A few years ago I sold all my stuff to explore the world, creating 12 startups in 12 months and building $1M+/y companies as an indie maker such as Nomad List and Remote OK. I'm also a big pusher of remote work and async and analyze the effects it has on society. Follow me on Twitter or see my list of posts. My first book MAKE is out now. Contact me
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How technology is shaping our future: billions of self-employed makers and a few mega corporations

Automation, Society, Tech
Mar 7, 2015

This is the story about how technology is shaping a completely new kind of future. One that we didn’t really expect at the onset. At the center of it is automation: how technology can do most things humans do in a cheaper and more efficient way. But that’s not new. What’s new is how we’re now discovering that technology’s end goal of efficiency, and capitalism’s reward for efficiency perfectly match up. And how that means profits will be distributed in extremes. Let me explain…

(Update: I was asked to present this story in Budapest two months after writing this post, here’s the video if you don’t like to read everything)

1. The West’s economies are still sick

1/ There’s a few super clear trends right now that can give us some idea how the economy will look like in a few years

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Let’s start off with the disaster that is America and Europe’s economy:

1.1. Unemployment

2/ Unemployment in US and EU continues to be an issue, the only real jobs added are in tech

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Today, unemployment in France hit 10%, a record high.

And the rest of Europe is not far off:

So there’s not a lot of jobs, and also people aren’t really spending. So everyone is cutting interest rates (so that you don’t save, but spend your money). But that isn’t working either. People are still not spending and that means interest rates have now become negative. Germany is now selling their bonds at negative interest rates, this is what that means:

Germany sells 5-year bonds at negative yield – investors are paying Germany so they can lend it money. (From the FT) pic.twitter.com/cy7hjmGR14

— Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics) February 28, 2015

It’s a unique situation, and quite comparable to Japan’s horrible last twenty years.

Now, in case of the US, unemployment is “officially” decreasing, but wait, no actually it’s not:

(..) overall unemployment rate can be misleading (..) Those who have given up [looking for work] are often referred to as “missing workers” [and not counted]. (..) there are about 1 million young missing workers – under 25 years old – and if they were included, the unemployment rate for young Americans would be closer to 16.2%. (..) Over the past year the number of employed young Americans has gone up by almost 400,000, to 14.1 million.

— from today’s article in The Guardian: US unemployment at lowest since 2008 – but young people still can’t find work

That’s really the point. Unemployment growth is being covered up by some statistical tricks. US and Europe’s economies are still not doing well, on the contrary.

1.2. Only low-skilled jobs are coming back

And the jobs that are coming back? Well, it’s not exactly the right ones:

Washington Post writes “U.S. job growth is coming in all the wrong places”:

Screenshot 2015-03-07 17.10.05

This chart shows the jobs that are coming back are low-skilled and low paid. That’s jobs for the working class (or lower class, but I think that’s a non-PC term). Now it’s great that at least the low-skilled get jobs back, right? Well no…because those are in line to be automated in the next few years. Because they’re low skilled, so they’re easy to automate:

Think of stuff like transport (replaced by self-driving vehicles), administrative jobs (replaced by SaaS), food services jobs (replaced by automated restaurants) and retail trade (replaced by online shops).

1.3. Software is eating the middle class

What about the middle class? The high-skilled jobs are what the middle class need. They’re not coming back:

Forbes writes “Higher wages aren’t coming back and here’s why”:

(..) William Lazonick, professor of economics (..) wrote in the Harvard Business Review, we currently have profits without prosperity. Corporate profits are high and the stock market has never done better, but most Americans don’t partake of the benefits. (..) Companies aren’t investing their capital and are even borrowing money — and keeping wages low and not hiring people for expansion.

So the West’s middle class is being wiped away and companies rather sit on money, than taking on the risk of hiring somebody. You’re right, this is a temporary thing. You hope. So once the companies believe in the economy, they’re going to hire back that middle class right? Well, no:

5/ Enterprise software and SaaS are quickly automating away employees at most small, medium and big businesses (SMB)

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Computer World writes one in three jobs will be taken by software by 2025:

So let’s get back to those middle class jobs. They weren’t coming back. So who is the middle class really? This is the most popular middle class jobs:

So a few that stick out here are secretaries, managers, and sales people. A lot of those are on the line to be automated next by enterprise software. Enterprise software is any software that medium and big companies buy to make them more efficient. It’s not just stuff your mom or dad probably used at their job like SAP, SharePoint, it could also be more hip stuff like Basecamp or Trello that we startup-hipsters use. It’s software that makes stuff more efficient, and that in turn can make it less necessary to hire new people.

Think of stuff like project management software that can reduce the number of managers you have on staff. But that will evolve into more smarter software in more advanced industries in just 10 years.

This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner. (..) “Gartner predicts one in three jobs will be converted to software, robots and smart machines by 2025,” said Sondergaard. “New digital businesses require less labor; machines will be make sense of data faster than humans can.”

So then you’ll have a large share of the middle class wiped out.

1.4. The labor force feels entitled

3/ Especially in W-Europe people seem to be too stubborn to learn to make/code and become self-employed, as they feel entitled to a job

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

There’s also a sense of entitlement. Especially in Europe (where I’m from), young people feel they studied a certain thing (history is a typical example) and are entitled to a job (in, well, history).

I wish it worked that way, but it doesn’t anymore. I personally know 28-year olds that have been sitting at home at their parents for 4 years waiting to get that PhD grant to do what they wanted to do. But their funding and positions are being cut and there’s probably not enough PhD grants to fund them.

phd-circle-candidates

Even crazier, there’s probably not a job waiting for them after they get their PhD, as Times writes: too many postdocs, not enough research jobs.

That’s sad. But what’s interesting is that many young people without jobs are also not trying to take on any other job than they studied for. The entitlement to do what they studied for and be stubborn about it, has become a liability for them and makes their (economic) position even worse. Re-training themselves into a skill set that is in demand would be a better idea. But that goes against the destructive philosophy that babyboomer’s kids have been raised with: they feel special. Entitled.

4/ The rest of the world embraces tech change and young people in emerging markets are learning to code/design and are becoming makers

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Everywhere I go outside Europe and the US, I see people very ambitious and eager to succeed. And they are quick to jump on new technology trends and get the skills for them. Obviously it’s because most emerging markets come out of poverty. You don’t have much to lose if you come out of poverty. Sure. But that means the unprecedented level of wealth the West gained in the 20th century is a liability now. It’s made the West, well, entitled and lazy. The issue is that with the internet, we’ll be competing exactly with those people from outside the West who are so eager to take over the work we’re not skilled in.

Already on freelance sites like Odesk, a web developer from the U.S. will be competing with one from China or Ukraine:

Quality? Well, the quality of work from outside the West and emerging markets is catching up quickly.

2. Infrastructure vs. creativity

6/ So what’s left that can’t be automated? Infrastructure and creativity. And they’re both necessary and will be in high demand

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Infrastructure has always primarily been about cost. It’s a commodity, which means it’s not highly unique. Like streets, the electricity net or the pipes your city’s water goes through, they’re mostly the same everywhere.

Where’s the modern day infrastructure? On the internet. What is the modern day infrastructure? Well, servers, app stores, payment services etc. Anything really that enables you to do stuff online.

It mostly doesn’t really matter where you have your smartphone’s photos stored “in the cloud”, or where your website is hosted. So with commodity stuff like infrastructure, if everything is the same, you’ll pick the one who provides it for the lowest cost.

Now how do you become low cost? Well, you get economies of scale. That means if you do things at high scale, you get the advantage of buying lots off stuff (e.g. servers) and being able to get them cheaper. So big tech companies are building huge data centers like crazy. Apple just spent almost $2 billion dollars on building its new data centers.

What does this mean?

Pickaxes!

2.1. Infrastructure

e69d2dafe0fb7af7c2b4ac377bfc888f

It means that the big tech companies know that they now have an opportunity to provide the infrastructure for the future. And the most important infrastructure of future society will be virtual. Startups try to win by making some new disruptive app/service/product, but the odds of a startup succeeding are like the odds of people finding gold during the gold rush. Who made money in the gold rush? The saying goes, not the people that dug for gold, but instead the people that sold pickaxes to the people that dug for gold. That’s kind of like infrastructure. It’s guaranteed to make money as it’s like a utility.

Especially if you’re one of only a handful of companies owning the infrastructure. That’s called an oligopoly. But you probably know it as a monopoly (which is when there’s only one company controlling a market). It’s the same kinda idea. I’ll explain oligopolies later on.

2.1.a. Hardware

It’s not just servers though. Look at your smartphone, it’s probably made by Apple, Google, or Xiaomi (which Alibaba has invested half a billion dollars in). And they all look the same:

iphone-6-plus-vs-nexus-6-vs-galaxy-note-4-three-quarter-540x334

So they’ve become a commodity too. Which means there’s about $0 profit to be made on them. So why are these big tech companies still making phones. Well, so you can use their infrastructure. And they’ll charge you for that.

2.1.b. Banking

They will take over payments and thus banking. Apple has Apple Pay. Google is relaunching Google Wallet. Alibaba has Alipay. And there’s countless more like Tencent’s WePay, Naver’s Line Pay and of course hip startups like Square and Stripe. You’ll say Stripe is just a merchant app, but I promise they’ll introduce their own wallet soon. And then they’ll get acquired. All these smaller payment apps will get acquired by the big ones.

And then the payment infrastructure war has been finished. You have those same big tech companies, and you’ll be paying through them. Banks will go bankrupt (no pun) and will massively fail. They won’t even be acquired probably because there’s hardly anything traditional consumer banks are good at. And their entire business model is completely unfit for this tech-based future, e.g. remember how you hate your bank’s internet banking site/app. Well I do too. So good riddance:

With the banking sector replaced by big tech companies, you get a lot of massive lay offs. A lot of people will be fired. I don’t really know a lot about investment banking, but I know there’s massive lay offs there already: just three days ago Royal Bank of Scotland said they’ll fire 19,000 people in the next 4 years. Trust me, automation is a big reason for it. But they’ll probably not even mention it.

2.1.c. Transport

So what about transport. Well, Uber just launched a robotics facility to build self-driving cars to replace their drivers with robots in a few years. Google is an investor in Uber, but think this will be such a big deal that it wants to compete with its own investment. And now, Apple wants to build their own self-driving car.

Vehicle prototype

So then you’ll get massive layoffs in consumer service transport like taxis, public transport and tour bus operators. So now they’re all without jobs.

2.1.d. So who will make money off this infrastructure?

The people that own it. If you own the infrastructure, you can levy fees.

So remember when we spoke about oligopolies:

An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion which reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

So this is funny, when the big companies actually get their dominating control over the infrastructure, they don’t need to be cheap anymore. They’ll start to levy fees. And since they’re not competing with many, they can charge whatever they want.

Like an iCloud subscription to store my photos in the cloud, or taking 30% of every app sale or in-app transaction I buy through my smartphone’s app store.

Or Apple Pay taking a % off every purchase you make.

Even stuff like transport. You go to school or work every day, so if they can transport you, that part is loads of money.

And once big companies own all this (automated) infrastructure, it’s pretty much just sitting still and there’s unlimited cash flowing in.

EarningsInsight_9.23.2014

What about competition? Well you’re seeing it now already. They’re too big of monopolies for anyone to compete with. The idea was that Google (founded in 1998) would be replaced by a new company in a decade right? Well that’s 2008, and it’s 7 years later and Google is still a giant. Facebook? Founded in 2004. It’s 11 years later. Etc. Etc.

2.1.e. This new infrastructure and its effect on jobs

Much of this new infrastructure, that’s controlled by these mega corporations, is transformative in that it changes the entire society, economy and its labor market. It partly automates away jobs, but it mostly just makes a lot of jobs not make sense anymore.

If most of our interaction is virtual, then we’ll spend our money increasingly, well, virtual.

2.1.f. So, what about education?

In one area, all of this will actually have a great effect: education:

Education will increasingly go online as well, with physical private study groups with personal mentors left. So you do most of your course material online and then you meet in the city in a coworking space, or teaching space, or maybe even a school/university, and have a small group where you review your course work etc. This can be from elementary education up to post graduate education.

A teacher teaching 30 students or more never worked any way so this is actually a great thing. And it means that teachers will be well paid in the future, they’re of extreme value and have been underpaid for decades now.

2.1.g. So what about public jobs? Like university jobs?

Then you think about scholars, professors, academics etc. right? Well historically they’ve been funded by public money. And now here’s another issue, a lot of the governments are running out of money. In Europe, the whole austerity thing, has cut stuff like universities drastically. Globally too, governments are cutting spending on public jobs drastically too.

It’s getting so bad universities are taking drastic measures: The University of Amsterdam just last month sold their expensive centuries-old real estate to afford, well, to afford existing really, and students are fiercely protesting about it:

[php]v(‘BmorQDyI7vU’);[/php]

What will the buyers do with it? Well, you can predict this really…

University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) humanities building, the Bungehuis, is scheduled for development into an exclusive, membership-only Soho House club, real estate developer Aedes announced. Soho House operates twelve private clubs around the world where people from film, media and creative industries meet to schmooze, drink and dine for an annual membership fee.

An annual membership to Soho House is 1,400 GBP or 2,000 USD. I couldn’t really ask for a more apt description of what’s happening. Money is flowing away from public into private hands. This club is for “creative industries to schmooze”.

Which is a nice bridge to the next topic, because creatives are indeed the new rich:

2.2. Creativity

9/ The only other group still having a job will be coders, app makers, designers, illustrators, artists; cause creativity can’t be automated

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

The only industries that won’t be automated are where the service/product becomes less valuable if automated.

What does that mean? Well, let’s say you have two products. One cheap one made by robots. One expensive one made by humans. If you still buy the one made by humans, it means there’s an added value there. Think of like being helped by staff in an expensive restaurant, you want that to be a highly trained person who has great service. But if I go out to have dinner like every day, then I want a super cheap place, and I don’t care if it’s humans or not. I care if it’s cheap.

So high-touch, high service, creative stuff won’t be automated soon. The rest will.

Now many people in positions soon to be automated will defend their position and say stuff like “a computer can never do what I do”.

But don’t underestimate how easy people switch to cheaper products/services though. They care a lot less if it’s a human than you think. When butchers were replaced by supermarkets so fast, you saw butchers on the TV news say “supermarkets can never give the same experience as a real butcher who knows his/her meat”. Well that didn’t really work out for them, did it?

2.2.a. The self-employed makers

My vision of this new future is billions of self-employed makers building apps, designing software/websites, illustrating for games, making music for apps etc. Creative stuff that makes or ties into software.

Now you think, apps, that’s a joke. Nobody makes real money with apps. But increasingly they are. And it’s not huge teams that are doing it either. Flappy Bird was made by one guy from Vietnam and grossed $50,000 per day or $1,5M per month.

SaaS apps like Baremetrics are interesting because they’re also built by (originally) non-VC-funded one-person teams. Just a girl or guy with a laptop building something that provides a real service and in 5 months they’re making $5,000 per month, a year later $25,000 per month.

2.2.b. Individuals are making lots and lots of money

So you see this more and more. It’s not huge teams, it’s one-person teams building something that’s fully online either as a mobile app or web app (what’s the difference these days any way?) and they become successful. So they’ll start hiring after right? That’s good for the job market right? Tell me! Well no, increasingly these companies just pay contractors to help them out instead of hiring employees. And for good reason. The liabilities of hiring employees (especially in Europe) are just way too high to fit with these unstable times. An app like aforementioned Baremetrics can be wiped out in a month or two by a competitor. And who will that competitor be? Oh maybe some kid from Africa or anywhere else in the world…on a laptop.

This new reality is kind of shocking to imagine and nobody I tell really believes this stuff. So why do I think I’m right here? Because I see the examples all around me. And I’m probably right in the middle of it too. I’m doing the same. Just a one-person band trying to build something that helps people and pay my bills.

2.2.c. Automation divides profits in extremes

The issue is that once I build a site or app that works well, I won’t just be making a normal salary (e.g. $3,000). Usually if a business model works well on the internet, you can scale an app quickly to $25,000 per month and then up and up.

And here’s why that creates more issues, the money probably doesn’t flow into more jobs:

If I make $25,000 per month, and I know my business can be wiped out in a month or two by another kid, then I’ll obviously be rather cautious with my money and I’ll probably sit on a large part of that (a bit like Apple does too).

And as hiring employees is too risky, I’ll hire contractors. But then here’s another bit of honesty. Increasingly it’s been saving me more time to just code a script that does the same then going through the ordeal of hiring somebody, training them, dealing with them making mistakes or decreasing work performance. This is the honest reality of a programmer, if I code a PHP script and hook it into a cron job, I don’t really need a human.

2.2.d. So what jobs are left?

Well, I can’t automate away someone who codes or creates something as an artist. So that’s why I keep talking about creativity. Creative professions will remain. With creative I mean entrepreneurs, programmers, designers etc. just makers in general. People that make stuff that is unique, original. Because robots aren’t original.

What about service jobs like waiters? Here’s an actual waiter’s opinion:

@levelsio @SuperWhelk I bring food, conversation, take the dishes off the table, clean them, etc. I wish I could automate table clearing!

— PunningPundit (@punningpundit) March 7, 2015

He has a good point IF people are willing to pay MORE for his service. Having a waiter is a luxury. Just like when supermarkets started selling meats, fish and vegetables, butchers, fish stores and crop markets where wiped away in a decade. Why? Because supermarkets offered it cheaper. So I know there’s a kind of “hipster” revival of butchers and small food shops now again. And that’s because they finally have something better to offer, it’s not cost, it’s quality. They have organic meats and a high amount of service. But that’s only for people willing to pay MORE for that. Just like waiters and other service staff will be. If @punningpundit can make his restaurant more premium and target to wealthy people, he’ll be with a job in a few years. And he’ll be making more than he does now as well.

That’s the thing, automation makes profits get divided in extreme ways. Most people won’t have a product/service that is in demand, but the ones that will have one will make A LOT of money. It’s not divided fairly. I don’t like that, but that’s what’s happening increasingly.

3. So, the future is a dichotomy

Dichotomy, that’s a jargon word for two polar extremes. That’s what this is. On one side you have mega corporations controlling infrastructure, and on the other side billions of individuals making stuff on top of that infrastructure, what’s left in the middle? Well, not much. Say goodbye to medium and big businesses.

8/ These tech co’s will probably be Google/Apple/Alibaba who will have a monopoly on cloud servers, hardware devices, payment, transport

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

Apple is now on schedule to become the world’s first $1,000,000,000,000 company (that’s a trillion dollars) and is sitting on almost $200 billion of cash:

There won’t be a lot in between because big companies have the advantage of economies of scale (e.g. huge infrastructure building) and individuals have the advantage of diseconomies of scale (e.g. creativity and agility). And in the middle you have…well, companies that don’t have either of those:

Medium and big (but not giant) business will be too slow to be creative, but too small to compete on scale with tech giants. So their economic reason of existence is gone (I’m not going to say raison d’etre because I’m not a high-nosed jargon journalist :P). And so they’re wiped out in the next few years.

4. Don’t shoot the messenger

10/ People get angry if you tell them this, because they feel their existence threatened. But embracing change is probably a better idea

— levels.io (@levelsio) March 6, 2015

I’ll probably get these reactions after I post this blog too. Because just talking about this at parties makes you incredibly unpopular. People don’t want to believe it. It threatens their entire thought model and their reason of existence. So they get angry. But it’s not that I agree with it. I would love a utopic society where everybody has a job and is happy etc. I’m just observing and telling you. Don’t shoot the messenger.

4.1 Are you next?

Think critically of your own job and skill set and judge how unique it is. Can it be automated easily? If your job is administrative, non-creative, repetitive, it’ll probably be gone soon. If you’re doing a lot of IRL stuff like sales, meetings, driving around to visit companies and then talk buzzword bingo bullshit, then you’re probably out too.

So if you didn’t get angry and don’t feel entitled, but instead are “embracing” this change, what’s there to do?

4.2 Build your skill set

So what’s the jobs you can train for? Well, if you do something creative, you’re probably be doing well in this new age:

Companies need programmers (yes that’s from my website):

Game developers need character designers:

Startups need artists:

Creative workers need people that organize spaces for them to work from:

Getting yourself a unique skill set that fits with this super fast changing future helps. Being creative helps. Learning to code ALWAYS helps if you ask me. But even stuff like illustration, drawing, making music, all that stuff is needed. Software is boring and they need that stuff to make it beautiful.

4.3. Can I just ignore this?

Thinking that by ignoring this reality, it’s just going to go away. That never worked. But that is what’s going on with, well, mostly everyone I meet that has never programmed. The moment you’ve programmed, usually the penny drops quickly how powerful technology is and increasingly will be.

You can’t really ignore it anymore once you lose your job.

P.S. I'm on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my stories. And I wrote a book called MAKE about building startups without funding. See a list of my stories or contact me. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:

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2016
25 Feb
Day 23 of Learning 3d 🎮 Filling up the street and adding shadows
2016
24 Feb
Day 22 of Learning 3d 🎮 Added rain, blinking lights, sound, textured menu sign and a VR web app
2016
23 Feb
Day 21 of Learning 3d 🎮 High res textures, physical rendering and ambient occlusion
2016
22 Feb
Day 20 of Learning 3d 🎮 Objects and camera perspectives 🙆
2016
19 Feb
My first time floating in a sensory deprivation tank ☺️
2016
12 Feb
Day 10 of Learning 3d 🎮 Making complex objects by combining shapes 🙆
2016
06 Feb
Day 4 of Learning 3d: @shoinwolfe visits the actual street I'm modeling 🏮😎🏮
2016
03 Feb
Day 1 of Learning 3d 🎮 I learnt how to make shapes, move, rotate and scale them + how to texturize, and add colored lights 💆
2016
02 Feb
I'm Learning 3d 🎮
2016
27 Jan
The things I have to do to read an email sent to me by my government
2016
12 Jan
How to use your iPhone as a better Apple TV alternative (with VPN)
2015
23 Dec
Here's a crazy idea: automatically pause recurring subscription of users when you detect they aren't actually using your app
2015
17 Dec
Stop calling night owls lazy, we're not
2015
16 Dec
We are the heroes of our own stories
2015
25 Oct
There will be 1 billion digital nomads by 2035
2015
21 Oct
Tobias van Schneider interviewed me about everything
2015
18 Oct
Why doesn't Twitter just asks its users to pay?
2015
17 Oct
Punk died the moment we learnt that the world WAS in fact getting better, not worse
2015
15 Oct
Stop being everyone's friend
2015
14 Oct
Vaporwave is the only music that fits the feeling futuristic Asian mega cities give me
2015
09 Sep
We live in a world built by dead people
2015
01 Sep
Why global roaming data solutions don't make any sense
2015
26 Aug
How to export your Slack's entire archive as HTML message logs
2015
24 Aug
How to play GTA V on your MacBook (and any other PC game)
2015
14 May
I uploaded 4 terabyte over Korea's 4G, and paid $48
2015
08 May
How I sped up Nomad List by 31% with SPDY, CloudFront and PageSpeed
2015
04 May
My weird code commenting style based on HTML tags
2015
01 May
Now is probably the time to make HTTPS the default on all your sites and apps
2015
17 Apr
Do the economics of remote work retreats make any sense?
2015
17 Apr
Don't grow up
2015
06 Apr
Calling people "expat" or "nomad" is just as irrelevant as calling internet users "netizens"
2015
02 Apr
How I built Remote | OK and launched it to #1 on Product Hunt
2015
29 Mar
Our society is not in line with our natural reward systems, and alcohol and drug abuse proves it
2015
28 Mar
Makers have become the invisible hand
2015
07 Mar
How technology is shaping our future: billions of self-employed makers and a few mega corporations
2015
22 Jan
We are the orcas at Sea World
2014
31 Dec
Love, Anxiety and Startups: My Year in 50 Tweets
2014
15 Dec
How to backup your Linode or Digital Ocean VPS to Amazon S3
2014
01 Dec
The total chaos that the dawn of the 21st century has become
2014
23 Nov
How I hacked Slack into a community platform with Typeform
2014
05 Nov
How to successfully build a community around your startup
2014
27 Oct
The ideal place to start a startup is not necessarily in Silicon Valley
2014
23 Oct
"If I had this, I would be happy"
2014
14 Oct
This is what happens when FlightFox copies your entire site without attribution
2014
02 Oct
GIFbook, the first animated GIF flipbook
2014
01 Oct
On Thailand's immigration police targeting digital nomads
2014
13 Sep
Why traveling makes you feel lost
2014
02 Sep
How I build my minimum viable products
2014
31 Aug
How I built Nomad Jobs, a remote job board for 100% distributed startups
2014
27 Aug
Danism & Rae - Sirens
2014
16 Aug
How I got my startup to #1 on both Product Hunt and Hacker News by accident
2014
15 Aug
Why does Generation Y feel so lost? And what's the cure?
2014
23 Jul
Bali is the magical voodoo spirit island of Asia
2014
05 Jul
Ideals, fears and the script of life
2014
22 Jun
How to access anyone's Telegram messages without unlocking their phone
2014
14 Jun
The achiever in crisis
2014
12 Jun
How I did not sell my startup today
2014
07 Jun
The free fall that is coming home after traveling the world
2014
02 Jun
Never dismiss your ideals as post-adolescent fantasy
2014
31 May
My 3rd startup: Tubelytics, the real-time dashboard for YouTube publishers
2014
29 May
How Go Fucking Do It raised $30,000+ in pledges in less than a month
2014
24 May
We have an ideologically broken and personally unfulfilling society
2014
24 May
On self-funding startups
2014
22 May
Run through ideas quickly
2014
11 May
If you can't express yourself by email, you're not worthy of anyone's time
2014
19 Apr
My 2nd startup: Go Fucking Do It, set a goal + deadline and if you fail, you pay
2014
18 Apr
Over 2,000 people played their inbox with Play My Inbox
2014
13 Apr
Celebrating my birthday North Korean style
2014
02 Apr
How Automation Left Us Feeling Empty
2014
09 Mar
Play My Inbox, collect music from your inbox and playlist them
2014
01 Mar
I'm Launching 12 Startups in 12 Months
2014
14 Feb
How to protect your backups from solar flares with a faraday cage
2014
06 Feb
Linkoban - Oh Oh
2014
05 Feb
Nationality is an accident of birth
2014
18 Jan
How I Went From 100 To 0 Things (Or How I Was Robbed of All My Stuff)
2014
04 Jan
All Watched Over by Machines of Living Grace
2013
31 Dec
Celebrating NYE 2014 in Hong Kong
2013
30 Dec
How I ended up in Hong Kong (or my adventures in the New York of the East)
2013
28 Nov
It's practically impossible for regular people to buy Bitcoin
2013
27 Nov
2014 is the year techstep drum and bass makes its comeback
2013
25 Nov
Rinse FM, here's your podcast feed we've always wanted
2013
23 Nov
How I travel the world with just a carry-on bag
2013
23 Nov
How I spent the night with Singapore's migrant workers
2013
22 Nov
Why I want to live in Singapore
2013
21 Nov
How I predict Bitcoin's price by tracking Twitter mentions
2013
04 Nov
James Blake & Chance The Rapper - Life Round Here
2013
03 Nov
Sasha Keable - Careless Over You
2013
30 Oct
My not so great time in Vietnam
2013
27 Oct
Wiley - And Again
2013
27 Oct
The myth of a globalized world
2013
19 Oct
Remote working is the future
2013
19 Oct
What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day
2013
14 Oct
Steve Summers - New Surroundings
2013
12 Oct
What I learnt from bootstrapping my startup from Thailand in six months
2013
11 Oct
Palms Trax - Equation
2013
11 Oct
Cash means controlling your own destiny
2013
24 Sep
You're just a piece of a heartless shitty machine that makes money
2013
16 Sep
Automation Will Free Us From the Endless Consumption/Production Cycle We're In
2013
16 Sep
National Borders Have Become Irrelevant
2013
04 Sep
A Culture of Distraction is Not The Problem
2013
20 Aug
Governments are always ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them
2013
17 Aug
You constantly need to be painting or it looks like total crap
2013
09 Aug
Oversight: Thank You For Volunteering, Citizen
2013
07 Aug
Stripe launches beta in the Netherlands
2013
22 Jul
Google+ spamming people every 2 weeks to put up a profile photo
2013
20 Jul
The 100 Thing Challenge – From 200 to 20 things in 3 months
2013
17 Jul
Living in a Hotel
2013
16 Jul
The Story of my Visa Run to Tachileik in Myanmar
2013
16 Jul
This is what "acting professionally" results in
2013
08 Jul
Lockah - Sly Winking Usury
2013
30 Jun
Stand-up comedians on creativity
2013
24 Jun
With jobs gone, will robot owners pay people's income?
2013
24 Jun
Money as an enslavement method
2013
19 Jun
Make money where prices are high, spend it where prices are low. Does income arbitrage work?
2013
16 Jun
Finding an apartment in Chiang Mai
2013
13 Jun
Add HTTPS to NGINX for free and help make the world more secure
2013
11 Jun
Co-Working Spaces in Chiang Mai: PunSpace
2013
10 Jun
Moving to Chiang Mai
2013
04 Jun
My Bad Day At The Co-Working Space
2013
03 Jun
If it's in the news, don't worry about it
2013
29 May
The 24-Hour Coffee Place in Bangkok: Too Fast To Sleep
2013
28 May
Nosaj Thing x Chance the Rapper - Paranoia
2013
23 May
"There simply are no other fields in which I can spend $100 tomorrow and set up a new business..."
2013
21 May
"Speaking as a graduate of one, top schools teach you credentialing and ladder climbing..."
2013
17 May
Visiting Koh Samui, the island of paradise
2013
05 May
From dive bar to roof-top bar to roof-top pool in Bangkok
2013
02 May
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town..."
2013
01 May
Co-working spaces in Bangkok: Launchpad
2013
24 Apr
The 100 Thing Challenge
2013
24 Apr
"Do whatever you're drawn to"
2013
23 Apr
Co-working spaces in Bangkok: Hubba
2013
22 Apr
Reset your life
2013
09 Mar
OSX Terminal Tricks
2013
09 Mar
OSX for Windows users
2013
09 Mar
How I switched from PC to Mac in less than 7 days
2013
21 Feb
Black Mirror is the best TV series I have seen in years
2013
20 Feb
Why overnight success is a myth
2013
20 Feb
Constraints make people more creative
2013
13 Feb
Kitty Pryde & Riff Raff - Orion's Belt
2013
13 Feb
Dedicating our lives to what is essentially an organization to make money
2013
11 Feb
Watch The Pirate Bay: Away From the Keyboard
2013
16 Jan
My new music video for rap duo RASA
2013
14 Jan
What if money was no object in your life?
2013
03 Jan
Why attention to detail matters, even if no one notices the details
2013
03 Jan
In the 21st century, Maria Montessori shows to be more relevant than ever
2012
30 Dec
Unless the job itself is your dream, stay the fuck away from salaried jobs
2012
30 Nov
Success is One Big Hoax
2012
18 Oct
The death of the corporate drone
2012
13 Oct
The West's unemployment problem is permanent
2012
04 Oct
New Panda Mix Show branding and website
2012
29 Aug
Headhunterz - Power of Music
2012
21 Aug
Essendle interview on my music and my YouTube show
2012
07 Aug
The XX - Angels
2012
02 Aug
Spenzo - Ova
2012
02 Aug
Anna Lunoe & Diamond Lights - Stronger (Willy Joy Remix)
2012
10 Jul
Herve feat. Ronika - How Can I Live Without You (Make it Right) (Death Rose Cult Remix)
2012
09 Jul
Pheo - Nyquil
2012
05 Jul
I love minimalist living
2012
05 Jul
Why buying YouTube views is bad
2012
05 Jul
Citizen - Deep End
2012
03 Jul
D!RTY AUD!O intro
2012
01 Jul
Anybody can monetize their passion (now)
2012
28 Jun
Diplo - No Problem
2012
27 Jun
Skream - Thoughts of You
2012
21 Jun
TEED - Blood Pressure
2012
19 Jun
Today is the first day of the rest of your life
2012
17 Jun
Happiness maximization vs. profit maximization
2012
16 Jun
Music genres are dead
2012
15 Jun
Make a great product
2012
15 Jan
Rasa - Noem 't Wat Je Wilt
2011
23 Dec
Rasa - Hard & Soul
2011
15 Nov
Earth