Pieter Levels

I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups, because most people in startups, 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 a designer. I'm the developer. I make everything. I make the logo.

So for me, I'm much more scrappy. And because I don't have funding, like I need to go fast. I need to make things fast to see if an idea works, right? I have an idea in my mind and I build it, build like a micro mini startup. And I launch it very quickly, like within two weeks or something of building it.

And I check if there's demand and 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 see if the idea is validated. And most ideas don't work, like as you say, most fail.

I think it's very rapid. And it's like, if I compare it 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 invented all the AI stuff years ago and they never really shipped. Like they could have shipped JetGPT, 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 didn't do it. And it's because these big organizations, 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 that legal for like, oh, can you vouch for this? You know, I can just go and ship.

No, but I do wear like shorts a lot. And I usually just wear shorts and no t-shirt because I'm always too hot. Like I'm always overheating.

And now, you know, I'm still wearing this for you.

I think it's because since I go to the gym, I'm always too hot.

Man, over press.

Yeah.

But it feels good because you're doing like, you win. Because when you, what is it? I do 60 kilos, so it's like 120 pounds or something. 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. A victory pose. I do bench press squats, deadlifts.

Yeah. Because it acts like therapy for me, you know?

Which is controversial to say. Like if I say this on Twitter, people get angry.

in it in nature yeah like there's something about that physical physical yeah toil yeah my dad taught me that my dad always does like a construction in the house like he's always 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 i'm depressed or something um

He says like, get a big, like what do you call it? Like a big mountain of sand or something from construction and just get a shovel and bring it to the other side and just, you know, do like physical labor, do like hard work and do something, like set a goal, do something. And I kind of did that with startups too.

Yeah. Yeah.

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 then he wants to go to the next room, you know? But I think... It's very metaphorical for work. Because 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, it gives you something to wake up in the morning and like, you know, have coffee and kiss your girlfriend. And then you have like a goal. Today I'm going to fix this feature. Today I'm going to fix this bug or something. I'm going to do something. You have something to wake up to, you know? And I think maybe especially as a man, also women, but you need a hard work, you know?

You need like an endeavor, I think.