// transcript — 287 segments
0:00 Intro
0:01 just think of him as the ultimate version or the max version of Indie
0:05 developer from the money-making projects he's shared publicly his monthly income
0:10 reaches an impressive $300,000 hi I'm David Kim Welcome to my
0:15 new series as a former entrepreneur and YouTuber with over 200k subscribers I am
0:20 now an anonymous Indie developer this series explores Indie developers
0:24 Journeys analyzing their successes and failures to provide insights for
0:28 aspiring developers and interested viewers join and me as we explore the
0:34 Who is Levelsio
0:34 world of Indie development together today I'll share the story of a standout
0:38 independent developer known as lelio he's arguably the most famous Indie
0:43 developer just think of him as the ultimate version or the max version of
0:48 Indie developer and here's why levelo is incredibly prolific he's built over 70
0:52 products which have enriched his experience in both success and failure
0:58 among these 70 plus products 95% of them failed however the remaining 5% of his
1:03 successful projects have performed exceptionally well with several turning
1:08 into profitable Ventures he has a website called levels.io projects where
1:13 you can see the Journey of his project development from the money-making
1:16 projects he's shared publicly his monthly income reaches an impressive
1:21 $300,000 that's an impressive figure by any standard in addition he's living the
1:26 quintessential digital Nomad lifestyle traveling freely to over 40 countries
1:32 and 150 cities his Twitter profile picture perfectly captures this Carefree
1:36 Vibe it shows him casually coding on a laptop slouched comfortably on a couch
1:41 his high profile isn't just about the money though it's largely due to his
1:45 openness in Sharing both the ups and downs of his journey he's built a
1:49 reputation for being genuinely transparent about everything he does
1:53 even Elon Musk has taken notice of him once musk interacted with him on Twitter
1:57 that single interaction flooded him with new users and significantly boosted his
2:02 income he joked about it saying something like just one mention from
2:06 musk and my income skyrockets it really shows a influence musk wields I mean
2:10 imagine if musk suddenly tweeted that his biggest rival was David Kim you'd
2:15 probably see people lining up to invest millions in my projects that's the kind
2:19 of impact we're talking about let's talk about lelio's background he was born in
2:24 the 80s in the Netherlands his dad was a doctor and his mom was a lawyer but his
2:28 dad had always dreamed of working in film why didn't he well after World War
2:32 II Rotterdam was in Ruins from German bombing the whole country was struggling
2:36 so lelio's Grandma told his dad forget movies you're going to be a doctor and
2:40 that's what happened this experience made lelio's dad pretty open-minded
2:44 about his son's career choices that freedom played a crucial role in shaping
2:48 lelio into the independent developer he is today um there's a sweet ending to
2:53 his dad's story after retiring he went back to his first love movies he's now
2:57 pursuing a PhD in film history reigniting his original Dream lelio's
3:02 first taste of entrepreneurial success actually came from music it all started
3:07 when he attended his hometown's annual Music Festival there he spotted someone
3:12 creating glitch music and got curious he walked around the stage peing at the
3:16 software on the musician's laptop back home he downloaded the exact same
3:20 software and dove into making music soon he became a DJ in Netherlands producing
3:25 his own tracks at around age 20 while in college he started uploading his
3:29 electronic mixes to YouTube and began earning from these uploads some months
3:35 he'd make a few th000 and at his Peak he earned as much as $8,000 in a month not
3:41 bad at all at 27 levio spent most of his money on a laptop and a backpack leaving
3:46 him with only $1,000 in his pocket he flew to Asia eager to Kickstart his life
3:51 as a digital Nomad however things didn't go as smoothly as he'd hoped he was
3:56 scraping by earning just $500 a month eventually he had to head back to his
4:01 parents' place in the Netherlands this setback hit him hard leaving him feeling
4:04 depressed and questioning his future looking at his peers he couldn't shake
4:10 off the feeling of being a loser in 2014 battling depression and dwindling income
4:14 lelio made a bold and life-changing decision to develop 12 products in just
4:20 one year so the idea to develop 12 products in a year was inspired by
4:25 someone named Jennifer who' created 180 websites in 180 days which was even more
4:31 impressive while lelio's challenge indeed led to some big wins one of his
4:34 most successful products from this project was Nomad list it's a real-time
4:40 index of cities ideal for digital Nomads to live and work in the website rates
4:44 each City based on factors like living costs weather and internet speed it's
4:49 like a travel guide but specifically for people who want to work while wandering
4:53 the world once you've picked your city it provides a toolkit to help you settle
4:57 in including a co-working space a SIM card and hotel Nomad list MVP version
5:04 cost just $100 to build upon launch it quickly shot to the top of both Hacker
5:08 News and product hunt catapulting lelio's annual income to $200,000 but here's the really
5:15 impressive part levelo launched Nomad list back in 2015 and 9 years later it's
5:20 still generating around $60,000 per month this shows that even
5:25 small products can be highly profitable and if you find the right Niche can have
5:30 a surprisingly long lifespan level has truly mastered the secret of building in
5:35 public in 2017 he hosted a 4-day live stream where viewers watched him build a
5:39 complete webat from scratch starting with just one line of code in Just 2 and
5:44 1 half hours he had the first version up and running the live stream was a
5:48 massive hit shooting him to the front page of Reddit the product he built
5:52 during the stream called Hood Maps quickly racked up over 300,000 users
5:57 after gaining enough attention lelio took his marketing efforts to the next
6:01 level level While others might settle for writing a few blog posts or creating
6:05 a small tool he opted to publish an ebook in March 2018 lelio dropped his
6:11 ebook make the book focuses on how to build a s project and turn it into a
6:15 profitable startup this is where level se's marketing genius truly shines take
6:20 a look at the book's slogan learn to build profitable startups the Indie way
6:24 each word in the slogan is crafted with surgical Precision in just a few words
6:29 lelio manages to convey the book's value its practical approach and its target
6:34 audience by 2019 lelio's annual income reached $1 million he continues to work
6:40 alone without hiring anyone he finds the greatest joy in building everything
6:44 himself in a podcast interview lelio shared his unique view on startups and
6:49 success he believes that as people grow older and earn higher salaries leaving
6:53 their jobs to start a business becomes harder that's why he thinks it's
6:57 important to start entrepreneurship early he believes entrepreneurship is
7:02 way closer to creativity in arts than to corporate big business this perspective
7:06 lightly comes from his creative personality and background in music for
7:10 product development levelsio consistently follows the shotgun
7:16 strategy the idea is to rapidly develop multiple products or features instead of
7:20 putting all your eggs in one basket especially by creating various products
7:25 for different user groups this way you're not relying on your own
7:28 subjective judgment about what makes a good product instead instead you're
7:32 letting the market decide if a product performs well great keep it and nurture
7:38 it if it underperforms for a while cut your losses and move on I couldn't agree
7:43 more with this strategy um lelio's shotgun strategy truly paid off
7:47 particularly after the success of nomad list he leveraged this win to create a
7:52 series of complimentary products one standout product is remote okay a job
7:57 board for remote work opportunities he quickly launched an MPV for remote okay
8:02 first then he fine-tuned its features based on feedback from Reddit users
8:06 remot okay soon claimed the top spot on product hunt in 2017 lelio received
8:12 three acquisition offers for remote okay but he thought the offers were too low
8:16 and his followers advised him to hold on to it it turned out to be a wise
8:22 decision in 2018 remote 's Revenue began to climb by February 2019 it was
8:28 generating $35,000 per month as time went on and the pandemic hit in late
8:32 2019 many people found themselves stuck at home searching for jobs online this
8:36 situation played right into remote okay's strengths by 2021 when remote
8:42 work was at its peak remote ok's monthly income skyrocketed to
8:46 $140,000 originally remote okay was called noad jobs by November 2021 the
8:53 site had become so profitable that lelio decided to invest $100,000 to buy the
8:59 remote okay domain name you're probably thinking $100,000 for a domain name that's way
9:05 too much but back in 2013 I also spent $100,000 on a domain hotdeals.com and
9:11 you know what that website is still making good money today so from my
9:16 perspective investing in a great domain name for a profitable project is worth
9:20 every penny it strengthens your brand makes your product easier to find and
9:24 remember and gives a real boost to your SEO the pandemic gave remote okay an
9:29 unexpected boost pushing it ual recurring Revenue into the millions
9:33 leoso didn't keep this success to himself he went on Hacker News to thank
9:38 everyone and announced he would donate 5% of the income to stripe this sincere
9:42 and humble act earned him a lot of Goodwill in the Tech Community in 2021
9:48 his annual income ranged from $1 to $2 million however not all of this came
9:53 from his products about 30% was from investments in ETFs and crypto in
9:59 October 2022 lelio ventured into the AI field with Avatar AI within just 10 days
10:06 it generated $100,000 in sales this success was largely due to perfect
10:10 Market timing AI image generation was just taking off making it an ideal
10:14 moment for this kind of product however it wasn't just luck leio success here
10:19 came down to two key factors identifying the right opportunity and moving fast to
10:24 capitalize on it in fact lelio even had a friendly competition with Danny posma
10:28 to see who could launch their AI image generation product first unsurprisingly
10:35 given lelio's speed he won that race stay tuned for a future episode where I
10:39 might share Danny's story level's approach to product development often
10:43 has a scrappy startup Vibe take Avatar AI for example within 24 hours of launch
10:49 it had 1,000 users uploading photos however at the time level hadn't
10:54 implemented any automation he manually input prompts for each photo to generate
10:59 corresponding images with users flooding in you can imagine how swamped he was
11:03 trying to keep up only later did he gradually automate the platform this
11:08 method while initially labor intensive is actually quite practical for Indie
11:13 developers the idea is to get the product out there with minimal upfront
11:18 cost then iterate and improve based on real user feedback in moving into 2023
11:23 levelo built on the success of Avatar AI by launching photo AI this new product
11:29 was more focused on generating realistic human portraits and levelo shared a
11:34 secret in a podcast among the first users to sign up and upload photos to
11:38 photo AI was a super famous Tech billionaire while lelio didn't say the
11:43 names I've got a strong hunch it might have been Elon Musk after all lelio and
11:48 musk had some interactions around that time by August 2024 Elon Musk once again
11:54 boosted lelio's profile by retweeting his appearance on the Lex fredman
2:05 Levelsios Background
2:06 musk and my income skyrockets it really shows a influence musk wields I mean
2:10 imagine if musk suddenly tweeted that his biggest rival was David Kim you'd
2:15 probably see people lining up to invest millions in my projects that's the kind
2:19 of impact we're talking about let's talk about lelio's background he was born in
2:24 the 80s in the Netherlands his dad was a doctor and his mom was a lawyer but his
2:28 dad had always dreamed of working in film why didn't he well after World War
2:32 II Rotterdam was in Ruins from German bombing the whole country was struggling
2:36 so lelio's Grandma told his dad forget movies you're going to be a doctor and
2:40 that's what happened this experience made lelio's dad pretty open-minded
2:44 about his son's career choices that freedom played a crucial role in shaping
2:48 lelio into the independent developer he is today um there's a sweet ending to
2:53 his dad's story after retiring he went back to his first love movies he's now
2:57 pursuing a PhD in film history reigniting his original Dream lelio's
3:02 first taste of entrepreneurial success actually came from music it all started
3:07 when he attended his hometown's annual Music Festival there he spotted someone
3:12 creating glitch music and got curious he walked around the stage peing at the
3:16 software on the musician's laptop back home he downloaded the exact same
3:20 software and dove into making music soon he became a DJ in Netherlands producing
3:25 his own tracks at around age 20 while in college he started uploading his
3:29 electronic mixes to YouTube and began earning from these uploads some months
3:35 he'd make a few th000 and at his Peak he earned as much as $8,000 in a month not
3:41 bad at all at 27 levio spent most of his money on a laptop and a backpack leaving
3:46 him with only $1,000 in his pocket he flew to Asia eager to Kickstart his life
3:51 as a digital Nomad however things didn't go as smoothly as he'd hoped he was
3:56 scraping by earning just $500 a month eventually he had to head back to his
4:01 parents' place in the Netherlands this setback hit him hard leaving him feeling
4:04 depressed and questioning his future looking at his peers he couldn't shake
4:10 off the feeling of being a loser in 2014 battling depression and dwindling income
4:14 lelio made a bold and life-changing decision to develop 12 products in just
4:15 Nomad List
4:20 one year so the idea to develop 12 products in a year was inspired by
4:25 someone named Jennifer who' created 180 websites in 180 days which was even more
4:31 impressive while lelio's challenge indeed led to some big wins one of his
4:34 most successful products from this project was Nomad list it's a real-time
4:40 index of cities ideal for digital Nomads to live and work in the website rates
4:44 each City based on factors like living costs weather and internet speed it's
4:49 like a travel guide but specifically for people who want to work while wandering
4:53 the world once you've picked your city it provides a toolkit to help you settle
4:57 in including a co-working space a SIM card and hotel Nomad list MVP version
5:04 cost just $100 to build upon launch it quickly shot to the top of both Hacker
5:08 News and product hunt catapulting lelio's annual income to $200,000 but here's the really
5:15 impressive part levelo launched Nomad list back in 2015 and 9 years later it's
5:20 still generating around $60,000 per month this shows that even
5:25 small products can be highly profitable and if you find the right Niche can have
5:30 a surprisingly long lifespan level has truly mastered the secret of building in
5:35 public in 2017 he hosted a 4-day live stream where viewers watched him build a
5:39 complete webat from scratch starting with just one line of code in Just 2 and
5:44 1 half hours he had the first version up and running the live stream was a
5:48 massive hit shooting him to the front page of Reddit the product he built
5:52 during the stream called Hood Maps quickly racked up over 300,000 users
5:57 after gaining enough attention lelio took his marketing efforts to the next
6:01 level level While others might settle for writing a few blog posts or creating
6:05 a small tool he opted to publish an ebook in March 2018 lelio dropped his
6:06 Make the Book
6:11 ebook make the book focuses on how to build a s project and turn it into a
6:15 profitable startup this is where level se's marketing genius truly shines take
6:20 a look at the book's slogan learn to build profitable startups the Indie way
6:24 each word in the slogan is crafted with surgical Precision in just a few words
6:29 lelio manages to convey the book's value its practical approach and its target
6:34 audience by 2019 lelio's annual income reached $1 million he continues to work
6:40 alone without hiring anyone he finds the greatest joy in building everything
6:44 himself in a podcast interview lelio shared his unique view on startups and
6:49 success he believes that as people grow older and earn higher salaries leaving
6:53 their jobs to start a business becomes harder that's why he thinks it's
6:57 important to start entrepreneurship early he believes entrepreneurship is
7:02 way closer to creativity in arts than to corporate big business this perspective
7:06 lightly comes from his creative personality and background in music for
7:09 Product Development
7:10 product development levelsio consistently follows the shotgun
7:16 strategy the idea is to rapidly develop multiple products or features instead of
7:20 putting all your eggs in one basket especially by creating various products
7:25 for different user groups this way you're not relying on your own
7:28 subjective judgment about what makes a good product instead instead you're
7:32 letting the market decide if a product performs well great keep it and nurture
7:38 it if it underperforms for a while cut your losses and move on I couldn't agree
7:43 more with this strategy um lelio's shotgun strategy truly paid off
7:47 particularly after the success of nomad list he leveraged this win to create a
7:52 series of complimentary products one standout product is remote okay a job
7:57 board for remote work opportunities he quickly launched an MPV for remote okay
8:02 first then he fine-tuned its features based on feedback from Reddit users
8:06 remot okay soon claimed the top spot on product hunt in 2017 lelio received
8:12 three acquisition offers for remote okay but he thought the offers were too low
8:16 and his followers advised him to hold on to it it turned out to be a wise
8:22 decision in 2018 remote 's Revenue began to climb by February 2019 it was
8:28 generating $35,000 per month as time went on and the pandemic hit in late
8:32 2019 many people found themselves stuck at home searching for jobs online this
8:36 situation played right into remote okay's strengths by 2021 when remote
8:42 work was at its peak remote ok's monthly income skyrocketed to
8:46 $140,000 originally remote okay was called noad jobs by November 2021 the
8:53 site had become so profitable that lelio decided to invest $100,000 to buy the
8:59 remote okay domain name you're probably thinking $100,000 for a domain name that's way
9:03 Success
9:05 too much but back in 2013 I also spent $100,000 on a domain hotdeals.com and
9:11 you know what that website is still making good money today so from my
9:16 perspective investing in a great domain name for a profitable project is worth
9:20 every penny it strengthens your brand makes your product easier to find and
9:24 remember and gives a real boost to your SEO the pandemic gave remote okay an
9:29 unexpected boost pushing it ual recurring Revenue into the millions
9:33 leoso didn't keep this success to himself he went on Hacker News to thank
9:38 everyone and announced he would donate 5% of the income to stripe this sincere
9:42 and humble act earned him a lot of Goodwill in the Tech Community in 2021
9:48 his annual income ranged from $1 to $2 million however not all of this came
9:53 from his products about 30% was from investments in ETFs and crypto in
9:59 October 2022 lelio ventured into the AI field with Avatar AI within just 10 days
10:06 it generated $100,000 in sales this success was largely due to perfect
10:10 Market timing AI image generation was just taking off making it an ideal
10:14 moment for this kind of product however it wasn't just luck leio success here
10:19 came down to two key factors identifying the right opportunity and moving fast to
10:24 capitalize on it in fact lelio even had a friendly competition with Danny posma
10:28 to see who could launch their AI image generation product first unsurprisingly
10:35 given lelio's speed he won that race stay tuned for a future episode where I
10:39 might share Danny's story level's approach to product development often
10:43 has a scrappy startup Vibe take Avatar AI for example within 24 hours of launch
10:49 it had 1,000 users uploading photos however at the time level hadn't
10:54 implemented any automation he manually input prompts for each photo to generate
10:59 corresponding images with users flooding in you can imagine how swamped he was
11:03 trying to keep up only later did he gradually automate the platform this
11:08 method while initially labor intensive is actually quite practical for Indie
11:13 developers the idea is to get the product out there with minimal upfront
11:18 cost then iterate and improve based on real user feedback in moving into 2023
11:23 levelo built on the success of Avatar AI by launching photo AI this new product
11:29 was more focused on generating realistic human portraits and levelo shared a
11:34 secret in a podcast among the first users to sign up and upload photos to
11:38 photo AI was a super famous Tech billionaire while lelio didn't say the
11:43 names I've got a strong hunch it might have been Elon Musk after all lelio and
11:48 musk had some interactions around that time by August 2024 Elon Musk once again
11:54 boosted lelio's profile by retweeting his appearance on the Lex fredman
11:58 podcast now let's talk about lelio's diverse income streams we've discussed
12:02 his products and Investments but there's more in May of this year he branched out
12:08 into merchandise with 500,000 Twitter followers it's a smart move to
12:12 capitalize on his personal brand leveler remains completely transparent about his
12:16 merchandise profits he continues his build-in public approach sharing
12:21 experiences and insights from this new Venture if you check out his official
12:25 website you'll see how he crafts clever slogans and Designs often tying them to
12:30 current trends or hot to ICS the reason why leveli has become a standout among
12:35 Indie developers as we've seen today is because he has created many products
12:40 experienced both successes and failures and has shared his journey with genuine
12:45 transparency he has a large fan base and all of this is built on over a decade of
12:50 continuous effort and dedication all right that's all for today if you
12:53 enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe for more fascinating Indie
12:56 developer case studies and stories
