// Creator teardown ·
How Pieter Levels grew to 983k on X and $165k a month
X is everything. After his Lex Fridman podcast, his typical post climbed from 499 to 829 likes in five months. His biggest posts are opinions about money, countries and tech, not launches.
Who Pieter Levels is
A Dutch founder who builds and runs his products alone: Photo AI, Interior AI, Nomads.com (formerly Nomad List) and Hotelist. He's posted on X since 2013, wrote the book MAKE about building startups without funding, and invests in AI startups through levels.vc.
- 983,362
- X followers
- 182k
- X posts since 2013
- 185k
- newsletter readers
- $165k
- a month
The timeline
-
Jan 2022
120,312 followers on X.
-
Jan–May 2023
Posting about 40 times a month. The typical post gets 107–206 likes.
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Jun–Aug 2023
Steps up to 261–368 likes a post. A post on the true cost of a $1M mortgage gets 11,563 likes.
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Mar–May 2024
Up again: 470–542 likes a post. His post on Europe's stagnation reaches 4.7M views.
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Aug 2024
Three hours on the Lex Fridman Podcast (2.6M views). Over the next five months his typical post climbs from 499 to 829 likes.
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Jan 2025
A high: the typical post gets 829 likes and about 213k views.
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2025–2026
Mostly 410–710 likes a post, with a dip to 244 in April 2026.
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Oct 2026
A new high: 852 likes a post. 983,362 followers, eight times as many as in 2022.
What a typical post gets on X, month by month
Podcasts and talks: where he goes long
Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life
Lex Fridman · Aug 2024 · 2.6M views
Three hours on building alone: how Photo AI started with fine-tuned image models, his simple stack, coming up with ideas and launching fast, and life as a nomad.
"I was trying to figure out how to do photo realistic AI photos"
How to Build a Startup Without Funding
Jan 2018 · 355k views
A talk at Dojo Bali on bootstrapping: building startups and side projects on your own skills, without investors, because building online now costs almost nothing.
"it's almost free to build things on the internet"
A Cheeky Pint with serial entrepreneur Pieter Levels
Stripe · Jul 2025 · 85k views
Stripe's interview: why he stays small instead of raising money, Europe, and how much he posts on X.
"I tweeted like I think 125,000 times over 10 years"
Building a Startup in Public: From first line of code to frontpage of Reddit
Jul 2017 · 64k views
Hoodmaps, built in public: he launches his crowd-tagged neighbourhood map and drives around Los Angeles to check its labels.
"today I'm going to launch Hoodmaps"
What they share: He barely posts on YouTube himself: his own 46 videos have about a million views in total. One episode on someone else's show got 2.6M.
His biggest posts are opinions, not launches
I did this a year ago! I glued an Airtag to a plastic yogurt box Then put it in the recycle bin It ended up in waste burning plant and was not recycled, but burnt Recycling is a massive gigantic hoax with lots of big companies making billions off of it
Amazon ($19.99) is a showroom for Aliexpress Aliexpress ($5.17) is a showroom for Taobao Taobao ($2.48) is a showroom for Alibaba Alibaba ($0.69) is a showroom for well whoever actually makes the thing!
Not your keys Not your coins
April Fool's pizzas in US are real pizzas in Brazil
Being an entrepreneur now has more job security than a job
Imagine being Sundar Pichai now: - you had the largest continually updated data set of any company to train AI on (the Google Index) - you invented the underlying technology of LLMs like ChatGPT in 2017 called Transfomers - you had complete search dominance…
The funnel
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1
Post on X all day. About 125,000 posts in 10 years, by his own count on Stripe's show. His bio lists every product with its monthly revenue next to it.
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2
Say what he thinks. His biggest posts are opinions about money, countries and tech. They reach millions who never asked about his products.
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3
Go long on other people's shows. The Lex Fridman Podcast (2.6M views) and Stripe's Cheeky Pint, instead of a channel of his own.
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4
Capture the reader. levels.io: 185,121 people read his posts by email. His book MAKE has sold 32,185 copies ($956,583).
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5
Sell small products he builds alone. Photo AI (from $9 a month, billed yearly), Interior AI, Nomads.com, Hotelist, and VibeJam, a game jam Cursor sponsors.
Where the money comes from
| Product | A month | |
|---|---|---|
Photo AI
AI photos and videos of yourself
|
AI photos and videos of yourself | $68k |
| VibeJam A game jam for games coded with AI, sponsored by Cursor | A game jam for games coded with AI, sponsored by Cursor | $44k |
Interior AI
AI interior design and virtual staging
|
AI interior design and virtual staging | $23k |
| X payouts X's payments to creators | X's payments to creators | $20k |
Nomads.com
Best places to live and work remotely
|
Best places to live and work remotely | $7k |
Hotelist
Hotels rated by AI
|
Hotels rated by AI | $3k |
What to copy
- Post every day, and more than you think. He's averaged about 34 posts a day for ten years.
- Say what you actually think. His biggest posts are opinions about money, countries and tech, not his products.
- Put your products and their revenue in your bio, so every viral post sends people to them.
- Go long on other people's shows. His typical post rose from 499 to 829 likes in the five months after one podcast.
- Build small products alone and launch them in public, on the same account.