Latest / Cheeky Pint / Serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels on building in public and living as a digital nomad

Transcript

Serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels on building in public and living as a digital nomad · Cheeky Pint

• John Collison: I think you are maybe the most prominent indie hacker. Nomad List got to $700k in ARR. Remote OK has gotten to $3.4 million in revenue. PhotoAI got to $600k in ARR. And these are all just you. Like, these are not startups that you have started, these are just Pieter Levels productions. You're also at the vanguard of the digital nomad thing. You’ve lived in more than 40 countries and 150 cities? Pieter Levels: Yeah, I think so. I've mostly just been working on my laptop for the last decade, traveling around, just making stuff, making little creative projects that I needed to solve my problems. And then most of the time, nobody else needed that problem solved. But a few times, it worked. And then, I mean, I used Stripe a lot, right? When Stripe came to Holland—back then I lived in Holland, it was 2014, I think—I was like, "Oh, shit, now I can start making money." And that was the year I started making money. When I was a kid, I think I was 12 years old, I was making websites too, and I wanted to charge money on the internet. And I remember signing up to Worldpay—I think it was Worldpay—and there was a giant contract. It was in America, and I lived in Holland. I asked my dad to sign for it. And my dad read the whole contract, and it was like, "You're liable for damages up to $100 million." He was like, “What am I signing for?” I'm like, "No, Dad, you don't understand. I need to make money on the internet. Just sign it." And he signed it. We faxed it to America, and I had a merchant account. I never sold anything—luckily, maybe, because otherwise we would be liable for damages. John Collison: I feel like this is a common thread amongst entrepreneurs, getting their parents to help them with things that they shouldn't do. Patrick, at one point, got a demo of a Sun Microsystems workstation. Pieter Levels: Oh my god. John Collison: Remember, these were very high-end workstations. And he just filled out the form and got them, and they came with a truck and they unloaded it… Pieter Levels: Oh my god. John Collison: … and he was playing with it. And I just remember, the Sun Microsystems rep was calling the house and they were like, "Is Mr. Collison interested in continuing with a purchase?" And our mom was like, "Mr. Collison is doing his homework, and you need to stop calling me." They hadn't realized that he was 12 years old at the time, or whatever. Pieter Levels: Man, amazing. John Collison: Did you try to monetize projects before you started building them on YouTube or— Pieter Levels: No, because… So, what happened was, I was making music and I was DJing. I was organizing nightclub nights in Holland and the UK and stuff, drum and bass music. You're Irish, you know drum and bass. Drum and bass, most people don't really know it, but British people know, Irish people know it. So, when YouTube started monetizing videos, I was uploading my music already. So I was one of the first YouTube monetizing people. I was number one or number two in Holland for a while, in the top channels. But the thing is, I started making money, like $1,000, and then $2,000, and then $8,000 per month, a lot of money. And I was in university. John Collison: So it seems like you've done well on this, kind of being a person on the internet. How much of a partisan are you on the topic of the indie hacker approach? Because obviously, most of tech doesn't run in the indie hacker way, where, again, you're building multimillion-dollar revenue businesses all by yourself. Do you think way more people should be doing the indie hacking thing? Pieter Levels: I mean, I think the internet makes you partisan, right? So I don't think I've been partisan much, but I think— John Collison: Until you got on X. Pieter Levels: Yeah, X does help with it. But you have to understand—2013, '14, when I entered the startup world, there was barely any…, There was no indie hacking, there was no bootstrapping, almost, except Patrick McKenzie, who you know well. You would find investors, you would raise money, you would grow faster, you would hire a lot of people, you would get a big office. Remote didn't exist, remote work. So compared to that, what's possible now? There's different… There are alternatives possible now. John Collison: Yes. Pieter Levels: And you can make a lot of money with this. I don't think you can become a billionaire. Maybe we will see that in the future. John Collison: So you think for talented engineers who have a commercial brain and who are good at product… Pieter Levels: Yeah. John Collison: … they should at least seriously evaluate the path of just building their own successful products on the internet, like you? Pieter Levels: Yeah, I think… Look, what I hate most about VC stuff is when you see people burn money. You probably hate this as well. A company of no users raises $50 million, $100 million, and you're like, “What is this product?” Like, it doesn't have any traction and it's just hype. We've all seen these startups. And they just disappear. I think it's much more interesting to—and maybe you guys did the same with Stripe—validate first and build a business first, and see if you get traction. Like, get to $50k or $100k a month. John Collison: No, look, I'm with you. Despite the fact Stripe has obviously raised VC, we just started writing code, we got our first paying customer way before we raised any money for the business… Pieter Levels: Wow. John Collison: … and then it just kind of grew and grew and grew. And it's a little bit different for a company in the financial services space. You need to be well-capitalized. Pieter Levels: Yeah. But this is the thing. It’s natural. It's kind of organic, right? Even if you raise money, you did it in an organic way, and you only raise more when you see the growth coming. John Collison: Have you ever been tempted to raise for one of your projects? Pieter Levels: No. But a lot of VCs have been in my DMs, and they want to invest. And I think because now I'm financially independent, I’ve made a lot of money, now I could do it, because now I'm at a point where it sounds fun to play with other people's money. But also, in a serious way, it sounds fun to go to a bigger thing. I mean, that's something you typically say after you've been a week in San Francisco, right? You start talking like this. But I'm not convinced yet. But I think now it would be fun, for example. But the problem is if you're a founder and you raise money, you kind of need to go big or bust, right? It's hard to stay in between. You can't make $10 million a year. You kind of need to make $100 million a year. You kind of need to become a unicorn. That's difficult, because the odds of that happening are not super high. Like, it's a few percentage [points], maybe. So most people don't get there, and they do spend five years or, I don't know, seven years of their 20s on that. And that's something where, if you would be an indie, and you would have a $10-million-a-year company… John Collison: It’d be great. Pieter Levels: …and you have ownership, it’s amazing. You have so much money. John Collison: You're saying as a VC-funded startup, you're kind of locking in the expectations for your company in advance as to what's successful and what's not. Pieter Levels: Yeah. John Collison: And it's quite liberating to just start building things. Pieter Levels enterprises, broadly, is making $3.1 million a year. Pieter Levels: Yeah. John Collison: And you've launched 70 projects? Pieter Levels: Yeah. Probably more, because I don't have the list, but it's like— John Collison: You've launched so many that you lose track, but it's at least 70. Do you shut them down if they're becoming too small to be relevant? Pieter Levels: No, I try to keep a lot of them running. I like to keep the internet history existing. It's sad to see all these websites disappearing. John Collison: Yes, yes. Pieter Levels: I keep them on my server running. John Collison: URLs shouldn't break. Pieter Levels: Yeah. One product that still runs on Stripe is Go Effing Do It. I don't know if I can curse, but… John Collison: Sure. Pieter Levels: … gofuckingdoit.com, where, for example, you want to quit smoking. So you write, "I want to quit smoking," or "I don't want to smoke." And the deadline is 1 December 2025. And then you have to enter the email of your friend and he checks it. And then you enter your credit card with Stripe and it creates a customer, and it doesn't charge the customer yet. And you set a price. So, for example, $100. And then on 1 December 2025, your friend gets an email, "Did he smoke?" And he says yes or no. And if it's yes, you get charged and I get the money. And the product still works, and it still makes, I think, $50 a month, and I didn't change the code in 10 years. It’s PHP, you know? John Collison: Yes. Pieter Levels: It still runs. John Collison: So part of what you're doing is you're creating all these businesses that have actually pretty long lifetimes as well. Pieter Levels: Yeah. John Collison: Who should try the digital nomad thing? Who does it appeal to? Pieter Levels: I think anyone. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 70 or whatever. It's so interesting, because you change as a person also. But I think, digital nomad, it's so cool because leaving your own country, which I did… The first time, I did a study exchange program. I went to Korea in 2010, I think, from university, and I was like, “This is a completely different world.” I’d never left Europe before. I went to France, you know, Italy, but there's neon signs and it's like… John Collison: Faraway places. Pieter Levels: ... it's crazy. John Collison: Yeah. Pieter Levels: This changes you on such a fundamental level, going to the other side of the world. It's amazing. And it's way safer than you think. Usually nothing happens. I've never been robbed except in my hometown. It was a burglary. So in 10 years of digital nomading, nothing ever happened. So, yeah, I think it completely expands your horizon. There's nothing I can recommend as much as for people to just go travel. And don't be scared, man. There are always people who will help you. If you don't speak the language, you can use your arms— John Collison: How did you make it not be lonely, not knowing anyone in all these places? Pieter Levels: It was extremely lonely. John Collison: Oh, okay. It just was lonely. Pieter Levels: I was like, "This is amazing." And then you lose contact with the grounds of your own culture, your home country. And everything's fine, people are nice, but you're like… It fundamentally removes your foundational culture at some point. John Collison: You become untethered. Pieter Levels: Yeah, untethered. That's it. And you have to rebuild it up. And that's a psychologically taxing process. It takes some years. John Collison: Yes. What have you learned from Patio11? Pieter Levels: Dude, amazing guy. What an inspiration. So, you have to go in the time machine. Back in 2013, or even earlier, I'm reading Hacker News in university, and I read two types of articles. I read, "We’re raising $40 million for a startup." Back then, Hacker News was full of raising, it was like special. Now you don't see that anymore. Now it's more tech. And you'd read Patrick McKenzie, “I made $60,000 this year with Appointment Reminder.” This site, which was like… He would go to hair salons, I think, and then sell his appointment reminder website. John Collison: It just reminded people to show up for their appointments. It was the most amazingly simple business. Pieter Levels: Yes, it was amazing. And I would read this post. I was like, “This iss amazing.” Like, $60k a year, that's big. We need to do this. So seeing somebody making a cool, honest business… And another guy, Jon Yongfook, he was a few years after Patrick McKenzie, but he was also traveling as a nomad in Singapore and Asia, and he was very well-dressed, and he was making beautiful SaaS. I was impressed that they were making honest, cool, clean businesses. John Collison: Yes. Pieter Levels: And I wanted to do the same thing. John Collison: One thing I was reflecting on is the fact that you are now a big brand, in a way, the brand of Pieter Levels, where... Well, no, think about it. You sold $50,000 of preorders for your book before you had written any of the book. You just said, "I might write a book, and buy it here," and you got $50,000 of sales. And so, to what extent does the recipe now work because you are launching these products, and if someone else was to build the flight simulator or if someone else was to write the book… Pieter Levels: Yeah, I've seen these replies too. John Collison: …then it wouldn't sell as well? Pieter Levels: Yeah. Man. I think of course it's part of it, but I also work really hard, because I tweeted, I think, 125,000 times over 10 years, so it's like 40 tweets a day. John Collison: You've contributed so many brain cells to spending time on X. Pieter Levels: Exactly. John Collison: Are you getting a lot of ChatGPT referrals? Talk about this. Pieter Levels: It’s amazing, yeah. I've seen the growth. ChatGPT, a month ago, was... So, if you have the Google traffic, that's like 100%. ChatGPT was, like, 4%. Now it's 20%. John Collison: Wait. In the last month, ChatGPT has gone from 4% to 20% of your traffic? Pieter Levels: In the last month, yeah. So it went 5x. And I checked other websites; it's the same story. And I think it's beneficial for me because it's very hard for me, as a solo person, to do SEO stuff. And I hate SEO stuff. I just want to make a cool product and a cool website with a nice title and whatever. John Collison: You talk in your book about automation being really important for making the indie hacker recipe work. Because I guess if you get drowned in operational work, you're not going to be able to do multiple projects, you won't do as many shots on goal, everything like that. Pieter Levels: Yeah. John Collison: So how much has the automation of your business tasks improved over the past 10 years, if at all? Pieter Levels: Man, it's been amazing for me. John Collison: What have you automated? Pieter Levels: So, for example, Nomad List, it's a big website, you can find places to live and work remotely. But you can also join a community. You can pay $100, you can join a community of meetups, a chat group, all this stuff. This chat group was hell to maintain. I mean, you know from communities, it's so much drama. I've had crazy stories. John Collison: Wait. Is the AI content moderating the community now? Pieter Levels: Exactly. It was very hard for me to moderate this stuff, and it was very hard for me to be impartial.You have, like, politically different sides. And I feel I'm kind of in the middle, kind of neutral. But the moment you ban one side, they're like, "Oh, you're on that side." And with GPT, it's actually neutral. It’s really good. I write down the rules of my chat group—and it's 40,000 people—and it doesn't ban anymore, it just mutes people for a day or 10 minutes or— John Collison: Like the debate moderators at the presidential debates. You have that, but ChatGPT. Pieter Levels: Yeah, essentially. It just muted them. That's it. So, like, I can either hire people or I can just use the GPT API. I don't like hiring because I need to manage people, and I don't really like managing people because it's not my thing. I like to create things. John Collison: Well, in your book, you recommend that people build for their own understanding of the problems they have. Shouldn't you make an investment product? You and Warren Buffett basically have the same views, which is, a lot of money managers and wealth management products… Pieter Levels: Oh, come on. John Collison: ... are very bad because they're charging you very high fees to invest in bad things. And actually, what the vast majority of people should do is buy a simple index, maybe the S&P 500 or the MSCI World or something, and then just leave the money there and don't touch it, and especially don't sell it during drawdowns. Pieter Levels: Yeah, so, Vanguard. John Collison: Exactly. Pieter Levels: But Vanguard already does that. John Collison: But there aren't good products for Europeans, I feel like. That's less common. Pieter Levels: We buy them via Ireland. UCITS. John Collison: Sure, you do. But again, I feel like, if you want an idea for the next business, I think good investment… Pieter Levels: There’s a lot of money in there. John Collison: ... good investment products for Europeans. Pieter Levels: But then you increase the price. That’s the problem. Like, if you resell a Vanguard ETF that has a 0.07% fee per year— John Collison: No, you'd need large scale to make it work. Pieter Levels: Yeah, yeah. John Collison: And maybe that doesn't fit with the indie hacker philosophy. Pieter Levels: Yeah. No, I think it's a cool idea because it helps people get richer and wealthier. John Collison: Yeah, and there's this home country bias in stock purchasing, where… Pieter Levels: Oh my god. My parents have this. John Collison: ... people in Germany buy German stocks. Pieter Levels: This is crazy. I told my parents, they're like— John Collison: Yeah, they're buying the Dutch stock market, probably? Pieter Levels: Yeah. And I'm like, "You need to buy an S&P fund." They're like, "No, we're not going to buy in America. We're going to buy Royal Dutch Shell." I'm like, "Come on." And they have all their money in Shell, in oil. And then, “Have you seen Tesla, electric cars now?” And they're like, "No, it's not going to happen." So, yeah, I think investing is very important. Look, if you make money as an indie hacker, even as a VC founder, it's very important to not spend all this money, because you have a limited time in startups to make money, I think, and put this money in the market. And it doesn't have to be only America. I always talk about Asia, and it's very hard to benefit in Asia from the economy's rising because the product market is not as efficient as in the US. So you should definitely have the S&P 500. But definitely, you can look at other ETFs in the rest of the world. I've got some in China, it’s never doing well, but at some point I'll be right, you know. Pieter Levels: So, yeah, it's very important to invest your money well. And most people don't know personal finance. Like, you don't get it in school. You save money, but your money, your cash, disappears the moment you have it. John Collison: Yes. Are you one of those people who hacks the thermostat when you get to a hotel room? Pieter Levels: I've tried, but I've never succeeded. I've watched the YouTube videos. John Collison: I also have failed. I've watched the YouTube videos. Pieter Levels: But it’s always some different model. Siemens. John Collison: I think they're wise to such people. Like, they make it hard to override them now. Pieter Levels: This air conditioning problem, it’s such a big problem here. John Collison: We need people in the comments to teach us how to override the hotel thermostats, because the ones that are set to, like, 72 degrees Fahrenheit or 22 degrees Celsius in Europe… I mean that should be— Pieter Levels: I mean, how many times do you get back to Europe? Often, right? John Collison: Often, yeah Pieter Levels: It's a massive problem. John Collison: The European hotels and air conditioning, it's not a good situation. Pieter Levels: No, but it's Airbnbs, too. My friend went to an Airbnb in Italy and it said, "Don't put it below 25 degrees because of regulation." It's like, this is unacceptable. And all the studies show, like, look at Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore… John Collison: For sleep, you actually need it pretty cold, yeah. Pieter Levels: You need it really cold. The sleep quality gets so good. John Collison: We're talking about European air conditioning. You've talked about the EU accelerationism movement. What is required for EU accelerationism? Pieter Levels: So, I think it was two years ago or one year ago, I saw Beff Jezos, who's Guillaume Verdon, he made e/acc, which is effective accelerationism, which is like, “Let's accelerate America again.” Like, it's been a very depressing time, especially with Covid. Let's look at the benefits of technology and AI for the future. And I thought, “That's amazing. We need to do the same for Europe.” So I did EU/acc. Like, let's do this for Europe. Because Europe, there's the same kind of depressing, kind of down vibe about the future. And I understand, because there are a lot of problems, it's not an easy life for a lot of people. So that got a lot of traction. And I crowdsourced this bug board where everybody could submit their ideas for how to save Europe, how to fix Europe. And tens of thousands of people submitted ideas, and then they upvoted each other's ideas and stuff. I think number one is just, like, remove the regulatory burden for new businesses. And there's other stuff, like remove the cookie banner and stuff. I hope it will be easier in Europe to start a business, run a business… John Collison: Yes. Pieter Levels: ... as easy as it is in America. I think there's so much... Nobody doubts European talent or intelligence. It’s cool, smart, ambitious people. But there's a ceiling for them. They can't go higher because they're getting pushed down by governments, by regulation. And it's like, what are you doing, European countries? You have amazing people. You could compete easily. John Collison: Yeah. I think there are kind of two things. One is where the regs are just bad. And the second is where the regulations are not standardized, where employment law is really annoyingly different across European countries. So if you're a 10-person startup and you employ people across Europe, it's actually really cumbersome. Whereas in the United States, that's quite easy. Pieter Levels: Yeah. The problem with Europe is… It's very funny. You have all these different countries, and the left side of the political spectrum are not very pro-business, they're more for regulation and for protecting people, and climate change and stuff. And then you have the right side, which is pro-business, but they're also nationalists. But the problem is, what we need ispro-business and federal Europe. Like you need to be pro-Europe,not nationalist, and you need to be pro-business. So it doesn't exist. So it's like, where do you start? I think it's actually good that it's going so bad in Europe now, because it's almost like the patient is so sick— John Collison: Never waste a crisis. Pieter Levels: Yeah. Finally, Europeans are like, “Maybe we should do something.” Two years ago, when I would tweet about this, they said, "Stop talking bad about Europe. It's going great here." And now they're like, "Okay, maybe we need to do something." John Collison: What would you highlight as the ideas that need fixing? Pieter Levels: I think the problem is, if there are not a lot of opportunities in Europe for people to get jobs or start businesses, then they're going to look down on Americans getting rich with these big businesses because they're jealous. Europeans are jealous. And you need to change this idea that business is bad, that getting rich is bad. Getting rich is simply a representation of your added value to the world economy, in most cases. Of course, there are edge cases. Generally, the money in your bank account is how much value you added to society. And in Europe, that completely does not... They really think different. In America, you get much more respect for being an entrepreneur. But I would say, don't be afraid of money. Money is a tool in this world to change the world. John Collison: If you were running Stripe, what would you fix? Pieter Levels: I think it's going really well recently. I think it wasn't going well after Covid. There were a few years where the API was getting more and more complicated. We all complained about it. It felt like it was being run by engineers, not by people who actually use Stripe. Like, illogical defaults on the API. One time, I had this bug, and it was from the Stripe API because it changed, and it didn't create a customer anymore. Everybody was a guest. I was like, "Why would I want people to be a guest? I can't even curate them as a customer anymore." Those kinds of things. But now it seems much better, and it seems like sanity has returned. But it's scary, and it must be scary for you, because you're running a big company. It's very hard to manage a company from small to big and not become a corporate. Of course, you're always corporate because you need to do B2B sales. But you need to keep the original Stripe mentality of, like, simple, right? Stripe JS, it was one line of code you would add to your page and you had a payment button, you know? Keeping that is so important, keeping the original soul of the company. And I think you're doing a great job. Because essentially, I don't want to go into Stripe to do anything. I want to go there to see how much money I make, and I want to go back to my coffee and code a little bit. I see all these new features on Stripe, making workflows and stuff, and I think it's very cool, but I don't have time to do this stuff because it's not that important for me. John Collison: I think our perspective is, you should be able to get started with anything instantly. You shouldn't even need to integrate an API. You should just be able to send a Payment Link, something like that. Pieter Levels: Exactly. That's amazing. John Collison: I'm always saying to people that generally, people will not even want to start by integrating the API, they'll want to start by sending people to a hosted page— Pieter Levels: Yeah, that's what I do now, like a Payment Link. John Collison: But you will, over time… We think the workflow engine is really cool because if you want to build something complex, you don't have to build it yourself. But if someone is starting with the workflow engine… Pieter Levels: Exactly. John Collison: ... then something's gone horribly wrong. You know what I mean? Pieter Levels: I think the challenge is exposing them slowly to all the stuff that's possible. John Collison: Exactly. Last question. If we're back here in five years, will things be similar, where you've worked on a bunch of projects that are working really nicely? Will things be different, where maybe you've sold a few of the projects? Maybe you've started a VC-funded startup and raised a billion dollars from SoftBank? Pieter Levels: That would be like... John Collison: Exactly. But I'm just curious, what does the next five years hold? Pieter Levels: Man, I have no clue. It would be so funny if you become a VC. I've been starting to invest. John Collison: Yeah. Maybe you become a VC. Pieter Levels: I've been starting to invest, and every time I invest, I feel bad because I feel like a faker, you know? But I invested in Cursor, for example, very nice. John Collison: That seems like that'll do okay for you. Pieter Levels: Well, who knows? But yeah, it's fun to... I think you need to be a little bit flexible with your neurons, and you can change your ways a little bit. And it's interesting to try different stuff. But, yeah, I'm really enjoying life with my girlfriend now. We’re still traveling a lot. It's fun. We meet all these cool people here, and I want that to continue. I'm just very happy. I'm every day grateful to be able to live this life, and it's so good. So thank you. John Collison: Thanks for coming by. Pieter Levels: Thanks for having me.