This year, 2014, a year in review seems appropriate with everything that has happened. It might seem that this year was 100% awesome for me. But it was actually not. It’s better described as one crazy roller coaster that brought me to extreme highs and the lowest lows. I know posts like this don’t fit the whole positive “we’re crushing it” startup mantra, but at least it’s real. I like radical honesty, so I’m going to tell exactly what happened. I tweeted a lot this year, so that’s a good outline to write this around. Without further ado, my year in tweets:
Returning home
The year started off with me returning home from Hong Kong and traveling most of 2013:
.@levelsio @punspace @launchpad Last years travels to Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Koh Samui and Hong Kong pic.twitter.com/zwHf3Ob1Qj
— LayerUp (@LayerUp) November 1, 2014
Being back in Holland, I landed back at my parents for a while. In the first week I was robbed of everything I owned, minimalism eh?
Being back home, I felt a bit confused as to what to do next with my life. I just went from daily insanity of travel to daily absolutely nothing happens at home. So I moved around Holland for a while from couch to couch staying at my friends figuring things out.
And then in Amsterdam, I met the love of my life. She was everything I wanted.
But mentally I wasn’t that stable. Two months in back home now, I started getting severe issue with anxiety and went almost insane (about which I’ll write more later). The root of it was that I couldn’t settle back in to a normal life at home anymore. I had panic attacks, waking up for months EVERY DAY short-breathed. My senses were different, as in I became hypersensitive to sound and light (a common side effect of extreme anxiety). And I had severe derealization, which is best explained as feeling that EVERYTHING is a movie and you’re in the center of it. Something like The Truman Show IRL. Scary.
Twelve startups
To try and stay sane, I decided to set a goal. I wrote a blog called “12 projects in 12 months”. For fun I backspaced projects and typed “startups”. I was going to do 12 startups in 12 months. What happened after is, well, wow. I don’t know but I think I hit the internet’s nerve. It changed everything. Without asking for it, I received crazy press coverage from WIRED to the New York Times.
It didn’t help I wasn’t wearing shoes and there was a Starbucks cup there, good luck fighting stereotypes with that, hahaha.
Meet the guy who's launching 12 startups in 12 months http://t.co/iJwmBF41Aa pic.twitter.com/9m5re1sXnY
— WIRED (@WIRED) August 27, 2014
It changed my life instantly. I remember just after this article hit, standing in a coworking space in Manila and random people started taking photos of me from a distance. Completely insanely weird. I would walk into random coffee shops in Bangkok and local Thai would say they read an article about me. I was asked to go speak at events and help everyone with their “startups”. My best friends in Holland told me that THEIR friends asked them if they could get them in touch with me. WTF! It was fun but also made me very awkward, especially in the beginning. I had become a public persona overnight (in a niche, that is):
12 startups in 12 months: here’s how this digital nomad is f**king doing it http://t.co/f3FHsgqNiP by @legendt
— Tech in Asia (@Techinasia) July 29, 2014
I was interviewed by @RocketshipFM on shipping and why you need a narrative to get traction http://t.co/Dc0ncptpDN pic.twitter.com/nR09yf9jn6
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 30, 2014
It gave me imposter syndrome. Suddenly people were giving me way more attention than I deserved. Suddenly people wanted to talk to me, work with me and ask me for advice. And that’s weird because a few months before nobody did. What exactly changed here?
My goal was building successful companies, not being some startup guru. I hate gurus and idols are ridiculous to have. Nobody should pretend they know anything certain. Because nobody does. And if they do, they usually have ulterior motives (e.g. selling you courses and bullshit). Fuck that shit.
Still, I had all of this attention, so what do you do with it? Well, I decided to channel it towards the startups I was building. It could help get my startups users. And sending out a more pragmatic message about startups then that was out there. As in, just build stuff and stop talking and listening to bullshit and gurus so much (I know that’s ironic):
The one and only @levelsio speaks about how he does stuff and why he shouldnt be the one and only. http://t.co/mRYpPvQ2QG /via @KrauseFx
— Andreas Klinger (@andreasklinger) December 18, 2014
The breakout success
One of the twelve startups, Nomad List, became a breakout success with everyone from Matt Mullenweg to Tim Ferriss talking about it. It did great on Hacker News and Product Hunt too and appeared to be the first sustainable business from the twelve.
It started as a spreadsheet:
I love how, while I was asleep, http://t.co/FCrL2bEE8z is actually still being edited on and slowly filling up! pic.twitter.com/AkGeyVI0z4
— levels.io (@levelsio) June 24, 2014
Then became a site:
NomadList: The best cities to live and work remotely http://t.co/zzZxaTfNvV via @emieljanson on @producthunt pic.twitter.com/4YORiUxhFO
— Product Hunt (@ProductHunt) July 29, 2014
Tied into it, a chat group made digital nomads everywhere less lonely (including me):
A @SlackHQ channel for digital #nomads: http://t.co/S5NPMG7K4J Sounds like: http://t.co/lywMBGaLSA /cc @bradneuberg @alexhillman #coworking
— Chris Messina™ (@chrismessina) October 30, 2014
And a forum full of AMAs with famous nomads and remote startups to inspire people to go out there and do it too:
I'm doing an AMA right now with fellow @buffer colleagues about remote working (or anything!). Come Ask Us Anything! http://t.co/T9oHyCXSMV
— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) December 11, 2014
More startups
Apart from the nomad stuff, I did a productivity startup:
#LinkAboutIt Set a goal, specify a deadline and the amount of money if you miss it, and go fucking do it https://t.co/wLBZ4IX31i
— Cool Hunting (@coolhunting) May 1, 2014
…that made somebody drop out of college, wow:
How someone used http://t.co/0j6YqjtEYP to launch their MVP and drop out of college, sheer wows were had pic.twitter.com/1V3HgkpiI6
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 29, 2014
…however it failed to make people quit watching porn:
Someone just lost $1000 on http://t.co/0j6YqjtEYP w/ "don't watch porn for 90 days" pic.twitter.com/Vcv6amLFNv
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 3, 2014
And with pride I can say, this year I also helped make GIFs go IRL:
Yay! My 6th startup is live! http://t.co/UcvHRAq5Wa prints flip books from your animated GIFs: http://t.co/Jq1nl77qbI pic.twitter.com/z65egD4Qdu
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 3, 2014
.@davidkmckinney GIFCEPTION pic.twitter.com/wwZZxOdv2s
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 3, 2014
GIFbook now can turn any of Giphy's GIFs into flipbooks! Check it out!!! http://t.co/CkVQd65S1G @levelsio
— Giphy (@giphy) October 30, 2014
Twelve startups saved my life
The twelve startups project made me more productive, successful and changed my life completely. I had no idea it would be like this. And I can only be very grateful that this happened. It put my life back on track, and I don’t know what I did if it wouldn’t have. As I said before this, I was pretty confused even what to do with my life before this.
That love of my life had since become my girlfriend. And while the world gave me so much positive attention for what I made, my girlfriend hated everything I made. She wanted me to settle down, stop traveling and do stuff that mattered (instead of “stupid startups” as she called it).
It reached a point where I was literally embarrassed to tell her that I got press coverage in the New York Times.
Five months back in Holland, not feeling things were going well, and still feeling like I was going insane with anxiety from not being able to settle back here, and this girlfriend thing not working out, I left to see if it’d go better if I’d be traveling again. The first place I flew to was Hubud in Bali.
Bali
The island helped me a bit because it was so mellow:
Oh my days, so this is the view from behind my laptop at @hubudbali, slightly awestruck pic.twitter.com/QdBpyyhuth
— levels.io (@levelsio) July 10, 2014
And so its people were mellow too, I met some really down-to-earth awesome neo-hippies, as I’d like to call them. They have a hippie mindset, but don’t smell and are into tech, but have the values of a hippie. So they’re friendly and make cool shit. It was definitely one of the most inspiring places I’ve been creatively.
Philippines
I was then selected to pitch GoFuckingDoIt to Dave McClure and flew to the Philippines:
Congrats @levelsio @Getbooky ! You were selected to speed date with @geeksonaplane geeks on July 24 #Manila Will you attend? 🙂 rsvp email
— Geeks on a Beach (@GeeksOnABeach) July 18, 2014
It was fun but it seemed a lot more like a high school prom show then a startup event. That’s when I had the big realization:
Startup events are the only ones making money from startup events.
Stuck in the Philippines now, I decided to do a lot of coding, eat Filipino chicken and see jeepneys:
That's not exactly a minimalist setup anymore, now is it… at @aspacemanila pic.twitter.com/EEDgxfAET7
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 7, 2014
They let me into the kitchen today to meet the chickens that fuel my addiction (@ Greenbelt 5, Makati) pic.twitter.com/GJXqciaakY
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 11, 2014
So I'm getting midly obsessed by these jeepneys I keep seeing here, they look way too cool for school pic.twitter.com/mxMS5SPdWt
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 10, 2014
I went partying and entered the hospital due to some misplaced high heels:
Today we visited the hospital in Makati as a girl planted her high heels into my little toe, much hurt very xray 😛 pic.twitter.com/lCaQnMj66n
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 13, 2014
A pit stop in Taiwan
And after a month, I had to leave the Philippines again. Since a month later I had to be in Japan to meet my Dutch friends who would come over, I had no other choice then do a pit stop in Taiwan (physically located between the Japan and the Philippines):
I have arrived in Taiwan ^_o pic.twitter.com/3CqyTMxhsv
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 22, 2014
…where I visited temples:
Today I visited the Xiangtian temple in north Taipei and prayed to its God of War; more importantly tho I met Doge 🐶 pic.twitter.com/4vMpvWqYup
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 26, 2014
…had street food:
Strolling around the Taipei night market trying to find a real Taiwanese dish… pic.twitter.com/BqbsNNCekP
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 27, 2014
…looked at the crazy signs:
More pics of Taipei, as requested by @marckohlbrugge ^___0 pic.twitter.com/ZtWGcQ9SL1
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 28, 2014
Why am I feeling so “lost”
Meanwhile, the travel had helped reduce my anxiety slightly. But now I started feeling incredibly “lost”. Where last year I went on a 9-month “long holiday” with every intention to come back home, this year that home just didn’t feel like home anymore. And that caused the great deal of distress (and anxiety) in my mind. If you lose your sense of home, you also lose a lot of sense of who you are, and even what life is. So now I felt confused and “lost”. I had no clue as to what I was doing with my life:
It's weirdly satisfying to know that HN's Generation-Y is having a quarter-life crisis too, like me https://t.co/0VLfo5DWkJ
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 14, 2014
I felt lost and even though my ex-girlfriend had broken up, I missed her like crazy. After she unblocked me on Telegram and sent me a message, I booked a 1,500 EUR (!) direct flight from Taipei to Amsterdam to see go see her and tried to make it work again:
So many breakups these days because ppl don't even try to work things out anymore, when that's the point of a relationship, you make it work
— levels.io (@levelsio) August 27, 2014
In Amsterdam for a very special mission ^__^ pic.twitter.com/96bN1zGBfh
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 2, 2014
We built a robot together:
You can now tweet my dino friend Orkel a yes/no question to @orkel_AMA and he'll answer it from future space ^_0 pic.twitter.com/MeubqNY3LJ
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 7, 2014
Meanwhile, I hung out with the Dutch startup kids, including Product Hunt‘s awesome Dutch designer (and nomad) Jonno) and BetaList‘s founder Marc. Even though I don’t put much value to national identity anymore, it was awesome to finally meet people making cool startuppy products AND also being Dutch. I guess there’s a little Dutch left in my heart still 🙂
Fun times with @emieljanson, @KevGroenendaal, @levelsio and @marckohlbrugge 🙂 pic.twitter.com/OoIML0IhMx
— Jonno Riekwel (@Jonnotie) September 15, 2014
And I saw my friends in Amsterdam:
Bye Amsterdam! See you in a bit 0_x pic.twitter.com/n8BafNJj5L
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 18, 2014
Japan with my best friends
I then left Holland again after 2 weeks and traveled all throughout Japan with my best friends from Holland:
Bye Tokyo! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/4Ueg38goaR
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 24, 2014
What's good Kyoto? @levelsio pic.twitter.com/MqGgc4bhJN
— RASA (@RasaHiphopNL) September 28, 2014
Today I played with doges in Hiroshima, saw the temples and went on the Shinkansen super super speed train 😍 pic.twitter.com/uxhPJyXHRO
— levels.io (@levelsio) September 27, 2014
Back in Thailand, after a year
….before returning back to where I started my nomad journey last year, in Bangkok:
Bye Tokyo, hi Bangkok! Who wants to have chicken and rice with me today? pic.twitter.com/iPWz1cIBle
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 5, 2014
…where I met Amarit from HUBBA and Yury from #nomads:
RT "coffee date w/ Pieter @levelsio @nomadlist_ and Yury @ytspar at our fav coffee shop in BKK" (via @AimAmarit) pic.twitter.com/BAaMUjzFzI
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 6, 2014
After a year without, I had Bangkok’s amazing street food again:
Awsm to be back in Sukhumvit 38, BKK's best street food place and the first place I arrived 1.5 yr ago; memories 😭 pic.twitter.com/fbEADoZsp1
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 6, 2014
My brother came to visit
And I finally welcomed my bigger brother to Asia and nomadism. It was awesome cause having him with me helped me feel more familiar and rooted:
A night of food + code with my (actual) brother @tokyopancake pic.twitter.com/G5leJMo1eW
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 11, 2014
My brother @tokyopancake is doing 24 startups in 6 months, this is his new press photo pic.twitter.com/59A56x6V6A
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 4, 2014
2 brothers, 2 codebases, 1 hairstyle @hubudbali @tokyopancake @nomadlist_ pic.twitter.com/5yjrButmd1
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 20, 2014
Back to Bali
And then I returned to Bali to become a neo-hippie:
Bye Bangkok, you were beautiful 😊 + hi Bali!! Let's go neo-hippie in Ubud again, I have my wristband already! pic.twitter.com/bNIMAKrqQK
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 7, 2014
And I ended up in more hot springs:
Yday we went for an awesome swim in 🌋hot vulcano water (no lava tho 😛) at Batur National Hot Spring in Bali pic.twitter.com/yoXJZiGUsA
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 17, 2014
I coached at Startup Weekend and we hit the Wall Street Journal!
Awesome to see Startup Weekend Bali where I was a coach get recog in Wall Street Journal http://t.co/diqmO6fMN3 @wsj @hubudbali #suwbali
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 17, 2014
At Hubud, I pushed ergonomics forward:
Mr @levelsio is pioneering new ways of working again: this time while sitting on top of a bin at @hubudbali pic.twitter.com/ye6RPFP49h
— Clare Harrison (@ClareJHarrison) November 18, 2014
Worked with monkeys:
This is my life right now 🐒🐵🐒 @hubudbali pic.twitter.com/0CnJGAMVHg
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 26, 2014
Had lots of Indonesian food:
Nasi Campur, real Javanese coffee and fresh banana juice, that's my breakfast in Bali (at $2.50) pic.twitter.com/2X1E9HckVd
— levels.io (@levelsio) December 4, 2014
I led the first Nomad List meetup in Bali myself:
Let's the #digitalnomad meet-up start at @hubudbali. @levelsio on stage! pic.twitter.com/8ja7P0S1rO
— Hubud (@hubudbali) November 21, 2014
I went surfing for the first time:
Yay! Today I did my first ever surfing with my brother @tokyopancake 🌊🏄🏊🌅😍 pic.twitter.com/BaQsWkD3Ik
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 19, 2014
My startups did matter
My ex-girlfriend’s words that what I made “didn’t matter” had hurt me a lot. I was in love and that made me believe every word she said. But it’s a bit hard to keep believing in what she said when I was meeting people daily that had moved to the other side of the world because of my blog and sites. More and more I felt convinced I was on to something here:
Just added a grid view to give you a better feel of where to move to next 🙂 #nomadlife http://t.co/lNszo6OTm3 pic.twitter.com/CwqIIQEELx
— Nomad List (@nomadlist_) September 20, 2014
The UK's @Telegraph wrote a nice article on @nomadlist_ today; thanks @laurendavidson! http://t.co/44qHT1NJqw pic.twitter.com/j2VXOQ2rkm
— Nomad List (@nomadlist_) October 7, 2014
Off to NomadList's #1 ranked city for living & working remotely, Chiang Mai. Msg me to meetup! @nomadlist_
— Victor Lai (@VictorLai) October 26, 2014
Reading this stuff makes me happy 🙂 @KrauseFx pic.twitter.com/IvuJ2MT2Px
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 12, 2014
There was now Nomad List meetups everywhere in the world:
Pics from last night's @nomadlist_ meetup in Berlin, looks like they had fun and wish I was there! (h/t @DavidNagy) pic.twitter.com/XxalB7ABAd
— levels.io (@levelsio) November 6, 2014
It's been such a pleasure meeting all the fantastic nomads at the first @nomadlist_ meetup in Chiang Mai tonight! 🙂 A brilliant start!
— Jerome Dahdah (@parasight) November 13, 2014
And Nomad List was reaching a lot of people:
My ex-girlfriend’s words that my startups “didn’t matter” was literally being proven wrong. They were changing hundreds of people’s lives every month now. They were being mentioned in arguments between Paul Graham (Y Combinator), Matt Mullenweg (WordPress) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails).
When I met even more people through #nomads, that were thanking me for what I created and were also traveling and working, it supported me in realizing that this is what I want to do. I didn’t want to settle at home. I wanted to see the world. I was not insane, after all.
Then, the bubble popped
Suddenly, everything became clear. I was in love with a person who was intrinsically bad for me. And blind love made me believe in her false doctrine about what people (and I) should do with my life; a doctrine drenched in negativity:
There's skeptics but "if you bet on the side of the optimists, generally you’re right" @pmarca http://t.co/oWEAQefGrV pic.twitter.com/UA5JMuuLrN
— levels.io (@levelsio) October 20, 2014
I decided to break up with her definitively. Those weeks after felt like walking away while you’ve got sticky bubble gum stuck to your back that just keeps pulling you back. Love is sticky.
If you’ve ever loved somebody so much that you wanted to be with them the rest of your life, you probably know how deep that love goes. Even if you hate what they did to you, even if they hurt you on a daily basis, you’ll still love them. And trying to get away from them, well…
But I left.
If you're dating someone who doesn't believe in your dreams, GTFO ASAP
— levels.io (@levelsio) December 3, 2014
The end
It’s now months later, and by sheer magic, just before the end of the year, I met someone who taught me it’s not normal for your partner to bring you down, ever, and it’s not normal to be embarrassed to talk about the stuff you love, your work, ever. She’s been the most supportive person I could ever wish for. And best of all, she doesn’t think I’m insane for wanting to fly everywhere and see the world. She’s doing it herself:
"Why you should absolutely date a girl who travels" I'm so happy I do now 👫✈️🌇🚁⛺️🚂🌅🚄🌋 http://t.co/A1QPd7J82k
— levels.io (@levelsio) December 24, 2014
All of these transient places, they had become my real home now:
@levelsio Look about right? 🙂 pic.twitter.com/cNANFvahPj
— Daniel Lockyer (@DanielLockyer) January 23, 2015
Maybe this shows a bit how personal startups can be. We’re not just making sites here, this HTML, CSS and JS we write affects people’s lives. It affects our own lives. For me, it helped me to steer my personal life from total fucking disaster, just at the right time.
I don’t feel lost anymore. I feel confident that what I’m doing is the right thing. And that feels great.
The roller coaster’s track has ended now and I can get off again. I hope next year I can replace the loud, unstable and fast roller coaster with a silent, stable but still fast Tesla instead.
And if this year shows me anything, it’s that good and bad can go hand in hand.
End of my mega airplane 36 hours to Amsterdam, concluding that @emirates on-board cams and wifi are awesome 😧😬😝 pic.twitter.com/9xDluTvseB
— levels.io (@levelsio) December 22, 2014
I’m ending the year in the same location as where I started, at my parent’s. It’s good to have a place to go back to, as a constant, as a point of reference. It gives me a perspective to see how everything changed so radically this year, while right here, nothing changed at all.
It was all in my mind.
And that love of my life? That wasn’t love at all, and that wasn’t the love of my life (which is a silly concept to begin with). That was a troubled person preying on my unstable mind. Instead, love is when you care about someone and they truly care about you. And you celebrate each other’s successes, not hate on them. It seems so obvious now.
And luckily, just in time, I found real love which made me realize that.
Oh, life.
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: