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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levels.io

5 years in startups with Abadesi

Tech
Apr 11, 2020

This week I was proud to be a guest for the first time on Product Hunt Radio. The awesomely smart Abadesi asked me lots of questions and we discussed:
- how the startup scene changed from 5y ago to now
- not building a team and the rise of automation
- building around organic communities
- the imposter syndrome when charging money
...and lots more

Here's the transcript, as always by the awesome Rev.com. You can also listen to the podcast and read the transcript at the same time here.

If you like this episode, please support Product Hunt and subscribe to Product Hunt Radio.

Abadesi (00:00):
Hey everyone. It's Abadesi your host of Product Hunt Radio where I'm joined by the founders, investors and makers that are shaping the future of tech. In this episode I speak to long time Product Hunt community member and one of our makers of the year Pieter Levels. You might know him as the founder of NomadList or a very prolific tweeter. This episode is all about building a sustainable bootstrapped business, which Pieter has done over the last few years and it's also about the rise of digital nomad culture and why the future of work has to be remote.

Abadesi (00:49):
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Abadesi (01:24):
Hey, thank you so much for being on Product Hunt radio today. It's pretty exciting and epic to have you on the show. You're one of the most prolific makers out there on the internet. I feel like most people probably know you as Level's IO and not as Pieter, you name. I just checked out your Twitter profile. You've got like you know, over 78,000 followers now and of course you are most famous for Nomad List and Remote OK, and just creating a narrative around making and remote working. I remember the Wired article that kind of got you that high profile acclaim where you were like, "I'm going to build 12 startups and 12 months." And people are like, "Who is this guy?"

Abadesi (02:02):
But yes, you've also won Golden Kitty awards Maker of the Year, Product of the Year. And yeah, thank you so much for being on the show.

Pieter (02:07):
Thank you so much for having me Abadesi. It's super cool.

Abadesi (02:10):
Yay. Awesome. So I know it was probably around 2014, 2015 that you launched Nomad List on Product Hunt and since then the remote work and indie maker community has just kind of grown exponentially. What is it like to be in the position you're in, where you were kind of like there at the beginning of the journey and like now see how much it's evolved.

Pieter (02:39):
It's super crazy because I was talking to my parents yesterday about it, I was trying to explain to them how five years ago when we were on the internet we were making little startups, it wasn't at all common to do it by yourself without funding and everybody was back then talking about raising funding, going to San Francisco and going to Silicon Valley. I remember I was talking to these rich people in Amsterdam to try and raise funding for, I was trying to do like make like Uber in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. I was trying to raise money and I was talking through these famous rich people in Holland that had giant companies and they were eating sushi and I was in this giant beautiful house on the Amsterdam canals and we had to pitch this stuff and it turned out they didn't really invest at all. It was kind of like a hobby to them, like only very rarely they invested.

Pieter (03:32):
So I had to put so much effort into raising this money and all I wanted to do was build a little startup. And then a few years later, like 2014 I just started shipping. And like I said, back then it wasn't normal at all. It was really uncommon to do in like a kind of indie maker way, bootstrapping it, growing it small. Not having this giant goal of a giant company, like David Heinemeier Hansson always talks about. It was just, it's hard to imagine but it wasn't cool at all what we were doing. It was super not cool. It was like, "Oh you want to stay small and you're never going to be successful." That was pretty much it.

Abadesi (04:11):
It's so ironic because I think you're right. At that time we were still obsessed with this narrative of like unicorn or bust. It's like you have to build a company that gets VC funding and then dominates the market and then makes everyone multimillionaires, billionaires. Woo woo woo. And then the thing is that five years later we're all looking at the Facebooks and the WeWorks of the world and kind of going like, uh-oh. And then meanwhile all the indie makers that were like, "I'm just going to knuckle down and focus on building something sustainable," are the ones that are just silently growing and continuing to grow.

Pieter (04:46):
I mean that part, what you just said about like the WeWork's and stuff. That's so interesting because it showed that like I'm not against it, but you have to sacrifice a lot. A lot of these companies are sacrificing ethics for example, because you want to grow so fast and if you want to grow so fast and so big, it's really difficult to do that without sacrificing your moral ethics. You've seen that with all these examples and there's also good examples. There's also good examples. There's lots of companies that raised money, that they are doing well. So I'm not against it, but I'm just saying nobody thought it was cool back then. So yeah, it was super cool to be part of that. Like in any way, just making things and seeing it grow. It's super. Honest, it's super cool to see things change.

Abadesi (05:25):
I can imagine. And how do you feel in terms of the actual ecosystem? Because I think if we actually think of how access to entrepreneurship has evolved just over the last five or 10 years, it also feels like five to 10 years ago there was very much this belief that you had to get outside funding in order to do it or at least that was the sensible way to do it. Like this is super risky, don't just put all of your eggs in one basket, spread out that risk and then it seems that as the narrative has evolved and people have been like, "Hey, there's value in bootstrapping. Don't get money until you need it. Really try to focus on what you're building and whether there's a demand for it and making it amazing." Do you just feel that there is now more support for people that want to go down the bitch dropping route like you did?

Pieter (06:12):
Yeah, I think so because more people talk about it, right? More people talk about it on Twitter. Probably more people talk about it in the real life too. I know all the startup events, also in U.K. and London for example, love start this a giant startup event ecosystem. I think Amsterdam too, U.S. too. The presentations that are happening there, you can kind of follow what's the current like big trend, and you see more of those presentations about people just doing things a little bit smaller, more bootstrapped. Also, like you said, it's way bigger than indie makers. It's like the whole entrepreneurship. We think indie makers is big, but it's very small. It's a very small niche. Entrepreneurship as a whole is giant. It's like a small and medium business is giant. Those people probably are having the same effects where there's less funding. There's more, how do you say it? There's more of a lean mindset of not spending a lot of money until you're making the money, right?

Abadesi (07:08):
Yes, absolutely. So I'd love to just switch gears a bit and have you tell us about the projects that you're working on now. I know Nomad List has kind of gone from strength to strength. So tell us more about it. And also like who helps you with this? I know you're kind of working from all corners of the world. Are you building a team? How does that all work?

Pieter (07:27):
Yeah, so I still work alone and that's the thing everybody's been telling me to hire for the last five years. I haven't hired at least not for product stuff. I have one, my friend Daniel from the UK. Too, he helps with the server. So you know stuff like keeping your NGINX web server up on you. VPS server is really difficult. Well it's not difficult, but you don't want to get hacked or that kind of stuff. So he gets an alert when the server goes down and then he goes into the server. SSHs into it and stuff and does some magic. But I really like making stuff, creating and creative expression and coding and designing and stuff. So I still like doing that most.

Pieter (08:12):
Again, this is like a thing where I do the opposite of what everybody tells me to do, because everybody's like, "Oh you should build a giant team," which I'm also not against, but instead I've been automating everything I do. I've talked a lot about automation, like automating all the things you can think of on Nomad List and Remote OK and all these websites that I have. Think of getting the weather from an API or emailing users when they're not using the website or refunding them automatically, that kind of stuff. A lot of support is automated, for example. So anyway, so I've been mostly just on purpose, trying to keep working for myself alone. So I don't want to lose my skills. I don't want to get like irrelevant.

Pieter (08:51):
I have a fear of irrelevance and if I stop coding and stop making stuff and I become some kind of CEO, executive manager, whatever, I feel like I'm going to lose ... Like why not learn a new skill like management? Which is a great skill. But I'm not a business guy. I'm a more like creative person. So I get happy from making stuff, like making something that's a challenge to make and then I make it and it works, so people use it. I'm like, "Oh my god, that's amazing." And I don't get that from, I think management because then other people make it and then I don't get happy from it. I think also my goal is never really money. So I probably make more money if I build a team and scale and stuff, but I'm not doing that. So I'm doing everything opposite.

Abadesi (09:30):
I really, I love that honesty. I love that honesty, because I think there are a lot of makers who probably also experienced this. I'm kind of even thinking of myself, like you start a company or you create a project and you love solving all the problems and you love building everything and making all those really fun decisions. And then you get to a super fortunate position where you have a business model that works, you've got traction, things are kind of working, and then you're at this point where you're like, okay, I can either delegate more but then I'm kind of doing less of the fun stuff and that must be so tricky.

Pieter (10:01):
Yeah, the fun stuff is like doing stuff. So I mean I studied business, so I kind of know about management. I know what you're going to do and how it works, but just doesn't seem for me personally as the most fun part. Then again, if there's too much work, you don't want to get burnout. You don't want to get stressed doing too much stuff. So like I said, I've really carefully automated everything so much and because we're in software, it's pretty logical to automate stuff that you do. And once the program works, because we're making software, once the software thing works, it generally kind of keeps working for at least a while, for at least a few weeks or a few months until, and then it does break. Things always break but in general and then you fix it a little bit. So mostly what I'm doing is bug fixing some features. But yeah, I think it's possible. It's possible to build software that just keeps running. Then the fun thing is like product development. You can make new stuff. You make new features.

Abadesi (10:57):
And that gives you the time. The automations that you've created are giving you the time to think about the new features you want to build and giving you the time to think about your roadmap.

Pieter (11:07):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another thing, strategy. We call it in business, the strategy, thinking about what's the next thing and the roadmap. And that's also really fun because that's again idea generation. So my friend Marc Kohlbrugge, you know him probably from Betalist, also a Dutch guy. He's been hiring one person, one developer where he just, he still works on his websites and his products, but sometimes small things, small bug fixes or whatever he puts it on Github as an issue and then this person goes in there and fix it and that kind of setup would probably work because then you can still be creative. You could still build new features yourself and just let other people do like bug fixes for example, which are kind of boring.

Abadesi (11:49):
Amazing. So I just realized you haven't actually described what Nomad List is. I mean, I'm sure lots of the community members who are listening will know. But for those who aren't familiar, tell us about it and tell us how it's evolved in the years that you've been running it.

Pieter (12:01):
Yeah. So Nomad List is a website where you can ... There's a lot of cities in a world where you can go and travel and work remotely. That's what I've been doing for the last five years. And this website it kind of lets you filter all these cities on the internet speed on the weather, on the safety, just anything you can think of pretty much I've collected as data and I let you filter on it. So for example, most people like probably mild to warm weather, so you can find places in January that are warm with fast internets that have kind of a nomad scene, so there's a lot of other remote working nomads there. So you can socialize with them.

Pieter (12:41):
So that's kind of the website. So it's all this data collected. You can filter on it. And then a big part of it is the social network where you can meet other travelers or nomads and people pay for that to become a member of it. There's also a Slack group, a giant chat group of about a few thousand people. So it's pretty much, it's fixed a lot of problems that remote workers and nomads have, which is like loneliness for example, like being alone in a faraway country, the isolation of that. But also the research, like well how do you find places to go that are good for living, good for working and good for fun too.

Abadesi (13:15):
I think what's so cool about your community is just how diverse the types of people I've met in it have found value in it. I remember one of my friends Tammy [Lashadae 00:13:24], who's also in the Product Hunt community, based in Berlin but like came to London and she was just like, "I spent some time in Bali, spent some time here and yeah, just the community is so great, because I was Nomad's List and I got to meet other makers who are just doing their thing." And I was just like, "Wow, that's so awesome." So it's so cool that you've been able to build and maintain this community that people now rely on as a trusted resource. I was just wondering when you first made that very first version, could you have imagined that it would get to the scale that it's at now?

Pieter (13:55):
No again, all these things you have no idea what's happening when it's happening. Again, back then there was also not really a big nomad scene. It was also like a little fringe. I think you have the same thing, every time you enter stuff it's like a fringe. It's like a weird thing. But you're like, "Oh this is kind of cool. This must become a cool thing in the future maybe." And then most things you do that it doesn't happen and some things it does. And with this thing again it happened where it became a ... I mean it didn't become a giant thing. I think it became a big thing. I think there're millions of nomads if you counted. If you defined nomads as people working from different countries now on their laptop, there're millions of them, so that's pretty big.

Pieter (14:38):
No, I've never thought it would have been big. And I never thought that my website would be a big central part of it. Because it's so hard. Like Product Hunt is pretty much the central website for startup launches and stuff. People wanting to build startups. It's really difficult when you have a scene because scenes are organic. It's like this group of people that are organically converging. They're very diverse. There're different factions. There's people fighting, in fighting as well, it's normal, it's a community, to make a website, like a company that grows or promotes or leverages that scene is very risky because it's like a commercial endeavor.

Pieter (15:21):
But a community is organic with humans. You know what I mean? So it's like you don't want to commercialize it. You don't want to make it too expensive. You want it to be kind of open to everybody. And if you do that and then it becomes a central part of a community. Community of course it's way bigger than Nomad List. I think I only capture maybe 10% of people, because most people don't even want to pay of course. But I do get a lot of traffic, which is a lot of free traffic and I think a lot of the nomads they do go to my website.

Abadesi (15:48):
I think you make such a good point there. That's one of the challenges of community businesses. They often start as purely reciprocal. Like, oh, I'm coming to get a bit of value, I'm going to share some value. But of course someone's behind the scenes maintaining that and I feel like you're in a very unique position to talk about converting these projects into a place where they're profitable and into a place where they're sustainable, because that is one of the biggest challenges that makers have. Fair enough if you're building a kind of like standard SAS tool where you've got a lot of healthy competitors, you can do a bit of price comparison and position yourself somewhere in the market. How did you approach trying to build this into something profitable and something sustainable and do you feel there are any tricks that really worked for you that are overlooked? Or do you feel there are any other things that you avoided that lots of makers unfortunately still do.

Pieter (16:45):
I think it's the most difficult part. One of the most difficult parts. It's like getting people to open their wallet, get the credit card out, but then now with Apple Pay it's easier to get them to pay, because they can just press a button. But no, it's so difficult and I think so many people launch things that are great ideas. They're super useful, but people wouldn't put the credit card out and pay money for it. It's so difficult to answer. You have to make something that's so useful and that's makes some person's existence pretty much better in the moment for them to actually want to pay money for it.

Pieter (17:25):
Then there are other things that like I asked like $100 or something or $99 for a year membership Nomad List. $100 is a lot of money for me. It's like that you can buy a lot of coffees from that. So it's a lot of money to ask. It's almost like the first years I felt embarrassed for asking money. I remember I was at a meetup. A Nomad List meetup in Taiwan and we were partying and stuff and drinking cocktails and I was little tipsy. I had two drinks and I was talking to a member. I was saying, "I'm just so sorry that I charged you money for membership. I just feel embarrassed by it. I just feel a shit." And he's like, "No, are you joking? It's so useful. That's why I met this meetup and that's why I make all these friends." And I felt really like imposter syndrome or embarrassed by it. I don't feel I should charge any money. Everything should be free for me, but that's not realistic because then I can't make money and I can not have an income.

Pieter (18:25):
So, I wish it would be free. But after a while, I think once your brand grows, once your website grows and once it's getting older, there's like this, I think they call it Lindy effect, like the things that are older, they also exist longer, but also people trust them more. Like you've been probably covered by CNN or by press and stuff and people trust it more and they think, "Okay, this is probably worth $99." Yeah, so it's not really answering your question, but it's just because it's so difficult to charge people money. Just psychologically it's like difficult.

Abadesi (18:59):
No, I think you're right and I think particularly given you have built a community of peers where you're also learning from each other and it's like a nascent industry. It's growing, it's scaling up. You're sort of at the beginning of the journey and riding that wave together, it must feel even more challenging to then exert some sense of authority over that.

Pieter (19:23):
Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. No. You 100% understand it. First of all, the money you're charging your friends money and seconds you are some authority figure, which you don't want to be. You just want to be a nice person, a nice friend who chills around. And so every time I get put into the position of authority where even like moderation, that's why I don't do moderation anymore, but sometimes you have to ban people for example, or that kind of stuff. I don't want to be that person. It's just not really, it's not ... I like to do fun stuff. I like to make stuff. I don't like to be so much an authority in that respect. I like a level, like an equal hierarchical structure. I don't care so much for hierarchy.

Abadesi (20:08):
The interesting thing about that is that, I mean I'm totally with you and I can empathize with that position so much, but I feel like to some degree maybe also as makers, it's hard for us to kind of take ourselves out of the scene that we're operating in and the communities that we're active in and take a more macro view of the value we're creating an ecosystem or even in the economy. And I think what a lot of great founders are doing right now is they are sharing the story of what it's like to be in their position. So they're talking about the journey of like, "Hey, guess what? I'm about to release 3.0, 4.0. Here's what I learned between these different versions. Or I've made a decision to relocate myself from X to Z to focus on this."

Abadesi (20:57):
I feel that that storytelling that comes with making is incredibly valuable because for every person that purchases your product or follows you on social media, there's also like 10 dozen more maybe who are just passively reading what you're creating or passively following your story, but being inspired by it and starting conversations about remote working or about nomad lifestyle in their circles. And I think how do you get compensated for that value you're creating? It's kind of hard to. It's a bit nebulous, hard to measure, but at the same time the people who are in a position to support that work can do that. And then I feel like it just it means that your work continues to happen and the value of that kind of cascades beyond what you can measure or see. Does that make sense?

Pieter (21:45):
No, 100%. So this, I was explaining to my mom yesterday. I was explaining blog platforms and I was explaining Twitter and stuff and she's like, "Why is your Twitter free?" And I was like, "Yeah, that's a good question. Why is my Twitter free?" She's like, "Because you write all day on this Twitter and nobody pays you for it and you need to get paid for it." And I was like, "Okay mom. So how it works, usually you sell something, you sell a book or sell t-shirt, merch or whatever. In my case I sell a website membership or job post. So indirectly it goes back there. But you're right." I mean, so you tell stories about your life, about remote work, about nomads and stuff, and indie makers do that as well. Part of it is marketing. You get traction from it. And part of it is just your honestly also telling your story. But yeah, we do it because it works. People see it and some of them might become a customer for example.

Abadesi (22:44):
Exactly. But also some of them might become makers. Someone might be able to make a nomad list that speaks to a ridiculously specific niche you've never even considered. And then that adds to everything. I feel like we might sometimes also just undervalue the knowledge capital that we're creating when we are building content. To some degree, yes it is content marketing, but to some degree it's also educating people about a new space, about a niche, but very fast growing space and then over time you start to see more subdivisions within that and then those can expand and proliferate because of the work that you're doing now.

Pieter (23:22):
No, I think you're right. I think the previous answer sounds also way too commercial, because it was like, oh, I'm only tweeting to make money. It's bullshit. No, again, we have to go back to five years ago when and maker scene didn't exist. I had to tweet about this because there was not a lot of other people tweeting about it-

Abadesi (23:38):
And talking about it.

Pieter (23:39):
Yeah, and all day I was fighting venture capital investor type people, nothing against them, but I was fighting them, because they were the dominant mindset. So I didn't even think about it inspiring. It was more about this thing obviously works and I need to talk about it to show other people that it works because it's a cool thing. So almost more like a spiritual fight pretty much. And other people did it like Patrick McKenzie from Stripe, or a Peter Levine did that a lot as well. I think he inspired me to blog and or more tweet about it because he wrote blogs about everything he did. Every week there was a new blog post about some new experiment he did with his apps and stuff.

Pieter (24:18):
No, I think you're right, inspiring helps. I think inspiring, it's a little bit like a cliche now. I had five years ago, I had some kind of fight against like an intellectual spiritual fight against the mainstream, like rebelling against it. And I think that's a nice way to see it for me personally and if that inspires people, that's nice, right?

Abadesi (24:45):
Yeah. I think you're right because you from the very beginning and in many ways at quite a kind of risky stage of your career because you're still quite young and you're like, "Hey, I'm in my 20 and I'm just like F you to the traditional corporate path."

Pieter (24:57):
Exactly and your industry.

Abadesi (25:03):
"I'm not going to get a normal job." It's like I'm not going to get normal job, I'm just to start my own companies and [crosstalk 00:25:07].

Pieter (25:05):
And I'm also not getting money raised from investors anymore. Goodbye.

Abadesi (25:10):
But then in a way perhaps it was pretty cool that the experiment of doing something different and taking that riskier path paid off, because in a way you've normalized something that a lot of people just would not have recommended as a career path. I feel like when I was at university, I graduated 10 years ago, no one was like, "Yeah, consider being a freelancer or considering working on multiple projects at the same time so you have more flexibility." Like that was just not a mindset that existed and for professors or careers advisors, they are coming from a different generation. They didn't have everything on the cloud. All this incredible mobile technology. So I get it I guess is kind of an interesting part of the interview to then think about what the next five to 10 years of the nomad lifestyle could look like.

Abadesi (25:58):
Because when we think of when you started to now, you're talking about choosing a career path that wasn't well carved and people weren't like, here's the rule book on how to do a nomad life or how to be a remote maker that didn't exist. Too, the community wasn't so well connected online and hadn't necessarily like named itself or labeled itself yet. So over time we've seen people talk about this more. We've seen people connect with each other more. We've seen more and more resources about it.

Abadesi (26:31):
I feel like we're also seeing traditional employers be more open to working with contractors and freelancers than always hiring someone that has to be in the office and that's really interesting. But now I'm kind of looking to the next few years and I see our attitudes to certain things connected to nomad life changing. Like people are already having different attitudes around air travel. Some of my friends the other day in the pub were like, "Oh, I'm going to try to only take three flights this year instead of the six I took last year." That's one particular thing. But do you see any other either trends or maybe even risks to the nomad lifestyle that could happen in the coming years?

Pieter (27:13):
Yeah, I think that the flight shaming thing is really big, but I mean, I have to debunk this. People always think of nomads as like they're moving around every two weeks or something. And I've tweeted about this a million times, but every time I have to tell everybody, they're mostly like settled down. But there's just settled down in two places or three places. So they move. So you start off as a nomad. You're like, "Oh my God, I'm going to travel. The world forever." Which is bull shit, because hardly anybody does that. You go mentally insane. I went mentally insane from traveling too fast. It's really dangerous.

Abadesi (27:46):
Yes. I'm pretty sure it messes up your circadian rhythm and like-

Pieter (27:50):
Not just that. Think of everything that grounds you to one place. Like your identity is good is ... You know when you go travel and you go to a new place and you're like, "Wow, I feel so different here." Imagine if you feel that every week and your identity in every place is shaped by the environment. Literally by the weather, by the people around you, by the interior, by the architecture, everything influenced you. If you change that every week, your brain is like, "What the hell is going on? I can't follow this. I can't track this." And you literally go crazy. So most nomads they don't do that. They're not able to do that. They would burn out. Most of them travel like four to six months in one place. The average and this comes from my database, it's like four to six months. They're fixed in one place.

Pieter (28:40):
Averages are always kind of like weird statistical. Some people would do it fast, some people less, but in general, and it fits with how I travel. I'm for long periods of time in one place. The limitation of it is visas pretty much. If there was no visa limitation, which for me as a European is super easy by the way, because I usually I could stay 30, 60, 90 days. A lot of other people have to apply for visas which is way worse. So I have it very easy I must say. But still the visa limitations, they limit you how long you can stay in a place. I think if that would become easier for everybody, people would stay longer.

Pieter (29:16):
But the point is, so nomads are pretty much the word is wrong, digital nomads, because they don't really nomad so much. They just work from different countries. A few hubs, like you said, like your friend was in Bali and then Berlin. That kind of makes sense. Maybe you're in Bali in the winter of Europe and you're in Berlin in the summer in Europe because it's great. So an example, last year I only flew three or four times like your friend said. So that's way less-

Abadesi (29:43):
That's probably less than people with a full-time job that have to travel.

Pieter (29:46):
Exactly, yes. It's less than my Dutch friends flew. So that's a good example that the Nomad List guy flies less than normal people do. And but it also, because travel's really fun but more fun is, I guess it's about finding a place where you feel better than where you're born or then where you've grown up or went to university and stuff. Like I was born in a small town in Holland and I moved to different cities for university. I ended up in Amsterdam in the end. And Amsterdam was nice because it was very international.

Pieter (30:19):
But my point is there's all these different hubs, these nomad hubs are just also like tech hubs that are nice to live in. Or maybe if you're a nature person you can go live in a cabin. But I think that there should be more attention to what's the best place for you to live. Of course, because that's my website is about, but because it affects you. Like I said, environments affect you and they might make you more creative. They might make you more happy. People with arthritis, they go to warm places because they have less medical problems. So there's a lot of reasons to move to different places. Not necessarily move fast or regularly, but find places that work for you. And with remote work that becomes possible.

Abadesi (31:00):
Yeah, totally. And so if I'm understanding your point correctly, you have observed that individuals want to be in the places where they're the most productive and the most content, the healthiest they can be. If they are able to. Like they're able Work from anywhere or they will seek work where they can work from those places. And as we are almost personalizing our work life more. You see the nomad approach to working and continuing to grow?

Pieter (31:36):
I think so. I think we won't be calling it nomads very soon anymore. It will just be called-

Abadesi (31:43):
It'll just be normal.

Pieter (31:43):
Yeah, you remember in 1995, I don't know if I remember even, but they would call internet people like netizens. Netizens, which it's a super nerd word, but like citizens, but then on the net and the people that use internet were netizens. And we don't even use that word anymore. Everybody has a phone and they're on the internet 24/7. So I think the same thing happens with nomad. We won't even talk about it anymore. And like very soon, within a few years. Nomad is a percentage of remote work, like let's say it's one to 10% of remote work. So the more remote work grows and becomes mainstream, the more living in different countries, working remotely becomes more mainstream. So once that becomes mainstream, yeah, we don't need to call it nomadism anymore.

Abadesi (32:30):
I feel as though your assumptions around this trend are or who they are.

Pieter (32:36):
Yeah, I think so. I think not just work, I think because we always talk about remote work, but what about life? Like how you feel as a person in your life. And like I said, I think you should be in a place where you feel best, but also how many of your friends are international-

Abadesi (32:54):
That's true.

Pieter (32:55):
Are foreigners. The majority of my time now I speak English to my friends. I even speak English to my Dutch friends. So it's becoming really strange. So, once all our friends are from all over the place, which we already are now, these people will probably converge. We already are planning places to live together. That's what I do for certain periods of time. So-

Abadesi (33:23):
Yes, I think you're right. The way we live will also change. It's not just about, oh, I'm buying a house and I'm going to live here for 35 years. We have more options and we have more choices.

Pieter (33:34):
yeah, and people can't afford to buy a house now as well.

Abadesi (33:37):
Exactly. Exactly.

Pieter (33:37):
It's this whole generation. But that's a big part of it. The financial part of it is like a lot of things you can't afford anymore, so you have to move. It's almost forced by economics.

Abadesi (33:49):
And I definitely have noticed in tech in particular, so I'm based in London most of the time and I see a lot of CTOs. I see a lot of CTOs who have made the decision to build their engineering teams in other hubs in the world where they can-

Pieter (34:05):
Yeah, you see Europe a lot right?

Abadesi (34:06):
Yeah, exactly. It might be Lisbon, it might be Sofia, like the Product Hunt team. But I think that's going to happen with more and more different skill sets over time as well. Because right now it's kind of focused mostly on the software engineering, because of the over demand and lack of supply. But over time that's surely just going to like expand. People are talking about artificial intelligence needing more ethicists and stuff like that. So I just feel that we're going to see more of that geo optimization for specific roles, because that's where you get the best return on your investment if you hire there or if you hire openly and flexibly across the world.

Pieter (34:46):
Yeah. But I mean think about stuff like medical diagnosis. There's an app on the iOS app store for you can make a photo of your skin and it checks what skin thing you have. Like if it's a pimple or if it's like cancer or whatever. That stuff, the doctors, they can sit at home or they can be anywhere pretty much. So you're right, it's going to infiltrate into almost every industry that you can think of.

Abadesi (35:09):
I know I don't have you for a lot longer. Sadly. I could sit here and ask you questions for ages, but one thing I wanted to ask, this is my favorite part of the podcast. We're obsessed with products in our community. We want to know what websites and apps and toys and gadgets people are obsessed with or playing with a lot these days. So I thought it can be fun to ask you since you are exposed to a lot of new products all the time through your community and probably know some which are like optimal for remote working and nomad life. But what are the products that you're bit obsessed with right now or which you rely on every day?

Pieter (35:43):
I just got AirPlus Pro in the mail, so that's good. I think most important, I use a Roost stand. It's called a Roost stand. R-O-O-S-T. It's a laptop stand. It's very minimal. It's very lightweight. And the biggest problem I see with people working anywhere, not just nomads, but anywhere are that their back is curved and they're looking downward to their computer. I was doing it again too, because it's so fun to not sit ergonomically, to cure your back and put your face in your screen. But I started getting headaches. I started getting headaches on my right side of my head and I Googled it. I was like, "Oh my God, am I going to die?" No, it's just, it's pressure from not sitting properly. So the Roost stand I use to raise my laptop to eye height and then I have a wireless keyboard, Apple wireless keyboard and an Apple trackpad. But the most important is the laptop stand, because you want to sit ergonomically, because all these health problems start from sitting improperly.

Abadesi (36:38):
Yeah, that's a very good point. It's so funny. Anytime someone mentions posture, I immediately check mine. Like, hang on, what am I doing?

Pieter (36:45):
No, our posture is wrong. We're all bad at it, but you don't have to be perfect. But especially if you're young, it's so easy. It doesn't really matter. But once you're getting older, your back starts to yeah, you don't even want to talk about it. It's just bad stuff. But, you want it to be sitting straight, you want to be standing straight and stuff. And it makes you taller. Everybody wants to be taller so if you stop straight-

Abadesi (37:08):
That is true. Although, Dutch people have nothing to complain about on that front, surely. I mean, you're like one of tallest nations.

Pieter (37:13):
I'm the shortest from my brothers, from my family. So it doesn't really help. 1.78m so yeah.

Abadesi (37:20):
So that's pretty cool. Great to hear your story. And for folks who are listening and are now curious to find out more about the sites you've made and the communities that you've built, where should they go?

Pieter (37:31):
Well if you're on Twitter, my Twitter is levelsio, which is L-E-V-E-L-S-I-O. And the website, my main website is Nomad List, nomadlist.com.

Abadesi (37:43):
Amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show today Peter.

Pieter (37:45):
Thank you so much for having me Abadesi. It was super fun.

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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2022
18 Sep
This House Does Not Exist
2022
14 Jul
Sam Parr + Shaan Puri asked me about bootstrapping, open startups and lifestyle inflation (My First Million Podcast)
2022
16 May
Thinking and doing for yourself (Life Done Differently Podcast)
2022
10 May
Relocation of remote workers (Building Remotely Podcast)
2022
26 Jan
Money, happiness and productivity as a solo founder (Indiehackers Podcast)
2022
20 Jan
Bootstrapping, moving to Portugal and setting up Rebase (Wannabe Entrepreneur Podcast)
2021
25 Mar
Why I'm unreachable and maybe you should be too
2021
25 Mar
The next frontier after remote work is async
2021
19 Mar
List of all my projects ever
2021
08 Mar
Why coliving economics still don't make sense
2021
14 Feb
Inflation Chart: the stock market adjusted for the US-dollar money supply
2021
10 Jan
I did a live 4+ hour AMA on Twitch w/ @roxkstar74
2020
20 Dec
No one should ever work
2020
10 Dec
Normalization of non-deviance
2020
05 Dec
Copywriting for entrepreneurs: explain your product how you'd explain it to a friend
2020
30 Nov
Entrepreneurs are the heroes, not the villains
2020
12 Nov
The future of remote work: how the greatest human migration in history will happen in the next ten years
2020
05 Nov
Will millions of remote workers become location independent in 2021?
2020
11 Apr
5 years in startups with Abadesi
2020
11 Jan
Twitter giveaways can be hacked to win every time
2019
16 Oct
Lorn - The Slow Blade ✕ Hong Kong
2019
28 Sep
Most decaf coffee is made from paint stripper
2019
12 Sep
The odds of getting a remote job are less than 1% (because everyone wants one)
2019
08 Sep
In the future writing actual code will be like using a pro DSLR camera, and no code will be like using a smartphone camera
2019
29 Aug
Instead of hiring people, do things yourself to stay relevant
2019
28 Aug
Nobody cares about you after you're dead and the universe destroys itself
2019
28 Aug
The only real validation is people paying for your product
2019
05 Aug
Monitoring Bali's undersea internet cable
2019
29 Jul
Nomad List turns 5
2018
29 Jan
I'm Product Hunt's Maker of the Year again!
2018
28 Jan
Why Korean Jimjilbangs and Japanese Onsens are great
2018
24 Jan
Turning side projects into profitable startups
2018
03 Jan
What I learnt from 100 days of shipping
2017
28 Dec
As decentralized as cryptocurrency is: so will be the people working on it
2017
22 Oct
How to 3d scan any object with just your phone's camera
2017
09 Aug
In a world of outrage, mute words
2017
03 Aug
How to pack for world travel with just a carry-on bag
2017
26 Jul
Building a startup in public: from first line of code to frontpage of Reddit
2017
24 Jul
Facebook and Google are building their own cities: the inevitable future of private tech worker towns
2017
21 Jul
The TL;DR MBA
2017
12 Jul
We did it! Namecheap has introduced 2FA
2017
08 Jun
It's about time for a digital work permit for remote workers
2017
23 May
Using Uptime Robot to build unit tests for the web
2017
08 May
Namecheap still doesn't support 2FA in 2017 (update: they do now!)
2017
03 May
Taipei is boring, and maybe that's not such a bad thing
2017
16 Apr
What we can learn from Stormzy about transparency
2017
17 Feb
The ICANN mafia has taken my site hostage for 2 days now
2017
10 Feb
Most coworking spaces don't make money; here's how they can adapt to survive the future
2017
11 Jan
A society of total automation in which the need to work is replaced with a nomadic life of creative play
2017
07 Jan
Nomad List Founder
2016
12 Dec
Make your own Olark feedback form without Olark
2016
29 Oct
How to fix flying
2016
19 Oct
Robots make mistakes too: How to log your server with push notifications straight to your phone
2016
17 Oct
Hong Kong Express - 上海 (Shanghai)
2016
17 Oct
Choosing entrepreneurship over a corporate career
2016
13 Oct
"I can't buy happiness anymore. I've bought everything that I ever wanted. There's not really anything I want anymore."
2016
11 Oct
From web dev to VR: How to get started with VR development
2016
05 Oct
What I would do if I was 18 now
2016
22 Sep
Bootstrapping Side Projects into Profitable Startups
2016
27 Aug
Kids
2016
13 Aug
How I cured my anxiety (mostly)
2016
26 Jul
We have an epidemic of bad posture
2016
17 Jul
Fixing "Inf and NaN cannot be JSON encoded" in PHP the easy way
2016
26 Jun
My third time in a float tank and practicing visualizing the future
2016
15 Jun
How to add shareable pictures to your website with some PhantomJS magic
2016
29 May
My chatbot gets catcalled
2016
19 May
From web dev to 3d: Learning 3d modeling in a month
2016
09 Mar
My second time in a sensory deprivation chamber
2016
04 Mar
Day 30 of Learning 3d 🎮 Cloning objects 👾👾👾
2016
02 Mar
Day 29 of Learning 3d 🎮 Glass, reflectives, HD, coloring and more details
2016
29 Feb
Day 27 of Learning 3d 🎮 Details, details, DETAILS!
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