's like you need to care for every cent. So like the money I make from Twitch is like a significant portion of my income weirdly enough. But yeah, it's just the whole thing with it being donations, like producing paid content, I feel, I'll put it to you this way, I feel like I've gotten more by asking for nothing, and just being myself, than I would ever get by asking for something and trying to produce something paid.

No man, yeah, just do your thing. And I think you're doing really well. And it's a cool channel you have here. And it's a really cool audience. So yeah, man. Keep doing it.

I am absurdly lucky to be here and I'm certainly lucky to be even having this conversation with you. This is, I mean truly, truly thank you so much, Ian, and thank you so much again, Ghost, but truly--

Doesn't add to the cry counter, 'cause it doesn't.

No, no, no, 'cause people were spamming it. So it's now purely held by Astro who is my mod and head of everything. Yeah, and that's why it has fractions in it is because she judges the decimal point. People used to ask 'cause people think it's a bot, and they're like, how did he cry a quarter of a time? But it is all just in Astro's heart. But yeah, I mean, I would never in a million years have thought that I would be having a conversation with you, much less on Twitch, much less like for so long. It's just all of this.

Yeah man, I do. I love Twitch. I mean Twitch, my homies, it's, I wish I was more, dude, I'm a Twitch consumer as fuck. Like it's the app I open shitloads of times in a day and I just tune into stuff and it's fun to watch. Maybe I'll go back 'cause you said I should just stream like few hours per week. Maybe I'll do that. Yeah. Yeah, why not? I think if I do it, I wanna do like new, like this year, I wanna do new parties anyway. Like I like to make new products from scratch on Twitch. That's the most fun. And I did that with Google Maps. It's on YouTube. If you search , maybe I can put it in the thing again. It was super fun. I did it in the co-worker space in Taiwan for like, where the fuck is this video? And it's just really, really fun. Let's check the link. There it goes. Yeah, here you go. This one. So I built it in Taiwan and then I launched it in Los Angeles. And then I filmed in LA. Two different neighborhoods. LA is very interesting in terms of how different neighbors are. Like hipster neighborhoods or tourism neighborhoods and stuff. I went to Hollywood, hikes and stuff to find the tourist spots and stuff, I don't know, but it was really fun. So yeah, that's like fun to stream and yeah. But I kind of think, 'cause last year was like spiritually, mentally crazy year for everybody else and for me. So I kinda figured out like, what's the new direction. I'm slowly figuring it out. New direction for what products I wanna build. And what I wanna do with my life and stuff. And where I wanna live and all these things I need to think about 'em. Yeah.

Hey man. Yeah, no, that's what I was actually about to say. I stream thinking. I stream my thought process. I stream my planning. I stream every time that I'm writing new marketing copy because there's a lot of scenarios where actually having some input is extremely valuable and you don't get that in you and your laptop.

Yeah, I feel like streaming can be therapy where your audience can, yeah, they all say something like you'd probably do this, or you should probably do this and maybe their right. Like I feel, like if you have an array and you get the most common value, that's juicy, I mean, it's this populism But it's, I feel it's populism as fuck, but it feels on the radar to take the most common value answer. Like if most people say, so one answer is probably that, I feel like not always, but in terms of getting advice, like Google Maps works with this, like Reddit works with this. Google Maps, you tag a place, and if enough people afford to start, it should be getting bigger and bigger. And usually it's a very honest depiction tag about a certain area in a city. So what it means like if all your audience says like if you advice them, they're probably right. If they get the same advice. Although it's kinda hard.

Even it can be like sometimes advice like is not just a trivialization of like a task. Sometimes it's not just like, what should this message be? Should it say this or this? Sometimes it's like very emotional things. Like I'm known for crying on this fricking stream all the time, which is normally a happy thing. But not always. Sometimes I'm just having a really rough day and I'll be like trying to get through some work and it's a real fucking trudge. And you know what? Every single time that happens, my entire, and I'll just be like, man, I'm just not feeling it today. Like my entire chat will light up and I'll just be like, hey man, like take the time you need, like, dude, you're killing it, like we love you, we're here for you. Like, you're totally, you got this.

Internet can be good.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You just need like one or two really good mods to make sure that all the bad people.

Dude, tell me about the fucking mods.

Hey man, I'll tell you this much. Like that is one of the things that I've come to appreciate the most. Like Astro, my head of everything, gives her time completely of her own accord just because she appreciates like--

So this is a random policy question and it's sensitive. People don't pay them off in Twitch, right?

Nope. I mean, at some point you do. At some point, once you get to such scale, a lot of people do. But no, most mods are like, my first mods are my friends. And they would come hang out whenever I was streaming and they would just ban people atAnd then slowly over time, people who hung out here all the time, people who really enjoyed my stream, some are like, hey, I appreciate you. Like I'm here because I like your content. I would love to help out.

That fucked up the whole with the SIMPs, I don't know if you're allowed to talk about it in Twitch.

Well, you can't say those words basically on stream, is kinda how it works now. The words that you were thinking of.

I didn't say anything, I'm so sure of it. I mean, like if you pay, if people pay, I don't even know that this is, okay. If people pay the moderators, you would have a much more honest vibe.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I mean, yeah, I don't know what I'm not allowed to say, but you would have a more transparent relationship.

Yeah, I know. Well, so here's the thing. You got to remember, this is very largely like the way that moderators come up and it is kind of inherent to the job. Like the phrase is not, I'm looking for work. The phrase is I want to help. And that's something that I've seen only on Twitch, not just in moderators, but across the community that is unequal. That does not exist anywhere else is the amount of people that just want to help. I've had people randomly make me UIs. I've had people make me logos. I've had people make me videos. People offer to edit stuff for me of their own accord, because they're just like, hey man, I like doing these things. It's fun for me. And I like you and I wanna help you with that. It's unprecedented. And that is something-- Yeah, I'm really trying to tap into that now because like part of my new year's stuff is like, I wanna actually put effort towards growing the stream. But again, I don't have a lot of time. And so I wanna finally take some people up on their offer where they keep saying, I wanna help. And I'm gonna say, okay. Like if you want to make a Snapchat for me and post to it, when I go live just like a two second clip once in awhile, am I asking a lot of them? No. Would it be asking a lot of myself? Yes. 'Cause I'm never gonna remember to do that and it's like, I wanna do, like, okay, lemme makes some TikToks or something. Like all that kinda stuff. And a lot of people use me now as an excuse to learn stuff. So I'm like, okay, you wanna go learn node? Great, here's a little side thing. I never have time to make that I've been thinking about, go do that. And then projects, I don't even have time to build or get built. And again, I only have, you know, only, this is pretty big for like the community.

So, you're like a cult leader.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Building a cult here.

Yeah, building a cult.

That's just true, yeah. Dude, it's so cool to step into different scenes. Like I feel like I'm stepping a little bit out of my indie maker scene here in this conversation and going into your scene on Twitch as different and there's some overlap. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Pretty cool to see.

Yeah that was the thing I appreciated most when you said that you wanted the AMA to be both ways. Those are really cool--

Yeah, man. Yeah, I know, it's yeah. Dude, I mean, maybe your next , you know?

I don't know about that--

I had a conversation, you don't wanna be next but yeah. It's really cool to see. So yeah.

I want to be the start-ups guy on Twitch.

Good, yeah. Do that, yeah.

That's like my goal statement. And it's a very big undertaking, but I realized that's kind of like an underserved niche here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can pull about 75 to a hundred people from Twitter into Twitch on the stream, which is nice. And then I checked out. I remember, yeah. I was also on Sci-Tech category and I remember the other life quarters, like there would be max 200 something. Still really small if you look at like... Like now I see Strange Parts, that electronic chip guy, 161 viewers. Still like relatively. 1400 viewers, Andy Milonakis gets like 3000 viewers, all that kinda IRL streamers. , He's a drag race. That guy who was in , it's amazing. I don't even like drag race, it's just fun to watch, 6,000 viewers. So that's like, you know, we're not doing bad, but it's like, ten times bigger than a coding stream. 10 to 20 times bigger. So I feel like there's some opportunities to grow there.

Yeah, and I think that's like, well, you gotta also acknowledged like remember, like 100 people and you're in the top 1% of Twitch.

Yeah, exactly.

You are in the top 1% of Twitch because you have an audience and your audience will follow you. That's huge. Like 100 people might seem like a small number when you have 100 times that.

No, I understand. Twitch is a different feel, yeah.

Yeah, and those are people who are actively watching you do shit for a long time. That is like the big, like the highest level of commitment that can exist realistically, outside of doing the damn work themselves.

You're right. And maybe that's it. And also, we need not forget, startup was not that big actually. Like I have a 100,000 followers on Twitter now. And I feel that's like a lot of people. It's like most of the people startups that are actually doing stuff, they're probably, they follow me all day. He has to have followed me or something. Like it's at max, like a few 100,000 people. They can't all be entrepreneurs. So like how many entrepreneurs are there in America? How many entrepreneurs are in America? 20, okay, that's quite a lot. But entrepreneurial, like two startup founders. How many startup founders are there in America? I didn't even notice no numbers about it. Yeah, I mean, we see law because we end up seeing, but it's actually, we're the only ones from our friends probably. I don't know anybody from my friends who's doing a business.

It's the bubble. It's the I am everybody effect. I'm so used to only talking to startup people. It's weird to me when people aren't in startups. That doesn't mean a lot of people aren't in startups, that just means that's my bubble. But that is not in any way representative, but here's the thing. You can never compare, here's something I've come to accept. You can't compare science and technology to your average stream because your average stream is pure entertainment. Like watching somebody play Apex is just like exciting, it's hype-filled, it's constant, it's colorful, it's loud, it's fast.

Yeah, and the game helps. The game is exciting. And then usually the personalities are very exciting, yeah.

We have to be interesting.

It is so difficult.

Now Prime. Prime proves this wrong a good bit because Prime manages to be excited. You go watch Prime. And he has like hardstyle, hardcore music going the whole time. Constantly coding and people come.

Yeah, but dude, he's on some fucking next hybrid. Like the people call me hyper. Dude, he's hyper.

Exactly, intentional.

He's like, okay yeah, okay, so, yeah. Function, okay, variable. Yeah, what are we gonna do?

Right.

Right. I can't do that.

Oh, but you can. You totally can.

If I don't want to.

There you go.

Hey, I wanna be myself.

Yeah, and you don't have to do that. That's the point. Like you can be like clearly, you are you, people like you for you, people will come to you for you, but you can't expect to get the numbers of the people who do do that without doing that, because that is much closer to just pure entertainment. And that's just reality. Once in a while, I try and have a Prime S stream where I will mimic that energy the whole time. It is exhausting, but it works.

I mean, I do it probably when I was three months. Wish I'd do it. Well, I play like techno music. It's already gone hardcore and then, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, man. I feel like the final part like it's interesting. It's like how we're moving, and I've said this for fucking five years. I feel like we're moving towards a more radical honesty world where people are more open and transparent about life and about the personalities on the internet. It's becoming more like we're less embarrassed about everything. We're all fucking imperfect and we will boo at B and have sex. And some of us, we get drunk and we throw up in the bar toilets and these things happen. And I feel like that's kinda against the Instagram five. Instagram is so still artificial. And I feel people are kinda done. I think definitely Generation Z is done with artificial. And yeah, I don't know. I feel like there's a big sub trends where old is part of where like realness, authenticity. Like I said before, and yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's like, how do I put this? You're a 100% right. And yet, like those viewers will, like that's why somebody like you or I can still garner 30, 100, 200 viewers. But all the same. Entertainment being in its purest form is always going to be that more exciting, more aggressive thing. And so we can garner an audience. And that audience will have a size that is reasonable and respectable and very satisfying, but all the same. We're never gonna be the NFL. We're never gonna be like the League of Legends Championship Series. And that's totally okay. The fact that I have like 25 viewers sometimes, like makes me shit my pants to this day with happiness. Like that's amazing. And relative--

People like you. You say this kinda shit more, yeah. Dude, Andy Milonakis, he's on Twitch. I watch him a lot. I love Andy. And he says, I could act a lot more like Greek God and stuff. And XYZ, I think he's naming, and all these people were like, . But that wouldn't be me, I'm just Andy. And he's just sitting in this chair and just chilling. And he gets consistent like 3000 people. But Andy is like, I could get 15, like 15, like 15,000 people if I did more depth, but I don't. Yeah so, same thing.

Yeah, it's just a choice. Like it's part of your brand at some point.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, it's just about quality. I agree.

Rich asks, do you enjoy Portugal? Why Portugal? Dude, it's so random that I'm in Portugal, but I was in Asia and then corona happened. I was in Chiang Mai and then we were in Penang in Malaysia. Penang is really nice. Street food and stuff. It's like this old colonial kind of city with Portuguese looking buildings, Portuguese buildings in Asia. I think it's Portuguese. Anyway, I was eating there with my friends and then corona happened. It was in China and then it was in Malaysia. And then it was in Penang. And we were like, we gotta get the fuck out 'cause we didn't know if it was like a plague. It might've been really bad. And it actually was pretty bad. So I booked flights to Singapore and then to Holland to get the fuck out 'cause I was like, okay, Asia is wrecked and Europe would be clean. Well, those are the wrong choice 'cause Asia State's kinda clean. They were able to lock down, and Europe and America got fucked. South America got fucked. And the death rate is so fucking low in Asia. It's insane, I should have stayed in Asia, but the West clearly fucked us up. Anyway, so all the borders got closed. And all the people, all the nomads kinda that were in Asia, they was, like half were like, fuck it, I'm gonna stay. But I was like, okay, what if shit goes wrong here? I'll be really far from safety. So I went back in half. 'Cause I almost kinda went back to home to America, Europe. And then Portugal came up 'cause Portugal, it's kinda warm. And corona, you wanna kinda, if you can be outside, it's good. So you wanna be in place kinda warm as long as possible. So we went to Portugal. After six months being in Holland in lockdown, I went to Portugal and now I'm a resident here. So I became a resident, became a tax resident. So I pay tax here. It's all legitimate stuff. And I have a rental house here. But kinda random. And it means, I'm on the beach here. So it's like one minute from the beach. Half minutes from the beach, amazing. I can see the sea from my window, just really chilled to see the sea. Like I said, San Diego. Yeah, it's like Mexico for Europeans, but then way more safe with good infrastructure, no corruption, just like a real European country. And it's very affordable 'cause then the economic crisis, so it's very cheap, way more cheap than Spain. Yeah, people are really, really nice. So yeah, I can recommend it. So all the most popular nomad place now in Europe is Portugal, Lisbon.

There you go.

There you go.

Oh man, I miss seeing the ocean. I lived in San Diego for a few months way back. I miss it, the weather. Oh my God, it's like fricking 15 degrees here every day. Like not even. And it's just, I never wanna go outside.

It's Fahrenheit or the Celsius, what? 15.

Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit.

50 or 15?

It's like zero Celsius. It's no, it's below zero Celsius. It's far below zero Celsius.

Mine is nine. Dude, that's Holland now as well. Yeah, that's where I'm from. Yeah, I mean. So here is Portugal. Sure. And the day it's about, I mean, not good, but 50 to 55 or something, Fahrenheit. So 11 Celsius. So pretty good. And it's still kinda sunny. The sun is kinda warmer. I can almost count.

Keep going.

You got it.

It's almost Spanish.

Sounds good. There you go.

I speak basic Spanish, but now I need to override with my Portuguese.

Bilingual king.

Is the food that good?

Comida is food. At least in Spanish. The food is good, man. It's a lot of fish. I live like, they catch the fish fresh so we can eat like crab and like lobster and stuff fresh. So it's pretty nice. You can go surfing, but it's kinda cool. So you need to wear a wetsuit. So I don't know.

Oh, I think that's probably the biggest thing I miss is having enough money to really like experience food in places.

Well, but the thing with Portugal is really affordable. It's like Asia. So it's like a meal can be, a meal in Holland, in Amsterdam will cost 40 euros now. A meal with a drink like 30 euros, which is like 40 US or something I think. Here it can be like $10 the same meal. So it's the average wage in Portugal now is something like $600 a month. So that means the cost of living is something like five times less than in US or Holland or Germany. So it's so super cheap, but then it's a very developed country. It's fucking weird because of the economic crisis. They want foreigners to come in. So if foreigners come, they spend money and then people get wealthy again. And so it's good for the economy if foreigners come. And then they're very happy that foreigners come here.

Full circle back to the tourism conversation.

Exactly, that's it, money. Yeah.

All right. We have like one or two last questions on this list that I wanna make sure we get through. Somebody asked how old you are.

I'm 34.

There you go. And this is kind of like the same question twice. How much dev do you need to know to start a startup? And did you know your code upfront or did you learn as you went?

Dude, I learned as I went. And I could do WordPress. So like WordPress, you edit the teams and stuff, but I couldn't do it very properly and I couldn't do PHP very properly. So I had to learn on the spot when my practice took off. And if you go way back machine, on nomadlist.com and you see all the versions, like it goes from looking really shit to slowly better. And I didn't know how databases worked. I didn't know SQL when I started. So that's how much I knew. I put stuff in text files. I put stuff in, and then in JSON text files, I learned JSON and code. The loading time with Nomad List in 2015 was 32 seconds.

Nice.

Because it would pull the whole data from the Google Sheets, put it in JSON. Dude, it's saying, and now it's like 600 milliseconds, so it is nice. But I learned lo in the spot. And just in time learning. And I think that's a good way to learn for sure.

Definitely. I think that's a huge way to really enforce that concept of MVP. Like if you wanna launch early, it's really easy to launch early would you have no idea what the hell you're doing? 'Cause you're like, well, here's a piece of garbage, but it works. I'm proud of it now, it's going up. Did you have users with a 32 second load time?

Yeah. Yeah, they still went through the website, but I think this was like only for a few days, but generally it was a really slow website. It was famous for being slow. For a long time. Like it took like seconds to load like four or five at least, yeah. It was insane.

It's just a giant table.

Yeah, I just learned like you shouldn't put logic on the clients. I mean, when the PHP script loads, you should have everything already ready for . And then show it too. Like this kinda course of aesthetic. But like you should do at least a less possible database stuff when a client close the page. Like do that with later with AJAX or whatever, but don't let the page load as fast as possible, I learned. So it took a few years to learn.

Huge. Yeah. No, it's yeah. That's still my favorite part of my current MVP is it's only a front end, so I can't have those problems.

Fuck it, yeah.

It's just truly hilarious. All right, that is actually, that is the end of our list of questions here. We did it.

Clap for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, I can't clap. There's noise canceling on the microphone. So like.

Yeah, dude, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed that. You won't hear anything. It's really funny 'cause if I clap at the same time, then my voice gets all robotic and shit. So it sounds really funny.

It feels pretty good. This is insane technology.

Yeah, dude. , right?

No, this isn't the mic at all. This is actually software.

No, I mean, this is GeForce NVIDIA.

It's Krisp. This is a software called Krisp with a K.

RTX had an audio thing now, right?

Yeah, I think so. This is the one that . Yeah, there you go. This is the one that discord uses. And you just have to refer like one person and you get it like free for two months. So this has been really big. So like my roommate's been walking around, cooking stuff and everything. You haven't heard any of it. So, pretty solid.

Hey man, yeah, good.

I would definitely recommend. Yeah, cool.

Hey, thanks so much for having me. And it was really fun. I hope it was fun for you too and for your viewers. We still have 50 viewers, so that's kinda good.

That's insane. Most of the time, like all of the drop-off happens within about a half hour. You and I have been going, I don't know if you realize this, we've been talking for four hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we said we were gonna make it like Joe Rogan, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was--

We just need to get high though. We need to smoke weed, man.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I know--

Maybe next time.

Yeah, yeah, I'll go buy some mushrooms or something.

It's legal in Chicago?

Weed is legal in Chicago, yeah.

It's legal here too, so we could smoke on the, is it TOS?

TLC. Oh, is it TOS? That's a good question. Well, I don't smoke either way, so I probably would, you're more than welcome to. I've definitely seen people do it on stream. I've seen a lot of people try and hide it. So I don't know. But yeah, generally what a doubt, just assume it's TOS. You don't wanna get wrecked. Twitch has abandoned people left and right these days. Everyone's getting YMCAd. Yeah.

Yeah. I understand though. Like we're banning people on my website because they're being outrageous against TOS. So it's part of the thing.

Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely gonna cut this up and put this on YouTube. I'll probably chunk by like topic and everything. And I'm sure people will find that interesting.

Yeah, cool, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, before we finish up here, anything that you need to shout out? You're hiring, that's probably the biggest one. What do you got?

Yeah, so hiring. Yes. And do I have a command yet?

There's one for just Levels.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so if you wanna follow me on Twitter, check out my website, nomadlist.com. Once corona ends, I would all invite you to, see if you can do your job remotely. Ask your boss if you can work remotely. After corona too, if you can continue doing it. And then, talk to your friends, your family, your partner, whoever, if they would like to consider. If you're already happy where you are, you should stay there. But if you think, okay, maybe I wanna live close to the beach so I can go surfing. Or maybe I wanna live near where my hobby is. Maybe your hobby is like Anime. You wanna move to Tokyo or to Kilto or whatever. Or your hobby is Thai food. You wanna learn to cook. Maybe you can move to Chiang Mai for half a year or whatever. It's all possible with remote work. And it's all possible with information on my website, nomadlist.com. And you can get a remote job or a remoteok.io. And that I hope you'll consider it because I feel like where you're born isn't necessarily where you are supposed to end up. And because we have this giant globe planet, and I feel like the less nationalism we have and the more we go around the world and meet different cultures and stuff, the more we realize we're all the same. And I think that's the most fundamental reason to travel or to live in different places. And that's kinda my mission to make you all do that. So peace out.

There you go, yeah. Beautiful ending. I will also say he also has a book that you can read. We've read it on stream a little bit, very solid. If you're interested in startups, if you're interested in making things very quickly, it just covers the easy and potentially right way to do it. Or at least the way to do it, that you risk the least and have the most upside. I swear by a lot of the things in there, a lot of our community really loves it. So definitely pick up a copy if you're interested in this stuff. And join Discord if you wanna talk more about it, we're always around. We do a lot of startup things in there. And yeah, all right.

Does your audience have a name? Are they like believers or are they like . And what does as a name like monsters.

Yeah, I've only ever called them one thing once--

Roxkstar.

That was it, yeah.

They're Roxkstar, yeah. Thank you, Roxkstars.

There you go. Wonderful. All right. So to finish us off very quickly, as you're familiar with raiding, we're just gonna go find a different--

Dude, can we raid Strange Parts?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Can you message? Can you put a message in that, I also raided with you or something. Is it possible?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we go. All right, so everybody, here's what we're gonna do. Everybody listen up. We're gonna need you to do this for us and in thanks for Levels spending his time here. We're gonna go through with this raid and I'm going to give you a specific message. Dude, what do you want it to say? Just like raid courtesy of Levels or something like that?

Raid courtesy of levelsio.

Raid courtesy of levelsio. So we're gonna skip the free real estate this time and we're just gonna do this, all right. Get your slash me in there. Raid courtesy of Levelio. Everybody start copy pasting it in chat right now. So I know that you have it. And then we get in there. You've got about maybe 40 seconds here. When we get in there, you're gonna span that. You're gonna absolutely span that.

I mean, somebody clip it.

100%.

We have to see this shit.

Oh yeah. No, no, no, don't worry. In fact, here's what I'll even do. I will open up that Twitch channel right now. Hopefully it'll load in time, which I cannot promise. But there we go, there we go. Keep getting a mixture. Make sure you do the slash me before it gives out the color so that we can get the wonderful rainbow. It will be truly, truly beautiful. And let's see if we can get this Twitch stream loaded up before it dies. Unlikely.

Dude, it didn't start shit, it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's a CPU thing, but regardless, whether or not we get it in time. Oh, we just might. Thank you guys so, so, so much for watching. Thank you Pete for hanging out.

What's the time limit?

It's five seconds. So thank you everybody. Appreciate you. Have an awesome night guys. Bye-bye.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I see it. I see it.

I'm getting ads.

Strange Parts: [Computer] Roxkstar raiding with a party of 50. My goodness, welcome. Raid courtesy of levelsio. You're here Levels? Are you roxkstar74? I don't actually know. Welcome everybody. We are programming a, well, follow me in the link between our telepresence robot, which is sitting behind me.

This year I reached several milestones. My revenue grew to over $1 million per year. Traffic increased to 1.4 billion requests per year and I'm serving over 1 million users per month. Over 20,000 people have paid for my products now. Nomad List and Remote OK are the main revenue generators responsible for 3/4 of revenue.

From the beginning of my little startup career I wanted to prove you can do things differently when building a company.

Without funding

I wanted to prove you don't need to raise venture capital investment: early on I was never able to get venture capital investment, and I discovered you don't need it. Instead of raising money you can operate extremely lean and scrappy and still succeed. My belief was customers would care about the story behind the product more than how it looked. And they would be okay that it wasn't immediately perfect and might have some bugs. Instead, they'd appreciate the authenticity of that more. As long as I'd improve based on customer feedback, I'd get a loyal and happy customer base and get more customers from word of mouth.

Without a team

I wanted to prove you don't need to hire a big team, but instead could do it mostly solo by learning how to things yourself. When I started out I could barely code, but I learnt it on the spot. From the beginning I've come up with the idea for, then coded and built every single feature on my sites. I've designed the layout, the logos and picked the colors (mostly looking at what the big startups like Airbnb and Product Hunt did). I've edited the landing page videos myself, sent newsletters and did all the marketing myself. (I did pay two part-time contractors: 1) to keep the server secure so I wouldn't get hacked and lose my customer's data; 2) a moderator to keep Nomad List's community a friendly place).

Without fancy technology

I wanted to prove you don't need to use the latest hipster JavaScript framework and a complicated hosting set up with hundreds of servers in a cluster so you could scale. I use a single VPS server on Linode for all my sites. I've reached the frontpage of Reddit multiple times with it. I don't use any framework except jQuery. And I use a language despised by most professional engineers called PHP, also without a framework. My code is mostly vanilla. Kinda like duct tape programming. My deployment process is extremely primitive: I write my code in Sublime Text, then I test it on my laptop (I have NGINX locally, so I open nomadlist.test for ex), then if it works I upload it with Panic Transmit via SFTP. I don't use Git and my versioning works by having backup services with infinite history running on my laptop. But I'd mostly just undo in my code editor.  I said primitive, right :D

Without paid marketing

I wanted to prove you don't need to buy ads, but instead that the best marketing is organic and that if you make a product customers use and love, that word of mouth is your best funnel. I've used the story of my own life and building my products with all the ups and downs as my primary way of marketing. Instead of acting like a professional startup founder whose life and business is perfect, I've tried to be as transparent and vulnerable as possible. People like to go on a journey with you especially if you share all your imperfections and mistakes.

Normalization of deviance

This scrappy way of building also made me ship super fast. I saw it as a light form normalization of deviance:

Normalization of deviance is a term used by the American sociologist Diane Vaughan to describe the process in which deviance from correct or proper behavior becomes normalized in a corporate culture.

Vaughan defines this as a process where a clearly unsafe practice comes to be considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe: "a long incubation period [before a final disaster] with early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored or missed completely".

Why prove it at all?

If it's possible to build million dollar companies without being able to code properly, without outside investment, without a team, without a network and without fancy technology, that means theoretically any person with a laptop anywhere in the world with internet access can now learn to code, find a problem, build a solution, (and with Stripe expanding around the world) charge money for it.

Building a company is becoming democratized, globally

I knew if I'd show this was possible, with me as an especially imperfect example, some people might try to do the same. And together with lots of other people doing the same, we could start a little wave of people building companies in a more organic and lean way without all the above. And I think that's happened by now.

As more people will realize this around the world in the next few years, more people around the world will try to start companies. And more will succeed. And the barriers to entry for starting a startup will decrease.

There's the easy attack vector of me coming from the Netherlands, a first world country, having a (free but) good education, all which contribute and none I'd deny. But that doesn't negate my argument completely. Building a company is becoming more democratic globally even if there might still be differences based on where you're from. And on a meta level, companies being built online by people around the world will help those differences gradually become less as they succeed and bring money back into their economies. Like a feedback loop.

Silicon Valley can now be anywhere.

And now for....normalization of non-deviance (or "the end of index.php")

Now that I've proved this up to a considerable amount of revenue and impact, by my own standards at least, I think it would be stupid to stubbornly try to do things scrappy and solo just because I did until now. I told my friend John from Ghost:

My sites are finally operating stable enough and I don't need to put out fires or fix bugs all day, so this month I've started to think about hiring people. For that I needed to clean things up. So I think my new focus is normalization of non-deviance. Instead of scrappy, I'll try to do things properly from this stage on, at least for Nomad List and Remote OK:

I'm now using Git

I've put my sites on GitHub, and I can now deploy my code from my laptop's local environment, push it to GitHub, which then pushes it to my Linode VPS. Working with Git makes sense because if I hire people, they'll need access to the code base easily. I've also started cleaning up some old code and technical debt so it'll be more easily understandable.

I'm now using Composer and NPM

I've learned how to use Composer and NPM to install libraries and even use GitHub's Dependabot to auto update my libraries. Before this I'd manually include and update libraries.

Building admin tools for the people I hire

I've started to create more admin tools for my sites. For example to edit a job post as an admin on Remote OK, I used to have to do it in the db. Now an admin can do it on the edit page. And on Nomad List, on the admin page new members can be screened for spam and easily flagged.

Hiring people

And I've actually started hiring: the first person I've hired is a customer support specialist. Most of my customer support is automated but I still get about 30 inquiries per month. Also the customer support specialist can help do other stuff like flag people joining Nomad List with fake/spammy accounts or remove stuff like NSFW profile photos. And other regular things I'd do like organizing Nomad List meetups remotely.

Raising money

Just kidding, I don't believe I need to raise investment though, the problem with venture capital for me is the same as it always was. I don't want the stress of having to grow my revenue to a $100M/y company or go to $0. I'm fine with how it's going now and I can cover costs fine.

From rusty to shiny

Before, my goal was to make my sites operate like this, built on-the-fly with scrap metal I found on the road, rough but effective and fast to build and iterate on. And it worked:

The goal now is to have my sites operate without me for a year or more. That means I can focus on what I think is most fun to do: building new startups, products and new features. And the objective is to make them operate more like the pic below, rough but now clean and shiny:

The end of solo

As my friend AJ from Carrd wrote this year, it'd be silly to just keep it solo for the sake of it. We've outgrown the stage of side projects and people do depend on our projects to get shit done.

With Remote OK, people pay a lot of money, anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars per month, to hire people. If the site repeatedly breaks and support doesn't answer, that means a lost customer who could have spent tens of thousands of dollars over the next year. With Nomad List, since it's B2C, the damage is smaller but still present.

Rest lightly, the deviance will continue, elsewhere

This isn't the end of the deviant scrappy life for me though.

When building something new, like an MVP or new feature, I think I'll still do things the old scrappy way though. No Git. Just FTP. No frameworks. Just solo. No outsourcing it to hired people.

I'm convinced doing things scrappy is the best way to validate new products or features and iterate towards making something that people actually want to use and pay for.

Instead of working with a big team far removed from your customers, burning through millions of dollars of funding that you spend on ads so you have no idea if people actually want your product, and losing yourself in overengineering technical solutions that customers won't care about anyway.

Scrappy is the closest you can be to the product and customer feedback loop. And since you're solo, it's super fast. No arguments, just shipping. Make, get feedback, iterate, get feedback, improve etc.

And that's one of my favorite things to do in the world.

One of the most common things I see with people launching startup landing pages is that it's completely unclear what the product or service does.

They try to overcomplicate it and write in a vague jargon to make it look like a "big startup" but actually all it does is confuse people who then do not buy their product and do not convert into paying users.

Copywriting isn't that hard, especially if you're just starting out: in most cases you can just explain your product how you'd explain it to a friend. Maybe later on when you're making millions, you can start thinking of hiring copywriters and A/B test to see what converts best. Don't overcomplicate your MVP.

Today on Twitter that exactly happened:

I took what they wrote in the tweet to me and edited their landing page with the exact same text. Now it's clear what the product does.

That's how easy copywriting can be! Explain your product to your friend and put that on your landing page.