12 startups in 12 months: here’s how this digital nomad is doing it

12 startups in 12 months: here’s how this digital nomad is f**king doing it

“You can work anywhere you have Internet, right? So, why are you still here?” was the question that hit Pieter Levels on the head and changed his life. At that point of time, he and his friends had just graduated from university, and Levels was already going crazy from the humdrum of working life in Amsterdam.

“Everyone around me was getting a job, and I was stuck with an online business that was making more than enough money to live and save from,” he explains. While many people would envy him, Levels wanted more out of his life.

“Working from home made me go mental. Normally, my friends would always visit me in the day, but after college, everyone suddenly becomes very busy during waking hours. And so for me, life just became really unsatisfactory.”

Here’s an excerpt from his blog at that point of time:

I had reached the epitome of Western living and Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” pyramid […] But it hadn’t made me happy. Nothing was changing anymore. Everything had become one big routine. Waking up. Having dinner. The nights of working. The weekends of alcohol abuse under the pretense of partying. And it was literally taking my breath away. I had this constant pressure on my chest. It sounded like symptoms of depression to me too, but I didn’t feel depressed. I was just too comfortable. I was so comfortable that I needed out. I was becoming physically anxious from my own living conditions.

So he bought a ticket to Bangkok. For the rest of that year, Levels spent his working moments on the road, traveling to Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, and then Hong Kong.

Living the dream on the road

To Levels, it was a dream come true to be able to put both his work and love for travel together. His wanderlust originated from an exchange program back in 2009, when he was still a student:

I ended up studying on the other side of the world in South Korea with two other Dutch students. I had never been outside Europe before that. I remember the moment we exited Seoul’s metro into some outskirts of the city – it felt like we had just landed on another planet. It was full of neon signs, strange food and lots of Korean people (obviously). I always imagined living abroad would be difficult. But in many ways, living here was easier than living at home.

That first foray out of his home country made him want to explore the rest of the continent. Levels went on to travel through Japan, China, and some countries across Southeast Asia. “We were away from home for six months,” he says.

A picture taken while in Hong Kong.