Pieter Levels

Re political situation in Thailand: Media is massively exaggerating. I've been here through the protests in BKK & Chiang Mai, through the curfew and coup. It has nothing to do with us. As long as you don't stand in the middle of a stone throwing competition - which you shouldn't anywhere in the world - you're safe. It's very easy to avoid these things. In daily life you won't see anything that is affected by the situation - except maybe emptier hotels.

Keep an eye on the visa situation. Back to back visa runs over land are/will be a bit trickier from now on. Plane tickets of local low cost carriers are ridiculously cheap and plenty and will solve this issue every 30 days (I'm writing this out of Vientiane, Laos for this very reason. Visa run by plane + extended weekend to get to know Vientiane. They have a coworking space here as well: https://www.facebook.com/tohlao). You can also apply for a proper tourist visa in your home country and in countries around Thailand. This gives you piece of mind for 60-90 days. For a long term commitment you could consider an educational visa for one year. Language schools and even muay thai schools can provide you with them. If you attend them is a whole different story (some schools are entirely built around this concept.). Both - Chiang Mai and Bangkok are amazing places to live and bootstrap. When you come to BKK, make sure to check out http://hubbathailand.com/ - best coworking space I've ever come across. Peter from https://levels.io/…

Good software rarely makes money by itself - you'll need to have a focus on validating your market, acquiring new users and finding features people would be willing to pay for.

levelsio is a great example of this. The guy is actually graduated with a Master degree in "Business Administration, Entrepreneurship & New Business Venturing" [1]. His main focus is on business development [2][3][4]. Software development is just something he needs to do in order to grow his business ideas.

Nomad List is great not only because levelsio created a nice product, but also because he successfully built a community and did great marketing to promote the "digital nomad" way of life.

So question to yourself: Why do you want to do this for? Creating a business or creating a software?

If your main motivation is to create a business, then design your software development cycle to spend plenty of time focusing on the business needs.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/levelsio

[2] Greatly handles communication - https://twitter.com/levelsio

[3] His blog posts are designed around visibility, product placement and referral links - https://levels.io/how-i-build-my-minimum-viable-products/

[4] He uses whatever technology is the quickest / most convenient for his business ideas (nomadlist started as a Google spreadsheet, then as a PHP website).

You've probably already seen, levelsio's tweet: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817

I also like one of his old posts: https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/

Yeah, building something people want (and are willing to pay) is pretty hard, and trying to sell early/often is a good way to reduce your market risk. I'm more on the "build something I want", and as soon as I have something "I like", iterate on the communication/go-to-market, more than the product. I think this is more aligned with founders like Brian Chesky that launched (and failed) multiple times, but kept on going because they really believed in their idea (though I'm still on the failing part).

There are many Ask HN posts about launching which you might find useful:
https://payperrun.com/%3E/search?displayParams=
{%22q%22:%22Ask%20HN:%20how%20to%20launch?%22,%22ds%22:%22askhn%22}

I got into one bagging a few months ago after looking at Pieter Levels blog post about it https://levels.io/carry-on-world-travel/ and have been operating from one since the 15th of April.

Bought a minaal 3.0 Cary On after going through the r/onebag community. Also bought some more equipment like an anker power core. Have to do a wash cycle weekly. A down jacket hangs off the bag. A laptop, kindle and my phone are the only electronics I have.

Works very well but in Europe you have to pay for carry on on a lot of airlines and otherwise you can only have something that fits under the seat in front of you.

The minimalism makes life easier. Only one pair of shoes & a pair of flip flops. Depend on the hostel / airbnb to provide a towel. Like Vitalik I have a weeks worth of clothes in the bag and one me.

Agreed, I landed on a stack that just works and I've been rinsing and repeating ever since. Laravel, InertiaJS, Tailwind, DigitalOcean, Ploi. I've shipped several projects, have a starter template that I've used to build entire very complex financial systems to simple couple page apps. Made my millions and furthered my career. Not to mention how automated I have stuff setup to handle dependency and package upgrades [1], everything logged to appropriate slack channels [2]. My main income nowadays is just maintenance and that is almost no work. Love php [3].

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613037

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22345150#22345721

[3] - https://levels.io/how-i-build-my-minimum-viable-products/

You may have heard of Pieter Levels[0], the creator of Nomad List, RemoteOK and Hoodmaps. I'm assuming you are planning to learn more about how to make a startup. There are two core resources that I find very useful from his writings.

- He documented[1] how he build Hoodmaps[2] while streaming. He got a functional app built as soon as he could and built upon user feedback. You learn how he bootstrapped his way up and you realize how to do that.

- He wrote a book on how to bootstrap. That book[3] was made online while collaborating with others. It was sort of a community effort. I think it is very well written.

[0] https://levels.io/
[1] https://levels.io/hoodmaps/
[2] https://hoodmaps.com/
[3] https://makebook.io/