Pieter Levels
Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs his internet startups alone — Nomads.com, Remote OK, Hoodmaps, Photo AI and Interior AI — and has written about it at levels.io since 2013. Posts as @levelsio.
Pieter Levels did not write this page. We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it.
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1 Sept 2026
Our reading
Their wordsIn most of the world there is: no real willingness to solve problems nor an acceptance of people offering to solve their problems (out of pride) simply too much regulation so the problem cannot be solved without a license or long approval time very low standards of what is deemed acceptable so the problem isn't seen as a problem in the first place
↗You stop wondering why the US is so insanely rich when you travel the rest of the worldlevels.io
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1 Sept 2026
Our reading
Their wordsI think you have the real economic effects of AI companies sucking up entire industries now (a lot where indie hackers operate) I do think the SaaSpocalypse is at least partly real
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1 Sept 2026
Our reading
Their wordsSo indie hackers are pivoting toward content, audience and distribution to find some moat, essentially becoming influencers
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1 Sept 2026
Our reading
Their wordsA regular boring but non-superficial SaaS app would do well 5 years ago but now it might not get anyone to sign up because it's so easy to vibe code by tens of thousands of other people
- 1 day earlier
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31 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsThere is no reason NOT to have every single email you get routed through an agent / LLM / API to be scored and approved or rejected And then the approved emails ordered by importance It's crazy this isn't a feature of Gmail, Fastmail etc AI could permanently fix email!
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31 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsThe safety guardrails in a way make it more dangerous not less I think because after rejecting you it becomes kind of a pedantic child that will just reject whatever If in that moment your server will go down and it feels it's related it could just reject fixing it
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31 Aug 2026
Our reading
Every large language model is trained on billions of pages of copyrighted data
Their wordsAlso the irony knowing that every single LLM is trained on billions of pages of copyrighted data
↗I keep getting rejected by Claude for the most benign things nowlevels.io
- 2 days earlier
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29 Aug 2026
Our reading
When something you make attracts a lot of irrational haters, you are usually on to something.
Their wordsWhen something you make get lots of irrational haters, usually you're on to something
↗Omarchy by DHH passes the irrational haters test with flying colourslevels.io
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29 Aug 2026
Our reading
AI video can now be generated faster than you can watch it.
Their wordsToday is a very historical moment for AI video generation You can now generate AI video faster than you can watch it Before it'd take let's say 2-5 minutes to generate 15 seconds of video @fal made a post-trained Minimax H3 variant called Max which is 50x faster than the original but still maintains quality It generates 15 seconds of video in 9 seconds!
↗You can now generate AI video faster than you can watch itlevels.io
- 6 days earlier
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23 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsEuropean governments and thus the EU too is losing lots of tax income from Europeans fleeing Next on the agenda is the European Exit Tax and after that I think they will try to add Worldwide Income Tax (like the US already has) meaning it doesn't matter where you live in the world as a European citizen, the EU will tax you for your entire income!
↗I think the EU will try to add Worldwide Income Tax after the European Exit Taxlevels.io
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23 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsI think most high skilled Europeans are happy to pay (even high) taxes That is, if the government does a great job like Singapore or Dubai or Korea or Japan and most things work well You pay the government for a service and you get safe cities, great public services and great healthcare back
- 5 days earlier
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18 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsThe chart of housing affordability is almost a direct inverse of how many new homes are built It's that simple Build more houses!
- 1 day earlier
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17 Aug 2026
Our reading
Day trading and technical analysis are proven not to work.
Their wordsBut he's only lost money because he chose to study day trading and technical analysis Both are proven to be bullshit by endless amounts of studies
↗Day trading and technical analysis are proven to be bullshitlevels.io
- 9 days earlier
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8 Aug 2026
Our reading
Their wordsThe problem is if nobody creates new content anymore and just asks their AI every question, the AI has nothing to train on anymore
↗The Dead Internet Theory could become real if AI replaces all human content creationlevels.io
- 10 days earlier
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29 Jul 2026
Our reading
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities.
Their wordsThe West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities
↗The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilitieslevels.io
- 3 days earlier
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26 Jul 2026
Our reading
Their wordsI'm seeing a trend here of declining revenue and traffic with indiehackers On my own projects too Maybe big VC products too but I wouldn't know cause they don't share revenue To me it seems clear BigAI is cannibalizing everything that used to be apps
↗BigAI is cannibalizing everything that used to be apps for indiehackerslevels.io
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26 Jul 2026
Our reading
Most SaaS subscriptions can now be replaced by software you vibecode for yourself.
Their wordsI cancelled and then vibecoded 100% of my SaaS subscriptions I only pay for domains, server hosting and storage and AI APIs
↗I cancelled all my SaaS subscriptions and vibecoded 100% of them myselflevels.io
- 4 days earlier
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22 Jul 2026
Our reading
France and Germany will ban Tesla's full self-driving to protect their own car industry.
Their wordsThe French and Germans will ban Tesla FSD to protect their car industry that's being decimated by Chinese EVs and Tesla Allowing Tesla full self driving would make it so popular that it'd probably the end of their car industry Because no French or German car has self driving like Tesla, many customers would probably flock to Tesla
↗The French and Germans will ban Tesla FSD to protect their car industrylevels.io
- 1 day earlier
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21 Jul 2026
Our reading
Their wordsSo you went from a business chain of customer > app > ai model provider To customer > ai model provider The app layer is possibly getting removed!
- 1 day earlier
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20 Jul 2026
Our reading
Their wordsIt's pretty clear to me that superintelligence is here and it's more powerful than us and it's moving where things are going now, not humans anymore
↗Superintelligence has passed us and we're all running after the carrotlevels.io
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20 Jul 2026
Our reading
AI has equalised everyone: coding, building and execution are no longer a differentiator.
Their wordsSo AI has made everybody just as capable as everyone else, it equalized everyone in the world, as in everyone can make everything (software, music, images, art etc) now and everyone is equal, at least in the digital realm now
↗Superintelligence has passed us and we're all running after the carrotlevels.io
- 2 days earlier
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18 Jul 2026
Our reading
Their wordsYou think this is crazy low but ~5% ownership probably the most common final % most VC funded startups will have when they work out, especially when you have a co-founder
↗5% ownership is probably the most common final stake for VC funded startup founderslevels.io
- 1 day earlier
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17 Jul 2026
Our reading
Restricting US AI models does not work: China builds better ones and everyone switches to them.
Their wordsUS: restricts US AI model because too dangerous China: builds better Chinese AI model Everyone: switches to Chinese AI model This is why restricting models probably doesn't work, it's much more preferable (for US) to have everyone on US AI models so at least they can monitor what everyone is doing
↗US restricts AI models so China builds better ones and everyone switcheslevels.io
- 3 days earlier
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14 Jul 2026
Our reading
Their wordsAll you really need today to build a business is 100% free open source software that charges you $0/mo a VPS server an API to do some required AI stuff some R2/S3 file hosting
↗All you need to build a business is free open source software a VPS an AI API and R2/S3levels.io
- 2 weeks earlier
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28 Jun 2026
Our reading
Letting a coding agent live-edit the production server works fine in practice.
Their wordsBut now with Claude Code on my VPS in the last year, it just live edits on my production server, which sounds like it should go wrong but it just doesn't, it's very careful and only twice in 12 months messed up which meant my site didn't load for 10 seconds which is OK
↗I've been coding almost solely on my VPS with Claude Code for almost a year nowlevels.io
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28 Jun 2026
Our reading
AI agents and AI coding will run on servers and from the cloud first, not on your laptop.
Their wordsI agree with @theo completely, it's clear to me this is where it's going, also seeing @karpathy with Claude moving to the cloud (via Slack etc), I think AI "agents" and AI coding will operate on servers / from the cloud first
↗I've been coding almost solely on my VPS with Claude Code for almost a year nowlevels.io
- 7 months earlier
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17 Nov 2025
Our reading
Their wordsI just realized the only 2 countries left with actual substantial startup activity now are literally only the US and China The rest of the world can't really do startups, doesn't have the funding, can't grow them and it's more like performative hobby projects for their governments Which might tell us where the future wealth will be concentrated in the world
↗Only the US and China have actual substantial startup activity nowlevels.io