Unleashing Creativity: The Journey of Peter Levels in Building Startups
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Introduction
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, the journey of entrepreneurship is filled with trials, discoveries, and significant transformations. Among these innovators is Peter Levels, a self-taught developer and entrepreneur, who has launched over 40 startups without relying on traditional funding. In this article, we will delve into Peter's philosophy on building startups, his practical approaches to creativity, and the insights he gained from his experiences as a digital nomad.
The Startup Philosophy of Peter Levels
When asked about his philosophy behind startups, Levels emphasizes a scrappy, fast-paced approach. Unlike traditional entrepreneurs who often seek venture capital before launching their ideas, Levels relies on rapid iteration and validation through real users. He aims to build a prototype quickly and test market demand without the overhead of a large team or funding.
Rapid Prototyping and Validation
- Build Quickly: Peter's philosophy revolves around launching products within weeks to gauge interest and demand.
- Validate with Real Users: Instead of hypothetical models, he emphasizes that startups should focus on actual paying users to ensure the viability of their ideas.
- Iterate on Feedback: Levels embodies the concept of adapting quickly based on real user feedback, allowing each iteration to refine his projects toward greater user satisfaction.
Moves in the AI Space
With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, Levels has also ventured into developing photorealistic AI-focused applications. Struggling initially with traditional AI models like Stable Diffusion, he found success by leveraging base models fine-tuned on specific characteristics, such as human anatomy.
Photos AI
Levels developed Photo AI, which allowed users to generate photorealistic images by simply inputting their photographs. Notably, he stresses the importance of gatekeeping nudity in AI prompts to adhere to safety regulations. He uses rapid automation to optimize performance and ensure his applications remain user-friendly and compliant with societal norms.
The Digital Nomad Experience
Having traveled to over 40 countries, Levels embodies the spirit of the digital nomad—working while exploring the world. His lifestyle represents freedom and adventure, as he seamlessly integrates work and travel.
The Minimalist Lifestyle
- Living with Few Possessions: Levels adopted a minimalist lifestyle that involves selling or donating most of his belongings to live freely and spontaneously. This decision underscores the lesson of prioritizing experiences over material accumulation.
- Adventure over Comfort: By living as a digital nomad, he has embraced the unpredictability of life, asserting that it opens doors to creativity and opportunities.
Building Community Among Nomads
Creating connectivity among remote workers is crucial for Levels. He established platforms where digital nomads could share experiences, workspaces, and resources while ensuring a collaborative environment.
Automation and Optimization
One of the distinguishing features of Peter’s work ethic is his commitment to automation. He believes in minimizing labor-intensive tasks by employing technology like cron jobs and automation scripts to keep his startups running with minimal oversight.
Automating Tasks
- Use of APIs and Cron Jobs: Levels utilizes APIs to automate checks and streamline operations across various platforms. Essential tasks like bug reporting and health checks are automated to ensure his applications run smoothly.
- Feedback Loops: By setting up systems that report back user interactions and experiences, he continuously improves his services without constant manual monitoring.
Emphasis on Community Engagement
Peter doesn't just focus on technology; he understands that community plays a crucial role in startup success. He leverages feedback from his user community to inform product updates, ensuring their needs shape the direction of his offerings.
Conclusion
Peter Levels' journey as a self-taught developer and entrepreneur is characterized by innovation and adaptability. His philosophy encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to build quickly, validate their ideas through real-world interactions, and embrace a community-driven approach to business. His experiences as a digital nomad further enrich his entrepreneurial ethos, reminding us that creativity flourishes when we break free from conventional constraints.
By following the principles outlined by Levels, we can learn invaluable lessons on navigating the ever-changing landscape of startups and technology, ultimately leaving a mark on the world through our creations and ideas.
so I was trying to figure out how to do photo realistic AI photos and it was stabil diffusion by itself is not doing
that well like the faces look all mangled y um and it doesn't have enough resolution or something to to do that
well so but I started seeing these these um base models These Fine tun models and people were training on porn and I would
try them and they would be very photorealistic they would have bodies that actually made sense like body uh
Anatomy um but if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now still there's still core porn there
like of naked people so I need to prompt out the nak and everybody needs to do this with AI startups with imaging you
need to prompt out the naked stuff you have to keep reminding the model you need to put clothes on yeah don't put
naked because it's very risky I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it's shown to the user to like
check detor oh nfw detector because you get the journalists get very angry the following is a conversation
with Peter levels also known on X as levels IO he is a self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed programmed
shipped and ran over 40 startups many of which are hugely successful in most cases he did it all by himself while
living the digital Nomad life in over 40 countries and over 150 cities programming on a laptop while chilling
on a couch using vanilla HTML jQuery PHP and SQL light he builds and ships quickly and improves on the fly all in
the open documenting his work both his successes and failures with a raw honesty of a true Indie hacker Peter is
an inspiration to a huge number of developers and entrepreneurs who love creating cool things in the world that
are hopefully useful for people this was an honor and a pleasure for me this is Alex Freedman podcast to support it
levels you've launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products as you say most failed but some succeeded
what's your philosophy behind building the startups that you did I think my philosophy is very different than most
people in startups because most people in startups they they build a company and they raise money right and they hire
people and then they build a product and they find something that makes money and I don't really raise money I don't use
VC funding I do everything myself I'm designer I'm the developer I make everything I make the logo so for me I'm
much more Scrappy and and because I don't have funding like I need to I need to go fast I need to make things fast uh
to see if an ID works right I have an IDE in my mind and I build it build it like a mro mini startup um and I launch
it very quickly like within you know two weeks or something of building it and I check if there's demand if people
actually sign up and not just sign up but if people actually pay money right like they need to take out their credit
cards pay me money and then I can can see if the idea is validated and most ideas don't work like as you say most
feel so there's this rapid iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works launch it yeah see if people
like it improving it really really quickly to see if people like it a little bit more enough to pay and all
that that that whole rapid process is how you think of I think it's it's like it's very rapid and it's like um if I
compare to for example Google you know like our big tech companies especially Google right now is kind of struggling
like they made like Transformers they made all they invented all the AI stuff years ago and they never really shipped
like they could have shipped jet gbt for example I think I heard in 2019 and they never shipped it because they were so
stuck in bureaucracy but they had everything they had the data they had the tech they had the engineers and they
could Didn't Do It um and it's because these big organizations it's it it can make you very slow so being alone by
myself on my laptop like you know in my underwear in a hotel room or something I can ship very fast and I don't need to
like I don't need to ask like legal for like oh can you vouch for this you know I can just go and ship you always code
in your underwear the your profile picture you're like slouching a couch and your underwear chilling a laptop no
no but it's I do wear like shorts a lot and I I usually just wear shorts and no T-shirt cuz I'm always too hot like I'm
always overheating thank you for showing up not just in your underwear but wearing shorts I know you know I still
wearing this for you but thank you um thank you for dressing up I think it's cuz I since I go to the gym I'm always
too hot what's your favorite EX in the gym man over press over press like like shoulder press yeah okay but it feels
good cuz you're doing like you do you win cuz when you what is it I do 60 kilos so it's like 120 lbs or something
like it's it's it's my only thing I can do well you know in the gym and you stand like this and you're like I did it
you know like a winner pose yeah Victory pose uh I do bench press squads deadlift hence the uh the mug yeah
talking to my therapist it's a deadlift yeah because it acts like therapy for me you know yeah yeah it is which is
controversial to say like if I say this on Twitter people get angry physical hardship is a kind of therapy yeah I
document people that are doing trapping they're essentially just working for survival in the wilderness year round
yeah and there's a deep happiness to their way of life because they're so busy in it in nature yeah 100% like
there's something about that physical physical yeah toil yeah my dad taught me that my dad always do does like
Construction in the house like he's always re renovating the house he breaks through one room and then he goes to the
next room and he's just going in a circle around the house for like the last 40 years so but so he's always
doing construction the house and it's his Hobby and he like he taught me when when I'm depressed or something um he
says like get a big like what do you call like a big uh mountain of sand or something from construction just get a
shovel and uh bring it to the other side and just you know do like physical labor do like hard work and do something like
get set a goal do something and I I kind of did that with startups too yeah construction is not about the
destination man it's about the journey yeah yeah sometimes I wonder people who are always remodeling their house is it
really about the remodeling or is it's not is it about the project Journey the puzzle of it no he doesn't care about
the results well he shows me he's like it's amazing I'm like yeah it's amazing but um then he wants to go to the next
room you know but I think it's very metaphorical for work cuz I also I never stop work I go to the next website or I
make a new one right or I make a new startup so I'm always like like give you something to wake up in the morning and
like you know have coffee and then uh kiss your girlfriend and then you have like a goal not today I'm going to fix
this feature or today I'm going to fix this bog or something I'm going to do something you have something to wake up
to you know and I think um maybe especially as a man also women but you need you need a hard work you know you
need like an Endeavor I think how much of the building that you do is about money how much is it about just a deep
internal happiness it's about fun cuz I was cuz I was doing it when I didn't make money right that's the point so I
was always coding I was always I was making music I made electronic music drama based music like 20 years ago and
I was always making stuff so I think a creative expression is like a meaningful work that's so important it's so fun
it's so fun to have like a daily challenge where you try figure stuff out but but the interesting thing is you
built a lot of successful products and you never really wanted to take it to that level where you scale real big
andell it to aan something like this yeah the problem is I don't dictate that right like if more people start using IF
Millions people s start using it and it becomes big um I'm not going to say oh stop signing up to my website and pay me
money but I never raised funding for it and I think because I don't like this the stressful life that comes with it
like I have a lot of um founder friends and they tell me secretly like with hundreds of millions of dollars in
funding and stuff and they they tell me like next time if I'm going to do it I'm going to do it like you
because it's more it's more fun it's more Indie it's more chill it's more creative they don't like this they don't
like to be manager right you become like a CEO you become a manager and um I think a lot of people that start
startups when they become a CEO they don't like that job actually but they can't really exit it you know but they
like to do the ground work the coding so I think that keeps you happy like doing something creative yeah it's interesting
how people are pulled towards that to scale to go really big and you don't have that honest reflection with
yourself like what actually makes you happy because for a lot of great Engineers what makes them happy is the
building the the quote unquote individual contributor like where you're actually still coding or you're actually
still building and they let go of that and then they become unhappy um but some of that is the sacrifice needed to have
a impact of scale if you truly believe in a thing you're doing but like look at Elon he's doing things million times
bigger than me right and um would I want to do that I don't know you can really choose these things right
but I really respect that I think elon's very different from VC Founders right VC start it's like software there's a lot
of bullshit in this world I think there's a lot of like dodgy Finance stuff happening there I think um and I
never have like concrete evidence about it but your gut tells you something's going on with like companies getting
sold to friends and VCS and then they do reciprocity and this Shady Financial dealings with Elon does not he's just
raising money from investors and he's actually building stuff with he needs the money to build stuff you know hard
Hardware stuff um and that I really respect you said that there's been a few low points in your life you've been
depressed and the building is one of the ways you you get out of that but can you talk to that can you take me to that
place to that time when you were in at a low point so I was in Holland and I graduated University and I didn't want
to like get a normal job and I was making some money with YouTube because I had this music career and I uploaded my
music to YouTube and YouTube started paying me like uh with AdSense like $22,000 a month $2,000 up and all my
friends got like normal jobs and we stopped hanging out cuz people would like in University hang out you know you
chill each other's houses uh you go party but when people get jobs they only party like in the weekend and they don't
hang anymore in the week because you need to be at the office and I was like this is not for me I want to do
something else and I was starting getting this like I think it's like Saturn return this you know when you're
turn 27 it's like some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit that it was when you're born I'm
learning some it's some astrology thing you know so many truly special artists died when they were 27 exactly sum of 27
man and it was for me like I started going crazy because I didn't really see like my future in Holland buying a house
going living in the suburbs and stuff so it flew out I went to Asia started digital nomading and did that for a year
and then that made me feel even worse you know CU I was like Alone um in hotel rooms like looking at the ceiling like
what am I doing with my life like this is uh like I was working on startups and stuff and YouTube but it's like what is
the future here you know like uh is this is this something while my friends in Holland were doing really well and with
a normal life you know um so it was getting very depressed and like I'm like an outcast you know and my money was was
shrinking I wasn't making money anymore lot making $500 a month or something and I was you know looking at the ceiling
thinking like now I'm like 27 I'm a loser and that's the moment when I started building like startups and it
was because my dad said like if you're depressed you need to you know get sand get a shovel start shoveling doing
something you can't just sit still which is kind of like a interesting way to deal with depression you know like it's
not like oh let's talk about it it's more like let's go do something and um and I started doing a project called 12
startups in 12 months where every month I would make something like a project and I would launch it with stripe so
people could pay for it so the basic format is try to build a thing put it online and put stripe to where you can
pay money for it yeah add a stripe check I'm not sponsored by stripe but add a stripe checkout button is that still
like the the easiest way to just like pay for stuff stripe 100% like I think so yeah it's a cool company they just
made it so easy you can just click and yeah and they're really nice like the CEO Patrick is really nice behind the
scenes it must be difficult to like actually make that happen cuz that used to be a huge problem like just Merchant
just just adding a thing a button where you can like pay for a thing dude it's dude I know this because when I was when
I 9 years old I was making websites also and I tried to open a merchant account there was like before tribe you would
have like um I think it was called World pay so I had to like fill out all these forms and then I had to F them to
America from Holland with my dad's facts um and my dad had to it wasn't my dad's name and he to sign for this and he
started reading these terms and conditions which was like he's liable for like 100 million in Damages and he's
like I don't want to sign this I'm like Dad come on I need a merchant account I need to make money on the internet you
know and he signed it and we sent we fax it to America and I had a merchant account but then never nobody paid for
anything so that was the problem you know yeah but it's much easier now you can sign up you add some codes and um
yeah so 12 startups in 12 months yeah so what how do you what startup number one what what was that what like what what
were you feeling what were you sitting behind the computer like how much do you actually know about building stuff at
that point I could I could code a little bit because I did the YouTube channel and I made a website for I would make
websit for like the YouTube channel it was called panda mix show and it was like these electronic music mixes like
dubstep or dral base or Tech in our house I saw one of them had like flash were you using flash yeah my album my CD
album was using flash yeah yeah I sold my CD yeah kids flash was Flash was software this is like the the break like
Grandpa you know but flash was cool yeah and there was what's it called boy I should remember this action script
there's some kind of programming language scpt yeah yeah script in flash back then that was the JavaScript you
know the JavaScript yeah and I I thought that's going to that's supposed to be the dynamic thing that takes over the
internet I invested so many hours in learning Steve Jobs killer Steve Job said flesh sucks stop using it every was
like okay that guy was right though right yeah I I don't know yeah well it was it was a closed platform I think and
Clos but it's ironic cuz Apple you know they're not very open right but back then Steve was like this is closed we
should not use it and it's as security problems I think which sounded like a copout like I just wanted to say that to
make it look kind of bad um but flash was cool yeah yeah it was cool for a time yeah H listen animated gifts were
cool for a time too yeah they came back in a different way yeah as a meme though I mean like I I remember when gifts were
actually cool not ironically cool like there's like on the internet you would have like a Dancing Rabbit or something
like this and that was really exciting no you had like the you know Lex homepage you Le everything was centered
yeah and you had like Peter's homepage and then the on construction yeah GIF which was like a guy like with a helmet
and the lights banners uh yeah that's how before like Google AdSense you would have like banners for advertising it was
amazing yeah and and a lot of links to porn I think yeah where the Merion accounts people would use for people
would make money a lot only money made on internet was like porn or a lot of it yeah it was it was a dark place it's
still a dark place yeah and but there's Beauty in the darkness anyway so you were uh you did some basic HTML yeah
yeah but I had to learn the actual like coding so I uh this was good it was a good good idea to like every monom lunch
a startup so I could uh learn to code learn basic stuff and but it was still very Scrappy because I didn't have time
to which was on purpose like didn't have time to spend a lot of um I had a month to do something so I couldn't spend more
than a month and I was pretty strict about that um and I published it as a blog post so people I think I put it on
Hacker News and people would check like kind of like oh did you actually you know I felt like accountability because
I put it public that I actually had to do it do you remember the first one you did I think it was playing my inbox cuz
back then my friends we would send we would send like cool was before Spotify we would send like uh 2014 we would send
music to each other like YouTube links uh like this is a cool song this is a cool song and it was the these giant
email trads on Gmail and they were like unnavigable so I made an app that would log into your Gmail get them emails and
find ons of YouTube links and then make like kind like a gallery of your your songs like essentially Spotify and my
friends loved it was it scraping it like what was no it uses like poop like pop or IMAP you know it would actually check
your email so that like privacy concerns because it would get all your emails to find YouTube links but then I would I
wouldn't save anything um but that was fun it was like and that that first project already would get like pressed
like it went on think like um some tech media and stuff and I was like that's cool like it didn't make money there was
no payment button but it was uh it was actually people using it I think tens of thousands of people used it that's a
great idea I wonder why like why why don't we have that why don't we have things that access Gmail and extract
some useful aggregate information yeah you could tell GMA like don't give me all emails just give me the ones with
YouTube links you know or something like that yeah I mean there is a whole ecosystem of like apps you can build on
top of the Google but people don't never do this I've seen a few like Boomerang there's a few apps that are like good
but just I wonder what maybe it's not easy to make money I think it's hard to get people to pay for these like
extensions and plugins you know cuz it's not like a real app so it's not like people don't value it people value oh
this a plugin should be free you know when I want to use a plugin in Google Sheets or something I'm not going to pay
for it like it should be free which is but if you go to a website and you actually okay I need this product I'm G
to pay for this because it's a real product so even though it's the same code in the back it's a plugin you know
yeah I mean you can do it through like extensions like Chrome extensions through from the browser side yeah but
who pays for Chrome extensions right like barely anybody so nobody uh that's not a good place to make money probably
yeah that sucks like chromic extension should be a extension for your startup you know you have a product yeah oh we
also have a Chrome extension you know I wish the Chrome extension would be the product I wish Chrome would support that
like where you could pay for it easily cuz like imagine I can imagine a lot of products that would just live as
extensions like improvements for social media like it's like gpts you know gpts yeah like these CH gpts they they going
to charge money for it now and you get a ref ref share I think from an open AI I made a lot of them also why we'll we'll
talk about it so let's rewind back it's a pretty cool idea to do 12 startup in 12 months what what's it take to build a
figuring out what you shouldn't add right what you shouldn't build because you don't have time so you need to build
a landing page well you need to make the you know you need to build the product actually because it need to be something
they pay for um do you need to build a login system like maybe no you know like maybe you can build some Scrappy login
system like for fot you sign up you pay strap checkout and you get a login link and when I started it was only a login
link with a hash and that's just a static link so it's very easy to log in yeah it's not so safe you know what if
you leak the link and now I have real Google login but that took like a year so keeping it very Scrappy is very
important to because you don't have time you know you need to focus on um what you can build fast uh so money stripe uh
build a product build a landing page um you need to think about how are people going to find this so are you going to
put it on Reddit or something how are you going to put it on Reddit without being looked at as a spammer right like
um if you say hey this is my new startup you should use it no nobody's it gets deleted you know M um maybe if you find
a problem that a lot of people on Reddit already have on subreddit you know like and you solve that problem say sub
people I made this thing that might solve your problem and maybe it's free for now you know like uh that could work
you know but you need to be very you know um narrow it down what you're building time is limited yeah actually
can we go back to the you laying in a room feeling like a loser yeah I still feel like a loser sometimes what's what
can you can you speak to that feeling to that place of just like feeling like a loser and cuz I think a lot of people in
this world are laying in a room right now listening to this and feeling like a loser okay so I think it's normal if
you're young that you feel like a loser first of all especially when you're 27 yes yeah especially there's like a peak
yeah yeah think a peak and so I would not kill yourself it's very important just get through it you know but uh
because you have nothing you have probably no money you have no business you have no job you have you like Jeremy
Peterson said this I saw it somewhere like the reason people are depressed because they have nothing they don't
have a girlfriend they don't have a or boyfriend they don't have a you need stuff you need like or a family you need
things around you you need to build a life for yourself if you don't build a life for yourself you'll be depressed so
if you're alone in Asia in a hostel looking at the ceiling and you don't have any money coming in you don't have
a girlfriend you don't of course you're depressed press is logic but back then if you're in a moment you think this is
not logic there's something wrong with me you know yeah um and and also I think I started going I started getting like
anxiety and I think I started going a little bit crazy where I think travel can make you insane and I know this
because I know that there's like digital Nomad that they kill themselves and I don't I haven't checked like this the
comparison with like Baseline people like suicide rate but I have a hunch um especially in the beginning when it was
a very new thing like 10 years ago that it can be very ecologically taxing and you're alone a lot back then when you
travel alone there was no other digital Nance back then a lot so you're in a strange culture you look different than
everybody like you're in I was in Asia like you everybody's really nice in Thailand but you're not part of the
culture you're traveling around you're hopping from City to City you don't have a home anymore MH you feel this rooted
and you're constantly in the outcast in in that you're different from everybody else yes exactly but people treat like
Thailand people are so nice but you still feel like Outcast and and then I think the the digital n i met then were
all kind of like it was like shady business you know but they were like Vigilantes cuz it was a new thing and
like one guy was selling illegal drugs was American guy was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans you know on
this website they were like a lot of drop shippers doing Shady stuff um there's a lot of shady things going on
there and they were they didn't look like very balanced people they didn't look like people I wanted to hang with
you know so I also felt Outcast from other foreigners in Thailand other digital Nomads and I was like man I made
a big mistake and then I went back to Holland and then I got even more depressed you said digital Nomad what is
digital Nomad what is that way of life what is the philosophy there and the history of the movement I I struck upon
it on accident because I I was like I'm going to graduate University and then I'm going to I need to get out of here
I'll fly to Asia because I've been before in Asia I studied in Korea in 2009 like study exchange I was like Asia
is easy Thailand's easy I'll just go there figure things out and it's cheap it's very cheap changai I would live
like for $150 per month rent for like a private room pretty good so I struck on this on next I was like okay there's
other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely back then nobody worked remotely but they worked
on their their businesses right um and they would you know live in like Colombia or uh Thailand or Vietnam or
Bali they would live kind of like a more cheap places and it looked like a very adventurous life like you travel around
you build your business there's no pressure from like your Home Society right like you're American so you're you
get pressure from American soci telling you kind of what to do like you need to buy a house or you need to this stuff I
had this in Holland too and you can get away from this pressure you can find kind of feel like you're free you're
kind of there's nobody telling you what to do but that's also why you start feeling like you go crazy because you
are you are free you're dis attached from anything and anybody um you're disattached from your culture you're
disattached from the culture you're probably in because you're staying very short I think France kofka said I'm free
therefore for I'm lost man that's so true yeah that's exactly the point and yeah freedom is like it's the definition
of no constraints right like anything is possible you can go anywhere and everybody's like oh that must be super
nice you know like Freedom you must be very happy and it's the opposite like I don't think that makes you happy I think
constraints probably make you happy and that's a big lesson I learned then but what what were they making for
money what what so you're saying they were doing Shady stuff at that time for me you know because I was more like a
developer I wanted to make startups kind of and and it was like um it was like drugs being shipped to America like diet
pills and stuff like non FDA proofed stuff you know and they would like there was no like e they were like they would
would save beers they would laugh about like all the dodgy shit kind of they're doing you know ah that part of okay kind
of vibe you know like kind of sleazy Ecom Vibe I'm not saying all Ecom is SLE you know but right but you know this
Vibe it could be a Vibe and your your Vibe was more buol shit that's ethical you know the guys with sports cars in
Dubai these people you know yes Ecom like oh bro you got a drop ship and you'll make 100 million a month like
those people was this shit and I I was like this is not my people yeah I don't I mean there's nothing wrong with any of
those individual components judg but but there's a foundation that's not quite ethical I
what is that I don't know what that is but yeah I get you no I like I don't want to judge it was more I know that
for me it wasn't my world it wasn't my subculture I want to make cool shit you know but they also think their cool shit
is cool so you know uh but I wanted to make like real like startups and that was my thing I would read Hacker News
you know like why combinator and they were making cool stuff so I wanted to make cool stuff I mean that's a pretty
cool way of life just if you romanticize it for a moment it's very romantic man it's very it's colorful you know like if
I think about the memories I mean what are some happy memories just like working working cafes or working
is possible you can just get up was amazing like we would work like you would I would make friends and we would
work until you know 6:00 a.m. in Bali for example with like um with Andre my best friend who who still my best friend
and we and other friends and we would work until like the morning when the sun came up because at night the co-working
space was silent you know there was nobody else and I would wake up like 6 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. I would drive to the
cing space on a motorbike I would buy like uh 30 hot lattes from a cafe how many 30 cuz there was like there was
like six people coming or we didn't know sometimes people would come in and did you say
3030 yeah nice and we would drink like four per person or something you know uhhuh man it's B I don't know if they
were powerful lattes you know but they were lattes and um we would put in plastic bag and I would drive there and
all the coffee was like falling you know everywhere and then we'd go into course and have these coffees here and we'd
work all night we'd play like techno music and everybody would just work on their like this was literally like
business people they would work in their startup and we would all try and make something and then the Sun would come up
and the morning people the you know the the yoga uh yoga girls and yoga guys would come in you know after the yoga
class at 6 and they say hey good morning and we're like we look like this you know and we're like what's up how are
you doing and we didn't know how bad we looked you know but it was very bad and uh then we'd go home sleep in like a
hostel or a hotel and do the same thing and again and again and again and it was this lockin mode you know like
working um and that was very fun so it's just a a bunch of you music blasting all through the night yeah more like like
indust not like see I for me it's such an interesting thing because the speed of the beat affects
how I feel about a thing So the faster it is the more anxiety I feel but that anxiety is channeled into productivity
but if it's a little too fast I start the anxiety overpowers don't like drama base music probably not no it's too fast
I mean for working I have to I have to play with it it's like you can actually like I can adjust my level of anxiety
this must be a better word than anxiety it's like uh productive anxiety that I like whatever that is it also depends
what kind of work you do right like if you're writing you probably don't want drama based music I think for codes like
industrial techno this kind of stuff kind of fast it works well because you really get like locked in and combined
with caffeine you know you go you go deep you know and and I think you balance on this edge of anxiety because
this caffeine is also hitting your anxiety and you want to be on the edge of anxiety with this techno running
sometimes it gets too much like stop the Techno stop the music it's like but uh but those are good memories
you know and also like travel memories like you go from City to City yeah and it feels like it's kind of like Jet Set
life like it's it's feels very beautiful like you're you're seeing a lot of cool cities and what was your favorite place
you remember you visited I think still like uh Bangkok is the best place and Bangkok and changai I think Thailand is
very special like I've been to the other place like I've been to Vietnam and I've been to South America and stuff I still
think Thailand wins in how nice people are how easy of a life people have their everything's cheap yeah good well bangok
is getting expensive now but changai is still cheap I think when you're starting out it's a great place man the air
quality sucks it's a big problem so um and it's quite hot but that's a very cool place um pros and cons I love
Brazil also my girlfriend is Brazilian but I do love not just because of that but I like Brazil brail uh the problem
still is the safety issue you know like it's it's like in America like it's localized it's hard for Europeans to
understand like safety's localized to specific areas so if you go to the right areas it's amazing Brazil is amazing if
you go to the wrong areas like you maybe you die MH right yeah yeah I mean that's true it's not true in Europe feel in
Europe is much more true more average you're right you're right there it's more averaged out yeah I like it when
there's strong neighborhoods when you're like you cross a certain Street and you're in in a dangerous part of town
man yeah it's I I I like it I like there's certain cities in the United States like that yeah I like that and
you're saying Europe is you don't feel scared well I don't I like danger BJJ no not even just that I think danger is
interesting so danger reveals something about yourself about others also I like the full range of humanity yeah so I
don't like the mellowed out aspects of humanity I I have friends like theom friends that are exactly like this like
they go to like the the kind of broken areas you know like they like this reality they like this authenticity more
they don't like luxury they don't like oh yeah I hate luxury yeah it's very European of you like wait was that
that's a whole another conversation so you uh you uh quoted Freya Stark quote to awaken quite alone in a strange town
is one of the most Pleasant Sensations in the world yeah uh do you remember a time you awoken in a strange town and
felt like that we're talking about small towns or Big Towns or man anywhere I think I wrote it in some blog post and
like it was a common thing when you would wake up and this was like because I have this website I started a website
about this D Nom like called Nomad list.com and there was a community so it was like 3, and other digital no man
because I was feeling lonely so I built this website and I stopped feeling lonely like I started make organizing
meetups and making friends and um and it was very common that people would say they would wake up and they would forget
where they are yeah like for the first half minute and I had to look outside like where am I which country which
sounds really like privileged but it's more like funny like you literally don't know where you are because you're so dis
rooted um but there's something man it's like Anthony berdan you know there's something pure about this kind
of vagab Bor travel thing you know like it's behind me I think I don't like now I travel with my girlfriend right it's
very different but it is romantic like memories of this kind of like Vagabond individualistic solo life but the thing
is didn't make me happy but it was very cool but it didn't make me happy right it made me anxious there's something
about it that made you anxious I don't know I still feel like that it's a cool feeling it's scary at first but then you
realize where you are and you and I don't know it's like you'll awaken to the possibilities of this place when you
feel like that it's like great and it's even when you're doing some basic travel I go to San Francisco or something El
yeah you have like the novelty effect like you're in a new place like here things are possible you know you you
you're you don't get bored yet and and that's why people get addicted to travel you know back to startups you
wrote a book on uh how to do this thing and gave a great talk on it how to do startups the book's called make
bootstrappers handbook yeah I was wondering if you could go through some of the steps it's idea build launch grow
monetize automate and exit there's a lot of fascinating ideas in each one so idea stage yeah how do you find a good idea
so I think you need to be able to spot problems so for example you can go in your daily life like when you wake up
and you're like what is stuff that I'm really annoyed with that's like um in my daily life that doesn't function well
and that's a problem that you can see okay maybe that's something I can add right code about you know code for and
it will make my life easier so I would say make like a list of all these problems you have and like idea to solve
it and see which one is like viable you can actually do something and then start building it so that's that's a really
good place to start become open to all the problems in your life like actually start noticing them I
think that's actually not a trivial thing to do to realize that some aspects of your life could be done way way
better yeah cuz we kind of very quickly get accustomed to discomforts exactly uh like for example like door knobs yeah
like design of certain things like new cream and door off well that when I know how much uh incredible design work has
gone into it's really interesting doors and door knobs just the Design of Everyday Things forks and spoons it's
going to be hard to come up with a fork that's better than the current Fork designs yeah and the other aspect of it
is you're saying like in order to come up with interesting ideas you got to try to live a more interesting life yeah but
that's where travel comes in yeah because when I started traveling I started seeing stuff in other countries
that you didn't have in Europe for example or America even like if you go to Asia uh like dude especially 10 years
ago nobody knew about this like weads all these apps that they already had before we had them these everything apps
right like now elon's trying to make X this everything app like WeChat the same thing like in Indonesia or tand do you
have one app that you can order food with you can order groceries you can order massage uh you can order car
mechanic um anything you can think of is in the app and that stuff for example you you know that's called like
Arbitrage you can go to back to your country and build that same app for your country for example so you start seeing
um problems you start seeing solutions that other countries already other people already did in the rest of the
world and also traveling in general just gives you more problems cuz travel is uncomfortable you know um airports are
horrible airplanes are not comfortable either there's a lot of problems you start seeing just getting out of your
house you know but also you can I mean in the digital world you can just go into different communities and see what
can be improved by the in that yeah yeah but what specifically is your process of generating ideas do you like do idea
dumps like do you have a document where you just keep writing yeah I used to have like a because when I was when I
wasn't making money I was trying to like make this list of ideas to see like so I need to build I was thinking
statistically already like I need to build all these things and one of these will work out probably you know so I
need to have a lot of things to try um and I did that right now I think like because I already have money I can do
more things uh based on technology so for example AI when I found out about when stable diffusion came or C gbt and
because I had a problem I had no problems but I was very curious about technology and I was like playing with
it and figuring out like first just playing with it and then and then you find something like okay this generates
St Fusion generates houses very beautiful and Interiors you know so it's less about problem solving it's more
about the possibilities of new things you can create yeah but that's very risky because that's the G is like a
solution trying to find a problem yeah and usually it doesn't work and that's very common with with startup FS I think
they they have Tech but actually people don't need to Tech right can you actually explain it'd be cool to talk
about some of the stuff you created can you explain um this photo.com yeah yeah so it's like fire your photographer the
idea is like you don't need a photographer anymore you can train yourself as AI model and you can take as
many photos you want anywhere in any clothes uh with facial expressions like happy or sad or poses uh all this stuff
so how does how does it work so this is uh you send me a link to a gallery of ones done on me which is so on the left
you have the prompts the Box yeah so you can write like so model is your model this Lex Freedman so you can write like
model as a blah blah blah whatever you want y then press the button and it will take photos take will take like photos
what are you using for the hosting for the compute replicates okay replicate decom they're very very goods okay it's
cool like this interface wise it's cool that you're showing how long it's going to take this is amazing so it's taking a
I'm presuming you just loaded in a few pictures from the internet yeah so I went to Google images St in Lex Freedman
I added like 10 or 20 images you can open them in the gallery and you can use your cursors to yeah so some don't look
like you so the hit or miss rate is like I don't know say like 50/50 or something but when I was watching your Tweet like
it's been getting better and better and better it was very bad in beginning it was so bad but still people sign up to
it you know uh there's there's two luxes is great it's getting more and more sexual it's
making me very uncomfortable man but that's the problem with these models cuz no we need to talk about this cuz the
models the fusion yeah so the photorealistic models that are like fine tuned they were all trained on porn in
the beginning and there was a guy called Hassan so I was trying to figure out how to do photo realistic AI photos and it
um and it doesn't have enough resolution or something to to do that well so but I started seeing these these um base
models these fine tune models and people would train on porn and I would try them and they would be very photo realistic
they would have bodies that actually made sense like body uh Anatomy um but if you look at the photorealistic models
that people use now still there's still core of porn there like of naked people so I need to prompt out the nak and
everybody needs to do this with AI startups with imaging you need to prompt out the naked stuff you need to put a
you know naked um you have to keep reminding the model you need to put clothes on yeah don't put naked because
it's very risky I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it's shown to the user to like check foror oh
nfw detector because you get the journalists get very angry if they you know you if you sex there was a
journalist I think that would got angry that used this and was like oh it it made me it showed like a nipple because
Google Vision didn't detect it so there's like these kind of problems you need to deal with you know that's what
I'm talking about this is with cats but look at the cat face it's also kind of mangled you know I'm I'm uh I'm a
little bit disturbed you can zoom in on the cat if you want like like yeah this is a very sad cat it doesn't have a nose
it doesn't have a nose but this man but this is the problem with AI startups because they all act like it's perfect
like this is groundbreaking and but it's not perfect it's like really bad you know half the time so if I wanted to
sort of update model as yeah so you remove this stuff and you write like whatever you want like in Thailand
or something or in Tokyo uh in Tokyo yeah and then you can say like at night with neon lights like you can add more
detail to make I'll go in Austin do you think you'll know in Texas in Austin Texas cowboy hats in Texas yeah as a as
a cowboy as a cowboy it's going to go so uh towards the porn Direction it's it's
you a push notification when your photos are done all right cool yeah let's see oh wow so this whole
interface you've built this is really well done J cury so I still use J cury the only one still after this day you're
not the only one the entire of the web is PHP thep and jur yeah and SQL lights you're just like one of the top
performers from a programming perspective that are still like openly talking about it but every everyone's
using PHP like if you look most of the web is still probably PHP 70% it's because of Wordpress right cuz the blogs
are that's true yeah um true I'm seeing a Revival now people are getting sick of Frameworks um like all the JavaScript
Frameworks are so like what do you called like wieldy like they're so it takes so much work to just maintain this
code and then it updates to a new version you to change everything BEP just stays the same and works yeah and
can you actually just speak to that stack you you build all your websites apps startups projects all of that with
mostly vanilla HTML yeah uh JavaScript with J jQuery PHP and cool white so that that's a really simple stack and you get
stuff done really fast that can you just speak to the philosophy behind that I think it's accidental because that's the
thing I I knew like I knew PHP I knew HML um CSS you know because you make websites and when my startup started
taken off I didn't have time to I remember putting on my to-do list like learn node.js cuz I it's important to
switch you know cuz this obviously is much better language than PHP and I never learned it I never did it uh
because the time I I these things were growing like this and I was launching more project and I never had time it's
like one day you know I'll I'll start coding properly and I never got to it I I sometimes wonder if I need to learn
that stuff it's still to-do atem for me to really learn node.js or or flask or these kind of react yeah react and it's
there it feels like a responsible software engineer should know how to use these but you can get stuff
done so fast with vanilla versions of stuff yeah it's like software developers if you want to get a job and there's
like you know people making stuff like startups and if you want to be entrepreneur probably you maybe
shouldn't I wonder if there's like I really want to measure performance and speed I think there's a deep wisdom in
that yeah I do think that Frameworks and just constantly wanting to learn the new thing this complicated way of software
engineering gets in the way I'm not sure what to say about that because definitely like you shouldn't build
everything from just vanilla JavaScript or vanilla C for example C++ When You're Building Systems engineering is like
there's a lot of benefits for a pointer safety all that kind of stuff so I I don't know but it just feels like you
can get so much more stuff done if you don't care about how you do it man this is my most controversial take I think
and maybe I'm wrong but I feel like there's Frameworks now that raise money they raise a lot of money like they
raise 50 million 100 million 300 million dollars and the idea is that you need to make the developers the new developers
like when you're 18 or 20 years old right um get them to use this framework and then add a platform to it like where
the framework can it's open source but you probably should use the platform which is paid to use it and the the cost
of the platforms to host it are a thousand times higher than just hosting it on a simple AWS server or VPS on
digital ocean right um so there's obviously like a monetary incentive here like we want to get a lot of developers
to use this technology and then we need to charge them money because they're going to use it in startups and then the
starts can pay for the bills um but what that it kind of destroys the the information out there about learning
to code because they you know they pay YouTubers they pay influencers developer influen is a big thing to like um and
same thing what happens with like uh nutrition in Fitness or something same thing happens in developing they pay
this influen to promote the stuff use it make stuff with it make demo product with it and then a lot of people like
wow uh use this and I started noticing this because when I was ship my stuff people would ask me what are you using I
I would say I just PHP JQ why does it matter and people would start kind of attacking me like why are you not using
this new technology this new framework this new thing and I say I don't know cuz this PHP thing works and I don't
really I'm optimizing for anything just doing it just works and I never understood like why uh like I understand
there's new technologies that are better and it should be Improvement but I'm very suspicious of money just like
lobbying there's money in this developer framework scene there's hundreds of millions that goes to ads or influenc or
whatever it can't all go to developers you don't need Developers for framework and it's open
source to make a lot of more money on these startups so that's a really good perspective but in addition to that is
because like I want to know from the individual developer perspective and then from a team of five team of 10 team
of 20 developers yeah uh measure how productive they are in uh shipping features how many bugs
they create how many security holes uhp was not good of security for a while but now it's
good in theory in theory is it though now no no now as as you're saying it I want to know if that's true because PHP
was just the majority of websites on the internet could be true is it just over represented same with WordPress yes
there's a reputation that WordPress has a gigantic number of security holes I don't know if that's true I I know it
gets attacked a lot because it's so popular it definitely does have security holes but maybe a lot of other systems
have security holes as well anyway like I just sort of questioning the conventional wisdom that keeps wanting
to push software Engineers towards Frameworks towards complex like uh super complicated sort
of software engineering approaches that stretch out the the time it takes to actually build a thing 100% And it's the
same thing with big corporations 80% of the people don't do anything it's like it's not efficient and and if you if
your your your benchmark is like uh people building stuff that actually gets done and like for society right like if
we want to save time we should probably use technology that's um that's simple that's pragmatic that's
like that works uh that's not overly complicated doesn't make your life like a living hell you know and use a
framework when it obviously solves a problem a direct problem that you of course you yeah of course I'm not saying
you should code without a framework you should use whatever you want but yeah I think it's suspicious you
know and um and I think when I talk about on Twitter like there's a lot this this Army comes out you know this this
these framework armies yeah man something my gut tells me you I want to ask the framework Army what have they
built this week it's the Elon question what did you do this week yeah did you make money with it you know did you
charge users is it a real business and um yeah uh so going back to the Cowboy first of all some don't look like you
right but some do every aspect of this is pretty incredible I'm also just looking at the interface it's really
well done so this is all just jQuery and yeah this is really well done so like tell take me through the Journey of
photo AI like you don't know much most of the world doesn't know much about uh stable diffusion or any of this any of
the generative AI stuff and so you're thinking okay how can I build cool stuff with this what was the origin story of
photo AI I think uh it started cuz stable diffusion came out so stable diffusion is like this the first like
generative image mod model AI model and um I started playing with it like you could install it on your Mac like
somebody forked it and made it work for MacBooks so I downloaded it and uh cloned the repo and started using it to
generate images um and it was like amazing like it would I found it on Twitter because you see things happen on
Twitter and I I would post what I was making on Twitter as well and you could make any image you could write a prompt
to essentially write a prompt and then it generates a photo of that or image of that um in any style like they would use
like artist names to make like a Picasso kind of style and stuff um and I was trying to see like what is it good at is
it good at people no it's really bad at people but it was good at houses so architecture for example I would
generate like architecture houses um so I made a website called this house does exist. org and it generated like they
called like house porn and that one like house porn it's like a subreddit so and this was stable diffusion like the first
version so looks really you can click for another photo so it generates like all these kind of non-existing houses it
is house point but it looked kind of good you know like especially back then now things look much
better um this really really well done wow and it also generates like a description and you can up vote is it
nice up vote it man there's so much to talk to you about like the choices here is this is very Scrappy in the bottom
there's like a ranking of the most up voted houses so these are the top voted if you go to old time you see quite