Pieter Levels

Pieter Levels runs ~$1M/yr off one PHP script

Steph holds up Pieter Levels as the archetypal indie hacker: Nomad List and Remote OK each do roughly half a million a year, run almost entirely by him, with the whole stack famously powered by one PHP script.

“And Nomad List has grown a ton. Now, it does probably, I think, half a million a year. Then he expanded that to Remote OK, which also does around half a million a year, and it's all done through him. And then I think he contracts out his servers to one guy that he pays like $2,000 a month for or something.”

Levels.fyi: crowdsourced comp data as a simple, defensible product

Shaan highlights levels.fyi, built by a remote-work champion (LevelsIO), where employees anonymously submit role, level, base, stock and city, creating an increasingly reliable comp dataset that is the best way to know if you're underpaid or what you'd make elsewhere.

“So it's this dataset of people anonymously putting in their compensation, and the dataset gets richer and richer. So it's actually a fairly reliable resource to say, oh, you know, should I go work at Facebook or Google? I think I'm this level. I can see the pay difference between the two.”

Steal thisCrowdsource a proprietary dataset in a domain where companies keep people in the dark; each submission makes it more valuable and harder to copy.

Tech stack doesn't matter; speed of the feedback loop does

Mocked for building on PHP and jQuery, Levels argues the stack is irrelevant as long as it gives a fast iterative loop. He can ship a new button in ~20 seconds while Kubernetes friends take hours or days, and fast shipping is also how you get happy customers.

“And I think it doesn't matter what you use, but as long as you use something that's really fast feedback loop and iterative loop where you can really quickly develop, like I can make a new button in like, you know, 20 seconds and deploy to the server and it's really fast. And I know other developer friends of mine use a very big stack, all this, you know, Kubernetes and all this stuff, all these keywords I don't really know. And for them it takes sometimes like, you know, an hour or maybe even days to deploy a new feature.”

Remote OK runs at a 94% pre-tax margin

Because his businesses are heavily automated with only part-time contractors, Levels says Remote OK operates at roughly a 94% pre-tax margin, meaning revenue is almost entirely profit.

“The thing is most of my revenue is profit, like the margins are really high, especially Remote OK, it's like 94% margin pre-tax. So it's very high.”

Levels' 2015 call: 1 billion remote workers by 2030

Levels recounts a 2015 presentation predicting 1 billion remote workers by 2030. He was mocked at the time, then COVID made it look reasonable. The 2030 figure remains a concrete, judgeable forecast.

“This was like, I did this presentation in 2015 where I predicted there would be 1 billion remote workers in 2030. And everybody laughed at me. And I was like, even in the comments, like YouTube comments were like, this is ridiculous. Where's your sources? This is bullshit. And then COVID happened and it suddenly seems very reasonable.”

You can't control trends, you can only surf the wave

Levels argues cultural movements (nomadism, crypto, EDM) are unpredictable: scenes go almost dead, then suddenly take off. You can't control the market or society, so the right posture is to surf the wave, like steering a surfboard, rather than trying to force growth.

“So I think the metaphor of surfing is very accurate. It's better to surf these waves. In general, I think life, just surf waves, stop trying to control it, just surf it and kind of like pivoting startups into, that's pretty much just surfing, like steering the surfboard over the waves. 'Cause you cannot control the market at all. You cannot control society at all.”

Keep margins so high your revenue is your profit

Levels' rule for sellable small software: don't hire a team of 10, use part-time contractors, and keep margins so high that revenue is almost equal to profit, because that's what lets you command a 5x multiple at sale.

“And I think it's reachable, especially if you think about high automation, very high margins. So software business, you're not going to hire a big team of 10 people immediately. You work with part-time contracts like I do and you keep your margins very, very high because then you can sell for 5x, right? Then your revenue is almost your profit.”

Steal thisRun on part-time contractors and automation so your margin stays near-total; then revenue is profit and buyers pay a higher multiple.

Apartment hotels for high-earning remote workers and their families

Levels pitches serviced 'apartment hotels' (kitchen, living room, daily cleaning) aimed at $100-200K remote workers and families who hate depressing hotel rooms and the unpredictability of Airbnb. Already huge in Asia; he predicts it grows globally with remote work.

“So I think that's gonna be bigger because of remote work. Because you have remote workers, even with families, with kids, and you don't want to live in a hotel room. Hotel room is very depressing. Like, I go insane in hotel rooms. It's just like a bed and you can barely walk around the bed. There's no space. I need to cook food. I need to buy steak from the local butcher. I need to cook it with broccoli and spinach and with my friends and stuff. And you can do it in an apartment hotel. And I think the— if you target, it's a high-end market, I think, of remote workers that make a lot of money. Like, $200K or $100K something. If you target them, you can make a lot of money because it's serviced, furnished.”

Steal thisBuild serviced apartment hotels (kitchen + cleaning + monthly rates) for $100K+ remote workers and families who find Airbnb unreliable and hotels depressing.

New stuff doesn't move your happiness baseline, so don't inflate

Despite making ~$3M/year, Levels deliberately caps spending at ~$4-5K/month. His argument: research shows a new car, house, or even marriage returns you to the same happiness within about six months, so buying more stuff is pointless and lifestyle inflation just builds golden handcuffs.

“And I know that material goods don't really make me happy. So I buy a new shirt or something, or I buy a new iPhone, within 2 weeks I'm used to it. And there's studies on this, there's like research about this stuff. Like if you buy a new car, even if you get married, after 6 months you're at the same happiness. If you buy a house, after 6 months, same happiness. So if you know that stuff, you know that, okay, you don't really need to spend money so much.”

Sell $50K bundles via a self-serve Stripe page, no sales calls

Levels avoids hiring salespeople by building a 'Buy Bundle' page (remoteok.com/buy-bundle) with a slider that lets companies build a discounted job-post bundle and pay $40-50K by credit card, fully automated.

“Oh, for sure, dude. I sell job post bundles for like $50K via Stripe, which is like amazing for me, to me. Like I'm like, how do you do that? That works. So you make a page called Buy Bundle and you have the, this, You can go to remotok.com/buy-bundle and you'll see like a slider where you can make your own bundle and get a discount based on it. And it's all automated and you add your credit card and then you pay, you know, $50K or $40K, whatever.”

Steal thisReplace 'contact sales' with a self-serve bundle page and a slider that lets buyers configure a discount and pay five figures by card.

Automated $40-50K bundles are 30% of Remote OK revenue

The self-serve job-post bundles that companies buy with a credit card, no sales call, account for roughly 30% of Remote OK's revenue.

“Oh yeah, it's like a lot of, it's like 30% of the revenue, I think bundles.”

Self-serve checkout filters out your worst customers

Levels notes that customers who demand W-8 forms, NDAs, and lots of email back-and-forth convert less, pay less, and are harder to support. Selling fully self-serve via Stripe naturally attracts easier, more modern customers.

“And the customers that ask for a lot of questions on email, they generally convert less. For me, they pay less money and they are more of an asshole to, you know, do customer support for and stuff. So you also, you get different types of customers. If you do it all automatic, you get more kind of modern customers that are easier to deal with, I think.”

Steal thisKeep checkout fully self-serve; the forms-and-NDA crowd converts worse and costs more support, so let friction filter them out.