Nomad List (and portfolio of 7 projects)

Pieter Levels didn't start with a master plan. In 2014, fresh out of business school, he began blogging about his travels to document cities for his mom. Writing in English to reach a wider audience, he shared candid stories about life as a digital nomad—a concept that barely existed at the time. What set him apart was inspiration from Patrick McKenzie (patio11), a Hacker News legend who transparently shared revenue from his small software projects. Pieter decided to blend this radical honesty with the nomadic lifestyle, creating content that resonated with developers in San Francisco realizing they too could work remotely.

His early blog posts on bootstrapping startups while traveling across Asia started appearing high on Hacker News. Rather than build one massive company, Pieter followed a lean philosophy: create simple products solving real problems he encountered. He deliberately chose PHP and jQuery—languages he already knew—to achieve the fastest feedback loop possible. "I can make a new button in like 20 seconds and deploy to the server," he explains. This wasn't cutting-edge engineering; it was pragmatic velocity. He'd later create Nomad List (a directory of cities for remote workers), Remote.ok (a job board with 115K/month revenue), and Rebase (immigration services for Portugal). Most projects were built in weeks, not months.

Customers found him. Organic Hacker News traffic from his authentic content created a moat of audience. As his Twitter following grew from sharing lifestyle updates and product metrics, so did awareness of his projects. He eventually created a Slack community for nomads—charging $10/month—which attracted thousands of members. This wasn't aggressive sales; it was a byproduct of being the authentic voice in a niche no one else was serious about. "I was blogging for my mom," he says, "and it just happened to resonate."

The pandemic accelerated everything. By 2019, his combined ARR sat under $1M. Then COVID hit, remote work exploded, and his revenue 5x'd to ~$2.7M by 2022. What worked: betting on a thesis early (he predicted 1 billion remote workers by 2030 in 2015, which seemed absurd then), maintaining 73% profit margins by staying solo with just 3 part-time contractors, and automating ruthlessly. What didn't: trying to grow aggressively through acquisition. He's received acquisition offers (likely from Andrew Wilkinson per his hints) but walked away, realizing 4-5x revenue multiples weren't worth losing control of his "life's work." His philosophy: if each product runs fully automated with $2M+ ARR, waiting 3-4 years for organic growth beats a lowball exit.

Pieter is a case study in sustainable indie entrepreneurship. Remote.ok generates 94% margins. His portfolio compounds—each product feeds new audience to the next. He publishes all revenue metrics publicly (nomadlist.com/open), turning transparency into brand moat. Rather than chase billion-dollar valuations, he invests his ~$2.5M annual profits into ETFs (particularly Asia-focused) and Bitcoin. He's shifting from constant travel to slower stays ("slow madding"), settling with his wife to eventually raise kids while maintaining location flexibility. By rejecting VC pressure and venture-scale ambitions, Pieter proved you can build a substantial, profitable business serving underserved communities—and actually enjoy the process.