Pieter Levels is a Dutch entrepreneur and solo founder known for building and maintaining multiple profitable software products without employees, funding, or venture capital. He is recognized for pioneering the "build in public" approach, sharing revenue and development details openly, and advocating for solo-founder businesses enhanced by artificial intelligence tools. His portfolio includes Nomad List, RemoteOK, and PhotoAI, among others, with combined monthly recurring revenue (MRR) peaking at approximately $420,000 in September 2024.

Early life and education

Pieter Levels was born in 1986 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. He attended business school in Amsterdam but left without completing the degree. His first significant professional experience involved building Panda, a music recommendation product, which facilitated his relocation to the United States on a B1 visa. After losing that visa, he began extensive international travel, which later influenced his work and public identity.

Career

Levels describes himself as a solo founder by design, emphasizing that he does not hire employees, raise funding, or hold meetings. He launched over 100 startups publicly between 2013 and 2014 as part of the "12 Startups in 12 Months" challenge, a period that crystallized his public-builder identity. Most of his enduring products, including Nomad List and RemoteOK, emerged from this intensive sprint. He has lived and worked in multiple countries, including Bali, Bangkok, and Lisbon, where he currently resides.

His approach to product development prioritizes shipping quickly, charging from day one, and iterating based on user feedback. He advocates for building with AI tools, arguing that AI APIs provide solo founders with leverage previously available only to large teams. Levels also emphasizes transparent communication about revenue, development, and failures through public channels such as Twitter and personal websites.

Notable projects

Levels has created several widely used software products, most of which are bootstrapped and maintained by him alone:

• Nomad List — A platform that ranks over 1,000 cities worldwide based on cost of living, internet speed, weather, safety, and other factors relevant to digital nomads. It began as a Google Sheet in 2014 and remains one of his flagship projects. The site provides a public "open" page displaying live MRR and visitor statistics.
• RemoteOK — A remote job board for technology, design, marketing, and other roles, known for pioneering transparent salary listings. It reached $101,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in April 2021 and continues to operate on the original PHP codebase from 2015.
• PhotoAI — An AI-powered tool that allows users to generate professional photos and videos by training a model on their own face. It achieved $61,000 in MRR in July 2023 and is cited as a leading example of a solo-built AI product.
• InteriorAI — A service that restyles interior spaces in various aesthetic styles using AI. It was built in a weekend and scaled using the infrastructure developed for PhotoAI.
• Hoodmaps — A crowdsourced neighborhood mapping tool that visualizes local vibes and helps users identify where to live or avoid. It is one of the cult-favorite projects associated with Levels.

The combined MRR of all his products peaked at approximately $420,000 per month in September 2024, with revenue figures and traffic data updated publicly on Nomad List's open page.

Technical approach and philosophy

Levels uses a minimalist and consistent technical stack across his projects: PHP, jQuery, and plain HTML, with SQLite for data storage and a single VPS for hosting on providers such as Hetzner or DigitalOcean. He avoids frameworks, microservices, and cloud complexity, favoring server-rendered applications and cost-efficient infrastructure that typically costs less than 2% of revenue. He has used the same stack since 2014 and describes it as "boring and proud."

He is an advocate for AI integration in software development, using tools like Cursor and Claude to write up to 70% of the code in some projects. He emphasizes the importance of product taste and prompt engineering over raw coding ability. His development philosophy centers on shipping quickly, embracing failure as a learning tool, and avoiding over-optimization before validating demand.

Online presence and advocacy

Levels is active on Twitter (X), where he shares updates about his projects, revenue, and development process. He describes Twitter as the cheapest customer acquisition channel in tech, enabling him to build an audience and distribute products effectively through "build in public" practices. He also maintains a personal website, levels.io, which serves as a hub for his projects and writings.

He frequently discusses topics such as remote work, solo entrepreneurship, bootstrapping, and the role of AI in enabling independent builders. He has expressed skepticism toward venture capital for his type of business, preferring full control and the ability to discontinue products without external constraints. He also shares insights on productivity, advocating for flexible schedules and rejecting rigid productivity frameworks.

Public philosophy and community influence

Levels is known for his transparent sharing of business metrics, including live MRR dashboards and detailed failure postmortems. He encourages aspiring founders to start small, validate ideas quickly, and avoid overthinking. His "12 Startups in 12 Months" challenge is cited as an example of how shipping frequently reduces fear of launching and uncovers viable business ideas. He also promotes the idea that remote work is not a future trend but the present reality, a thesis he developed while running RemoteOK since 2015.

He engages with the indie hacker and digital nomad communities, having lived in over 50 countries and spent significant time in hubs like Chiang Mai and Lisbon. His work and public persona have influenced a generation of solo founders who prioritize autonomy, transparency, and AI-assisted development.