Pieter Levels
speaker
696 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Aug 2024
Pieter Levels’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I think Franz Kafka said, I'm free, therefore I'm lost. Man, that's so true. Yeah, that's exactly the point. And yeah, freedom is like, it's the definition of no constraints, right? Like anything is possible. You can go anywhere. And everybody's like, oh, that must be super nice. You know, like freedom, you must be very happy. And it's the opposite. Like, I don't think that makes you happy.
I think constraints probably make you happy. And that's a big lesson I learned then.
For me, you know, because I was more like a developer. I wanted to make startups kind of. And it was like drugs being shipped to America, like diet pills and stuff, like non-FDA approved stuff, you know? And they would like laugh. There was no like, they would sit with beers and they would laugh about like all the dodgy shit kind of they're doing, you know?
That kind of vibe, you know, like kind of sleazy e-comm vibe. I'm not saying all e-comm is sleazy, you know, but you know this vibe.
You know the guys with sports cars in Dubai, these people, you know? Yes. E-comm, like, oh, bro, you got to drop shit.
And you'll make a hundred million a month. Those people, it was this shit. And I was like, this is not my people.
No, I don't want to judge. I know that for me, it wasn't my world. It wasn't my subculture. I wanted to make cool shit. But they also think their cool shit is cool. But I wanted to make real startups. And that was my thing. I would read Hacker News, like Y Combinator. And they were making cool stuff. So I wanted to make cool stuff.
It's very romantic, man.
No, I think it was amazing. Like, we would work. Like, I would make friends and we would work until, you know, 6 a.m. in Bali, for example, with, like, with Andre, my best friend, who is still my best friend, and with another friend. And we would work until, like, the morning when the sun came up. Because at night, the coworker space was silent, you know, there was nobody else. And...
Because there was like six people coming or we didn't know. Sometimes people would come in. Did you say 3-0-30? Yeah.
And we would drink like four per person or something, you know? Man, it's Bali. I don't know if they were powerful lattes, you know, but they were lattes. And we would put it in a plastic bag and then we'd drive there and all the coffee was like falling, you know, everywhere. And then we'd go in the coffee stand and have these coffees here and we'd work all night. We'd play like techno music and...
everybody would just work in there. Like this was literally like business people. They would work in their startup and we'd all try and make something. And then the sun would come up and the morning people, you know, the yoga girls and yoga guys would come in, you know, after the yoga class at six and they say, hey, good morning.
And we're like, we look like this, you know, and we're like, what's up, how are you doing? And we didn't know how bad we looked, you know, but it was very bad. And then we'd go home, sleep in like a hostel or a hotel and do the same thing. And again, and again, and again. Yeah. And it was this lock-in mode, you know, like working. And that was very fun.
More like... Like industrial.
It also depends what kind of work you do, right? Like if you're writing, you probably don't want drum and bass music. I think for codes, like industrial techno, this kind of stuff, kind of fast, it works well because you really get like locked in and combined with caffeine, you know, you go deep, you know?
And I think you balance on this edge of anxiety because this caffeine is also hitting your anxiety. And you want to be on the edge of anxiety with this techno running. Sometimes it gets too much. Like stop the techno, stop the music. It's like... But those are good memories, you know? And also like travel memories. Like you go from city to city. Yeah.
And it feels like, it's kind of like jet set life. Like it feels very beautiful. Like you're seeing a lot of cool cities.
I think still like Bangkok is the best place. And back in Chiang Mai, I think Thailand is very special. Like I've been to the other place, like I've been to Vietnam and I've been to South America and stuff. I still think Thailand wins in how nice people are, how easy of a life people have there.
Yeah, well, Bangkok is getting expensive now, but Chiang Mai is still cheap. I think when you're starting out, it's a great place. Man, the air quality sucks. It's a big problem. So, and it's quite hot, but that's a very cool place.
I love Brazil also. My girlfriend is Brazilian, but I do love, not just because of that, but I like Brazil more. the problem still is the safety issue. It's like in America, it's localized. It's hard for Europeans to understand safety is localized to specific areas. So if you go to the right areas, it's amazing. Brazil is amazing. If you go to the wrong areas, maybe you die. Right? Yeah.
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