#130: Digital Nomads, Remote Working, Founders Mental Health, Niche Fame and Nomads Dating with Pieter Levels
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Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chewy Journal Podcast. I'm your host Camille Yang. My guest today is Peter Leibovitz. Peter is a serial founder of multiple products such as Nomad List, RemoteOK and Revis. In this episode, we discuss digital nomads life, remote working trends, founders mental health,

what it feels like to be a niche famous and a Nomad's dating life. I hope you enjoy the show. Shall we start with your digital Nomad journey? So how did it all begin? I mean, it depends how far you want to go back, right? But I started like April 2013. Back then, it wasn't a very popular thing to do. It was like quite fringe, I would say.

And the reason I went because my friend, my Dutch friend, Hasse, he said, you know, you can do your work on your laptop anywhere, right? Or if you would buy a laptop, because I had this big PC computer because I did like video stuff and I had two screens and I could never travel with that, of course. So he's like, why don't you just buy a laptop and try it on there? So I did that and I flew to Asia. I'd already studied in Korea before.

So I did like study exchange program and it was really fun. And, uh, and I also knew him from there and he was like, you know, he, he had a normal job, so he couldn't, he couldn't go, but he was like, you know, you have this internet thing. So, because I had a YouTube channel for music, it was making money. It was like electronic music mixes, you know, like one hour mix. And that came kind of from my music career where I made my own music, which I was uploading to YouTube. And I know that was making like a thousand dollars, $2,000, sometimes $8,000 a month.

So I was making money and I could just do it on my laptop kind of. So that's what I did. Then when did you find these opportunities to create a nomadly site to attract other people? Back then I was in Chiang Mai. There was like maybe 20 to 30 people doing this thing. Like most American or European guys,

was no woman at all it was mostly gone now it's much better but they're all like a little bit weird like i was also weird i'm still weird but they were it was not like regular people doing this thing you know a little bit on the edge of society like a little bit a little bit dodgy maybe the money they made the work that they was a little spammy you know like google spam dexing selling illegal drugs to america from chinese dropship like a lot of weird but they were nice people kind of and uh i was like okay this is

I didn't really identify with those people as much because I was making like music stuff. So I was like, okay, I did this for like six months. And then I was in Hong Kong, I think. So I went to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Cambodia, I think, Vietnam, also Bali. No, not Bali, Hong Kong. I was there. And then I was like, okay, let's go back home. And, you know, I called my parents. I miss my parents. So I went back home and saw them for Christmas and stuff.

And then I kind of got into depression because this six months or eight months was really fun. And, but I didn't identify with these people. I didn't, I wanted to do like cool stuff, make cool businesses and stuff and not do spammy shit. I wanted to do legit business and cool startups and do it on my laptop. So I was kind of like depressed in my bed, in my parents' house, in my kid's room, you know?

being like I think I was 26 or something 27 28 like I hate my life what am I doing and all my other friends were kind of moving on with their life because they graduated they were like maybe buying houses you know moving in together and I was like in my kids room and um and I remember watching um Jungfug John Jungfug's Instagram I think because I knew him because he was making his own startups

And he was doing like cool stuff. He was doing like SaaS, you know, like back then he was making Beatrix app, which was like a customer service app, I think. No, it was like a social media scheduling app, like Buffer kind of. A little bit different. And he was like blogging about it and doing it like really in a classy way. And I was like, okay, if he can do that, then that was kind of like a role model for me. Like I should do that too. And I went traveling and I went to Bali and

And I kept working on these startups and none of these startups really made money yet. I started doing 12 startups in 12 months, which was like, I tried one project every month. And I started like April, 2014. So a year after nomading, after I started nomading, I started doing that. And I mean, that was my low point. I was like, I was super depressed, anxiety. Like my hands were like shaking all the time and I didn't know what to do with my life. And, and my dad would always say like, you know, you need to,

Start doing something if you want to get out of the version, like take action and do stuff, you know? So I started doing these 12 startups. It gave me like a goal purpose. And after doing like all these crazy different projects, I made a nomad list, the first version in Bali. And then I flew to Philippines. I finished it there and then it launched. And since then it's been like rollercoaster. People started using it. People started paying for it. So that was kind of my journey. So it was pretty much like a low point.

And this Nomad List saved me pretty much because without that, like I was interviewing for jobs at Coinbase in Amsterdam in the office. Kind of cool company though. Like, I mean, maybe it would have worked out, but yeah.

I'm still happy that this thing worked out. Now it's a mainstream thing, right? Yeah, it is. I joined Nomadlist last year. I was in the UK before and then I said I want to do something new. So I joined it now. I met so many friends through Nomadlist. It's great. So nice. Do you still remember when you got your first paid customer? How did you feel? Yeah, it was super weird because...

We had the problem. So I first created the website, which was like a list of cities and it was kind of crowdsourced. So everybody just put their own information in on the Google sheet and then I made it into a website. I remember there was a guy on Twitter who

from america was dming me like kind of advice and it was like smart startup guy he said you need to create like some social features on this website like a login button and that there needs to be something else you know like users and stuff and i was like okay i have no idea how to do it because i didn't know how database worked i could barely code i could do basic php wordpress stuff but i could make like a table html stuff but i couldn't really code difficult database stuff so i thought like okay what's the easy way to do it and back then slack was taking off

So I made a Slack for nomads and I added like a link. Like if you want to sign up, there was a type form and your email name. And then I invite you manually to the Slack. And so a lot of people came in and within like weeks was like 500 people. And it was completely free. It was like, um, didn't have to pay for it. And then I remember there was people coming in spamming. So they were like posting their, you know, self-promotion stuff. And I was like, okay, we need to fix that. So, um,

On Typeform, you could enable payments with Stripe. And I already had Stripe for my other products. So I was like, okay, I'll connect Stripe and I'll charge, I think, like $1 for signup. And that worked to increase the quality because you didn't get random people signing up anymore. And then I increased to $5 and then $10 and then $20, $30, $65 for a long time, $69.

And nice 69, you know, the Slack started growing and became like the biggest remote work or nomads, like the community. And then I slowly started learning how to code better. And I started moving a lot of the features, social fee. I started adding social features to the website because I finally understood how it worked. This is like a hell because like I started with like literally the type form export, like the CSV or the spreadsheet export of users putting into a database. And then there was like four different databases of users. There was like forum users, there were Slack users, there was web users.

It took years to fix all that stuff. And now it's just our users database and a lot of different features on the website, like meetups. And like most users now is not Slack. Most of the users is on the website, like

You can organize meetups like you do a lot. I see you organize a lot of me. Yeah, you can just dating features kind of like swiping DM on the website. You can create your own travel profile, like log your trips and stuff. You can, of course, filter on everything about which city you like, like if there's a legal weed or if it's like what climate it is in December, if it's warm or is it a member of the OECD? You know, all these

crazy niche things, but you can filter everything. And that kind of became the website. And now it's like the biggest platform and website for digital nomads in the world. I see so many mainstream media also quote your website on their news articles. Yeah, it's really nice. It's very funny. When I organize a meetup, it's hardly any girls. So

So all the guys working in the software engineer. Yeah, I saw this photo. I saw a photo like this week or something of you and like none of these guys. Yeah, it's a big problem. I think if you look at, for example, the meetups in Mexico are more diverse. But I mean, this is always a problem with tech. But also with communities, like if you look at the usage of technology,

forums and stuff and internet websites and communities, the users by women is usually like 20% or 30%. If you look at tech companies, the developers is always something like 20%, 30%. There's other type of website or other industries where you see more women sign up, where it's like 70% women, for example. I don't know, like stuff like Pinterest, for example. But women and men sign up to different websites and...

My purpose would obviously be to make it 50/50, but that's difficult because then, for example, you need to start charging less money for women who sign up. It's like a club, a nightclub. That's why nightclubs do it, right? It starts getting in complicated territory. So I'm not really sure if it's one, if it's a problem, I'm not really sure, two, if I should solve it.

I think generally it will solve itself anyway, because remote work is usually tech jobs and you see with general tech jobs, it's like 20 to 30% women. Why is that? I don't know. But if that's changing, you will see more women get into tech jobs and then they can also go more remote and they can

you know, be more on Nomadlist, for example. I do encourage my female friends to become nomad. I think it's still the society condition women, or you need to get a stable job, have a family. So not many people are brave enough to give up this. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I've made sure to like, we moderate Nomadlist heavily and it's open to everybody. So everybody's nice generally, there's no politics. So I think it's quite a welcoming, open community.

But I think you're right. I think there is a lot of society norms, depending on country. Like America, they're quite open. Western Europe, like Holland, Germany, quite open. But even countries like Portugal, Spain are more traditional. Asia is very traditional, of course. But yeah, things are changing. Look at Korea. Women empowerment and feminism is very much on the rise. Also in China, for example. I think it will work out, but...

I think what doesn't help is like people like what you had like five years ago, where I was like, oh, my God, people would tweet me. Oh, my God. Why are you following only like 20% women on Twitter? Stuff like attacking people for stuff. It doesn't really work. And it's kind of stupid.

Yeah, because before I joined the Nomad List, I have a stereotype about digital nomads. So like poor people living in Bali or this kind of stereotype. It will take time to resolve it. Yeah, so that was your question. You wrote also, like I read before the podcast, like what are some stereotypes, something that are wrong that you found out? And so I looked a little bit and I think one of the stereotypes that digital nomads are low income, low educated.

and they live and fly to cheap places. And I mean, a more recent stereotype is that they emit a lot of CO2, right? Because they're flying so much. So I have the data for that, tens of thousands of people that are on my website. On average, digital nomads make over $120,000 a year. It's way higher than normal salary. 90% of digital nomads is university educated, so bachelor or master or PhD.

The majority of digital nomads has progressive political views. So they're not like certain political, they're very progressive and open. That's why they're traveling, right? And seven out of the top 10 destinations are in expensive countries with high cost of living. So only 30% of the top 10 destinations is cheap, affordable. And then if you look at the CO2, like I also measure how much CO2 they emit with flying and stuff.

Nomads emit about 42% less CO2 than regular people. And that's because they don't commute to work every day. They don't work in offices. They usually walk to their cafe or they use a bike or something.

So that's very interesting because that goes against all the stereotypes. True, exactly. With data. And I remember you tweet someone, someone say, oh, remote work is work from home. This stereotype is surprised me. I said, you can work anywhere. You can work in the park. Yeah, it was yesterday. Yeah. I think with COVID it's very interesting because suddenly remote work is mainstream and people don't really understand. Like for them, remote work has been lockdowns and staying at home.

But that's not remote work because we've been doing it for years. We have friends in different cities. We work from hotel bed or Airbnb or cafe or coworking space.

wherever we work best we work you know and especially before covet it was not a home a lot it was mostly outside home you know yeah exactly 90 of my friends i met online through traveling does this also apply to your life do you still keep contact with your old friend back home

I think of old friends, like the people who kind of also were like traveling or remote work and based day state and the people that didn't kind of, kind of, we grew out of a part, which is annoying. It's not good, but that's just what happens. And no bad feelings, but just like it's different lives. But like more and more, some of those people now are messaging me like, Hey, I,

I want to go nomad. I'm moving to Portugal. And I'm trying to get those people onto the, not nomad, but just more like, let's move to Portugal. Let's move to, because I'm from Holland. It's very cold always, except the summer. It's rainy. Let's move to Portugal or something or somewhere nice. And let's live there and have nice wine and tapas on the beach at sunset. And that's my dream. And that's what I'm trying to do with Rebase now, with the company, the immigration service.

but also just to move all my internet friends, because I'm the same as you. I have 90% internet friends and it's great on the chat apps, but I love to get that more in real life. Yeah, meet in real life. So why do you think Portugal has the potential to be the next big thing? I've read a lot of articles, Portugal is the next Silicon Valley, and so many tech people come here. It's weird. I never really thought about Portugal until COVID.

COVID happened. When COVID happened, I was in Malaysia with Mark and Andre, these friends of mine. And I flew back to Europe to escape COVID because it wasn't in Europe yet. And then I arrived in Europe and nobody believed COVID was going to be a problem for months, until April or May. They didn't believe. And I stocked up on food and everything.

Back then I was in a relationship and she wasn't with me then because I fled to Europe and we ended up breaking up and I was very depressed and anxious and stuff. Kind of similar vibe to like when I did 12 startups, like that was 2014, but this was like 2020. And I talked to Mark and I said, let's go travel again. Cause now it's like July. And you know, if we wear masks, we can, you know, just, we could just move. And so we went to Berlin, Prague, and then we went to,

Portugal and but we were very careful like we were not spreading we were really proper n95 masks and we ended up in Portugal because it was like on nomad this was really popular suddenly like and I feel all the people that used to move to Asia in the winter couldn't move because Asia was kind of closed Asia was very strict with quarantines and borders was all closed kind of so nobody could go to Bali so people were just like okay let's go to somewhere warm in Europe

A lot of Americans just went to Mexico, but a lot of Europeans went to Portugal. And you expect them to go to Spain because it was generally classically more popular, but they went to Portugal. I was like, well, interesting. So let's go to Lisbon. I was there. We organized a meetup and like, I think 40 people were coming. And this was like September, September, 2020. And I had to cancel the meetup because no, but I was really, I was really scared of COVID and for good reason. And I knew that,

something like five percent of people had covet actively so 30 people uh good chance somebody has it so i canceled the meetup but i realized okay this is interesting this is a very like bustling kind of place and i felt the same as chiang mai in 2014 or bali changu in 2017. suddenly a lot of people you know are there and it's very easy to meet up everybody's excited and i was like okay this might

this might become a thing. And to your question, what made Portugal especially good was affordable, almost as affordable as Southeast Asia. Yeah, it is. When I moved from London to here, I feel like, oh my God, it's super cheap. Yeah, it's the same. I remember buying the same amount of groceries I would buy in Holland. In Holland, you spent 200, 300 euros. This was like 100 or 75 euros. And

But the great food, great vegetables, great meat. Yeah, I love seafood. Yes, I love seafood. The weather is like... Like, Southeast Asia is too hot. Like, I'm now sitting in AC at, like, 20 Celsius. But outside, it's usually, like, 30 to 40. And I'm now on an island, so it's more breezy. Like, the beach is there, like, 10 meters away from me. But that's nice. But it is generally too hot. And it gets really sweaty. And...

And in Portugal you could just be outside and it's generally like now it's kind of cold, right? But like, you know, April, May, it's like 20 degrees or something, 22 degrees. Close to like, I think 22, 23 is perfect. It's like the perfect human temperature, you know, like lukewarm kind of. And that's Portugal. I think California has the same climate. Almost all year it's kind of warm. Like now, you know, January is cold, but yeah.

still less cold than the rest of Europe. Yeah, I think it's a suit for my criteria when I pick up my location. I don't want to live in a

just one season. I tried Madeira before because I'm a nomadist. Madeira is an island in Portugal. So I said, oh, it's too hot for me. I want different seasons. So Lisbon is perfect. Yeah, have different seasons. Yeah, I think so. Also, the air is really clean. The clean air is really difficult. I'm actually sitting here and I smell somebody smoking outside. Generally, the air in Lisbon

Asia is quite bad. Like the AQI levels are like 75, 150. China is a horrible era. Of course, we know it's like,

i was in Qingdao no i was in Beijing and from it was always like 125 AQI which is quite bad and then i was in traffic and it suddenly the the air became orange oh my god and i look at the AQI suddenly 350 yeah just it's crazy and i i started getting a eye irritation and stuff and and if you are like now i'm like 35

So you start thinking about long-term health stuff more. Like when you're 25, you don't care anything. It's like, who cares? Fuck it. Let's just, you know, why are you so scared of air quality? Who cares? Just live your life. Let's get drunk. Let's smoke cigarettes. When you're 35, you think more about it and you're like, okay, health, this is now causing me long-term, you know, cancer risk and stuff.

So I was like, okay, Portugal, super clean air because it's on the coast and stuff generally. Locals are friendly, great English. It's very safe. It's very safe. Safe for women. Yeah, I feel very safe. Yeah. I went to a couple of Fado performance. Yeah, Fado. Normally ended at midnight or 1 or 2 a.m. Then I walk back like

I walk one hour on street. No big deal. I feel very safe. Yeah. And that's exceptional. Like people from Latin America, they cannot walk back. Or in South Africa, in Cape Town, you can't walk home. You can't even walk outside as a guy. Even Holland. Holland might be a little bit dodgy in Amsterdam. So I think it's an exceptional place. It's a place that's on nobody's mind. But if you look at the data, all the metrics are kind of good there.

There's not a lot of negative things about Portugal we can find. I would say bureaucracy, typical. Also Spain, the bureaucracies are difficult. I would say there was a lot of corruption in the past. I think they've removed a lot of corruption. So that's fine. I think things go a little bit slower if you do with local businesses. But for foreigners who work remotely, you're not really in touch with those businesses. So it's quite good for foreigners.

Yeah. So what motivates you to build up Rebase? I was one of the early customers. Yeah. Pretty happy. So when I came to Portugal, I didn't know anything about this, but I knew that everybody, a lot of people I talked to kept saying like, yeah, I just moved to Portugal, but also became a resident here. Like, okay, that's interesting. And I was like, what does that mean to say, well, there's benefits for foreigners to move here because they're trying to attract foreigners because a lot of Portuguese are leaving Portugal

Because it's hard to find a job. There's not a lot of opportunities. The companies in Portugal don't pay a lot of money. So there's a big brain drain. And like last year, Portugal had the biggest decrease in population in 50 years, or 2020. And so they want foreigners to come and spend money. And so I kind of checked and I asked like the immigration advisors that people had. And I did a call with them and I did it. I got all my lawyers to...

I got a Dutch lawyer, Portuguese lawyer, Singaporean lawyer to check the concept because my company is Singapore. And it's all legit and solid and legal. And I made sure to properly leave Holland, my citizenship country. And I called the IRS about everything. Is everything good? Everything's fine. And I moved. And then I started... You tell your friends about it, your nomad friends. And they were above average kind of...

interested and also wanted to talk to my immigration advisor and also do like a call. But this started like in December 2020, January 2021. And I was like, okay, I'll make a type form so you can just sign up and I'll refer you. Started, you know, getting like, I don't know, somewhere like 20 signups a month. And then I made it into a real landing page around, you

November last year, like a few months ago. With like a form you can sign up and the benefits are on the left and you can sign up and you can do all your data. And then you pay with Stripe for the first call, you pay like a hundred dollars. I didn't even launch this. Like it was online, but I didn't really launch it. And then I made a photo of me sitting on my bed with my laptop. Like I tweeted like POV, building an immigration service as a startup. And I was just kind of just, it's fun to always update people what I'm building, you know?

And for some reason, I just don't understand, it went viral. It was like, wow, this is cool. We need this. And then I wrote the URL, the people like, what's the URL? And I just posted it. And then within a month, 500 people signed up or something like 466 or something. The immigration advisors I refer to, I think they dealt with like 20 to 30 people a month normally.

And suddenly they have like 500 people. It's like a workload. Yeah, they were. And so they started hiring more people. They hired like five more people, trained them to scale up. And they've been very good in like dealing with the demand and stuff. It's still difficult. Like now if you sign up as a non-European, it takes until like February or March to get a call. So it's still quite, it's a bottleneck. But I'm trying to...

speed it up and i've automated all these parts like i've automated the the sign up the payment which used to go by email like you would email the immigration advisor they would send you a form a pdf you need to fill out then you need to bank transfer money all this stuff and now it's um it's stripe payment you upload your passport on stripe also for the identity check kyc

you set up a calendar meeting with the immigration advisor and within two minutes you can be done. And then the call comes and then you get set up in Portugal and they help you register there and move there. Yeah. I even met the immigration lawyer because I need to sign some paperwork. So she met me in the cinema in this room when I was there. Yeah.

Yeah, they are super nice and very efficient, I will say. Yeah. I mean, this is hard to get efficient immigration advisors because they're living in an analog world, not a digital world like us. So they've been very, very good at accepting me saying like, no, I don't want to do call. I never even called them since I moved to Portugal. I never called them about this problem.

We just did everything over chat and they accepted it. So they're amazing. And you mentioned that you had two breakdowns during your startup and last year. So what solution did you take up to get out of that? Yeah, I think everybody was in like a bad psychological state last year because of COVID. And now still, I mean, still people are, it's difficult.

very difficult, like the most difficult thing in many people's lives. And it's not good to be in lockdowns alone at home. It's so hard that we cannot meet groups of people still. It's quite difficult. It's getting better for sure with vaccination and stuff, but it's caused a massive psychological toll. And what helped for me was meeting Mark, going on trip again. We were in Prague, we were in Portugal, and then we invited some more friends over.

And we kind of lived in a coastal town in Portugal called Irizarra. And we'd go for walks and stuff. And beautiful, beautiful place, like magical. And considering COVID, we had a pretty good life. You know, we ate nice food. We had friends near. And that helped me a lot. I think having friends near you within, I would say, 100 meters is the most important. That's my goal. Because that is so key to your happiness, you know. Yeah. Did you also try therapy or?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, good point. Yeah, I did online therapy. Really good American therapist. So I was like, you know, when you talk to therapists in your own language, you must have it with Chinese, I think. Yeah, I was born and raised in China. Yeah, so if you have a therapist maybe in Mandarin Chinese? Yeah, Mandarin. Yeah, I speak Mandarin. Okay, so what I had with Dutch therapists was like, I felt kind of judged. You know what I mean? Because it's like Dutch person. And I was kind of like,

And I talked to my British friend. He had the same British therapist. So I was like, okay, I'll Google like, you know, anxiety, depression therapist online. And I found this American woman from Ohio. It was kind of sovereign, you know, like kind of Tim Cook accent. I think kind of like cowboy accent, kind of cool. And she was really, she was really nice. She's like, how can I help you today? Or some accent. And I told her everything, all my thoughts and,

fears and problems and we went through everything and it was CBT so like I knew CBT which is cognitive behavioral therapy which is like you make like a spreadsheet with like a thought you have like for example let's say you're single you're like I'm going to be alone forever I'm never going to meet a new boyfriend or girlfriend right it's a common thought and then you need to reality check it so you okay next column is like evidence for this thought it's like okay well you know is there evidence you will be forever alone um

Not really. Like when you were single before, you kind of found a new girlfriend or boyfriend. So it was, and you're a nice person. You're, you're, you're attractive and it's, you know, it's not really been a problem ever. So why would this be? Okay. So there's no evidence for this. So then what's the realistic thought? It's like, I'm single now, but I don't think it will be a real big challenge to find the next person. It will never, definitely not be forever. And maybe it's kind of good to be alone for a while. You know, why not?

and that's cbt and and i think i had like 10 or 20 of these thoughts but another thought was like i was scared that i wasn't normal that i was not like a classically normal person like for example like i didn't have a mortgage and a car living in the suburbs of amsterdam you know like like friends or something and i talked about all that stuff and that really helped like it took like i think eight or ten or twelve sessions of one hour and i felt so much better after that and uh

that therapist really really helped me like really change my life yeah i did a therapy as well when i was in the uk yeah especially during lockdown i was new to the country not many friends around and lockdown by myself i do think yeah highly recommend that yeah i don't know when i talk english i can be more open to talk about my thoughts that's it i've seen things that's that's why i got the american therapist because i could be pretty open and with dutch i cannot be that because dutch

And probably Mandarin for you gives this culture connected to that language. There's your whole upbringing, right? Like your whole childhood and teenage years is Chinese and for me, Dutch.

that gives a lot of baggage, which it's harder for me to open up. With English, it's like, who cares? You can say anything. Yeah. I say fuck a lot. Yeah, me too. I never curse. Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting. So I see you built up so many websites and products. How do you manage your time and energy to be so productive? Yeah, I think I get the question a lot.

I don't do that much stuff. So let's say like yesterday or something or today I wake up. I wake up like around noon. So I go to bed around 4 a.m. And it's just my cycle always been and was very difficult in high school. And I wake up, I shower, I make or I order coffee. And I kind of sit and chill and read my friends' chat groups and stuff. And then I'll check like my robots these days, they...

send me the bugs every when they happen or I get feedback sent and it's also on the chat app but some telegram so I get sent before I wake up I get sent the the revenue of all my projects summarized for the last 24 hours 30 days and 365 days and growth rates and emojis like green or red like if it's good or bad like I know in China it's reverse but for me it's like green is good

And then also the uptime, like did the server go down, the last errors I get. So that gives me to see what I should be working on. And so if there's nothing, if there's no bugs, it's perfect. Feedback on my website goes immediately to the chat group, which is me and my server guy friend who works for me, who keeps the server up. So usually I just quickly fix some bugs and then I'll look at my kind of to-do list and

like i have like post-it notes on my window like stuff i need to do like now for example i need to work on the rebase video i'm making a video trailer kind of like like a nomad list but the thing is so i i work a lot but i don't work that much as people think because all these projects are highly automated i don't have to enter the weather for lisbon tomorrow on my website like that's the robot it downloads the weather on some weather api that i pay money for

A lot of data, all the data is automatically updated. Like I have another website, Remote OK. It's a remote job support. People pay to post jobs on there and then job is posted by the script, right? By the PHP script. And then it shows up on the websites in the database and the payment is accepted and there's no human there doing anything. It's all automated. Yeah. And there's no reason to put a human there except for customer support, which I have a contractor for.

And then she will message me when there's a bug, but she messes me maybe once a week. So generally it's highly automated. And the only stuff I have to work on is new features. And if I make a new feature, I will also introduce always a bug because when you add something, something else breaks. It's always like that. But the joke is if I don't touch the code,

nothing breaks. So the moment I started working on it, things started breaking. I see. I remember you wrote an article about why you should be unreachable. Yeah. I'm a writer, so I get a lot of feedback. So people want to meet me. Well, you're famous in China, I know. Not famous. Well, 100,000 followers, I think. Yeah, it's massive.

more followers than I was on Twitter. - Yeah, you have more followers than me, I think on Twitter. So that's a- - I got 150,000 on Weibo. - Yeah, see this one at me. So you're- - I think I quite enjoy this niche famous.

Not like a celebrity famous. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm saying, right? It's just a niche. Like nobody knows me on the street, but. I find out quite resonate with you. You divided 24 hours. What to do divided your energy and time allocation and the async way of working. I find it's very good. Yeah. I think that's the future. I mean, I don't like, I did this blog post dividing my hours. It's not, I'm not like autistic where I just structure my hours like that. It's more like it was an example.

Because there was someone in the area saying like, oh my God, beauty levels even scheduled one hour of sex every day. Yeah. No, that's not how it works.

It's insane. That's not how it works. It's just an indication. And I was annoyed because people always do these schedule things and they never write that they have sex. It's taboo to write about it. So okay, fair enough. I wrote about it. It's a healthy part of being a human. So why not? But the problem is it's not structured like that. It's just like I wanted to show that a day is quite short. And if you want to... People want to...

always message you, especially if you're like famous in a niche. But even people, you know, if you have 1,000 followers, you already start getting DMs and stuff. And the problem is that if you have to answer all these, like I would get probably like 20, 40, 50 messages a day

And I cannot answer all these messages. It's just not possible. Because 50 messages a day is-- it takes 10 minutes to write an email, right? So that's-- That's your whole day gone. It's 8.3 hours a day. I need to write replies, right? So I can't do that. No.

It's much easier if I just tweet stuff that's useful for everybody, I think. And of course, I want to be reachable for specifically like this podcast is nice. I want to be reachable. I want to talk to you. And I wanted to obviously talk to my family and my friends, but I don't necessarily need to talk to every stranger on the internet. And they don't necessarily have, this sounds arrogant, but they don't necessarily have the right to message because this is very unpopular opinion in this current zeitgeist, but

you know, if you did the work and the efforts and you do something really cool, just like you do, or just like I do, um,

Of course, then you automatically start talking to each other anyway. But a lot of people, they don't even do work. They don't even put the effort in. And they want to talk to everybody and just like, oh my God, we should work together. No, we shouldn't work together. You didn't do anything yet. You need to do a lot of stuff. You build a company first or you create art first. And then we can talk because I also made all these websites. I spent ages of my life doing all this work. And you want to just get in, not do any work, and you want to

dm everybody for partnerships sorry that's not how it works and nobody's going to say that on podcast because it sounds i know it sounds really arrogant and bad but that's the reality that's what all my successful famous friends say you know yeah you need to have a proof your work then then you have the credit yeah you have value you need to bring value to the table and you know it could also be you have a good idea but usually the ideas are not good

And also I had like stalkers, like physical stalkers. I had like security issues, death threats. I had really bad things like that happening. And that made me completely reevaluate how open I should be about who I should let talk to me or also should I tell people where I am? My location is purposely quite vague. It's big security risks and...

tim ferriss wrote about this like he was kidnapped almost and this kind of stuff and

I mean, those are real things you need to think about. Yeah, especially for girls because I used to be very open. I'm a very transparent person. So I say, okay, I'm here. Yeah, girls get 10 times more stalkers. Yeah, I do have stalkers and some random guys. That's why I deleted my Instagram. I stopped posting my real pictures. Yeah, I see a lot of girls delete their Instagram these days. Because it's so creepy. Yeah, it's difficult. And...

What I miss though is like I do miss getting random cool messages. It's a hard balance to strike like how to be open to... Yeah, it's like trade-off. You need to sacrifice something. And there's a certain percentage of people who cannot deal with treating you normal. Like...

I was at parties. I was at a party. This is the first time I realized this. I was at a party with my normal friends, just Dutch friends, right? Nothing about startups. And I'm just drinking. And we're just talking about, you know, whatever, like about music and stuff. And then there's a guy in a house party, right? And there's a guy sitting next to me and he says, Peter Levels. And I'm like, what? And that's not the name I use even in real life, right? So I'm like, okay, interesting. And my friend's like, what?

and this guy is like a strange guy he says and i just won uh product on make of the year award and he's like you just want product off the make of the year award but you know product is not relevant anymore why why would you i don't know like i don't know why would you say that um i'm like okay who are you he said i know you're from internet and this was such a weird interaction

I was like, good. You know, first of all, that's not a very nice thing. First thing to say, maybe if it's true, I don't know, but if your opinion is fair, but we could just say hi, like, Hey. Yeah. Be a normal person. Introduce yourself. Yeah. And I realized that something like 10 to 20% of people, and maybe I've also been that in the past, but they cannot deal with

treating you normal they they don't know what to say they will get jealous and they will say something really negative to trigger you for no reason no reason other than they know more about you than you know about them because they're strange to you right so this is very social relationship and i had more of those crazy things like i was in bali once with my friends also drinking kind of like nomad friends and uh and a guy starts sitting with us like an old guy like 60 year old

guy white guy and he's sitting really close and he also someone like peter levels i know what you're doing and i'm like what the is happening and all my friends are what and i'm like dude this is

our friends please don't sit with us and we told him to fuck off and uh then he started sitting across the bar alone with his drinks with drinking and looking at us so creepy shouting stuff so strange and then i was like how should we deal with this so i went to him and said what's going on why are you doing this why you cannot just behave normally and he's and it kind of diffused him like he was just twitter follower and he was just also interested in stuff and

I was like, okay, you know, like, uh, he said, I'm really sorry for my behavior. Can I buy you drinks? I was like, yeah, I guess. So he bought us like 10 people bought us like free drinks. So kind of nice. And then he sat with us. It was super awkward. And, uh, and it was annoying because I felt guilty that it was annoying for my friends for like at least an hour, this guy. And it was in a way my fault because I, you know, I was there and he, uh,

And I have a number of those events. And you probably have 10 times more. But yeah, it's strange. Yeah. Even for my ex-boyfriend, his new girlfriend told him, don't talk to Camelia anymore.

Because she can search me and knows me, but I know nothing about her. So kind of this jealousy or something is very interesting. I mean, I do think it's generally a good idea to not talk to ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, though. But it's good to cut it off. They say people already know you through reading your work or look at everything you post online, but you know nothing about them.

Yeah, it's strange because there's two persons, right? That's your own self and then there's this internet self. And I do try and keep them the same. I never like those Twitter threads where people are like, I talk to seven billionaires and this is what I learned. It's like this weird vibe. It doesn't look authentic. So I think I try to be as authentic as possible. I try to talk the same to you as I talk to my friends as I talk on Twitter as far as possible.

But people will get ideas about you and they can be wrong, they can be subjective. And people get jealous, right? If somebody is successful, people get really jealous.

they're not in balance with themselves. Like if you're in balance with yourself, you can say, wow, cool. This person did something cool, successful. I'm inspired to do the same thing or I respect it. Like I respect Elon Musk doing all this cool stuff. I love it. I'm a little bit jealous, but not in a bad way. Like he deserves everything he gets, all the good things, not all the hate. Yeah, I see. So how do you cope with criticism or negative comments? Do you read them or?

How do you deal with them? I mean, many times the people that say something bad, especially on Hacker News or Reddit, they often have a point, though. There's some truth there. So you need to listen, I think, and see what... Hacker News is really honest, and they might have a point. So I do try to... If it's true, I try to learn from it.

with twitter you get you get strange like anonymous accounts with anime avatars saying just negative stuff for example and i just mute them so and there's also the thing where i think paul graham wrote about it if you have fans that's like fans are the same as haters because

And they flip often. Fans are obsessively liking you in an irrational way and haters are obsessively hating you in an irrational way. Both are not accurate. There should be a neutral perception about you. And fans often flip when you...

do something that they that doesn't agree with what they think so for example they could be like oh my god i love peter loves because remote work but then if i tweet something about like i think nuclear energy should be the future at least until we you know have enough renewable wind and solar power that's a might be controversial opinion like and then people are like okay now i don't like you anymore because you like nuclear like it's it's stupid because that's not

that's obsessive that's not how you would deal with your friends true because they only see one aspect of your life then love you for that point the humans are very complicated if you see something different they will say that's it and and how do you do that because

how can you keep a hundred thousand people happy because they obviously different opinions it's impossible exactly that's very interesting because i see so many people like oh i don't like i don't like you anymore i'll unfollow you just do it nobody force you to follow me that's my space yeah you feel free feel free to read or go

100%. But then there's so many good things from it, you know, like I made so many friends from Twitter, for example. Yeah, I think it's been generally very net beneficial for me. But it comes to the territory. Like if you choose to publicly write stuff, you know, you chose for that.

You also get all the weird stuff, you know, it comes with the territory. Do you normally meet them in real life or just keep online discussions? Twitter followers? Twitter friends. I used to go to like the normal meetups. I mean, I still do kind of, but it's really fun, but it's annoying because it becomes...

like i like to have conversations but they will just keep it becomes like interview like you go to me when they keep asking questions and they're like oh i also want to build a startup like how did you do this and it's like faq it's like well i wanted to be more chill like friends and stuff so i i i kind of do meetups but i i generally try to meet like friends like a more

niche kind of personal community of people I know from like chat groups and stuff sometimes if I work with people or if there's a podcast for example sometimes podcast and then I become friends after for example cool can we talk about your music career because I'm very interested in that yeah so so around 2003 way back I was a teenager and

Back then I was doing graphic design online. I was in all these communities. Now GoCreate was a famous one and Yehure, which still exists, these graphic design. It's a different scene in graphic design now. Graphic design now is a lot of websites, web apps. Back then it was, think about posters, flyers, big corporate design work and all these cool people, people like No Pattern. I don't know if anybody still knows them, but they made really cool art and

like i think no pattern was artisan in this community and he i think he ended up making the branding for microsoft windows

10 or something like the wallpaper and stuff and like really cool stuff and uh work with big brands like nike and i also wanted to do that i wanted to do like motion like graphics and i want to do motion graphics like in after effects like these back then you had all these there would be like a show reel which is like a trailer video of people's work like portfolio but it was motion graphics like one minute and it was like crazy shit like i don't know like letters like nike and then flips and then you go through the camera like semi 3d after effects and

crazy stuff and rainbows and colors and so beautiful and I tried to do all that stuff I won like a Qantas design award that was cool I was like teenage I was like wow so cool but I wasn't particularly super good at it and then I went to a festival in Holland because it was an annual festival in my hometown this is four days march the Vierdaagse and then there's these parties in the evening big festival and there was all these artists playing a lot of indie artists also and this guy was playing with his laptop

and it was like maybe 10 people watching me and my friend you know smoking weed and like watching uh as like teenagers we do and this guy was like on a laptop was like well i know how computers work so i can also make music i guess and i checked what app he was using it was a reason propeller had reason tree and i downloaded it and i started making music and

i started uploading the music to like forums like music forums like i was making drum and bass music which is like pendulum like that music and i think now like net sky is famous for example kind of like dubstep kind of similar but a little bit faster i started sending it to labels started sending to the radio it became on the bbc it was a one like bbc competition then i won it was like playlists on bbc radio

it came on bbc radio one this was like 2003 2004 or something and then i started djing also started playing my own music in clubs in holland i started organizing my own events kind of continued i made my own album i released my own album and i pressed it like cds and stuff in the factory you know i sent it out myself in envelopes everywhere

uh people could buy for like i don't know like six dollars or ten dollars or something and so i needed to learn how to accept money i think i used like money bookers because back then stripe didn't exist this was like 2008 or something wow so i'd get money from money bookers and then i would send the package i started uploading these songs to promote the album to youtube and youtube was a video website it was like

not for music it was like the max upload time was like five minutes back then or maybe 10 minutes so i could upload my songs and i made like nice artwork and photoshop because i knew how to do graphics these songs started getting a lot of views they were getting more views than i would should have gotten considering how non-famous i was because i wasn't very famous in drum bass i was like not very famous i was like doing okay you know

And I was like upcoming artists, but these views were getting a lot of views. And I realized this was because nobody else was uploading music to YouTube around 2008, 2009. And so I was like, okay, I'll upload like a mix of my songs, but there was a limit of 10 minutes. So I uploaded a 10 minute mix. And then there was a button in YouTube. You could say like, ask for music.

long upload permission so i tried to do this thing and i got approved and now i could upload like two hour mixes so i started uploading dj mixes of my own mix and my other piece of music and then i started getting messages from artists like hey can i feature on your channel i started featuring my friends djs producers on the channel and all these mix started getting millions of views like insane wow and then i was like okay this might be a thing so

Every week, I would have a new artist on. I would prepare the whole video in After Effects. So I used my kind of motion graphic skills. For example, like I would cut out the artist photo. So like this, I would cut out in Photoshop. And then I would make the background separate. I'd make like a cool background with like 3D stuff. Like...

And this front would kind of move like this. It was all 3D. And people couldn't do motion graphics a lot. So it was perfect. I had all the weird skills, like motion graphics, graphic design, music, audio production, all together. Suddenly, YouTube is for music. So it became the number two biggest channel in Holland for a while.

And like one of the top like five music channels in the world. And then I started getting paid money for it. So I started getting paid from YouTube, like I said, like $2,000, $8,000. Yeah. So the music career kind of pivoted towards a YouTube career, which then pivoted into a nomad career.

So why you stopped doing your music anymore? So this interesting story, I think I've told this many times. There's a limited time something is unknown in a market. So knowing that nobody's uploading music to YouTube, you have that for six months. So more and more people started coming in. Labels started uploading their own music. So music labels who have the rights, right? There was two things. The music I uploaded, I would get, for example, DJ Fresh.

Who I met here was a big drum basically who I met here in Thailand. Actually, I saw him walk and I said, hi, we had drinks really fun. Like a hero of mine. Uh, he was also on my channel. So he would send me a mix. For example, I would upload it. And the problem was that there was Verizon sued YouTube for

I think order big music labels through YouTube because of the copyrights because they weren't paying royalties, right? They weren't paying license fees to the music. So you would start getting copyright claims. As people know on YouTube, when you use our music, get a corporate claim and either your video gets removed or they monetize it, right? So artists with semi music and the labels with semi music, I would upload it and then their licensing agencies, the labels would start

claiming it or taking it down. So something like one further mix I uploaded started getting taken down and then I would have to email the artist like, why is it taken down? He said, sorry, man, it's like our licensing agency. They don't know that I sent you the music. And so I need a lot of phone calls and stuff to get this music back up. Meanwhile, at the same time, everybody's changing their thumbnails on YouTube to hot girls, hot bikini girls. Yeah.

with big boobs because that would get you views so i was like okay i'll try to do the same thing so i would upload a normal video and we would get like you know 50 000 views in a week then i would upload a hot bikini girl photo as a thumbnail and it would get 800 000 views so like i don't know something like 20 000 human nature yeah it was human nature but i didn't feel really good about it i felt like this is not but i had to do it because i was

I had to compete with just stupid, shitty channels who would upload music. They didn't even get sent, but they would get millions of views because they had these hot girls in there. So I did this for a while. I did it for six months. I didn't feel good about it. And then I think when I started working on new projects, like these twelve startups, when that took off, I was like, okay, let's shut this YouTube down or at least stop it. Stop making new episodes because

Money is going down. Copyright is crazy. And the thumbnail thing, it's not a fair way to do business. And at the same time, the YouTube channels who started their own labels, and so they started licensing their own music from the artists, they were really smart. So they didn't have copyright claims because they owned the music. And I probably should have done that. Famous channel UKF, UKF drum base, UKF dubstep, they did it.

And they became the biggest channel, one of the biggest music channels. So a lot of business theory here, like you need to own the rights to this stuff. You need to be in the right position to leverage my skills for like a few years, my graphic YouTube video skills, my network of music. But then it became too difficult. So I got out at the right time, I think. Yeah. It's all about timing. Yeah. And I'll know my list.

You mentioned in Colombia, people start to vote for the hot girl pictures. Exactly. I think it's so much human nature. And the photos are normally just voted by the users and by people who visit the site and they can click a photo. And on Colombia, Medellin, the main photo. So I take the photos from Unsplash automatically. I search for the city name. The robot does that, downloads the photos.

And then the number one voted photo becomes a city picture on Nomadlist. And the city picture on Nomadlist in Medellin was like a girl with big ass. So this is human nature, I guess. I made a filter for that now. I tried to remove it and it worked.

I mean, it's also the taboo. People just click on this stuff or people search for it. I have the same thing today. I added suggested filters on Nomad List. So if you click Europe, you get the other filters people also used in that combination. And the top filters people use in a combination, any combination is Tinder and then it's legal weed. I mean, it's fine. Both are taboo, right? People want to have sex.

do drugs and find a girlfriend or boyfriend, which is fine, but it's a little bit taboo. But I think it's kind of beautiful about data that it shows the truth of humans. Yeah, I like that. It's not like a serious corporate website. Just everything is script. Yeah, it gets so bored if you make it bored. But I did add a filter, I think, for the weed now to kind of skip it. But who cares?

So what's your vision for Nomad List in the future and remote OK? Well, I think with COVID now, remote work went absolutely mainstream. Like everybody now knows remote work. And before that was like, I would say 10% people worked remotely, maybe even less outside US. And now it's like really high, like maybe 70% or something, 80%. This is insane. And my revenue went crazy because it's all about remote work. So it all went like,

It's been doubling for two years now. So it's almost 5x compared to before COVID. So the chart is like insane. It's like this. So I think the future will be, I don't think necessarily everybody's going to be digital nomads. I think people are going to move to different places that give them a better work-life balance. You see a lot of people in America move to snow resorts. They become like, they want to be snowboarding, skiing and working a little bit.

You see a lot of people move to Miami, for example, to find their subculture, right? Crypto culture. Austin is kind of like the Joe Rogan kind of culture vibe. People move to Portugal, it's kind of like the Europeans or the nomads everywhere that are moving there for a nice life and a healthy life and surfing and stuff. You see more and more of these places with a specific sub-niche of topic and certain types of people. And I think that's amazing. And nomad lists will only...

I guess keep trying to help you find those places that fit with you, right? That's why you have all those filters so you can find those places. And Remote OK, I don't know. It's just a job board, so I hope it helps a lot of people find jobs. I think it gets like 5,000 job posts a year or something. So it's 5,000 people finding a remote job hopefully per year. And I think it's really exciting for me because I've been so long in this remote work thing and Nomad thing. Since I started April 2013,

And I've seen it go from 20 people in Chiang Mai to now hundreds of millions, probably, you know, soon a billion people, probably.

I made a prediction in 2015 that there would be 1 billion nomads, like remote workers in 2035. And I was like canceled almost for that prediction. I was like, you're crazy. You cannot say that. What? No, because a billion people is way too many. People were like absolutely untrue. And then COVID happened. And now people say this is probably already maybe there. Like it's 2022, so it's still, you know, eight plus five,

13 years so yeah i think we're gonna make that yeah true what's your opinion on the dating market for nomads because i see so many singles yeah so i think it's very difficult so i had a relationship like quite some years uh which worked because and we would spend like three months together and then one month i would spend with my friend with her we'd go on a trip also nomad and then one month with my friends they worked really well i think it's i mean i i think it doesn't matter if you have relationships

At home, not being nomads, like relationships, you know, often end, you know, like it's normal. And sometimes things don't work anymore. I think with nomads, it's hard that, like there's this perception that these nomads, that they move around a lot. This is not true. Like most nomads stay very long. They stay months in one place. They move around because of visa, you see. But now with COVID, they've really slowed down. And like a lot of people now live in Mexico or live in Portugal or live in Thailand. I think it's hard to have a long-term relationship if you're

two people are not physically in the same place, you know, or choose to be like long-term relationship, sorry, long distance relationships. I don't think work at all. Some person needs to move to the other person or you both need to move to the same place. You cannot have relationship over zoom. You know, it just doesn't work. I do think it was cool that you meet a more diverse type of people like nomads. The problem with like nomads dating locals is that locals have their own life in a certain place. The nomad is visiting that place.

Unless that nomad wants to live in that place for the rest of their life or the local wants to, you know, move to move, also become nomad or move to some other place. But that's also why I think I'm trying to push people to move to Lisbon because it helps if all our, like everybody has a problem with our internet friends are everywhere. We want to move our internet friends to one place.

you know for dating but also for friends like it's good to have all these people and all these people that kind of think alike and I think same thing happening in America with Austin and Miami yeah Joe Rogan yeah Joe Rogan is moving all his friends and everybody to Austin so cool so cool a lot of the crypto people are moving everybody to Miami right I think it's the first time where you see and man I hoped for this so long for years that the people that

are the same subcultures on the internet will physically move to each other and it's happening now but yeah I think moving around every few months forever will not give you necessarily a good thing in life although I did that with I did it with my ex-girlfriend I did we did Nomad for for many years and for a few years it was really cool it was really cool like 2014 to 2018 or something you know it was not without problems but it was it's almost as if you make a relationship like 10 times

as much intense or experiencing because you are like we went from I think like Thailand to Europe to Bali to Eastern Europe to Latin America like all the way all these places and it was very intense but very like really cool memories I have yeah go to the new place explore have the new adventures together yeah and like now of course we don't but I think it helps to have a base

somewhere and then go from that base. Like now I live in Portugal and I can go to Bali or go to Thailand for a few months in the winter and then come back to Portugal. And as long as you come back to the same place, the core of friendship is proximity and repetition. So proximity is being near each other. So live near each other and repetition is seeing each other every time. So if you go to the same place again, and if you go back to the same place again, you will have friends inevitably.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I pick up Lisbon as my base. Because New Zealand is too far away from everywhere. Oh my God. Like if I hear people move to New Zealand, like, do you know Pascal Pixel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Yeah. I met him through the digital nomad. Cool guy. So he always tells me he wants to move to New Zealand. And I'm like, you will absolutely...

You get depressed there because it's so isolating. It's so lonely there. Like this is never going to work. Yeah, exactly. That's why I left. Even though it's nice nature, you know. And I do feel like through the COVID, the government lockdown for 18 months, it affected people's mental health so much. All their focus is on a few COVID cases. Oh, we got another one.

I think they're living in a different reality now. I can't talk to my New Zealand friend anymore. And Europe is like hundreds of thousands of days. Yeah, we don't care anymore, but they are very cultured about a few cases. It's very strange what this pandemic is giving us insights into of countries, of peoples, of even friends of mine who changed radically. I probably changed radically too, but changed radically. A lot of people went...

super against anti-government, you know, a lot of people went like way too pro-government, were like "I'll do anything the government tells me". Everyone has their own little reality bubble, what they think about COVID and all this stuff. Yeah, that's why I like to talk to digital nomads, because they all travel different parts of the world. They have more wide view of the world. I do believe that. Yeah, I do believe there's a lot of examples of that. I do think that's true. Yeah, cool. Okay.

Nice to meet you Camille, it was really fun. Yeah, very nice to meet you, nice to talk to you. I hope to see you in this one in May or April or something. Yes, let me know when you are here. Let's have nice wine and tapas. Good idea.