I think it's actually good that it's going
so bad in Europe,
because it's almost like
the patient is so sick—
Never waste a crisis.
The problem is, if you're a
founder and you raise money,
you kind of need to go big or bust, right?
It's hard to stay in between.
I also work really
hard, because I tweeted,
I think 125,000 times
over 10 years, so it's
like, 40 tweets a day.
You've contributed so many brain cells
to spending time on X.
Pieter Levels,
one of the most prolific indie
hackers and digital nomads,
whose businesses now do more
than $3 million in revenue—
and it's just Pieter working on them.
Cheers.
I think you are maybe the
most prominent indie hacker?
Nomad List, got to $700k in ARR,
Remote OK has gotten to
$3.4 million in revenue,
Photo AI got to $600k in ARR.
And these are all just you.
Like, these are not startups
that you have started,
these are just Pieter Levels productions.
You're also at the vanguard
of the digital nomad thing.
You've lived in more than 40 countries
and 150 cities?
Yeah, I think so.
I've mostly just been working on my laptop
for the last decade, traveling around,
just making stuff,
making little creative
projects that I needed
to solve my problems.
And then most of the
time, nobody else needed
that problem solved.
But a few times, it worked,
And then, I mean, I used
Stripe a lot, right?
When Stripe came to Holland—
back then I lived in Holland,
it was 2014, I think—
I was like, "Oh, shit, now
I can start making money."
and that was the year
I started making money.
When I was a kid, I
think I was 12 years old,
I was making websites too,
and I wanted to charge
money on the internet.
And I remember signing up to Worldpay—
I think it was Worldpay—and
there was a giant contract.
It was in America, and I lived in Holland,
I asked my dad to sign for it.
And my dad read
the whole contract, and it was like,
"You're liable for damages
up to $100 million."
He was like, "What am I signing for?"
I'm like, "No, Dad, you don't understand."
"I need to make money on
the internet. Just sign it."
And he signed it. We faxed it to America,
and I had a merchant account.
I never sold anything.
Luckily, maybe,
because otherwise, we would
be liable for damages.
I feel like this is a common
thread amongst entrepreneurs
getting their parents
to help them with things
they shouldn't do.
Patrick, at one point, got a demo of
a Sun Microsystems workstation.
Oh my god.
Remember, these were
very high-end workstations.
And he just filled out the form and
got them, they came with a truck
and they unloaded it...
Oh my god.
...and he was playing with it.
And I just remember the
Sun Microsystems rep
was calling the house and they were like,
"Is Mr. Collison interested in
continuing with a purchase?"
And our mom was like, "Mr.
Collison is doing his homework,
and you need to stop
calling me." They hadn't realized
that he was 12 years old at the time,
or whatever.
Man, amazing.
Did you try to monetize projects
before you started building them
on YouTube or—
No, because...
So what happened was, I was
making music and I was DJing,
I was organizing nightclub
nights in Holland,
UK and stuff, drum and bass music.
You're Irish, you know drum and bass.
Drum and bass, most people
don't really know it,
but British people know,
Irish people know it.
So, when YouTube started
monetizing videos,
I was uploading my music already.
So I was one of the first
YouTube monetizing people.
I was number one or number two in Holland
for a while, in the top channels.
But the thing is, I started making money,
like $1,000, and then $2,000,
and then $8,000 per month,
a lot of money. And I was in university.
So it seems like you've done well
on this, kind of being a
person on the internet.
How much of a partisan are you
on the topic of the indie hacker approach?
Because obviously, most of tech
doesn't run in the indie hacker way,
where, again, you're
building multimillion-dollar
revenue businesses all by yourself.
Do you think way more
people should be doing
the indie hacking thing?
I mean, I think the internet
makes you partisan, right?
So I don't think
I've been partisan much,
but I think—
Until you got on X.
Yeah, well, X does help with it.
But you have to understand—2013, '14,
when I entered kind of the startup world,
there was barely any...
There was no indie hacking,
there was no bootstrapping,
almost, except Patrick McKenzie,
who you know well.
You would find investors,
you would raise money,
you would grow fast, you
would hire a lot of people,
you get a big office.
Remote didn't exist, remote work. So
compared to that, what's possible now?
There's alternatives possible now.
Yes.
And you can make a lot
of money with this.
I don't think you can
become a billionaire.
Maybe we will see that in the future.
So you think for talented engineers
who have a commercial brain,
and who are good at product...
...they should at least
seriously evaluate the path
of just building their
own successful products
in the internet, like you?
Yeah, I think...
Look, what I hate most about VC stuff
is when you see people burn money.
You probably hate this as well.
A company with no users raises
$50 million, $100 million,
and you're like, "What is this product?"
Like, it doesn't have any
traction and it's just hype.
We've all seen these startups.
And they just disappear.
I think it's much more interesting—
and maybe you guys did
the same with Stripe—
but validate first and
build a business first,
and see if you get traction. Like,
get to $50k or a $100k a month.
No, look, I'm with you.
Despite the fact Stripe
has obviously raised VC,
we just started writing code,
we got our first paying customer
way before we raised any
money for the business...
Wow.
...and then it just
kind of grew and grew and grew.
And it's a little bit different
company in the financial services space.
You need to be well-capitalized
Yeah, but this is the thing.
It's natural. It's kind of organic, right?
Even if you raise money, you
did it in an organic way,
and you only raise more when
you see the growth coming.
Have you ever been tempted
to raise for one of your projects?
No. But a lot of VCs have been in my DMs,
and they want to invest.
And I think
because now I'm financially independent,
I've made a lot of money,
now I could do it,
because now I'm at a point where
it sounds fun to play
with other people's money.
But also, in a serious way,
it sounds fun to go to a bigger thing.
I mean, that's something you typically say
after you've been a week
in San Francisco, right?
You start talking like this.
But I'm not convinced yet.
But I think now it would
be fun. for example.
But the problem is if you're
a founder and you raise money,
you kind of need to go big or bust, right?
It's hard to stay in between.
You can't make $10 million a year.
You kind of need to make
$100 million a year.
You kind of need to become a unicorn.
That's difficult, because
the odds of that happening
are not super high. Like, it's
a few percentage [points] maybe.
So most people don't get there,
and they do spend five years
or, I don't know, seven
years of their 20s on that.
And that's something where,
if you would be an indie,
and you would have a
$10-million-a-year company...
It'd be great.
...and you have 100% ownership.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amazing.
You have so much money.
You're saying as a VC-funded startup,
you're kind of locking in the
expectations for your company
in advance as to what's
successful and what's not.
Yeah,
And it's quite liberating to
just start building things.
Pieter Levels enterprises, broadly,
is making $3.1 million a year.
Yeah.
And you've launched 70 projects?
Yeah. Probably more,
because I don't have the list,
Yeah.
But it's like—
You've launched so many
that you lose track, but it's at least 70.
Do you shut them down if
they're becoming too small
to be relevant?
No, I try
to keep a lot of them running.
I like to keep the
internet history existing.
It's sad to see all
these websites disappear
Yes, yes.
I keep them on my
server running.
URLs shouldn't break.
Yeah.
One product that still runs
on Stripe is Go Effing Do It.
I don't know if I can curse,
but gofuckingdoit.com,
where, for example,
you wanna quit smoking.
So you write, "I wanna quit smoking,"
or "I don't wanna smoke."
And the deadline is
December 1, 2025.
And then, you have to enter
the email of your friend
and he checks it.
And then you enter your
credit card with Stripe
and it creates a customer,
and it doesn't charge the customer yet.
And you set a price. So for example, $100.
And then on December 1, 2025,
your friend gets an email, "Did he smoke?"
And he says yes or no.
And if it's yes, you get charged
and I get the money,
And the product still works,
and it still makes, I think, $50 a month,
and I didn't change the code
in 10 years.
It's PHP, you know?
Yes, yes.
It still runs.
So part of what you're doing
is you're creating all these businesses
that have actually pretty
long lifetimes as well.
Yeah.
Who should try the digital nomad thing?
Who does it appeal to?
I think anyone. It doesn't
matter if you're 20
or 70 or whatever.
It's so interesting, because
you change as a person also.
But I think, digital nomad, it's so cool,
because leaving your own country,
which I did... The first time,
I did a study exchange program.
I went to Korea in 2010,
I think, from university,
and I was like, "This is a
completely different world."
I'd never left Europe before.
I went to France, you know Italy,
but there's neon signs,
and it's like...
Far away places.
...it's crazy.
Yeah.
This changes you on such
a fundamental level,
going to the other side of the world.
It's amazing. And it's
way safer than you think.
Usually nothing happens.
I've never been robbed
except in my hometown.
It was a burglary. So in 10
years of digital nomading,
nothing ever happened.
So, yeah, I think it completely
expands your horizon.
There's nothing I can recommend as much
as for people to just go travel.
And don't be scared, man.
There are always people who will help you.
If you don't speak the
language, you can use your arms—
How did you make it
not be lonely, not knowing anyone
in all these places?
It was extremely lonely.
Oh, okay. It just was lonely?
I was like, "This is amazing."
And then
you lose contact with the
grounds of your own culture,
your home country. And everything's fine,
people are nice,
but you're like...
It fundamentally removes
your foundational culture
at some point.
You become untethered.
Yeah, untethered. That's it.
And you have to rebuild it up.
And that's a psychologically
taxing process.
It takes some years.
Yes.
What have you learned from Patio11?
Dude, amazing guy. What an inspiration.
So, you have to go in the time machine.
Back in 2013, or even earlier,
I'm reading Hacker News in university,
and I read two types of articles.
I read, "We're raising $40
million for a startup."
Back then Hacker News was full of raising,
it was special.
Now you don't see that anymore.
Now it was more tech.
And you'd read Patrick McKenzie,
"I made $60,000 this year
with Appointment Reminder."
This site, which was like...
He would go to hair salons, I think,
and then sell his
appointment reminder website.
It just reminded people to
show up for their appointments.
Yes, like an SMS.
It was the most
amazingly simple business.
And I would read this post,
it was like, "This is amazing, this guy."
Like, $60K a year, that's
big. We need to do this.
So seeing somebody making
a cool, honest business...
And another guy, Jon Yongfook,
he was a few years after Patrick Mckenzie,
but he was also traveling as
a nomad in Singapore and Asia,
and he was very well-dressed,
and he was making beautiful SaaS.
I was impressed
that they were making honest,
cool, clean businesses.
Yes.
And I wanna do
the same thing.
One thing I was reflecting on
is the fact that you are now a big brand,
in a way, the brand of Pieter Levels,
where... Well, no,
think about it.
You sold $50,000 of
pre-orders for your book
before you had written any of the book.
You just said, "I might write
a book, and buy it here,"
and you got $50,000 of sales.
And so, to what extent
does the recipe now work
because you are launching these products,
and if someone else was to build
the flight simulator
or if someone else
was to write the book...
Yeah, I've seen these
replies, too.
...then it wouldn't sell as well?
Yeah. Man. I think of
course it's part of it,
but I also work really hard,
because I tweeted, I think
125,000 times over 10 years,
so it's like 40 tweets a day.
You've contributed so many brain cells
to spending time on X.
Exactly.
Are you getting a lot
of ChatGPT referrals?
Talk about this.
It's amazing, yeah.
I've seen the growth.
ChatGPT, a month ago, was...
So, if you have the Google
traffic, that's like 100%.
ChatGPT was, like, 4%.
Now it's 20%.
Wait. In the last month,
ChatGPT has gone from 4%
to 20% of your traffic?
In the last month.
Yeah.
So it went 5x, and I
checked other websites
it's the same story.
And I think it's beneficial for me,
because it's very hard
for me, as a solo person,
to do SEO stuff.
And I hate SEO stuff.
I just want to make a cool
product and a cool website
with a nice title and whatever.
You talk in your book about automation
being really important for making
the indie hacker recipe work.
Because I guess if you get
drowned in operational work,
you're not gonna be able
to do multiple projects,
you won't do as many shots on
goal, everything like that.
So how much has the automation
of your business tasks improved
over the past 10 years, if at all?
Man, it's been amazing for me.
What have you automated?
So, for example, Nomad List,
it's a big website, you can visit,
you can find a place to
live and work remotely.
But you can also join a community.
You can pay $100,
you join a community of meetups,
a chat group, all this stuff.
This chat group was hell to maintain.
I mean, you know from
communities, it's so much drama.
I've had crazy stories.
Wait. Is the AI content moderating
the community now?
Exactly. It was very hard for me
to moderate this stuff,
and it was very hard
for me to be impartial.
You have, like, politically
different sides.
And I feel I'm kind of in
the middle, kind of neutral.
But the moment you ban one side,
they're like, "Oh, you're on that side."
And so with GPT, it's actually neutral.
It's really good.
I write down the rules of my chat group—
and it's 40,000 people—
and it doesn't ban anymore,
it just mutes people for
a day or 10 minutes, or—
Like the debate moderators
in the presidential debates.
Yes, essentially.
It just muted them.
That's it. So, like,
I can either hire people, or
I can just use the GPT API.
I don't like hiring because
I need to manage people,
and I don't really like managing people
because it's not my thing.
I like to create things.
Well, in your book, you
recommend that people build
for their own understanding
of the problems they have.
Shouldn't you make an investment product?
You and Warren Buffet
basically have the same views,
which is, a lot of money managers
and wealth management products...
Oh, come on.
...are very bad because
they're charging you
very high fees to invest in bad things.
And actually, what the vast
majority of people should do
is buy a simple index, maybe the S&P 500
or the MSCI World or something,
and then just leave their
money there and don't touch it,
and especially don't
sell it during drawdowns.
Yeah, so Vanguard.
Exactly.
But Vanguard already does that.
But there aren't good
products for Europeans,
I feel like.
That's less common.
We buy them via Ireland. UCITS.
Sure, you do. But again,
I feel like, you know,
if you want an idea for the next business,
I think good investment...
There's a lot of money
in there.
It's a lot of money.
...good investment products
for Europeans.
But then, you increase
the price. That's the problem.
Like, if you resell a Vanguard ETF
that has a 0.07% fee per year—
No, you need large scale
to make it work,
Yeah, yeah.
And maybe that doesn't
fit with the indie hacker
philosophy.
Yeah. No, I think
it's a cool idea
because it helps people
get richer and wealthier.
Yeah, and there's this home country bias
in stock purchasing,
where people in Germany...
Oh my god.
My parents have this.
...buy German stocks.
This is crazy.
I told my parents, they're like—
Yeah, they're buying the
Dutch stock market, probably.
Yeah, and I'm like, "You
need to buy S&P 500 fund."
They're like, "No,
we're not gonna buy in America.
We're gonna buy Royal Dutch Shell."
I'm like, "Come on."
And they have all that
money in Shell, in oil.
And then, "Have you seen
Tesla, electric cars now?"
And they're like, "No,
it's not gonna happen."
I think investment is very important.
Look, if you make money
as any indie hacker has,
even as a VC founder,
it's very important to
not spend all this money,
because you have a
limited time in startups
to make money, I think...
...and put this money in the market.
And it doesn't have to be only America.
I always talk about Asia,
and it's very hard to benefit in Asia
from the economy's rising
because the product market is
not as efficient as in the US.
So you should definitely have the S&P 500.
But definitely, you can look at other ETFs
in the rest of the world.
I've got some in China,
it's always never
doing well,
but at some point,
I'll be right, you know.
So yeah,
it's very important to
invest your money well.
And most people
don't know personal finance.
Like, you don't get it in school.
You save money, but your
money, your cash, disappears
the moment you have it.
Yes. Are you one of those people
who hacks the thermostat
when you get to a hotel room?
I've tried, but I've never succeeded.
I also have failed.
I've watched the YouTube videos.
But it's always
some different model.
Siemens.
I think they're wise to such people,
Like, they make it hard
to override them now.
This air conditioning problem,
it's such a big problem here.
We need people in the comments to teach us
how to override the hotel thermostats,
because the ones that are set to, like,
72 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 22 degrees Celsius in Europe...
I mean, that should be—
I mean, how many times do
you get back to Europe?
Often, right?
Often, yeah.
It's a massive problem.
The European hotels and air conditioning,
it's not a good situation.
No, but it's Airbnbs, too.
My friend went to an Airbnb in Italy,
and it said, "Don't
put it below 25 degrees
because of regulation."
It's like, this is unacceptable.
And all the studies show, like,
look at Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore...
For sleep, you actually need
it pretty cold, yeah.
You need it really cold.
The sleep quality gets so good.
We're talking about
European air conditioning.
You've talked about the EU
accelerationism movement.
What is required for EU accelerationism?
So I think it was two
years ago or one year ago,
I saw Beff Jezos, who's Guillaume Verdon.
He made e/acc, which is
effective accelerationism,
which is like, "Let's
accelerate America again."
Like, it's been a very depressing time,
especially with Covid.
Let's look at the benefits of technology
and AI for the future,
and I thought, "That's amazing.
We need to do the same for
Europe," so I did EU/acc.
Like, let's do this for Europe.
Because Europe has the
same kind of depressing,
kind of down vibe about the future.
And I understand, because
there are a lot of problems,
it's not an easy life for a lot of people.
So that got a lot of traction.
And I crowdsourced this bug board
where everybody could submit their ideas
for how to save Europe, how to fix Europe.
And tens of thousands of
people submitted ideas,
and then they up upvoted
each other's ideas and stuff.
I think number one is just, like,
remove the regulatory
burden for new businesses.
Yeah.
And there's other stuff, like remove
the cookie banner and stuff.
and I hope it'll be easier in Europe
to start a business, run a business...
Yes.
...As easy as it is in America.
I think there's so much...
Nobody doubts European
talent or intelligence,
It's cool, smart, ambitious people.
But there's a ceiling for them.
They can't go higher
because they're getting
pushed down by governments,
by regulation.
And it's like, what are you
doing European countries?
You have amazing people.
You could compete easily.
Yeah. I think there's kind of two things.
One is where the regs are just bad.
And the second is where the regulations
are not standardized,
where employment law
is really annoyingly different
across European countries.
So if you're a 10-person startup
and you employ people across Europe,
it's actually really cumbersome.
Whereas in the United
States, that's quite easy.
Yeah. so the problem of
Europe is...it's very funny.
You have all these different countries,
and you have the left side
of the political spectrum
are not very pro-business,
they're more for regulation
and for protecting people,
and the climate change and stuff.
And then you have the right
side, which is pro-business,
but they're also nationalists.
But the problem is, what
we need is pro-business
and federal Europe.
Like you need to be pro-Europe.
Yeah.
Not nationalist,
and you need to be pro-business.
So it doesn't exist.
So it's like,
where do you start?
I think it's actually good
that it's going so bad
in Europe now,
because it's almost like
the patient is so sick—
Never waste a crisis.
Yeah. Finally, Europeans are like,
"Maybe we should do something?"
Two years ago,
when I would tweet about this, they said,
"Stop talking bad about Europe.
It's going great here."
And now they're like, "Okay,
maybe we need to do something."
What would you highlight as
the ideas that need fixing?
I think the problem is
if there are not a lot
of opportunities in Europe
for people to get jobs
or start businesses,
then they're gonna look down on Americans
getting rich with these big businesses,
because they're jealous.
Europeans are jealous.
And you need to change this
idea that business is bad,
that getting rich is bad.
Getting rich is simply a representation
of your added value to the
world economy, in most cases.
Of course, there are edge cases.
Generally, the money in your bank account
is how much value you added to society.
And in Europe, that completely does not...
They really think different.
In America, you get much more respect
for being an entrepreneur.
But I would say, don't be afraid of money.
Money is a tool in this world
to change the world.
If you were running
Stripe, what would you fix?
I think it's going really well recently.
I think it wasn't going well after Covid.
It was a few years where
the API was getting more
and more complicated.
We all complained about it.
It felt like it was
being run by engineers,
not by people who actually used Stripe.
Like, illogical defaults on the API.
One time, I had this bug,
and it was from the Stripe
API because it changed,
and it didn't create a customer anymore.
Everybody was a guest.
I was like, "Why would I
want people to be a guest?
I can't even curate them
as a customer anymore."
Those kind of things.
But now it seems much better,
and it seems like sanity has returned.
But it's scary, and it
must be scary for you,
because you're running a big company.
It's very hard to manage a
company from small to big
and not become corporate.
Of course, you're always corporate
because you need to do B2B sales.
But you need to keep the
original Stripe mentality
of, like, simple, right? Stripe JS,
it was one line of code
you would add to your page,
and you had a payment button, you know?
Keeping that is so important,
keeping the original soul of the company.
And I think you're doing a great job.
Because essentially, I
don't wanna go into Stripe
to do anything.
I want to go there to see
how much money I make,
and I wanna go back to my coffee
and code a little bit.
I see all these new features on Stripe,
making workflows and stuff,
and I think it's very cool,
but I don't have time to do this stuff
because it's not
that important for me.
I think our perspective
is, you should be able
to get started with anything instantly.
You shouldn't even need
to integrate an API.
You should just be able
to send a Payment Link,
something like that.
Exactly. That's amazing,
I'm always
saying to people that
generally, people will
not even want to start
by integrating the API,
they'll want to start by sending people
to a hosted page—
Yeah, that's what I do now
like a Payment Link.
But you will, over time... We think
the workflow engine is really cool,
because if you want
to build something complex,
you don't have to build it yourself.
But if someone is starting
with the workflow engine...
Exactly.
...then something's gone horribly wrong.
You know what I mean?
I think the challenge
is exposing them slowly
to all the stuff that's possible.
Exactly
Last question.
If we're back here in five years,
will things be similar,
where you've worked on a bunch of projects
that are working really nicely?
Will things be different,
where maybe you've sold
a few of the projects?
Maybe you've started a VC-funded startup,
and raised a million dollars
from SoftBank.
That would be, like...
Exactly.
But I'm just curious, what
does the next five years hold?
Man, I have no clue.
It would be so funny if you become VC.
I've been starting to invest,
and every time I invest,
I feel bad,
because I feel like
a faker, you know?
But I invested in Cursor, for example,
very nice.
That seems like that
that'll do okay for you.
Well, who knows?
But yeah, it's fun to...
I think you need to be
a little bit flexible with your neurons,
and you can change your ways a little bit.
And it's interesting
to try different stuff.
But, yeah, I'm really enjoying
life with my girlfriend now.
We're still traveling a lot. It's fun.
We meet all these cool people here,
and I want that to continue.
I'm just very happy.
I'm every day grateful to
be able to live this life,
and it's so good. So thank you.
Thanks for coming by.
Thank you for having me. I think it's actually good that it's
going so bad in Europe because it's
almost like the patient is so sick.
Never waste your crisis.
The problem is if you're a founder and
you raise money like you kind of need to
go big or bus, right? That's kind of
you. It's hard to stay in between. I
also work really hard cuz I tweeted like
I think 125,000 times over 10 years. So
it's like 40 tweets a day. You've
contributed so many brain cells to
spending time on X.
Peter Levels, one of the most prolific
indie hackers and digital nomads whose
businesses now do more than $3 million
in revenue and it's just Peter working
on them.
Cheers.
I think you are maybe the most prominent
indie hacker. Nomad List got to 700K in
ARR. Remote has gotten to $3.4 $4
million in revenue. Uh photo AAI got to
600K in ARR. And these are all just you
like these are not startups that you
have started. These are just uh Peter
Levelvel's uh productions. Uh you're
also the vanguard of the digital nomad
thing. And so you've lived in uh more
than 40 countries and 150 cities.
Yeah, I think so. I've mostly just been
working on my laptop for the last
decade, right? like traveling around um
just making stuff making little like
creative projects that I needed to solve
my problems and then most of the times
nobody else needed that yes problem
solved but like a few times it worked
and then I mean I used Stripe a lot
right like when Stripe came to Holland
back then I lived in Holland was 2014 I
think then I was like oh now I can
start making money and and that was the
year I started making money when I was a
kid I think I was like 12 years old I
was making websites too and I wanted to
charge money on the internet and I
remember signing up to World Pay. I
think it was World Pay and it was a
giant contract was in America and I live
in Holland and I asked my dad to sign
for it and my dad read the whole like
contract and I was like you're liable
for damages up to $100 million and I was
like what am I signing for? I'm like no
Dad you don't understand like I need to
make money on the internet just sign it
and he signed it and we faxed it. We
faxed it to America
and I had a merchant account and I never
sold anything
luckily maybe because otherwise we would
be liable for damages. I feel like this
is a common thread amongst entrepreneurs
of doing getting their parents to help
them with things they shouldn't do.
Patrick at one point got a demo of like
a Sun Micros Systemystems workstation.
Remember these were like very high-end
workstations and he just filled out the
form and like you know got them and you
know they came with a truck and they
unloaded it and he was playing with it
and I just remember the Sun
MicroStations rep was uh calling the
house and they were like is Mr. Collison
interested in continuing with a purchase
and our mom was like, "Mr. Collison is
doing his homework and you need to stop
calling me." And they they hadn't
realized that he was like 12 years old
at the time or whatever.
Man, amazing.
Yeah. Did you try to monetize projects
before you started building them?
So, what happened? I was I was making
music. Um, and I was DJing. I was
organizing like nightclub nights in
Holland and UK and stuff. Um, drum and
bass music. They're drum. You're Irish,
you know, drum and bass. Like drum and
bass most people don't really know, but
British people know, Irish people know.
Um so when YouTube started um monetizing
videos um I was uploading my music
already. So I was one of the first
YouTube monetizing people and I was like
number one or number two in Holland for
a while in top channels but the thing is
I started making money like $1,000 and
$2,000 and $8,000 per month. A lot of
money and I was in universities.
So it seems like you've done well on
this kind of being a person on the
internet. How much of a partisan are you
on the topic of the indie hacker
approach? because obviously
most of tech doesn't run on the indie
hacker way where you're building
multi-million dollar revenue businesses
all by yourself. Um do you think way
more people should be doing the indie
hacking thing?
So I mean I think the internet makes you
partisan, right? So I I don't think I've
been partisan much but I think um
until you got an X.
Yeah. Well X does help with that. But
you have to understand 2013 14 when I
entered kind of the starter world there
was barely any indie there was no indie
hacking. There was no bootstrapping
almost except Patrick McKenzie you know
who you know well you would you would
find investors you would raise money you
would grow fast you would hire a lot of
people you got a big office remote
didn't exist right work so um compared
to that like what's possible now there's
different there's alternatives possible
now and you can make a lot of money with
this I don't think you can become a
billionaire maybe we will see that in
the future but
so you think for talented engineers who
have a commercial
uh brain and who are good at product
they should at least seriously evaluate
the path of just building their own
successful products in the internet like
you.
Yeah. I think you look what I hate most
about VC stuff is when you see people
burn money and you you probably hate
this as well. A company with no users
raise $50 million, $100 million and
you're like what is this product? Like
it doesn't have any traction and it's
just hype. We've all seen these startups
and they just disappear. And I think
it's much more interesting to and maybe
you guys did the same with Stripe, but
validate first and build a business
first um and see if you get traction
like get to 50K or 100K a month.
No, look, I'm I'm with you, you know,
despite the fact Stripe has obviously
raised VC. We just like started writing
code. We got our a first paying customer
way before we raised any money for the
business and then it just kind of grew
and grew and grew. And it's a little bit
different for a company in the financial
services space. You need to be well
capitalized from the
but this is the thing. So it's natural.
It's kind of organic, right? Even if you
raise money, you did it in an organic
way and you you only raise more when you
see the growth coming.
Have you ever been tempted to raise for
one of your projects?
No, but a lot of VCs have been in my DMs
and they want to invest and and uh I
think now because now like I'm
financially independent. I made a lot of
money. Now I could do it because now I'm
at a point where um like it sounds fun
to play with other people's money, you
know, like but also in a serious way. It
sounds fun to go like to a to a bigger
thing. Um, I mean that's something you
typically say after you've been in a
week a week in San Francisco, right? You
start talking like this, but I'm not
convinced yet, but I think no will be
fun, for example. But the problem is if
you're a founder and you raise money,
you kind of need to go big or bust,
right? That's kind of you. It's hard to
stay in between. You can't like make $10
million a year. You kind of need to make
$100 million a year. You kind of need to
become a unicorn. Um, that's difficult
because uh the odds of that happening
are are not super high. Like it's it's a
few percentage maybe. So most people
don't get there and they do spend like
five years or I don't know seven years
of their 20s on that and that's
something where if you would be an indie
you would have a $10 million a year
company and ownership like oh this is
amazing you have so much money
you're saying as a VC funded startup
you're kind of locking in the
expectations for your company in advance
as to what's successful and what's not
and it's quite liberating to just start
building things. Peter Level's
Enterprises broadly is making $3.1
million a year. Um, and you've launched
70 projects.
Yeah, probably more, you know, because I
don't know if this is exist, but it's
like it's
so many that you lose track, but it's
70. Um, do you shut them down if they're
like becoming too small to be
No. So, I try keep I try to keep a lot
of them running. I like to keep the
internet history existing. Like it's
it's sad to see all these websites
disappear, you know? I keep them on my
shouldn't break.
No. Yeah. One product that still runs on
Stripe is is go effing do it. I don't
know if I can curse but go do
it.com where um for example you want to
quit smoking. So you write I want to
quit smoking on the deadline is like or
I don't want to smoke and the deadline
is like 1 December 2025 and you have to
enter the email of your friend and he
checks it and then you enter your credit
card with Stripe and it creates a
customer and it doesn't charge the
customer yet and you set a price. So,
for example, $100 and then on Wednesday
when December 2025, your friend gets an
email, did he smoke? You know, the last
time and he says yes or no. And if yes,
you get charged and I get the money and
the product still works and it still
makes I think like $50 a month and it's
been I didn't change the code in 10
years. PHP, you know, like
Yes. Yes.
still runs.
So, part of what you're doing is you're
creating all these businesses that have
actually pretty long lifetimes as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
Who should try the digital nomad thing?
Who who does it appeal to? So I think
anyone doesn't matter if you're 20 or 70
or whatever. It's so interesting because
you you changed as a person also. But I
think you know it's so cool because um
leaving your own country which I did the
first time I I I did a study exchange
program. I went to Korea in like 2010 I
think and from university and I was like
this is a completely different world. I
never left Europe before. I went to
France you know like Italy but like this
is like there's neon signs and it's like
it's crazy. This changes you on such a
fundamental level going to the other
side of the world. It's amazing and it's
it's way safer than you think. Like
usually nothing happens and I've never
been robbed except in my hometown was a
burglary. So in 10 years of dig nothing
ever happens. So yeah, I think it it
completely expands your horizon. There's
nothing I can recommend as much as
people just go travel. And don't be
scared, man. Just like there's always
people who will help you.
If you don't speak the language, you can
use your arms and like
How did you make it not be lonely not
knowing anyone?
Extremely lonely.
Oh, okay. Okay. It just
No, it was like it was like I was like
this is amazing and then you're you you
you get like you lose contact with the
grounds of your own culture, your home
country and it's everything's fine.
People are nice but you're like um
it it fundamentally removes your
foundational culture. At some point it
starts
you become untethered. Yeah.
Yeah. Unted. That's it. And you and you
have to rebuild that up and that's a
psychologically taxing process. Takes
some years.
Yes. Um what have you learned from Patty
11?
Dude, amazing guy. like what
inspiration. So you have to go in the
time machine back in 2013 or even
earlier. I'm reading Hacker News in
university and I read two types of
articles. I read uh we're raising $40
million for a startup. Back then hacker
news was full of raising. It was like
special. Now you don't see it anymore.
Now it's more tech.
And you'd read like Petrick McKenzie. I
made $60,000 this year with appointment
reminder. This site which is like he
would go to hair salons I think and then
sell his appointment reminder website.
And I was and he would
just reminded people to show up for
their appointments. SMS
and I would read this post like this is
amazing that this guy like 60k a year
that's that's big like we need to do
this. So seeing somebody making a cool
like honest business and another guy
like Yungfuk John Yongfuk um he there
was a few years after Petra McKenzie but
he was also traveling as a nomad in
Singapore and Asia and he was very
welldressed and he was making a
beautiful SAS
and I was like I was impressed that they
were making like honest cool clean
businesses
and I want to do the same thing. One
thing I was reflecting on is the fact
that you are now a big um brand in a way
the brand of Peter levels where well no
think about it you sold $50,000 of
pre-orders for your book before you had
written any of the book you just said I
might write a book and buy it here and
you got $50,000 of sales and so to what
extent does the recipe now work because
you are launching these products and you
know if someone else was to build the
flight simulator or if someone else was
I see these replies too
that it wouldn't as well.
Yeah, it's Man, I think it's of course
part of it, but I also work really hard
cuz I tweeted like I think 125,000 times
over 10 years. So, it's like 40 tweets a
day.
You've contributed so many brain cells
to spending time on X.
Exactly.
Are you getting a lot of chat GPG
referrals? Yes. People talk about this.
Amazing. Yeah. So, Chat GPT so I've seen
the growth. CHP a month ago was um so if
you have the Google traffic that's like
100 CHP was like four so 4%. And now
it's 20%.
In the last month, check it's gone from
4% to 20% of your year.
Yeah. So, it went 5x and I check other
websites the same story. And I think
it's beneficial for me because
it's very hard for me as a solo person
to like do SEO stuff and I hate SEO
stuff. I just want to make a cool
product and a cool website with a nice
title and whatever. You talk in your
book about uh automation being really
important for making the indie hacker
recipe work because I guess if you get
drowned in operational work, you're not
going to be able to do multiple
projects. You won't have as many shots
on goal, everything like that. And so
how much has the automation of your
business tasks improved over the past 10
years if at all?
Man, it's been amazing for me.
Okay, what do you automated?
So for example, Nomad List, it's like
this big, it's a big website. You can
visit, you can find place to live and
work remotely, but you can also join the
community. You can pay for like $100.
You join a community of like meetups, a
chat group, um all this stuff. This chat
group was like hell to maintain. It was
I mean, you know, from community, so
much drama. I've had crazy stories but
if they are content moderating the
community now.
So exactly. So so it was very hard for
me to moderate this stuff and it was
very hard for me to be impartial.
Yeah.
So you have like politically different
sides and I I'm I feel I'm kind of in
the middle kind of neutral but they
don't like the moment you ban one side
they're like oh you're this you're that
side. And so with GPT it's actually
neutral like it really it's really good.
You you write I write down the rules of
my chat group
and it's 40,000 people. Um, and it's it
doesn't ban anymore. It just mutes
people for like a day or 10 minutes or
like the debate moderators in the
presidential debates.
They just muted, right? Exactly. So
that's it. So like um I can either hire
people or I can just use GPT API and uh
um I don't like hiring because I need to
manage people and I don't really like
manage people because I it's not my
thing. I like to create things.
Well, in your book you recommend that
people build for their own understanding
of the problems they have. Shouldn't you
make an investment product? You and
Warren Buffett basically have the same
views, which is a lot of money managers
and kind of wealth management products
are very bad because they're very
charging you very high fees to invest in
bad things and actually what the vast
majority of people should do is buy a
simple index, maybe the S&P 500 or the
MCI World or something and then just
leave the money there and don't touch it
and especially don't sell it during draw
downs.
Yeah. So, Vanguard.
Exactly.
But Vanguard already does that.
Yeah. But there aren't good products for
Europeans I feel like. Uh that's like
less common.
Buy them via Ireland.
UCS. Sure you do. But again, I feel
like, you know, if you want an idea for
the next business, I think good
investments,
a lot of money in there, good investment
for your business,
but then you you increase the price.
It's the problem. Like if you resell a
Vanguard ETF that has 0.07 fee per year,
no, you need large scale to make it
work. And maybe that doesn't fit with
the Indie Hacker.
No, I think it's a cool idea because it
helps people get richer and wealthier.
Yeah. And you know, there's this home
country bias in stock purchasing where
people in Germany buy German stocks.
This is crazy. I talk to my parents.
They're like,
yeah, they're buying the Dutch stock
market.
No. And I'm like, you need to buy S&P
500. They're like, "No, we're not going
to buy in America. We're going to buy
Royal Dutch shell." I'm like, "Come on."
And they have all their money in Shell,
like in oil. And then I have you seen
Tesla like electric cars now. And
they're like, "No, it's not going to
happen."
You know, so yeah, I think index is very
important. I think look, if you make
money like as I even as a VC founder,
like it's very important to not spend
all this money because you're you have a
limited time in startups to make money.
I think like and put this money in the
market and and it doesn't have to be
only America. Like I always talk about
Asia and it's very hard to benefit in
Asia from the from the economies rising
because the public market is not as
efficient as in US.
So you should definitely have S&P 500.
But definitely you can look at other
ETFs in the rest. I got some China.
Yeah.
Always never doing well. But at some
point
I'll be right you know. So
yes.
Yeah. It's very important to invest your
money well. And most people don't know
most people don't know personal finance
like they don't you don't get it in
school you know. Um you save money but
your money your cash disappears the
moment you have it. Yes. Are you one of
those people who hacks the thermostat
when you get to a hotel room?
I've tried, but I've never succeeded.
I've I've watched the YouTube videos.
I've watched the YouTube videos and it's
always some different model seammens,
you know, like
and I think they're wise to such people
like they make it hard to get to
override them.
Air conditioning problem is such a big
problem.
We need people in the comments to teach
us how to override the hotel thermostats
cuz the ones that are set to like, you
know, 72 degrees Fahrenheit or 22
degrees CC in Europe. I mean, that
should be a
I mean, how many times do you get back
to Europe? Like often, right? often.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's it's a massive problem.
The European hotels and air
conditioning, it's not a good situation.
No, but it's it's like it's Airbnbs too.
Like my friend went to an Airbnb in
Italy and it said don't put it below 25°
because of regulation. It's like this is
unacceptable. And all the studies show
like look at like
you need really cold like the sleep
quality gets so good.
Yeah. We're talking about European air
conditioning. You've talked about the EU
accelerationism uh movement. um what uh
what is required for EU accelerationism.
So I think it was two years ago, one
year ago, um I saw Bev Jels who's uh
Gileiam Ferdon, he made EO, which is
like effective accelerationism, which is
like let's accelerate America again like
it's been a very depressing time
especially with co let's look at the
benefits of technology and AI for the
future. And I thought that's amazing. We
need to do the same for Europe. So I did
EU like let's do this for Europe because
Europe is has the same kind of like
depressing kind of down vibe about the
future and I understand because there's
a lot of problems. It's not an easy life
for a lot of people. So that got a lot
of traction
and um I crowdsourced this like bug
board where everybody could submit their
idea how to save Europe, how to fix
Europe and like tens of thousands of
people submitted ideas and then they
upvote each other's ideas and stuff. I
think number one is just like remove the
regulatory burden for new businesses. Y
um and there's other stuff like remove
the cookie banner, you know, this stuff.
And I hope it will be easier in Europe
to run to start a business, run a
business.
Yes.
As easy as it is in America.
Yes.
I think there's so much
nobody nobody doubts the European talent
or the intelligence. Like it's cool,
smart, ambitious people,
but they're like they're getting there's
a ceiling for them. They can't go higher
because it's they're getting pushed down
by governments, by regulation.
And that's like what are you doing like
European countries? Like you have
amazing people.
you could compete easily and I think
there's kind of two things. One is where
the regs are just bad and the second is
where the regulations are not
standardized where places where you know
employment law is really annoyingly
different across European countries and
so if you're a 10 person startup uh and
you employ people across Europe it's
actually really cumbersome whereas in
the United States that's quite easy.
Yeah. So the problem with Europe is um
it's very funny. You have all these
different countries and the you have
kind of the left side of the political
spectrum are like kind not very pro
business. They're more for regulation
and for protecting people and
understanding the climate change and
stuff and then you have the the right
side which is pro business but they're
also nationalist.
Mh.
But the problem is what we need is like
pro business and federal Europe. Like
you need to be pro Europe. Yeah.
And um that's not nationalist and you
need to be pro business. So it doesn't
exist.
Yes. So it's like where do you start? I
think it's actually good that it's going
so bad in Europe now because it's almost
like
the patient is so sick.
Never waste a crisis.
Yeah. Like like finally people are
finally Europeans are kind of like maybe
we should do something. Like two years
ago when I would tweet about this they
said
stop talking bad about Europe. Like it's
going great here.
And now they're like okay maybe we need
to do something.
What would you highlight as the ideas
that need fixing?
I think
I think the problem is if there's not a
lot of opportunities in Europe for
people to to get jobs or start
businesses, then they're going to look
down on Americans getting rich with
these big businesses and because they're
jealous. Europeans are jealous and you
need to change this idea that business
is bad, that getting rich is bad.
Getting rich is simply a representation
of your added value to the world economy
in most cases. Of course, there's edge
cases. generally the money in your bank
account is how much value added to
society. Um and in Europe that that
completely does not like they don't even
they really think different. The America
you get much more respect for for being
an entrepreneur. But I would I would say
don't be afraid of money like money is a
tool in this world to you know to change
the world.
If you were running Stripe how would you
fix?
Um
I think it's going really well recently.
I think it wasn't going well after co
there was a few years where things were
getting the API was getting more and
more complicated. We all complained
about it. There was every
it felt like it was being run by
engineers not by people who actually use
stripe
like illogical defaults on the API you
know like one time I um I had this bug
and it was from the Stripe API because
it changed and it didn't create a
customer anymore. Everybody was a guest.
I was like why would I want people to be
a guest? Like I can't cannot even cure
them as a customer anymore. those kind
of things. But now it now it seems much
better and it seems to be like sanity
has returned. But it's scary and it must
be scary for you because you're running
a big company. It's very hard to to
manage a company from small to big and
not become like corporate. You know, of
course you're always corporate because
you need to do B2B sales become more
corporate. But you need to keep this
the original Stripe mentality of like
was simple, right? Stripe.js it was one
line of code you would add to your page
and you had a payment button, you know?
Keeping that is so important. keeping
the original soul of the company and I
think you're doing a great job because
essentially I don't want to go into
stripe do anything I want to go there to
see how much money I make and I want to
go back to my coffee and code a little
bit like I see all these new features
for example strip make like workflows
and stuff and I think it's very cool but
I don't have time to do this stuff
cuz it's not that important for me
I think our perspective is you should be
able to get started with anything uh
instantly you shouldn't even need to
integrate an API you should just be able
to send a payment link something like
thating you know I'm always saying to
people that you know generally people
will not even want to start by
integrating the API. They'll want to
start by sending people to a hosted page
if they want to do now like a link.
Yeah.
But you will over time get to we think
the workflow engine is really cool
because if you want to build something
complex you don't have to build it
yourself but if someone is starting with
the workflow engine something's gone
horribly wrong. You know what I mean?
I think so. The challenge is like
exposing them slowly to all the stuff
that's possible.
Exactly. Last question. If we're back
here in 5 years, um will things be kind
of similar where you've worked on a
bunch of projects that um are working
really nicely? Will things be different
where maybe you've sold a few of the
projects? Maybe you've started a VC
funded startup and raised a million
dollars from self, you know, exactly.
But I'm just curious, what does the uh
the next five years hold?
Man, I have no clue. I I it would be so
funny if you become a VC. I've been
starting to invest.
Maybe you become a VC.
No, be starting to invest. And every
time I invest, I feel like I feel like
bad cuz I feel like a a faker, you know.
But um like I invest in cursor for
example, like very nice. And uh
that seems that like that will uh
that'll do okay for you.
Well, who knows? Who know? But uh but
yeah, it's it's fun to I think you need
to be neuroflex. You need to be a little
bit flexible with your neurons and like
you can change your ways a little bit
and um and it's interesting to to try
different stuff. Um, but yeah, I'm
really enjoying life with my girlfriend
now and it's it's we're still traveling
a lot. It's fun and we meet all these
cool people here and like
um I want that to continue and uh um I'm
just very happy. I'm everyday grateful
to be able to live this life and it's so
good. So, thank you.
Thanks for coming by.
Thank you for having me.