The Exchanges

Q Yeah. Did you try to monetize projects before you started building them?

A No, because, so what happened, I was, I was making music, um, and I was DJing, I was organizing, like, nightclub nights in Holland and UK and stuff, um, drum and bass music. The drum, you're Irish, you know, drum and bass. Like, drum and bass, most people don't really know, but, British people know, Irish people know. Um, so when YouTube started, um, monetizing videos, um, I was uploading my music already. So I was one of the first YouTube monetizing people, and I was like number one or number two in Holland for a while in the top channels. But the thing is, I started making money like 1000 dollars and 2000 dollars and 8000 dollars per month, a lot of money, and I was in university.

AI assessment note: “No, because, so what happened, I was, I was making music”

Q Have you ever been tempted to raise for one of your projects?

A No, but a lot of VCs have been in my DMS and they want to invest and, and, uh, I think now, because now like I'm financially independent, I made a lot of money. Now I could do it because now I'm at a point where, um, like it sounds fun to play with other people's money, you know, like, but also in a serious way, it sounds fun to go like to, to a bigger thing. Um, I mean, Something you typically say after you've been in a week, a week in San Francisco, right? You start talking like this, but I'm not convinced yet, but I think now it will be fun for example. But the problem is if you're a founder and you raise money, you kind of need to go big or bust, right? That's kind of, it's hard to stay in between. You can't like make ten million dollars a year. You kind of need to make a hundred million dollars a year. You kind of need to become a unicorn. Um, that's difficult because, uh, the odds of that happening are, are not super high. Like it's, it's a few percentage maybe. So most people don't get there. And they do spend like five years or I don't know, seven years of their twenties on that. And that's something where if you would be an indie, you would have a ten million dollar a year company and you have ownership. It's amazing. You have so much money.

AI assessment note: “No, but a lot of VCs have been in my DMS”

Q So it seems like you've done well on this, uh, kind of being a person on the internet. How much of a partisan are you on the topic of The indie hacker approach, because obviously, most of tech doesn't run on the indie hacker way, where you're building multi-million dollar revenue businesses all by yourself. Um, do you think way more people should be doing the indie hacking thing?

A So, I mean, I think the internet makes you a partisan, right? So, I, I don't think I've been partisan much, but I think, um. Until you got an X. Yeah, well, X does help with it, but you have to understand, 2014, 14, when I entered kind of the startup world, There was barely any indie, there was no indie hacking, there was no bootstrapping almost, except Patrick McKenzie, you know, who you know well. You would, you would find investors, you would raise money, you would grow fast, you would hire a lot of people, you would get a big office, remote didn't exist, remote work. So, um, Compared to that, like what's possible now, there's different, there's alternatives possible now, and you can make a lot of money with this. I don't think you can become a billionaire. Maybe we will see that in the future, but.

AI assessment note: “I don't think I've been partisan much”

Q Yeah. We're talking about European air conditioning. You've talked about the EU accelerationism movement. Um, what, uh, what is required for EU accelerationism?

A So, I think it was two years ago, one year ago, um, I saw Beth Jaisels, who's, uh, Guillaume Ferdin, he made eOC, which is like effective accelerationism, which is like, let's accelerate America again. Like it's been a very depressing time, especially with COVID. Let's look at the benefits of technology and AI for the future. And I thought, that's amazing. We need to do the same for Europe. So I did EU slash OC, like, let's do this for Europe because Europe is, it's the same kind of like depressing kind of down vibe about the future. I understand because there's a lot of problems. It's not an easy life for a lot of people. So that got a lot of traction, and, um, I crowdsourced this, like, bug board where everybody could submit their idea how to save Europe, how to fix Europe, and, like, Tens of thousands of people submitted ideas and then they upload each other's ideas and stuff. I think number one is just like remove the regulatory burden for new businesses. Yep. Um, and there's other stuff like remove the cookie banner and stuff. And I hope it will be easier in Europe to run, to start a business, run a business.

AI assessment note: “number one is just like remove the regulatory burden for new businesses.”

Q If you were running Stripe, how would you fix?

A Um, I think it's going really well recently. I think it wasn't going well after COVID. There was a few years where things were getting, the API was getting more and more complicated. We all complained about it. There was every, it felt like it was being run by engineers, not by people who actually use Stripe. Like illogical defaults on the API, you know, like one time I, um, I had this bug and it was from the Stripe API because it changed and it didn't create a customer anymore. Everybody was a guest. I was like, why? Would I want people to be a guest? Like I can't, I cannot even curate them as a customer anymore. Those kind of things. But now it's, now it seems much better, and it seems to be like sanity has returned. But it's scary, and it must be scary for you, because you're running a big company. It's very hard to, to manage a company from small to big, and not, become like corporate, you know. Of course you're always corporate, because you need to do B to B sales, becomes more corporate. But you need to keep this, The original Stripe mentality was simple, right? Stripe.js. It was one line of code you would add to your page and you had a payment button, you know? Keeping that is so important, keeping the original soul of the company, and I think you're doing a great job. Because essentially, I don't want to go into Stripe and do anything. I want to go there to see how much…

AI assessment note: “The original Stripe mentality was simple, right? Stripe.js... Keeping that is so important”

Q Who should try the digital nomad thing? Who does it appeal to?

A I think anyone. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 70 or whatever. It's so interesting, because you, you change as a person also, but I think digital nomad is so cool because, um, Leaving your own country, which I did the first time, I, I, I did a study exchange program. I went to Korea in like, 2000, uh, 10, I think, and from university, and I was like, this is a completely different world. I never left Europe before. I went to France, you know, like Italy, but like, This is like, there's neon signs, and it's like, it's crazy. This changes you on such a fundamental level, going to the other side of the world. It's amazing, and it's, it's way safer than you think. Like, usually nothing happens, and I've never been robbed except in my hometown. It was a burglary, so in 10 years of this, nothing ever happens. So yeah, I think it, it completely expands your horizon. There's nothing I can recommend as much as people just go travel, and don't be scared, man. Just like, there's always people who help you. If you don't speak the language, you can use your arms and like, how did you make it not be lonely?

AI assessment note: “I think anyone. It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 70”