How to Build a Startup Without Funding by Pieter Levels

Summary

Pieter Levels 分享了他在过去四年中如何通过自筹资金的方式成功创立了多个初创公司。他强调了利用现有技能和低成本技术资源的重要性，并鼓励听众追求自己的创业梦想。通过讲述自己的个人故事，包括他如何从大学毕业后的无聊状态转变为通过YouTube频道赚取收入，再到因YouTube收入下降而面临财务困境，Levels 展示了他的创业之旅和如何通过创建12个项目来克服抑郁和焦虑。他详细介绍了如何通过解决实际问题来产生创业想法，如何构建和推出产品，并通过社交媒体平台如Product Hunt、Reddit和Hacker News进行推广。Levels 还讨论了关于产品货币化的观点，包括提供付费会员制和赞助模式，并分享了他对于自动化业务流程以减少人工干预的偏好。最后，他鼓励创业者要对自己的直觉有信心，并在社交媒体上保持友善，同时分享了他对于未来自动化和基本收入的看法。

Takeaways

• 🚀 **启动项目的初衷**：Pieter Levels 通过解决自己的问题来启动项目，比如创建Nomad List是因为他需要一个可以旅行和工作的地方的数据库。
• 💡 **创意来源**：他的创意来自于个人生活中的烦恼，比如朋友间通过电子邮件分享音乐的不便，激发了他开发应用程序的灵感。
• 🌐 **技术实现**：利用现有的技术，如互联网，以低成本甚至几乎免费的方式构建项目。
• 🎯 **市场定位**：通过识别并专注于一个小而具体的市场细分领域，逐步扩大业务范围。
• 💸 **盈利模式**：通过会员费用、赞助和Patreon等模式为项目创造收入，强调产品或服务需要能够带来收益。
• 🔍 **用户反馈**：积极与用户互动，通过反馈盒子等方式收集用户意见，并根据反馈调整产品特性。
• 📈 **增长策略**：通过在社交媒体、Product Hunt、Hacker News等平台上发布和推广来增加用户基数。
• 🤖 **自动化**：通过编写脚本来自动处理日常任务，如数据更新和用户交互，提高效率并减少人力需求。
• 🌱 **持续迭代**：不断推出新功能和改进，保持产品的活力和市场竞争力。
• 📊 **数据分析**：监控用户行为和产品表现，使用分析工具来理解用户需求并指导产品发展方向。
• ✅ **执行力**：强调执行力的重要性，即使想法相似，执行的方式和效果将决定项目的成败。

Q & A

什么是自举（bootstrapped）的初创企业？

自举的初创企业是指没有外部资金支持，仅依靠创始人自己的技能和资源来建立和发展的业务。这种方式不依赖于风险投资或外部资金，而是通过自身的盈利来维持和增长。

为什么技术便宜使得自举初创企业成为可能？

技术的便宜化，尤其是互联网相关技术，使得建立和运营在线服务的成本大幅降低，几乎可以免费地进行创新和尝试。这样就减少了创业的门槛，让更多人能够尝试自己的创业想法。

Pieter Levels 如何通过自己的方式克服抑郁和焦虑？

Pieter Levels 通过开展名为 '12 Startups for Fun' 的项目来克服抑郁和焦虑。他决定在一年内启动12个项目，以此作为自我治疗的方式，通过保持忙碌和专注于创造来提升情绪。

Go Fucking Do It 是一个怎样的项目？

Go Fucking Do It 是一个能够让用户设定目标和期限，并为此下注的项目。如果用户未能在规定时间内达成目标，他们的朋友会收到一个询问邮件，如果朋友说没有完成，用户的信用卡会被收费，费用归项目所有者。

Nomad List 成功的原因是什么？

Nomad List 成功的原因之一是它满足了数字游民寻找理想工作地点的需求。它提供了一个关于不同城市互联网速度、生活成本和气候的数据平台，并且通过社区驱动的方式不断更新和完善。

为什么 Pieter Levels 推荐在创业时独自工作而不是与他人合作？

Pieter Levels 认为独自工作可以避免群体思维，让人更专注于实际问题和解决方案。此外，独自工作可以加快执行速度，减少沟通和协调的时间成本。

如何避免在创业时产生群体思维？

避免群体思维的一个方法是独自工作，这样可以减少团队成员之间的相互吹捧和过度自信。此外，保持批判性思维，不盲目接受团队内的意见，而是通过市场反馈和实际数据来验证想法。

为什么 Pieter Levels 认为创业初期应该独自完成项目？

Pieter Levels 认为在创业初期独自完成项目可以节省时间，避免群体思维，并加快产品的开发和上市速度。此外，自己完成项目可以更深入地了解产品和市场，从而做出更好的决策。

Pieter Levels 是如何通过远程工作和旅行结合的方式来应对 YouTube 频道收入下降的问题？

面对 YouTube 频道收入的下降，Pieter Levels 选择了卖掉所有家当，带着笔记本电脑去亚洲旅行，同时寻找新的收入来源。在旅行中，他通过建立多个小项目来尝试不同的收入模式，最终找到了适合自己的创业路径。

为什么 Pieter Levels 认为创业者应该从小问题开始解决？

Pieter Levels 认为从小问题开始解决可以让创业者更聚焦，因为小问题通常对应着一个较小的市场细分领域，创业者可以在这个领域内成为专家，从而获得竞争优势。此外，小问题更容易被解决和验证，有助于快速迭代和产品改进。

Pieter Levels 提出了哪些关于产品发布的建议？

Pieter Levels 建议创业者在产品发布时利用大型平台如 Product Hunt、Hacker News 和 Reddit 来吸引用户和媒体的关注。他还建议在发布时要准备好高质量的宣传材料，如动画 .gif 和响亮的口号，并在评论中与用户真诚互动。

为什么 Pieter Levels 认为创业者应该尽早开始赚钱？

Pieter Levels 认为尽早开始赚钱可以验证产品的市场价值和用户支付意愿。如果一个产品或服务能够让用户愿意付费，这意味着它解决了用户的痛点，并且具有持续增长的潜力。

Outlines

00:00

🚀 创业启动：自力更生的创业之路

演讲者分享了他在过去的四年里如何通过自力更生的方式成功建立多个初创公司和副业项目。他强调了不依赖外部资金，而是利用个人技能和低成本技术来构建业务的重要性。他还提到了远程工作和个人项目的兴起，鼓励听众利用技术实现自己的创业梦想。

05:01

🌐 网络创业：利用互联网低成本构建项目

演讲者讲述了他如何利用互联网的低成本优势，通过创建各种小型项目来克服个人的经济困境和抑郁症状。他分享了多个项目的创意和实施过程，包括一个音乐播放列表应用、一个动画.gif书以及一个目标设定和挑战平台。这些项目不仅帮助他逐步恢复了收入，还逐渐吸引了媒体的关注。

10:03

💡 创意与执行：从想法到产品的转变

演讲者强调了从个人问题中寻找创业灵感的重要性，并分享了他如何将这些想法转化为实际项目。他提倡独立工作，避免团队思考，并鼓励自学编程和设计，以快速实现想法。此外，他还讨论了产品原型的重要性，并建议在短时间内完成原型制作，以便快速验证想法。

15:05

📈 成长与扩张：策略性地增长用户基础

演讲者讨论了产品发布后如何通过分析流量和用户行为来确定产品的成功与否。他批评了非有机增长策略，如使用机器人和广告，而提倡有机增长，即通过产品的真实价值吸引用户。他还分享了如何通过建立反馈机制、与用户合作以及利用社交媒体和新闻稿来增加产品的曝光度和用户参与度。

20:05

🤖 自动化与优化：利用机器人提高效率

演讲者分享了他如何通过自动化几乎所有业务流程来提高效率和盈利能力。他展示了他的服务器上运行的大量自动化脚本（机器人），这些脚本负责从获取城市天气数据到处理退款等各种任务。他强调了自动化的重要性，并讨论了人类在管理这些机器人和处理意外情况中的作用。

25:05

💸 盈利模式：创造收入的多种途径

演讲者讨论了不同的盈利模式，包括会员制、赞助和自由职业平台等。他分享了如何通过提供有价值的数据和服务来吸引用户付费，并强调了循环收入的重要性。他还提到了如何通过设置支付按钮和限制免费功能来测试用户对特定功能的支付意愿。

30:05

🔍 市场验证：通过社区反馈测试产品

演讲者提到了通过社区和论坛来验证产品想法的重要性。他建议找到并参与与产品相关的特定兴趣小组或论坛，以获得目标用户的反馈。此外，他还讨论了如何通过直接与潜在客户接触来测试产品的市场需求。

35:06

🌟 产品迭代：不断改进以满足用户需求

演讲者分享了他如何根据用户反馈不断改进产品。他提到了在产品开发过程中常见的自我怀疑，以及如何通过持续的迭代来克服这种感觉。他还讨论了何时应该停止开发一个产品并转向新的项目，以及如何平衡产品的功能性和用户的实际需求。

40:08

📊 数据驱动：分析用户行为以指导决策

演讲者讨论了如何通过分析用户行为和市场反馈来决定产品的发展方向。他建议使用工具来跟踪产品在社交媒体和新闻报道中的提及，以此来衡量产品的影响力和用户的兴趣。他还分享了如何根据这些数据来决定是继续开发现有产品还是转向新的项目。

45:11

🤝 社区参与：建立和维护用户社区

演讲者强调了建立和维护一个积极用户社区的重要性。他分享了如何通过提供有价值的内容和解决问题的产品来吸引和保留用户。他还讨论了如何处理负面反馈，以及如何利用社区的力量来推动产品的增长和成功。

Keywords

💡自举启动（Bootstrapped）

自举启动是指在没有外部资金支持的情况下，依靠自身的资源和技能来建立和发展业务。在视频中，Pieter Levels提到他的创业项目大多是自举启动的，意味着他没有寻求风险投资，而是利用自己的技能和资源来构建业务，这体现了一种自力更生和创新的创业精神。

💡数字游民（Digital Nomad）

数字游民是指那些能够在世界任何地方通过互联网远程工作的人。Pieter Levels通过创建Nomad List网站，为数字游民提供了一个平台，帮助他们找到适合居住和工作的城市，这体现了对现代工作方式的适应和支持。

💡产品发布（Product Launch）

产品发布是指将新产品推向市场的行为。在视频中，Pieter讨论了多种产品发布的策略，包括在Product Hunt、Hacker News和Reddit等平台上发布，以吸引用户和媒体的关注，这对于创业公司的市场推广和用户增长至关重要。

💡有机增长（Organic Growth）

有机增长是指通过产品本身的质量和服务吸引用户，而非依赖付费广告或非自然手段的用户增长。Pieter强调了有机增长的重要性，认为这是验证产品价值和用户真实需求的关键方式。

💡自动化（Automation）

自动化是指使用软件和机器人来自动执行任务和流程，减少人工干预。Pieter通过自动化服务器和业务流程，实现了业务的高效运行，这体现了技术在提高效率和降低成本方面的重要作用。

💡收入模型（Revenue Model）

收入模型是指企业如何通过其产品或服务产生收入的方式。Pieter提到了不同的收入模型，包括会员制、赞助和Patreon等，这些都是他用来为其创业项目创造收入的方法。

💡创业直觉（Entrepreneurial Intuition）

创业直觉是指创业者基于自身经验和洞察力做出的判断。Pieter提到，他更倾向于信任自己的直觉而不是过度依赖外界意见，这强调了创业者对自己业务的深刻理解和内在感知的重要性。

💡用户反馈（User Feedback）

用户反馈是指用户对产品或服务的意见和建议。在视频中，Pieter强调了用户反馈在产品开发和改进中的重要作用，他通过在网站上设置反馈框来收集用户的反馈，并据此调整产品功能。

💡持续迭代（Continuous Iteration）

持续迭代是指不断地对产品进行改进和更新。Pieter提到，他会根据用户反馈和市场变化，不断添加新功能和改进现有功能，以保持产品的活力和竞争力。

💡创业心态（Entrepreneurial Mindset）

创业心态是指一种愿意承担风险、寻求机会、不断创新和自我驱动的心态。Pieter通过自己的经历展示了创业心态，他不断尝试新的创业项目，即使面临失败也不放弃，体现了坚韧和适应性。

💡市场验证（Market Validation）

市场验证是指确认产品或服务是否满足市场需求的过程。Pieter通过创建原型并在社区中进行测试，来验证他的创业想法是否可行，这是创业过程中不可或缺的一步，有助于减少风险并提高成功几率。

Highlights

演讲者分享了他在没有外部资金支持的情况下，通过自己的技能建立创业项目的经历。

演讲者强调了技术使得在互联网上建立事物变得便宜，这为创业提供了新的可能性。

演讲者讲述了他如何通过在YouTube上制作电子音乐视频来赚取收入，并且如何开始他的数字游民生活。

演讲者提到了他的创业项目之一Go Fucking Do It，这个项目通过设定目标和期限来帮助人们实现改变。

演讲者分享了他如何通过创建Nomad List来解决自己寻找合适居住城市的问题。

演讲者讲述了他如何通过创建Hood Maps来解决在大城市中迷路的问题。

演讲者强调了创业过程中保持独立性的重要性，建议创业者自己学习编码和设计，而不是依赖合作伙伴。

演讲者分享了他如何通过在不同平台上发布项目来吸引关注和用户，例如Product Hunt和Reddit。

演讲者讨论了创业项目的收入模式，包括会员费和赞助等。

演讲者提到了自动化在创业过程中的重要性，如何通过编程和机器人来提高效率。

演讲者分享了他如何通过创建Remote OK来解决寻找远程工作的问题。

演讲者讨论了创业项目的成长策略，包括持续推出新功能和保持与用户的互动。

演讲者强调了创业项目应该追求有机增长，而不是依赖广告或非自然手段。

演讲者分享了他如何通过创建Nomad List来解决自己作为数字游民时的问题，并最终将其发展成为一个成功的网站。

演讲者讨论了创业过程中的个人感受，包括面对压力和挑战时的心理状态。

演讲者分享了他对于创业项目应该如何定价和收费的看法，以及他个人在这方面的尝试和经验。

Transcripts

(clapping)

I've done a lot of building startups and side projects

in the last four years.

They're mostly bootstrapped, and bootstrapped means

that you build a business without any funding.

So you don't go to San Francisco.

You don't get venture capital

from big, old, fat, rich white guys, no offense.

And you just do it yourself with your own skills,

and that's very fascinating for me

'cause it's like a new way to build startups.

It's finally made possible

because technology's kinda cheap now.

It's almost free to build things on the internet.

And it's also exciting, because a lot of you guys here,

and girl, and whatever, you guys wanna build things.

You might have a job now, a remote job,

but you might wanna have your own little side project.

Make some money, or that maybe becomes a real startup later,

and so maybe that's relevant for your guys.

So thanks for coming, thanks for listening.

I would like to start with my own story.

Four years ago, I was in Holland,

and I just graduated from University.

I studied business, and I was really bored,

'cause all my friends got corporate jobs,

and I had a YouTube channel for electronic music,

and I was making like $2,000 a month,

$3,000 a month, so a lot of money for a student

for just a graduate, so I was really happy,

but I was sitting at home at my desk making

these YouTube videos, and I loved the music and stuff,

and I loved doing it, but it was really boring

being at home all the time.

So my friend said, "Why don't you buy a laptop

"and just try and do this on a laptop,

"and then you can maybe travel a little bit."

I was like, "Okay, I'll do that."

So, I sold all my stuff, similar story, maybe, to you guys.

You sold all your stuff, stuff you were renting,

and you just flew to Asia or South America, whatever,

and you went traveling for a little bit with your laptop.

I did this.

I was all over Asia, and the problem was,

my YouTube, meanwhile, was going bankrupt.

It was $3,000, $2,000, but then suddenly,

it was $900 and then $700, and then $500.

I was like, fuck, I need to make some money,

or I'm not gonna be able to pay this travel,

and just my rent and stuff,

and also, I was getting fucking depressed.

I'd been nomading and then I came back home

to my parents' house.

I was sitting there in this cold, Dutch winter,

and I just wanted to die, and I got really big anxiety

and depression and panic attacks for the first time ever

in my life, 'cause my life was going fucking bad,

so I needed to figure out something to do.

So I knew, like my dad always says, "If you're depressed,

"you need to order one cubic meter of sand,

"and get a shovel, and just start shoveling,

"one to the other."

And you do something, and you get less depressed.

And so I was like, okay, I'll do it digitally.

I'll just do 12 projects in 12 months,

and I called it 12 Startup for Fun, you know?

It wasn't really startups, but I'll just do it.

And I started building these little projects.

I took one month for each, and I had something to do.

I had focus.

Still wasn't making money, but whatever.

The first one was, my friends and me,

we would always send each other music over E-mail,

so I made this little app that would playlist it,

and you could list all the music we sent to each other

back when we didn't really have chat apps yet,

so, now, nobody use E-mail anymore.

Anyway, this didn't make any money, but it was really fun,

and I launched it.

I made an animated .gif books, or .gif book,

however you wanna pronounce it,

so I got a supplier in Malaysia.

He could print flip books, and then I would send

the animated .gifs to him, the frames,

and we would order it.

Everybody loved it, but the margin was literally like

two or 3%, so it was hardly making any money.

I think I was losing money after tax.

It was total bullshit, but it was really fun.

Then, this was the first one that went really viral.

It's Go Fucking Do It, so you could enter a goal.

You could add a deadline.

Like, I wanna quit smoking.

I want January 2018.

You set a price, and you enter your credit card details

with Stripe, and on the day, on the deadline,

your friend gets an E-mail, and it asks,

"Hey, did Pieter really quit smoking on January or not?"

and if the friend said no,

your credit card would get charged with $50, $100,

and the money would go to me,

(laughing)

and this was the first one that was starting to make money.

So, I was going from my YouTube crashing to $200 a month.

Suddenly I was making $500 a month again with this,

so now I was up at about $700 a month,

so I could live again, so this was kinda nice.

Still wasn't a lot of money, but okay.

And then the press started getting involved.

So, my friend made this kinda funny picture of me,

really pretentious, but whatever.

It worked, 'cause the press started biting on this project

of 12 Startups in 12 Months, and everybody started writing

about it like The Next Web, Tech in Asia,

and suddenly, like thousands of people started E-mailing me

and following me on Twitter and stuff,

and something was started to happen,

so I cracked this little marketing thing accidentally

with this 12 Startups thing.

Meanwhile, I had to keep continuing building more products,

so one product I built was a spreadsheet of cities.

So I was in Chiang Mai, and Bangkok, and Singapore,

and Hong Kong, and Tokyo, whatever,

but I wanted to find places where the internet was good,

where it was kinda warm, like 26 degrees Celsius,

and it wasn't super expensive to live,

'cause, you know, I had $700 a month.

So I was like, okay, let's make a spreadsheet,

and I published it on Twitter, but I forgot to,

well, actually, the first time, it leaked,

and I forgot to remove the edits thing,

so actually, people were starting to edit it,

and I was like, just share it on Twitter,

and it went viral, and hundreds of people,

maybe I think a thousand people

started adding data to it, and then we had 75 cities

with all the costs of living and fast internet and stuff,

and all these nomad hotspots, so then I made it

into a website, and I launched the website

to Hacker News and it went number one.

I launched to Product Hunt, it went number one,

and just started going viral.

And it was 2014, August or something at the time.

The new nomads wave, I think, after 2007 started,

and it was kind of a nomad list as well.

I grew Nomad List into this big fucking website

with loads of data.

It's 1,250 cities, now 250,000 data points.

It's all crowd-sourced, and it makes money.

It makes $15,000 to $25,000 a month

in membership fees and stuff,

so that's a far reach from the $700 I was living on,

but this took, obviously, years to build,

but at least this one actually stuck.

One of those projects stuck,

which is kinda the philosophy I do now.

It's like shotgun.

You shoot a lot of projects and see which sticks.

I bootstrapped Remote OK from Nomad List success.

It's like a remote job website, which is now, also,

since December, the number one remote job website

in the world with almost a million monthly visits,

so that's really cool, and it makes about $10,000 a month.

I also made Hood Maps recently.

This is Canggu, so it's a map where everybody

can cross-source tech, kinda like Wikipedia tech,

things they think about a place.

They can color it based on if it's hipster or rich,

so you kinda know where to go in a city.

So this is Canggu.

So where?

It's a nomad mecca.

Deus' hipster mecca, and the ocean is full

of hot surfer boys and girls.

So anyway, while building all these projects,

there was one framework and pattern that kept happening,

which was like, you have an idea, or I would have a problem

and make it into an idea.

I would build it, I would launch it, I would grow it,

and then I would monetize it to make money from it,

and then, if I got really annoyed with working on it,

I would automate it with robots, so today,

I wanna tell you about all these processes.

And importantly, there's no VCs involved.

No venture capital, just self-funded.

So let's start with idea.

A lot of you have already startup or app ideas

and a lot of them are good.

A lot of them are really bad, and I think the bad ones

are pretty much bad because they're not focused

on a problem.

I hear constantly, let's make another food delivery app

or another fashion clothes delivery app or whatever,

but they're not really problems that you wanna solve,

so my thing is like, I try to look at my own life,

and what am I really annoyed with?

What is in my daily life, something I can work on,

information that's missing or whatever.

With Nomad List, I wanted to know new cities,

where I could go.

With Hood Maps, I was lost in these tourist centers

of big cities, and I was like,

"Fuck, I wanna see the real city."

So I built Hood Maps, for example.

So I was always trying to find problems and then to solve,

and I think that's the way to do.

And the reason that's cool, because when you have a problem

you solve, you're actually, you're the expert

at your own problems, so, this is an expert,

and it's a competitive advantage,

because let's say you're a gardener.

You know very well about the problems that gardeners have

about flowers and plants and stuff,

and nobody else knows that, or only other gardeners,

so you have a little niche there that's competitive,

that's good.

The problem is, we're all very similar.

Look at us.

A lot of guys here beards and short hair

and trimmed on the sides like me, so it's bullshit.

That means that we all start getting the same ideas

'cause we all have the same problems.

So you wanna become less homogenous, right?

So how do you do that?

Well, you have to start doing crazy shit.

So you have to, I don't know, go sky diving

or you go trek to the jungle for six months

alone without any phone, or just do some original stuff.

Go do orgies or whatever.

Find new subcultures to go into.

Fringe subcultures are really good, because when it's taboo,

nobody else is doing it yet,

so it's competitive advantage again,

and you might find some business or app idea

or service idea, whatever, in there,

but you have to become original, 'cause otherwise,

you're making the same shit everybody else is making,

and that's not gonna make you money.

What I see a lot is a big fault, too.

People think really big with ideas, so they start with,

I wanna build a space company,

but that's bullshit because you're nobody,

so it doesn't go as fast as that.

You have to start with something very small.

So, if you look at Elon Musk, he started with PayPal

which was a payment app for Palm Pilots, old smartphones.

That became big, and he sold it with a lot of other people,

and then, in the end, after 20 years,

he's finally building a space company.

So start slowly.

Build something small, fix a small niche problem first.

Make some money and keep growing the niche,

and keep growing bigger.

With Nomad List now, it was focused on nomads,

but now I'm going bigger.

I wanna go into the whole travel market,

which is about 10 or 100 times as big as Nomads,

so grow a niche instead of starting big, you know?

Start small, it's better.

And a niche is really cool, because if you have,

let's say, $100 products,

you only need 10,000 people for one million dollars.

I was shocked.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, it is accurate, it's one million dollars.

So you don't need a lot of,

and you can take a picture if you want.

You don't need a lot of customers

to make one million dollars.

You just need a small niche of people.

Everybody took the picture?

Yeah?

Nice, flash doesn't gonna help.

Okay, so you can also make an idea list.

That's what I did too.

Every time I have an idea, I write it in a concepts list.

This is all bullshit ideas, but whatever.

And I'd see which ones are promising

and which keep coming back to me,

and then I might start building them.

And it's good to just track this.

Do it in WorkFlowy or Trello or whatever,

to-do post-its or whatever.

Write it down because you might need the idea later.

I think a lot of the remote work ideas I had,

they came months before I actually did them,

so it takes a long time to boil in your head.

Also, I would definitely, definitely super advise,

and this is very contradictory advice

from what most people say.

Do it yourself.

Don't work with other people.

You don't need a technical co-founder

if you're a business person.

Just learn the codes.

Just do it yourself and learn to design or whatever.

Do the basics yourself,

because it will save you so much time.

And Groupthink.

Groupthink is very dangerous.

If you have two or three people in a group,

you're building a startup, I've seen it myself.

People sort of hyping each other, like,

"Wow, this dog food delivery idea is really gonna change

the whole fucking ecosystem of the world."

It's just not true.

It's just you're hyping each other.

And if you're alone, you cover your hype up,

'cause you're mostly insecure, right?

And being alone is kinda good, because, yeah,

it will help you ship faster and better.

A lot of people are like, "Okay, I'm working on a startup,

"but I can't really tell you because we're

"in stealth mode, and I won't share

"that idea 'cause otherwise, somebody steals it,"

which is more bullshit.

Nobody's gonna steal your idea.

It's all about execution.

Everybody has the same ideas anyway.

The execution makes it original and unique,

so, actually, sharing your idea is good

'cause you can talk to people, you can talk

to maybe potential customers already

before you actually build something,

so be happy with sharing your idea.

Yeah, and this is the end of the first idea part.

Do you have any questions?

'Cause I don't wanna do questions at the end,

'cause it's a little too messy, so maybe.

You have questions now about how to get ideas?

Anybody?

No, okay.

So, if you have an idea, you finally got it,

you wanna build it, so how do you start building it?

Well, a lot of people, they need to learn the codes

and they need to go to coding boot camps

or code academies or whatever, and I would definitely

not recommend that, 'cause it's gonna take months or years,

and I don't really think it's a good way to code.

I think it's a little bit of a scam.

I think you should learn to code yourself.

I think you should just open Google

and write how to make a website.

And that's how I learned it.

That's how most successful people around me learned it,

and the thing is, the biggest thing in coding

and in business you can learn,

is learning how to learn and learning how

to figure things out for yourself.

That's very practical knowledge, and that's super,

super important in entrepreneurship,

just practically knowing how to do things,

and not calling somebody, like, "Hey, how do I do this?"

or not finding a book or something about it.

Just do it yourself.

Why not?

All the information is now on the internet.

It's on YouTube, it's on Stack Overflow, it's on Google,

so you can easily find for yourself.

And that's, again, it's the most important skill

you can have.

Learn to learn.

If you really are stubborn and you're just like,

no, Pieter, I'm not gonna learn to code,

go fuck yourself, go on Typeform.

Typeform.com is a site where you can make a form,

and you can even accept payments,

and you don't need to do any codes,

and you can actually build a little mini-startup

just with a form.

Like here, you can enter your credit card,

and then you can actually pay.

You can accept payments with Stripe and stuff.

Another cool app is called Carrd.

It's C-A-R-R-D.co.

It's built by my friend AJ, and it's super amazing.

It lets people without code build really advanced websites.

I built this yesterday.

It's a luggage pickup service, and I just build

a whole landing page out of nothing,

and then if people schedule a pickup,

it gets sent to Zapier.

It's API website, and the luggage gets picked up.

Not really, but I could do it if I want.

Me too, I started with a spreadsheet.

Normally, this was a spreadsheet.

I wasn't a good coder.

I could make WordPress themes for a little bit,

but I wasn't really good at it,

so I learned just in time with Google.

I learned something when I needed to learn it.

When the problem happened,

I would go on Google and just find it and figure it out,

and because the only other option of not learning it

was my entire startup failing, it's a very nice constraint

to, you really need to learn how to make the button align

with the logo because everybody thinks it's ugly.

No, that's a good reason to go learn.

Also, I see a lot of people,

they build startups for years or months.

Like, "Yeah, I've been working on this thing for six months.

"We have no customers,

"and the design is perfect and beautiful."

That just doesn't work.

I would say, max one month for a prototype.

It has to be a good prototype, though,

but don't spend too much time working on something

because you need to validate with launching.

That's very important.

Questions?

Not yet, okay.

Well, then, everything's clear, so it's good.

Okay, launching, very important.

So you built some things,

and now you wanna actually get users,

and I think this is the most important step in any startup

because it validates if the product

is actually useful or not, and can be monetized and stuff.

So, very big platforms for launching startups.

Product Hunt, of course, one of the biggest.

It'll get you about 10,000 users, 10,000 visits.

I think about 10% maybe convert or something or less.

Tips for Product Hunt,

make sure just the whole item looks really good.

Add some animated .gif.

Make a really good slogan.

Ask your friends and stuff about the slogan

for your startup.

A lot of the startup slogans are just super obtruse,

and I don't know what they actually mean.

So, make it very simple.

Very important for Product Hunt.

Product Hunt works in San Francisco time,

so the time's on Pacific Standard Time,

which means that you might have to stay up

until midnight San Francisco time,

and then you need to submit your product.

Because otherwise, if you submit at like,

I don't know, Bali time 4 p.m.,

it might be 1 p.m. San Francisco or something, anyway,

a little bit too late to compete with other startups

on Product Hunt for that day, and you wanna be high

on the ranking.

It's very important.

Also, jump on the comments when you're on Product Hunt.

You know, talk with people.

Don't be marketing, just be honest and say,

if this bugs or whatever,

fix them immediately and be friendly.

Be a human.

It's very important.

Hacker News is another one.

Hacker News is very critical.

They can destroy your whole startup with their comments.

Here it's even more important.

Don't do marketing stuff.

Be as frank and honest and personal as you can.

If you build a food delivery app, whatever,

say, show HN, "I built a food delivery app."

And then say something unique or whatever.

Make it original, but make it friendly.

No spamming.

Don't use voting rings and stuff.

No bolts, all that bullshit.

It's only gonna go down, you know?

They'll see it.

Reddit is very, very gigantic big.

It's about 100 times big than the sites before,

Hacker News and Product Hunt.

Reddit is the mainstream launching platform right now,

I think it's becoming very quickly.

Reddit, again, also, they don't like spam.

They don't like marketing.

They will remove your listing very quickly.

Important think about Reddit is you wanna submit

to subreddits, so if you doing an app for horse management,

you might wanna go in slash R slash horse,

and you wanna be very friendly.

You wanna say, "Hey guys, I made this app about horses.

"How to manage them.

"Would you give feedback on it?"

And then if it gets up-voted, people will like it,

it will actually, that's a very good chance

to go to the front page.

I did it twice.

I did it with Nomad List.

I did it with Hood Maps.

The problem is, when you go to the front page,

when you get about page two or three, your server will die

because it can't handle traffic.

It's like literally thousands of people in the same second,

so you wanna make sure that your site stays up

so, technical term, but make it static.

Make it in XHTML instead of PHP or JS.

Just make it static so it actually runs.

Load test it before, 'cause a lot of people

just don't get onto the front page when they might have

if their server stayed up.

And this, again, hundreds of thousands

of users you'll get from this, 400,000, maybe,

half a million, it's crazy.

Horse Forum, it's very important.

(laughing)

You're like, "What the fuck is this site doing here?"

No, it's very important.

So, if you make this horse management app,

you wanna also go in your niche.

So you wanna find websites specifically for your niche.

In this case, horses, and you submit it there.

Same story, make it personal.

This is actually users that might convert the highest,

because it's very relevant to them.

They have horse stables or whatever, and they need your app,

so publish here.

Bodybuilding, another one, if you do a bodybuilding app,

and yeah, this is subreddit motorcycles

if you make a motorcycle app, whatever.

Questions about launching?

Yeah.

- Sorry, need you to talk in this microphone.

- I was just gonna ask, do you have any procedure

that you go through when you do a new startup,

or you just jump right into it?

Like, are you doing a competitor analysis or?

- Yeah, good question.

I sometimes do competitive analysis.

Like I check if the app already exists,

but the thing is, the fact that an app already exists

doesn't mean you can't add to the market, right?

So many times, when an app doesn't exist,

is you wanna build, it means there is no market for it.

So usually, there is an app that already exists,

but it's shit, and it doesn't have a lot of users,

and it's just broken and ugly, whatever,

so you can just make a better one.

That's what I did a lot of times.

There's a lot of competitors of mine who were just,

their site was just unusable,

but they were big sites before, but yeah,

so it's easy to, not even take them over,

but just like, yeah you'll get more traffic,

but yeah, I will usually dive right into it,

and I'm a little bit arrogant and naive,

so I'm like, oh, I can do this better.

Fuck this, I'll just do it, and sometimes,

usually it doesn't work out. (laughing)

But mostly, one out of 10 times it does,

and then you made something that's better.

So being a little bit arrogant about it works, I think.

- I mean like, do you have a checklist, I guess,

of a lot of things that you would go through?

- Yeah, so I'll try and launch,

so he asked, do I have checklist?

Things I go through during launch?

I will try and do Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News,

all those websites on the same day,

'cause you kinda want a constant traffic,

'cause then it's like, oh my God, this whole day's

about your startup and everybody's talking about it,

and it has this giant effect, like exponential,

but the checklist is pretty much,

yeah, it's kinda

Tweet about it, share it on Facebook, then submit it.

Yeah.

Just, it's pretty obvious, I think, yeah.

Sure.

Other questions about launching?

No, cool.

So, when you've launched, of course you need

to check your analytics, like if it actually worked.

If, you know, usually you see a drop off.

You see a spike of traffic when it launches,

then it goes down and down and down,

which is very normal.

Doesn't mean your site is not validated,

but if and when, in a week, literally everybody's gone,

then you might think that maybe it's not successful.

So you wanna try, maybe, don't stop, but whatever.

You wanna try and grow.

If actually the traffic's still there,

you wanna try and grow it,

and what I really hate these days (laughing)

and it's also of events in Dojo, is there's a lot of talk

about non-organic growth, and I think just doesn't work.

There's a lot of talk about Instagram bots.

I tried them too, last week.

Didn't work.

There's a Twitter follow/unfollow bots, like bots,

spamming by an E-mail list, all this fucking dodgy,

shady gray stuff, or black hat stuff,

and I hate it so much that every time.

In Dojo, I think every week I'll be in some heavy discussion

or at some coffee shop with somebody.

What you're doing is not good.

Don't do it.

But, I don't wanna be moral night,

so I should shut up as well, but the thing is,

this is how non-organic growth looks.

It's a very ugly cow.

It's not good.

And look how beautiful the next cow looks.

Look, aww.

This is organic growth, which means

people actually really like your website.

They're not there because of bots, or ads as well.

Ads are ethical, but I don't like ads.

Like who of us has ad-blockers?

See?

So why do we have ad-blockers but we're still buying ads

at Facebook and Google?

It's kinda morally ridiculous.

I don't believe that ads will be the future,

so all the ads, they give you,

let's say they give you a spike of 10,000 users and signups,

but when you stop buying these ads,

usually it slowly just fades out.

And I see it a lot with venture capital-based startups,

and I think venture capital-based startups

are a lot like this, 'cause it's all fake growth.

It's all a bold growth or paid traffic,

and I don't really think it works.

It stops working when the money stops, right?

Then you usually just fall off.

And then you didn't really actually build something useful.

Organic growth is much cooler,

because it's much more hard to get,

but when you get it, it means you validated the product

you built, so you actually have people using it,

and actually people loving it.

And if you don't get traffic,

it means your product's just not good enough.

So it's the ultimate test of, is my product good or not?

Should I tweak it, should I build another product,

a new thing, whatever, to have organic.

And if you have all this paid traffic in there,

okay, it's kinda hard to see

if people actually really like your product,

or if it's just paid traffic.

Very important, what I do, to kinda get this growing.

I wanna build with my users.

So every site or every app I have has

this little feedback box, and it just sounds like,

"Hey do you have feedback?

"Tell me.

"Be nice."

Cause people can be really angry in this feedback box,

so I had to ask, be nice, and now they're really nice to me,

so it actually worked. (laughing)

If this box, like this, the images are not loading,

you can write, "Hey your images are broken."

But also, there's a lot of feature requests.

Every week, I'll add a feature, or I'll change a feature

somebody just says is wrong.

This week, I think I moved the search box on Nomad List

to the right because somebody said it looked ugly,

so, yeah, and then they're happy and they're involved

in the process, so building.

I think it's called co-creating.

Building with users is amazing, because they become,

what is it called?

Ambassadors.

Wow, you're British.

Ambassadors of your products,

so they will tell, "Hey, I sent Pieter this message

"about the search box, and he actually changed it.

"I love it.

"You should use Nomad List, too."

So, it's very positive effect you have,

and users are really smart.

You shouldn't always listen to everything they say,

but you should definitely consider it,

what they're saying.

A more beautiful feedback box, of course,

Intercom, used by most startups.

This works as well.

It works very well.

It's paid, though, so a little annoying.

Very important to add on your website or app

is some kinda thing so you can re-engage users later.

So you launch with 10,000 users on Hacker News

or Product Hunt, but then after that day,

those 10,000 people are gone.

So how do you contact them again?

So you wanna re-engage.

So, capture their E-mail with, I don't know,

somewhere like this, send me a message

when you have special food discounts

in my area, or whatever.

What I did with Remote OK was, the remote jobs website,

I would have daily job alerts that people can subscribe to.

Nomad List has a newsletter, so that kinda stuff.

So you can E-mail people later.

Don't spam people, you know?

Again, just be sparing using these E-mail addresses,

'cause you guys know how annoying

it is to have annoying E-mails

flooding your inbox.

Very important and very trendy,

and if you do this, you will be

so far ahead of everybody else.

Build your startup in public.

So this guy is a friend of mine,

kinda friend, acquaintance, not really acquaintance.

Hardly know.

(laughing)

But, it's Drew Wilson who once Tweeted.

Drew Wilson, he's really cool, and he built Plasso,

this payment startup, but he build a lot of it in public,

and he just live streams.

So he's just sitting there.

It's a little boring, but also kinda fun,

because he plays music and stuff,

and you can see his code, so you can see the product

being built right there in front of you,

and that's super cool.

And the cool thing is, nobody else is doing that.

I did it with Hood Maps.

I hardly know anybody who's doing it,

and it gives you so much attention and press,

so definitely try this.

Yeah, takes guts, but also streaming,

it makes you very productive.

100 people were watching me, and I never coded as fast,

'cause I was just so nervous and stuff, so it works.

Another one to keep growing is to keep launching,

so don't launch your startup once.

Launch a feature as well, and launch to the press again,

and just keep doing it every two or three months.

You wanna keep getting into the press

and keep getting into these websites.

I don't think you can launch it

in Product Hunt every two months,

but you can launch every year.

Every big version number you have,

or every change you do, you can launch again,

and that's very important,

'cause you wanna stay in people's minds.

So, any questions about launching?

You look like you had a question.

No, okay.

No, okay, cool.

So, the most, well, not.

I keep saying, "The most important part."

That's bullshit.

I can't keep saying that, but this is very important too.

Monetizing.

You aren't running a charity, you're running a business.

If people won't give you money for your product,

you have an existential crisis on your hands,

and that's very important.

And I see so many startups just don't make money,

and it's like, how do you pay your rent?

Just, I don't know.

And (laughing) and that's just not the way to do it.

It's very important to make money,

because you need to pay your bills,

and I would say within three months,

I would say within two months, maybe,

get the first dollar in.

Maybe even during launch day, get the dollars running,

'cause otherwise, again, you didn't validate.

You made a nice startup, but it's not making money,

so it's not really validated as a product,

and that's a big problem.

Focus on money, and focusing money is very difficult for us.

I'm Dutch, so especially for Dutch people,

they're traders historically,

but they're very weird about money.

You're not really allowed to make money.

This is a typical, I wrote it myself,

but this typical example E-mail of the stuff I would get

when I started charging money.

So, I'll read for you.

This is an E-mail by grumpycat2019.

Okay, I can't believe what just happened.

So anyway, I was feeding my cat,

and then I was trying to find an app

so I can schedule my social media post.

I really put too much time into scheduling,

so I need this app.

So I found this app called Media Scheduler 2000.

Okay, so I sign up, and what the hell?

I have to pay $25 a month for it?

Who does the maker of this app think?

What a capitalist.

He's just making easy money off the back of others.

This should be free.

It's always these big companies trying to make money

off the little people.

Even Gmail's free.

Don't support this app.

The maker's evil, one one.

But really, this is a typical E-mail I get.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

They think you're a big company, but you're just you

and your laptop and you're trying to just pay your bills

and buy a coffee, and this is so,

this happens so much, especially in Reddit.

Like people really hate when you charge money for something,

but you should charge money for something,

and just ignore these people.

And there's always a free alternative

of your app that's worse, but yeah,

you're not competing with them.

You're competing in the premium

with actually charging money.

A very good example of how to charge and validate

at the same time is Buffer,

and they pioneered this whole thing.

They didn't even launch a product yet,

but they just put up a landing page

with a plans and pricing button,

and if you clicked it, this is social media scheduling

as well, you would get an E-mail box,

and you could sign to get updated

if the app actually launched.

And this was amazing, 'cause this is literally

just validating how many people will click on this?

How many people add their E-mail?

Okay, so now we have a list of 10,000 people

that might actually wanna pay for it,

because they clicked pricing,

so they actually wanna maybe pay for it.

I did this idea even worse, or even bigger.

I made a whole payment button with a fake Stripe box

where you enter your credit cards

for a feature you wanna use, and then after paying,

they wouldn't be actually be paying.

I said, you didn't actually pay.

This was a fake Stripe payment box, but now I know

that you would pay if I built the actual feature.

But I didn't actually build the feature yet.

So, that's again, validating a feature before you build it,

if actually people pay for it.

So yeah, but buy buttons on everything.

This is the most important slide of my presentation.

You wanna check what people pay for in your product,

so every feature, put a pay ball on it to see what happens,

and then start, if nobody pays for it, make it free,

but yeah, limit your app as well.

See what people pay for again.

Super important.

A few business models here that you can apply.

A lot of websites you know and startups,

they don't actually make money off their main product.

They make money off their by-line product, kind of,

their main product.

So this is Nomad List.

This website doesn't make any money.

This is all free data.

You can filter cities in the whole world.

Nobody pays money for this, but this is like a social media,

or like a social network for travelers,

which also Nomad List, which 7,000 people pay money for.

Dribble.

You guys, a lot of designers here know Dribble?

A design website.

It's free to post your designs on Dribble,

and nobody pays money for this, but there's a job site

that business people business pay for to post jobs,

and they pay a lot for it.

I think $299 for 30 days, yeah.

So you can use your main site to be free,

like Freemium, and then have side things.

Also, sponsorships are good.

When I launched Nomad List, I got an E-mail

within the first day by Matt Mullenweg,

the founder of WordPress, who had liked the website,

and he said, "Can we sponsor it?"

And I was like, "Sure, I'll add a little banner,"

and then automatic, WordPress are hiring,

and he paid me a few thousand dollars a month for it,

and it still pays, so yeah,

that's a very good sponsorship model you can do as well.

It's just, it's very hard to get sponsorships.

Going outbound, like E-mailing companies

for it is very hard.

You wanna be so cool as a product, maybe,

and be lucky to, a cool company wants to help you

and provide you, so you can keep developing on the website.

And this money helped a lot, because in the beginning,

I wasn't making a lot of money,

so it has helped me continue developing the website.

A more cool modern model that you might now is Patreon

where you just simply ask your users to pay money,

not even for a specific feature,

but just for supporting you as a maker,

and I just saw this week on Twitter,

a guy called Sindre Sorhus, who does a lot

of open source development, he just asked like,

"Hey, do you wanna give me money

"for my open source work the last few years?

"I've been working for free."

And I think he got a few thousand dollars.

This is my friends abroad in Japan,

a Japanese YouTuber, British guy in Japan,

and he makes $3,000 a month from 800 people paying him

a few dollars a month, and it's actually a sustainable model

to make money these days, and why not?

Overcast, a podcast app for iOS, does the same thing.

They don't have premium features anymore.

They just have a Patreon part

where you can literally just say,

"Okay, I'll pay $12 'cause I love the app."

And you don't even get anything.

You just, you're a supporter, and I think 400 people a day,

or something, they're Patreons, so it's a lot of money.

Very important about monetization.

You know, I see a lot of people, I did the same thing.

I see a lot of people charge $50 once to unlock a feature

or use your product, but it's not recurring revenue,

and recurring revenue is quite important,

because, as you can see in this chart,

if you have a single payment of $75 and the company,

you can't see it, but it says sales growth by 25% a year,

which is kinda okay growth, you know,

year one, you make $75,000 on both.

In year five, when you have a single payment by a user,

you make $183,000, and with a subscription,

you make almost $2,000,000 a year,

because subscriptions keep going, and they keep growing

with more and more subscriptions,

so it's exponential kinda growth,

and it's just a lot of money.

And of course, you'll have churn, too.

You'll have people canceling your subscriptions,

but still, in the end, it's kinda positive.

Only thing is, subscriptions are annoying for users.

I hate getting another bill of some service I signed up

a few years ago, like fuck, I was still paying for that.

I don't even use it.

That might be annoying.

Any questions about growing?

No.

Cool, okay, so, this is a also really cool part.

Automating.

So if you have this whole business running now,

you make money, and you kinda,

you kinda get sick of the business.

Like, I get sick of startups after one

or two years or whatever.

I like doing new stuff.

I hate doing the same shit all over, over and over again.

So you can get robots to work for you.

You can hire people, but humans are difficult.

Robots are much easier and more efficient, I think.

So automating.

So this is my server right now.

I made a screenshot a few hours ago.

In the top, you can see, it's blocked,

but it's 187 robots are running now.

That's parallel processes,

and they're doing something for my site.

They're getting the weather for the cities on Nomad List.

They're getting job posts for Remote OK.

They're processing refunds for users.

Both sites are 100% automated,

and these robots keep everything running.

This is my scheduled cron jobs, which means,

it's tech lingo for scheduled programs, these robots.

All these things are things that I need to do hourly

or daily or weekly.

This is my whole business, is all these lines.

This is all the robots running everything,

and for me, it's really cool.

It just looks really cool that I have this server

somewhere in San Francisco, and it just does all this stuff.

And I have anywhere from 180 to 700 robots running,

working for me 24/7, and they can scale up and scale down

whenever they want.

When they need more people, they just hire more people.

Within seconds, more robots.

It's just, the magnitude of this is like,

it's hard to explain, but it's,

it means that you can run entire businesses now

with robots, with scripts doing stuff for you,

and this means that you can hire people,

but then you can't really fire them,

'cause it's hard with labor laws.

Humans get sick, all this stuff.

And I know it sucks, but this is the reality.

Robots are, to be honest, just more efficient

at a lot of stuff.

This, for example, how to monitor robots.

So what's the role for the human then,

left in his little black box of a business you built?

Well, I think it's very important to have one human hired

full time to manage all these robots

when you've automated everything, so they can check

if your server's down or not.

Otherwise, you're still 24/7 working on this business.

I've woken up so many times, it's 4 a.m.,

just check my website, and it's down,

and then I have to do all this stuff,

and then I'm awake for three hours

'cause the server crashed.

You wanna have a guy or girl or whatever

on there, on standby.

Get alerts when a server's down and when the robots

are not doing their work.

Yeah, exit is very important.

I've never done it, but selling your business.

I've got proposals to sell my business,

but I'm not happy yet with the price.

Very important to just finally get on with it

and start living I guess.

The price of an exit is usually something like this.

So, let's say you have 25% growth.

You have $100,000.

Usually you can ask $500,000.

If you have higher growth,

you can ask even a million dollars

for $100,000 a year business.

Yeah, this is very important.

So that's why you see all these startups.

They think about their growth rates so much,

'cause they want the growth rate for the selling price.

It's very important.

I think I would sell for something like

four or five revenue multiple or something,

'cause my growth rate is okay.

It's kinda stable.

It's slowly growing.

And also, there's a lot of psychological things

with selling, like if you wanna sell your company, maybe.

You know, your company's your baby.

Like, Nomad List is my baby.

If I sell, maybe I get depressed, so think about that stuff.

See, that's the whole loop.

So you have an idea.

You solve your own problem.

You build it.

Then you launch it.

You grow it organically, very important.

That's my opinion.

Monetize it, automate it, exit.

And then you do it again.

And this is like a little ecosystem and pattern I found

after a few years.

So, yeah.

Thanks for listening.

(clapping)

So do you have any questions now?

- Did you finish the 12 startups in the year?

- What?

- Were you man--

- No, I didn't.

No, I did about seven.

Because Nomad List was taking off,

and I had a decision.

I could either continue, finishing startups,

which is very important for me,

or I could do Nomad List and make it big,

and I think if I would have continued making new projects

every month for another five times,

then I'm afraid Nomad List wouldn't be big.

It would have just,

'cause it took like hardcore effort

to keep this growth going,

and I had to keep adding features,

and I think otherwise, it would be a passe,

one-day fly thing, so unfortunately I didn't finish,

but I'm still thinking, today I was checking the black ball,

it was like 2014, and I thought,

it'd be cool to do those five at some point in five months,

but, yeah, just to resolve it for myself spiritually.

- How do you deal with all the legal stuff?

Where do you set your companies up and taxes and, yeah.

How do you deal with all that?

Like when you're setting up loads of new companies

all the time as well.

- Yeah, good question.

So, what you can do, you can have one company,

the holding company, and actually everything you do

is just a project.

So it's called a startup, called a business,

but you can just do it in-house.

And you can even spin things off,

and I think it's, fiscally, in some countries,

more beneficial to do the separate entities,

but in a case of Holland, it's really annoying

to start a LLC or (speaking in foreign language) we call it.

It costs like $5,000 in bookkeeping fees,

so I was just like, "Okay, I'll just do it

"on my own in my own little company,"

so I just have one company and that's it,

and that's what I have everything in.

So it works fine, and it kinda is like,

it works with my lean, simple approach.

I don't like spending too much time

in all this difficult stuff, tax stuff, fiscals.

I want it to be legal, but that's it.

But I think even if you have a company,

you can spin off parts of it legally, so why not?

Yeah.

- Are you the only one adding features,

or do you have people for that?

How do you handle that?

- No, it's just me.

All the websites.

Just me, yeah.

So, it's a lot of work, but, then again,

it's also not a lot of work.

It's a lot of nights here at Dojo as Michael knows,

'cause he always watches the security cameras at night.

(laughing)

Like we buy nine coffees and then we come here.

Nine lattes, and we sit with Andre and everybody,

we sit there in the Air-con room at night,

and then we ship loads of features,

but usually, these are cycles.

What?

We play techno music, yeah.

And we dance on the table.

Don't let Michael know.

He might kick us out.

(laughing)

But it goes in cycles, so it's a lot of hard work

for many days or weeks, and then,

now it's pretty much like very little work.

So it's just running.

But yeah, I think you can keep things running for very long,

but then it slowly will get dusty

merely because the time changes.

People will want different design.

There's different trends, right?

Or different, I don't know, even travel trends,

so you wanna slowly maybe change the website.

But my idea now for 2018 was to kind of keep

it running and live a little bit more,

and relax a little bit more, 'cause the last four years

was like a whirlwind of hardcore working, traveling,

and doing all this stuff, and yeah.

It's very intense if you do everything yourself,

like press stuff.

Like people attack you in the press.

New York Times articles, it's always, yeah.

Weird shit.

But it's very intense, so maybe relax more.

- Yeah, man, hey.

Over the years, what do you think top three mistakes

that you've done that you could have avoided?

- Top three.

I think listening to yourself, to your intuition

is much more important than I thought.

I was trusting always on the internet so much,

like TechCrunch and shit, like I started reading TechCrunch

like 2011, and I thought that was the way

to build a startup.

Like, you raise 23 million dollars, and you hire a team

and get a office and stuff, and it didn't turn out

to be for me, anyway, the thing to do.

And every time, I'm really stubborn, but every time

I think something is the way to do it,

it turns out to be the way to do it for me

just because I force it kinda,

and so trusting yourself and your intuition

is super important.

You're not wrong, usually.

The time is wrong, you're not wrong.

Like a lot of people here, we're nomads,

and this is a very early adopter scene,

so you're already an early adopter,

so it means I think you know things a little bit better

than the common people, or, oh that sounds really bad,

like normal people, normies.

But it means that, if you would never trust yourself,

you wouldn't even be here, so you wanna trust yourself,

very important.

That's the most important thing.

Other mistakes.

Yeah, just be nicer.

Be nice in anything.

Twitter, it's a hell hole.

I know a lot of you people aren't on Twitter.

I'm on Twitter a lot.

The tech scene is on Twitter.

So many haters, especially when things are going well.

First, nobody knows you, and then things are going well,

and people just start hating on you for no reason.

So, don't engage with haters.

Ignore them.

They're just angry, and I don't know a third mistake.

No, really, I don't know.

- Anything else?

Question?

- You guys?

- How did you monetize The Digital Nomads?

- Website, Nomad List, it's a membership site mostly,

so you can join.

Like I said, you can use everything on the website.

It's like a read-only website, so there's social profiles

of where I traveled and stuff,

and then I can see where somebody else is traveling,

but if you actually wanna have your own profile,

you need to sign up.

You log on with Facebook, and then you have to pay

$1 a day or $99 a year, I think,

and then you can use all the features,

so it's kinda like teasing.

Like you show the features, but then,

if people wanna interact, they can't.

They have to pay.

It wasn't like that from the start, no.

Well, the start was only a city list.

That was it.

But, actually this is a good story.

The reason I started charging money

was because I was getting spammers.

I had this Slack chat for nomads,

and it started filling up.

Within a month, there was a thousand people on there,

and we started getting these internet marketing people,

and I think if you're on Facebook,

you know very well.

These people, they're also in these Bali groups.

They're like, "Hey guys, I'm selling my course,

"so I'm getting new people on" and stuff,

and it was just really annoying that everybody was selling

their own shit all the time.

So, I was so annoyed, so I was like,

okay, well, you know, you're obviously selling something,

so pay for it, so $5.

I got a Typeform for $5 and started charging,

and then, it slowed down a little bit, the spammers,

but then it started growing more,

and then, again, the same thing, all these spammers.

So, $25, okay $50, $100, and they kept paying,

so it was kinda like accidentally,

I had a business model where people actually paid for Xs,

and also, the room spam, there's hardly any spam now.

So, yeah, accident.

And you had a question.

- Yeah, I had a question.

So you said about coding?

- Yeah.

- You said, don't do any boot camp,

any kind of--

- Just my personal opinion.

- Yeah, that's okay, but what would you recommend

to start learning?

- I google.

- Would you do PHP?

I know, but the language.

- I don't think it matters, no.

- You don't think it matters?

- No.

- You just go with,

for someone that don't know anything,

should just go and Google, and you search,

- Yeah--

- I wanna do--

- I used PHP and JavaScript and CSS, all plain, vanilla,

but I don't think it matters.

I think all these JavaScript frameworks are very difficult

and obtruse and bullshit, but theoretically,

you should just Google and then figure it out

for yourself, even which language you should figure out

for yourself, because figuring out

for yourself is the main skill you need.

- Yeah.

- Right, that's the point.

- And so once you figure it out by yourself,

if there are some boot camps available

that are faster, obviously, how many times--

- It's not faster.

- So you took less than two months or three months to learn?

- No, I could do basic WordPress PHP stuff.

- Yeah.

- And then, you know, I could make a table

of cities, so I did that.

So I copied the stuff from the Google sheet to a table.

Then I had Nomad List, and I launched it.

And then I was like, okay, how do I make this city

pop up open with more data?

So I was like, okay, how to hide stuff on webpage,

and enter, and then fuck, this is bullshit.

(laughing)

JQuery, what the fuck?

Okay, JQuery doesn't work.

(groaning)

Days of this pain, this suffering.

Which is, this suffering is essential

to getting anywhere in life, as you know,

any skill, so yeah.

Just Google any little question,

because if you see coders here,

I would suggest, go in Dojo on a day,

and look around for rural developers.

See what they're actually doing.

They're half the time in this coding screen,

black with colors, half the time

they're Googling everything.

Every day, I don't know what to do with this fucking code,

and I have to Google it, and then I'm on Stack Overflow.

I'm like, ah, this looks horrible.

Copy, paste.

Okay, wow, it works.

This is amazing.

(laughing)

And that's literally my day.

- But if you don't understand why it works,

- No, it doesn't matter.

- Okay.

- I think the coders are half,

half the codes the codes they don't understand.

I didn't understand most, though.

I'm not joking, I'm serious.

- Okay.

- Really, just Google.

Yeah.

(audience chattering)

Nice, yeah.

(laughing)

(audience chattering)

Yeah, it's weird, I don't know.

I'm just saying my opinion, my perspective.

Like I said, your mileage may vary.

Maybe there's different styles, I don't know.

I don't think there's different styles to be honest,

but that's my opinion.

(laughing)

Do you have more questions?

- When you did the fake Stripe checkout stuff,

did you get any negative feedback to that,

when you fake the features, and you fake the--

- No, I don't think so.

I didn't use Stripe logo.

I just, like a payment box.

- No one--

- But it was definitely a little bit brutal.

Like crazy thing to do, but I didn't save

any credit card data, so it's.

I was like, sorry, I didn't.

I wrote that.

I said, I didn't save your credit card data.

This is bullshit.

This is just a test if you actually would pay

for the feature.

- What did people respond to that?

- Nothing, I just got their E-mail.

I don't know what they respond, like, yeah.

I just got their E-mail.

Then I sent them an E-mail, and they paid

for the the real feature, so yeah.

Anymore questions?

Don't be shy, 'cause otherwise I become really shy.

Yeah, you.

- Have you ever made something

and then had this feeling that it's crap?

- Yeah, everyday.

- Before and after?

- No, still, so this guy, Bettra Siska, this week,

he was whining about Nomad List being the most ugly website

he's ever seen, and I got so triggered.

I started overheating in the coffee shop.

Like wow, why it so hot here?

Like God damn it.

You know, he helped me align everything properly,

like designer, and now he's like, it looks good.

So, yeah, it's always, that's art, you know?

I think it's very similar to art.

It's never.

The moment you made it, you hate it, so.

- True, absolutely, has happened to me lots of times.

- Yeah, it's absolutely normal.

You can just keep making new stuff.

That's what artists do.

You know, just ship more startups, and yeah.

But, you know, the thing is, when it makes money,

it kinda like, it's like, oh,

it's a really horrible website, but it makes money,

so some idiots might like it, you know?

(laughing)

You might think that.

Not really, but kinda.

Yeah.

But you're always further than your audience, right?

Like everything I'm telling now,

maybe I hardly don't even believe in it anymore.

It's just you're always ahead.

'Cause you're the maker.

You're not the consumer of the work, so, normal, yeah.

Any other questions?

- When you're doing big launches on Product Hunt

or Reddit, and you see this huge spike

of new users, how do you know, especially when you get

the big drop off afterwards, how do you know

at what point to stop working on the website,

or what data do you look at since you've built

a lot of these?

You know, you've launched a lot of startups.

At what data do you look at to know

whether to continue?

- I think it's kinda like a feeling now, so,

you want daily people kinda to come back.

I don't know how much.

It's kinda hard to say, right?

But a good thing to track is press mentions.

So what I have, I have a Google Bookmark

where it's like past 24 hours or past week,

and I have in quotation marks, the name of my product,

like Hood Maps or Nomad List or whatever.

You can do Nomad List in quotation marks

or Hood Maps in quotation marks,

last 24 hours, and I just have it as a bookmark,

so sometimes I click, and I'm like,

okay, what are people talking,

are they talking about my app or are they not?

What's happening?

And tracking that and seeing nobody talk about your app

at all after it was on Product Hunt?

Yeah, that might be a little difficult, you know?

That might mean that it's not important.

Andre just launched or is working on,

what is Dark Mode List, yeah, so a website

where you can see which apps have dark modes,

and that's been getting press mentions

all over the place now, so that's kinda like,

that validates it a little bit.

Like he can continue working on it,

and if everybody's like, okay, this is really bullshit,

why should I write about it as press?

Then, okay, maybe skip it.

Although press is definitely getting less and less relevant,

but yeah, people talking about it is always good.

- Thanks.

- And it's about if you,

how far do you wanna continue with it, you know?

Is it just a gimmick app, or is it a real app

you really believe in, then you might wanna give

it a few more weeks, but I would not give

it a few more months.

It's very risky.

You're wasting your time.

Just do new stuff, in my opinion, so.

Anymore questions?

- Yo.

Any features on your sites that you regret not charging for

or charging too late, early, or?

- I don't know, I think Nomad List, it's so much data now

and so valuable, and it sounds really arrogant,

but it's a really, it's kinda like a really

useful travel planner now to find destinations

to go and to find how it is there,

and I think it would be obvious

to slowly charge a little bit more for premium stuff.

Maybe how many filters you can use or whatever,

like limits, use just a little bit, but then again,

I also don't wanna do that because it annoys people,

and I wanna be the main travel search website kinda

that's out there for nomads,

so yeah, I think I could have charged more for that,

like just a little Stripe box.

Okay, just pay $10 to use all the features, you know?

Doesn't have to be like a membership.

'Cause a lot of people say,

the main free website's very useful.

The community website, I really don't care about

'cause I don't wanna make friends.

I don't care, I have enough friends or something.

So that means you lose.

I'm missing out on a lot of money

with giving something for free,

and I see with a lot of people, they give away everything

for free, and yeah, you probably shouldn't.

You should probably limit from the beginning,

because it's hard to start limiting features now.

Now everybody will become angry, than do it from the start.

So.

- So, let's say that maybe you have some other kind

of business, some other product or something else,

and you want something like Product Hunt,

and there's nothing for it, but essentially,

you wanna validate your idea.

How would you go about doing that,

or what would be kind of a structure that you would have,

or via somebody else.

Say they have a product.

Say they're shipping some kind of thing

on somewhere else.

What would you do or tell them to do?

- I don't completely understand.

So you have a product that doesn't fit Product Hunt?

- Yeah, so part of your success, a great deal,

as I understand it is that you're have this community

where you can easily go, and you can validate your product.

You know, you take Nomad List to Product Hunt.

Everybody likes it.

What would you suggest, say for example,

if there wasn't a Product Hunt for that.

- Yeah, I think you need to go to your horse forum,

your niche forums or niche websites.

Reddit has a lot of niches, subreddits with niches.

You can do a fairly physical thing.

Like, there's a guy called Patrick McKenzie,

Patio11, who's a big inspiration of me,

and he would go into hair salons

and just start selling his.

He had like an app called Appointment Reminder

where he would get an SMS message an hour before

you had your hairdressing appointment or something,

so he would go into barber shops,

and just say, "Hey, I have this app."

And they're like, "Yeah, of course we want this.

"This is amazing.

"It will save us so much time and people forgetting

"their hair appointments."

So, physically even going to your customers.

Where are your customers?

Where are your users?

Even that you can do if there's no websites, you know?

But you need to think about where are your users?

How can you get to them?

- Have you ever come up with,

are all your ideas original, or have you ever looked

at a website and thought, or an idea and thought,

this is garbage.

I can do it better?

And then executed on it.

- It's mostly, again, it's like I've tried

to solve problems always,

so I would find websites that solve my problems, but partly.

Like Nomad List is a lot of cost of living data.

There's Numbeo, there's Expatistan

which are now my competitors.

They were doing that, but they didn't give me

filter buttons and they didn't give me,

it wasn't targeted nomads.

They had no idea about nomads, so, yeah,

there's always websites that are already doing it,

but I think you have to fundamentally think about

your problem.

Go from first principles.

What's your problem that you wanna solve here,

and that's gonna make the whole journey easier.

- Do you not ever think that you've expanded so much

that investing in PPC or getting a team

or social media manager, then you could grow a lot more,

or is it if you just stay as one person,

other businesses might overtake you?

- So I had a social media media manager

a little bit who buffered.

She buffered Tweets and Facebook posts and stuff,

and it was okay.

It was very nice work, but

I think it's a very weird time now

where actually, everybody's doing

all the social media posting stuff,

and I think we're very tired of content and stuff,

and I think a lot of people just want an app

that just does something specifically, functionally.

Like, for example, no one is like, where do I go now?

Filters, okay, there I go.

And a lot of these, a lot of solutions

for problems are apps, or they're a solver of things

that you can easily, that are hard to make,

but you can automate, and a lot of,

I see less and less perspective

of future in stuff that's human,

which sounds fucking autistic,

but it's just, it's kinda like how it is.

The future is robotic and automation,

and, yeah.

I think it's easier to make money like that

with just software, and anything that involves

a ring of humans around it is hard.

I think actually it's harder to scale,

but I don't completely know the right answer,

but I think it's harder to scale, yeah.

'Cause software just scales.

Literally, now I have maybe 40 people on my website,

generally, at this moment.

If it's on Reddit, I'll have 4,000,

and nothing changes, you know?

And I don't need to hire people,

and to me that's amazing.

- Pieter, that's the idea that we're moving

towards the useless revolution,

where everyone becomes useless.

- I think so.

Yeah, not even a joke.

It's serious.

Basic income.

Free money for everybody.

'Cause again, it sounds so fucked up,

but I'm annoying too, as a human.

Most the times I don't even wanna work.

I need to drink two lattes to even get some codes

on the paper, and this robot just runs,

and it doesn't sleep.

So I think definitely, yeah.

Don't be scared of it, but embrace it.

Start coding.

Very important to code, sorry.

It's so important.

If you're not coding, you're gonna be unemployed, maybe,

probably, yes.

(laughing)

So thank you for listening, and thank you for coming,

and if you have questions,

after, private one-on-one, we can also talk here,

so yeah.

Thanks so much, guys.

(clapping)

- Thank you, Pieter Levels.

- Thank you everyone for coming.

(audience chattering)

Thank you, Pieter, thank you.

For everyone, maybe you can how about

give five stars to Dojo.

Thank you so much.

(laughing)

(audience chattering)