I went through 126.8K tweets & found 7 patterns to Pieter’s success
Pieter is the OG of digital nomads.
He’s a serial entrepreneur who’s amassed over 422K followers on Twitter and built startups from just his laptop.
These include:
Most remarkable of all?
Pieter has built these successful businesses with zero employees.
“For Photo AI, I’ve hired an AI dev for awhile to help me set up AI models on GPU servers, but everything else is by me.” — Pieter Levels
He’s lived in 40+ countries and 150+ cities — from Korea to Brazil — and he’s never worked for someone else. He’s always been self-employed.
What the actual f*ck.
It’s a crazy story.
I first heard about Pieter in 2019, and I later signed up for Nomad List. However, I’ve never dug into his story properly until now.
Over the last 2 months, I’ve read through all of his 126.8K tweets because I wanted to learn:
- How he’s grown such a huge Twitter following
- How he’s built multiple six-figure businesses
- Nuggets of wisdom he’s shared since 2014
Let’s go!
*A quick note on my research methods
This research process — from start to finish — has taken me about 60 days.
(Around 60 hours.)
- I used Twitter’s advanced search feature to look through all of Pieter’s top tweets
- I pulled the most interesting tweets and blog posts into Notion
- Finally, I sorted all these tweets into this Google Doc
Alright, how has Pieter grown his businesses using Twitter?
Pieter’s following and business success are linked.
Here are seven patterns I’ve spotted.
Pattern #1: Pieter is ALWAYS messaging people and fixing bugs
Pieter treats Twitter like a conversation.
There are countless examples of him going back and forth with followers about his websites.
In this tweet, he engages with his followers when they ask questions or offer suggestions:
In fact, he’s having these conversations and fixing bugs so much that he set up an “Ideas + Bugs” website.
Here, people can message their suggestions:
He doesn’t just spark conversations about his websites.
In this tweet, he asks his followers to share their “battle stations”.
And in this tweet, he encourages his followers to retweet his post about one of his businesses. (It got 8.7K retweets):
The tweet directly above is genius because:
- It rewarded his followers
- Did something new (copycats have since tried similar marketing)
- Fit his “indie hacker” brand of beating the system & being radically transparent
- Uses an aesthetically pleasing image
- Actually worked!
Pieter’s willing to throw the odd curve ball out there, too.
In these tweets, he chats with his followers about — of all things — butter cakes:
All of these interactions spark engagement and build trust.
They also shine a spotlight on Pieter’s businesses.
Pieter wins.
Pattern #2: Pieter is radically transparent
We’ve already seen this.
Pieter shares his monthly revenue figures in his Twitter bio.
But there’s more to transparency than just numbers. In his tweets, Pieter shares the behind the scenes of building his businesses and the decisions he makes.
For example, he talks through his decision to add facial recognition to Nomad List:
He’s also shared:
- The code you need to use to build a jobs board
- The profit he’s made selling hoodies
- The daily sales for avatarai.me
- The tech stack he uses
- The number of AI photos generated on photoai.com. “Over 1 million AI photos per month are now generated […]”
A few years ago, Pieter even shared his monthly business costs:
Nothing is off-limits.
This complete transparency helps Pieter build authority. It’s also great marketing.
People trust what he says.
Pattern #3: Pieter shares thought-provoking, emotive content
Whereas most people share pithy one-liners that we’ve all heard a billion times before, Pieter does not.
So his tweets pop off.
Take this one. It’s vulnerable, honest, and rubs against the “work-life balance” movement:
Then there’s the demo video he recorded with his “AI therapist”.
It’s INCREDIBLE.
(It’s also great marketing):
Pieter loves a good old meme.
Here’s a classic about Airbnb.
Again, it’s on-brand, and it got over 1 million views:
Going back to transparency, Pieter also shared a graph of his monthly revenue when Covid became a thing:
Again, there are countless examples to choose from.
From flying like a bird around NYC to losing money through inflation to getting a shoutout from Kendrick Lamar, Pieter’s tweets are packed with feelings.
This is why I loved going through them.
And it’s also why he’s winning.
Pattern #4: Pieter’s never afraid to argue his opinions
… And he argues them strongly
That’s not to say I agree with everything he says. I don’t.
For example, in this 2014 tweet, Pieter argued that most jobs in the US are being lost to automation.
(I disagree because we see that other jobs are created when new industries emerge.)
Other times, I wholeheartedly agree with Pieter.
Take this tweet about “gurus”:
And sometimes, Pieter throws out curveballs that get people talking.
This one about parachutes for planes is a great example:
No matter the angle, tweets like this make you pick a side.
And Pieter rarely backs down.
All of this stokes engagement and gets more eyeballs on his content.
Pattern #5: Pieter’s not afraid to ask for help
Asking for help is effective for many reasons:
- It gives him lots of data points
- It increases tweet engagement
- It raises awareness of his upcoming projects/startups
Take this example. Pieter ran a poll on subtitle suggestions for his book, Make:
Not all of these tweets for help are designed to attract attention.
Sometimes, they’re genuine pleas for help.
Here, Pieter asks a technical question about using Cloudfare:
While in this tweet, Pieter asks for help using Stripe.
The difference here is the CTO of Stripe actually stepped in to help.
Of course, this made for a great story, which Pieter was more than happy to share:
Why wouldn’t he?
It’s a unique story that gave him the opportunity to tag Stripe.
And this tagging led to more PR and eyeballs.
Pattern #6: Pieter’s a funny guy!
His off-the-cuff tweets are some of the funniest I’ve ever read.
Take this one about Bali:
And this one about a fake Starbucks:
This one might just be my favourite.
If you know, you know:
Pieter isn’t just a one-trick pony.
Humour shows the depth of his character and makes him relatable.
If he was just arguing all the time, he wouldn’t be as popular.
Pattern #7: Pieter celebrates people doing cool sh*t
This is one of Pieter’s qualities I admire most.
As well as lifting people up, Pieter knows sharing cool sh*t can highlight his own beliefs.
This tweet about a Brazilian nomad is a great example:
Often, Pieter doesn’t support businesses directly. He just points people their way.
In this tweet, for example, Pieter suggests an alternative to Typeform.
No doubt his tweet drove lots of traffic to YouForm:
This tweet is perhaps my favourite of all.
Pieter asks his followers if they know any “Indie Makers” making lots of money:
It’s one of my favourites because of the replies.
I went through a bunch of them, which gave me interesting people to follow.
(And lots of future article ideas!)
Takeaways
Of course, Pieter’s ability to spot real problems and code solutions for them is a huge part of what’s made him so successful.
This shouldn’t go unnoticed.
However, what makes Pieter so universally admired is how transparent he’s been over the past decade.
Yes — decade.
He’s been doing this for a long, long time:
“Took 82 months of work!”
He’s also been putting out lots of projects — and not all of them have been successful.
In fact, only a few have actually made him any money:
So what have we learned from Pieter’s business success?
Here’s a quick summary:
- #1: Speak with your audience — not at them. Pieter is always having conversations with his followers and fixing bugs. It’s a two-way street.
- #2: Be transparent. You don’t have to be as transparent as Pieter about EVERYTHING. Just remember that people connect to your rough edges. Don’t hide them.
- #3: Share thought-provoking, emotive content. If you share the same pithy one-liners as everybody else, you’ll blend in. Be more than background noise. Stand out.
- #4: Stand up for what you believe in. Strangers on the internet might disagree with you — and that’s okay. Be like Pieter. Fight your corner.
- #5: Ask for help often. Pieter still does this, despite his success. He’s humble enough to know that he’s not an expert in everything. You can always learn more.
- #6: If something makes you laugh, share it! Other people will probably find it funny, too — and it’ll bring you closer to them.
- #7: Celebrate people who are doing cool sh*t! Karma will pay you back.
If I was to sum up Pieter’s success in one sentence?
It would be this:
Put in the time to build your skills and build trust with your audience, and keep shipping products.
Go get it!