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Confronting Your Fears and Taking a Leap with Pieter Levels of Nomad List

Episode #043

Starting an online business is scary. You're putting yourself out there and risking failure in front of thousands or even millions of people. Learn how Pieter Levels has not only faced his fears, but used them as motivation while building an empire of profitable businesses that cater to digital nomads.

  1. 10

    This guy is super down to earth, I loved this episode. He inspired me to really get into bootstrapping, I kind of dabbled with making random projects with new tech and always getting side tracked and never finishing, but after he started saying he just uses php and mysql and focuses on marketing, it finally clicked for me.

    Since he's my main inspiration, I'm basically copying what he's done and seeing if I can copy his success too, I'm also doing 12in 12, (12 "startups" in 12 months), and my first one is almost a literal copy of nomadlist: outsidelist. If he sees this, I hope he doesn't mind haha. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

    1. 2

      One of my big takeaways from the episode was the reiteration that things need to be different to work. Personally, I feel like the 12 startups in 12 months thing has been done to death, so won’t yield the same results.

      That’s not to say it’s not worth doing and won’t end up working out, just that it’s unlikely press, etc will be as interested because it’s no longer unique.

      Coming up with novel ways to stand out is tough, but I think it’s worth thinking about!

      1. 1

        Yeah, so many people have copied and not got anywhere.

      2. 1

        Yeah I agree here, but when you already don’t have any traction, there’s nothing to lose. Plus, I’d rather start by copying and work towards something novel over time than get stuck in what I always get stuck in, analysis paralysis or in this case, novelty insolvency?

        1. 1

          Good point - anything to get you shipping!

    2. 2

      Looks like the site got slashdotted... er I mean indiehacked ;)

  2. 5

    My Main Takeaways:

    • NomadList was a big inspiration for IndieHackers. The same way that NomadList was based on ProductHunt; IndieHackers, was based on NomadList

    • Pieter feels strong competition with Mubz (friendly competition), because at the time of this interview, Mubz was ranking as the number 1 maker on ProductHunt, and Pieter is competitive and wanted to be number 1. Although Mubz makes things as a hobby, while Pieter makes things for profit.

    • Charge more! - As an indie maker you should charge more per user, since you're not likely to have the scale of a billion dollar company with millions of users paying small amounts. You should instead charge a few users fairly big amounts.

    • Don't charge on time, charge on value brought

    • Pieter used to be a YouTuber back in the day before building NomadList

    • Pieter first came up with an idea called "Tubelytics" analytics for YouTube in the early days. He spent a year building the platform with his limited programming knowledge. Eventually a big company, "Vice" reached out to him asking if they could use that tool. They started using it, but the product wasn't built very well, so it didn't work correctly, and eventually they lost interest, and this resulted in Pieter giving up on this project and deeming it a failure.

    • Soon Pieter's YouTube income was quickly decreasing, so he had to begin applying to jobs, but wasn't having any luck. This was after he spent a year travelling as a Nomad. Soon he decided to do 12 startups in 12 months.

    • Pieter's inspiration was patio11 who apparently never acknowledged Pieter's existence in the early days.

    • Pieter learned from the failure of his Tubelytics app that he shouldn't spent too much time developing the app. He also knew that most ideas don't work, so he chose to quickly develop a lot of ideas and validate by testing.

    • Pieter accidentally deployed NomadList to production, making the site live before he intended to. And someone submitted it to product hunt. And then NomadList went to Number 1 on ProductHunt, all while Pieter was drunk in Manila.

    • When suitable, add social features - The social aspect of NomadList aka the "sticky features" were what helped NomadList survive as long as it currently has, according to Pieter.

    • NomadList solved Pieter's own problem

    • Courtland started IndieHackers so that he could find a good idea to work on.

    • Pieter at the time of this interview has become less interested in frequent travel, he appreciates having a base that he sticks to.

    • The best way to travel is to stay in one location at a time for a long duration, not just for 7 days and then off to the next destination.

    • Leverage economic arbitrage - Take successful products and services from one country, into another country where that product or service has not been introduced (yet).

    • The IndieHackers/NomadList/ProductHunt Formula - (1) For any topic that people really care about, where it's also hard for them to do research, you can do all that research for them and put it all in one place. (2) Once you have all this traffic, build a community around this information. (3) Once you have this community of people who care about the same thing, you build related products that they'd also find valuable.

    • Don't get caught up on technology stacks, that stuff is for engineers in enterprise environments, not for bootstrap founders rapidly validating ideas on low budgets.

    • Pieter doesn't have a social media strategy, he just shares what he thinks.

    • Pieter said that he drinks 3 coffees a day.

    • Pieter isn't into the idea of retirement.

    • Just start! Don't get obsessed with reading, learning, and inspiration.

  3. 5

    I really appreciated the part where he talked about tech snobbery. I say this as someone with a background at a huge company who is currently indie hacking educational material for a super hip language.

    Soooo many makers and even funded startup founders sabotage themselves worrying about scalability and engineering perfection before getting any interest from the market at all. I'm fighting really hard against falling into that trap again.

  4. 4

    Great points-

    • Focus on building things rather than spending too much time on new tech
    • Bootstrapped your product. Everything should not be free.
    • Don't get disappoint when project doesn't work. Start building new projects.
  5. 2

    Awesome interview. So many great points. Being a digital nomad in similar places (Bali, Thailand, SE Asia) #nomadlist's Slack inspired the creation of LaunchPass.com to help others quickly launch paid Slack communities. Getting some brutal feedback from Pieter Levels would be a dream come true 😃

    1. 1

      Great domain!

  6. 1

    Hi guys is this episode no longer available? It was recommended on twitter but won't play for me. Thanks!

    1. 1

      Weird, seeing the same issue. Will try to fix!

      1. 1

        Thank you! I appreciate that.

  7. 1

    Great episode :)

    Using RemoteOK API at https://workfromhomejobs.me with great ease.

    Thanks Pieter!

  8. 1

    Love the part where he talks about people being religious about tech. There are so many "purists" out there it's unbelievable.

  9. 1

    is there an alternate way to purchase the book? for some reason stripe is not accepting my card. paypal maybe?

  10. 1

    Great podcast. So many parts of it resonate with me, especially the part where "non-doers" are critical of your technology choice or strategy. Thanks for being a voice of reassurance.

  11. 1

    Loved this episode! Really inspiring in a down-to-earth, get-things-done way!

  12. 1

    All of the Indie Hackers podcasts have been addictive to listen to, but this one with Pieter was so raw and packed with good tips. I got so inspired by Pieter and Courtland when they were talking about the tech giants not going after the niches in the world that I created a Google spreadsheet of all the online courses I've taken with course links, reviews, homework assignments, and solutions: https://goo.gl/edMBXL. I also followed Pieter's advice to create a Slack channel to form a niche community around online course takers: https://coursecurator.slack.com. Keep on hacking everyone!

  13. 1

    Great points about analysis paralysis of coding! just pick a damn stack and get good at it, cause it's gonna take more than a course or 1 website to get good at coding!

  14. 1

    This was amazing. Thanks guys. Well worth the wait : )

  15. 0

    Sounds like "Andy" Hackers?

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