Trend #020 - How Pieter Levels built a $2M empire building things he loves

Hey,

This week, I’m sharing the story of one of THE most successful indie hackers of our time who makes more than $2m a year building a cool stuff he loves. When I announced his name in a preview tweet on Wednesday, Twitter got very, very excited about this issue.🔥

So, grab a drink and find a comfy seat because this is going to be a huge one.

In this deep dive, you will learn:

• Why he is the best-known indie hacker of all time

• Which of his startups are making millions

• How he find ideas to build

• How his ideas gain traction immediately

• How he grew his empire without hiring anyone

• His indie hacking playbook - summarised in 10 steps (SUBSCRIBERS SPECIAL)

This is the story of Pieter Levels (@levelsio).

Who is Pieter Levels?

Most of you would have heard of Pieter Levels. In case you haven’t, he is possibly the best-known indie hacker who pioneered the 12 startups in 12 months challenge and ended up building an empire of startups that’s now making him millions a year, in profit.

What most of you don’t know, is that just 2 years prior to starting the 12 in 12 challenge, he was still living with his parents, suffering from regular anxiety attacks and running a failing music YouTube channel.

So what changed?

He made a public commitment

In 2014, Pieter got tired of feeling depressed and made a bold public statement: he decided to build 12 startups in 12 months, even if they didn’t make him any money.

His first 3 projects flopped despite receiving tons of media attention. Then out of a personal need, he created a Google sheet directory to rank nomad destinations and made a tweet about it, asking people to contribute to the directory.

When he woke up the next morning, nearly 100 people had filled in that sheet.

That Google Sheet became the start of NomadList, a million-dollar travel destination website for digital nomads.

💰Revenue Timeline

Since then, he continued to ship new products CONSISTENTLY. Most people would have stopped when they found “a winner” like NomadList, but Pieter kept shipping. This led him to found at least 3 other successful startups, RemoteOK (2013), PhotoAI (2022) and InteriorAI (2023).

I dug through his public income reports on Twitter, and his blog and even watched a presentation he did back in 2018.

Here are the juicy details:

How his portfolio revenue evolved over time

• 2006-2012: Pursued international business administration while DJ’ing.

• 2012 ($40k Revenue): Launched an electronic music YouTube channel, Panda Mix Show.

• 2013 ($52k Revenue)

• 2014 ($45k Revenue): Initiated the 12 Startups in 12 Months challenge. His fourth and seventh startups, NomadList and RemoteOK, accidentally gained attention on Product Hunt, leading to multiple inbound sponsorship opportunities.

• 2015 ($203k Revenue): Became Product Hunt’s third Maker of the year. Introduced one-time access fees to his website, and memberships grew to 50% his income.

• 2016 (~$300k Revenue): Introduced a $9.99/month subscription for NomadList. Both platforms reached a combined 700k monthly visitors.

• 2017 (~$360k Revenue)

• 2018 (~$600k Revenue): Refined pricing strategies. Introduced an upsell funnel (buy a bundle/add your logo), increasing average order value from $310 to $484. Released his Indie Maker handbook, Makebook.com.

• 2019 (~$1M Revenue) - Finally reached $1M ARR (revenue report)

• 2020 (~$1.4M Revenue): Seven years post-launch, RemoteOK got another boost thanks to Covid. Began experiments with GPT3 (yes, 2 years before the hype!)

• 2021 ($1M-2M Revenue): Announced that 30% of his earnings came from ETF and crypto investments.

• 2022 ($1M-2M Revenue): Dived again into AI, this time in generative photography and launched AvatarAI ($100k in 10 days). Interest in his AI work led to more Makebook sales.

• 2023 ($2.2M Revenue): Started scaling TikTok influencer marketing. His AI apps exploded, now contributing to half his total earnings.

(source: his Twitter and blog)

Pieter Levels Maker’s Playbook

Pieter is very vocal about what it takes to be successful at making a living building cool stuff you love.

In this next section, I will summarise his playbook in 10 steps for you to find and build profitable bootstrapped startups.

1️⃣ First, start small but dream big

Start with a small niche problem you can solve quickly. You can always build on top of that later. As you can see, NomadList started as a remote working destination directory, which he then expanded into a remote working job board (RemoteOK) and an immigration service business (Rebase).

2️⃣ Scratch your own itch. If you can’t find a problem to solve, widen your life experiences

But how do you find an idea to build? Pieter advocates solving your own problems because they are problems you understand well. However, if you can’t find a problem worth solving in your life, try broadening your life experiences (find a new hobby, go travel or find new friends). This is a great way to uncover new problems you can solve.

3️⃣ Then, launch quickly and move on to the next project within a month (if no traction)

His best advice to fellow indie makers? Ship more. And don’t ever spend more than a month in the validation phase because if you’re struggling to gain momentum after a month, you’re unlikely going to make this idea work.

Pro tip: Keep shipping even after you’ve found a winner. 7 years after he launched NomadList, he found another winning category - AI, which now accounts for 50% of his total income.

4️⃣ Build in public to grow with your audience

He started building in public back when it was known as the Open Startup movement and continued to share his revenue and experiments publicly even to this day. It works - NomadList was accidentally hunted on Product Hunt without his knowledge and most of his startup’s initial customers came from his Twitter audience.

5️⃣ Be prepared to learn on the job and track everything

If you don’t know how to build your startup? Learn to code or use any of the no-code tools on the market. You learn faster by building a project than by attending a course or bootcamp.

(Fun Fact: Do you know that Pieter has an MBA and was a self-taught coder? What a legend.)

6️⃣ Then, get good at marketing

The most remarkable thing I’ve uncovered about Pieter is how much he experimented with marketing and improved his offers. For example, most businesses are cautious when it comes to changing their pricing models (looking at you Bubble), but not Pieter. Here’s proof:

7️⃣ Can’t figure stuff out? Make smart friends who know more than you.

By building in public, hosting meetups and writing regularly, Pieter was able to have conversations with people that helped him write better email marketing campaigns (@thepatwalls), and learn influencer marketing on TikTok.

8️⃣ When you get bored running the business, automate everything and move on to the next idea.

How does Pieter run a million-dollar empire without employees? Automation.

“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”

Don’t worry if this looks scary to you. Nowadays there are plenty of no-code tools that can help you automate simple tasks 

9️⃣ Recognise mega trends and when to jump in on the next trend

All of his income came from 3 mega trends 1) Remote Working, 2) The Creator Economy and 3) AI.

He is humble enough to recognise that he was at the right place at the right time with many of his successes. Nevertheless, he is always experimenting. Some worked (AI), some didn’t (3D printing).

🔟 Finally, it’s OK to change your mind

He went from hating on ads to running TikTok influencer campaigns for his AI startups. When facing evidence that goes against what you believe to be true, It’s OK to change your mind.

💌 Did you learn something?

Phew, this is a big one. It took me 20 hours to research and write this issue. If you’ve learned something, please share this story. It will make my day. ❤️

Until the next one,

Hazel

P/s: Who do you want to learn from next? Drop me a reply. This also helps me figure out if I am writing into the void. TIA!