The Story of Pieter Levels (Levelsio) & How This Solopreneur Become So Successful

When people say “entrepreneurs,” our first thought goes to famous people and their products. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. Steve Jobs and Apple. Sam Altman and OpenAI. 

But, there’s something special about entrepreneurs who grew a grassroots business. Then started another, and then another. These are the true hustlers: the proof that anyone can make it with enough skill, persistence, and determination. 

Pieter Levels is the perfect example of this mentality. One of the Indie Hackers I really look up to.

At first glance, he may seem like just another tech entrepreneur who stumbled into success, but his journey is far from ordinary. Levels took the road less traveled to get to where he is today – a self-made multi-millionaire with several thriving startups under his belt. 

As of September 2024, his current Twitter lists his current monthly revenue for each project at:

• $34,000/month (http://levelsio.com)
• $157,000/month(http://PhotoAI.com)
• $54,000/m (https://nomads.com/ — previously, Nomad List)
• $41,000/month (http://InteriorAI.com)
• $28,000/month (http://RemoteOK.com)
• $1,000/month (http://ApplicantAI.com)
• And his newest venture: https://hotellist.com/ — no revenue so far, but we can expect great things.

So, where did he come from, and what was his journey like? Let’s discuss.

What We Know Of His Past

Pieter Levels’ road to becoming a tech multi-millionaire is anything but conventional. He spent a part of his childhood coding in MS-DOS Batch, which he learned from a random Windows For Kids book. From this sentence, it may seem that he’s on track to be a software engineer from a young age, but that’s not where life will take him… yet.

When he was a teenager, he tried to become a graphic designer, but that was just another phase for Pieter. His first serious venture was his music career — for which he was able to make a decent living out of his YouTube channel. The music was a product of its time, but hey, it's still pretty good.

Around this time, Levels was completing his business degree in… let’s see, well, everywhere. He started it in Hogeschool Utrecht, then transferred to Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, then moved to South Korea for three months to attend Korea University Business School, and then finally finishing his degree from Rotterdam's School of Management.

Among those, the one that left the biggest impact were his three short months in South Korea. It was his first time outside of Europe and he saw the insane potential of stepping outside his comfort zone. He saw what the other side of the world had to offer, and there was no going back.

Nomad List: Pieter's Big Break

After university, Levels sold 99% of his possessions to pack up his bag and move to Asia. He started embracing a digital nomad lifestyle and decided to go all-in on creating startups. But there’s one slight hiccup: he didn’t know how to code (for a living). 

So, he started a challenge: Twelve startups in twelve months.

His theory was that you can learn how to code better by doing, rather than sitting in a class for seven hours a day. And that’s what he did, but still nothing really worked. That is, until he tweeted this:

From that tweet, he was able to crowdsource opinions from other digital nomads and consolidate them to create a database of sorts. Due to the traction the tweet was receiving, he decided to make this his next startup. And thus, the Nomad List was born.

Nomad List is a community resource specifically designed for digital nomads which includes data-driven insights and profiles into the best places to live in and work remotely. That’s the basic premise of the website but Levels has since tweaked the business model by also adding a subscription-based Slack server.

Earlier this year, the Nomad List was simplified and rebranded as Nomads (don’t worry though — it’s still the same digital nomad network you know and love). According to Levels’ Twitter bio, it’s bringing him more than $54,000 per month (nearly $650k a year) and has close to a million unique visitors last year. Tell me that isn't crazy.

Pieter’s Other Successful Projects

After Nomad List, Pieter went on a roll. Here are some of his other successful projects:

RemoteOK

RemoteOK is an employment platform which aims to connect talented individuals with flexible career options. It caters to different niches such as programming, design, sales, customer support. This makes Pieter around $28,000 in monthly revenue.

InteriorAI

Interior AI is an AI-powered interior designer. It takes images of your home as an input and modifies them using prompts to get your next design inspiration. It’s currently generating around $41,000 in monthly revenue. Also insane.

PhotoAI

PhotoAI is a web and mobile application that uses your image as an input and generates portraits based on it. You can use it for yearbook photos, identification images, character creation, and more. It currently generates the most monthly revenue for Pieter at $157,000.

That’s a lot of money. In fact, you’d need to combine the monthly revenue of RemoteOK, Nomads, InteriorAI, and his personal website to even come close to $157,000. Unfortunately, PhotoAI is banned in some countries, so who knows how profitable this could’ve been?

His Other Other Projects

It may seem like everything Pieter touches turns to gold, but I assure you that that’s not the case. He has his fair share of startups that he needed to shut down because of the lack of traction. You can check them all out here. Among those, here are some of my favorites:

• Go F***ing Do It: A productivity application that lets the user set a goal and, if it’s not met, Levels will charge your credit card.
• Tubelytics: An analytics dashboard for YouTube content creators.
• Mute: A list of commonly muted words on social media.
• Airline List: A travel platform that consolidates opinions on specific airlines. Think Digital Nomad, but for airlines and airports.
• Hotel List: One of his newest startups. An international hotel booking site without rating inflation.

What Makes Him So Successful?

The secret ingredient to Pieter’s success is simple: make what you know.

Most of his startups are aimed towards digital nomads because he’s one of them. He saw what problems he could solve in the community and worked towards making a profitable solution.

He’s also unafraid of failure, something that sets him apart. He learned early on that most of his startups will fail — and that’s okay. As long as something sticks, he’s still going to be profitable in the long run.

He just did a great interview with Lex Fridman that helps you understand his mind better. I highly recommend it:

How Old is Pieter Levels?

I don't think I've ever seen his exact age mentioned, but I assume he is around 38 years old. There are a few hints that suggest this:

1. He mentions being 27 years old at one point in the past when he was going through a difficult period and starting to build startups.
2. He talks about events from about 10 years ago as part of his history.
3. He refers to using technologies and platforms that were popular in the early to mid-2010s when he was starting out.
4. This article mentions him being 28 in 2014, meaning he's ~38 years old today
5. This article mentions him as being 36 in 2020, meaning he's likely ~40 years old today
6. A blog post from his own website mentions he was 26 in 2012. Basically confirming he is 38? 

I don't know why it was so shocking to me. He seems like he's still in his 20s because of his hungry attitude and realistic optimism for the world. Love it.

In A Nutshell

Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: for every Pieter Levels, there’s about a hundred Average Joes who failed. It’s survivorship bias to think that you can be like him too.

Should that discourage you from following in his footsteps? Absolutely not.

It's only failure if you give up. If you never give up, you haven't really failed – just pivoted.

Instead, use him as inspiration. The hardest part of making it into the industry is that constant loop of worrying if your idea is worth it.

Just do it, and if it fails, reassess and don’t let it get to you. Levels is living proof that success doesn’t always follow a predictable path — it follows the path of the bold.

After all, if he can do it with nothing but his laptop, backpack, and confidence in himself, what’s stopping you?