Pieter Levels joins John Collison to discuss building successful online businesses as a digital nomad, thoughts on European accelerationism, and Pieter’s unconventional methods and philosophy as a bootstrapped founder making over $3 million per year.

Full episode transcript

https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/4/transcript

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(00:37) Pieter’s resume

(01:33) Trying to make money online as a 12 year old

(02:43) Being one of the first YouTube creators

(03:18) Who should indie hack

(04:31) What Pieter hates about VC-backed businesses

(07:51) Who is digital nomading for?

(09:15) Learning from @patio11

(10:17) 125k tweets and the brand of @levelsio

(10:59) Getting referrals from ChatGPT

(11:43) What Pieter automates with AI

(13:02) Investing and home country bias

(15:05) Hacking thermostats

(15:57) EU acceleration movement

(18:34) Entrepreneurship in the EU

(19:26) Pieter's reflections on Stripe’s API

(21:21) Looking 5 years into the future

The Bot Company founder and CEO Kyle Vogt—who also cofounded Twitch and Cruise—joins John Collison to talk about applying AI to home robots, the similarities between robotics and self-driving, and why the next $100 billion company will have fewer than 100 people.

Full episode transcript

https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/3/transcript

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(00:38) The Bot Company pitch

(02:05) Single-task vs. multi-task robots

(04:27) What is the Turing test for robotics?

(05:52) Why this time is different for home robots

(08:42) The last mile in robotics and self-driving

(09:47) Viral demos and hype cycles

(10:38) Commercializing frontier tech

(13:06) Self-driving CapEx

(14:15) Regulatory hurdles

(16:18) Tesla vs. Waymo

(19:21) Why Kyle regrets selling Cruise

(21:39) The next $100 billion company

Susan Li of Meta—the youngest chief financial officer of a Fortune 100 company—joins John Collison to talk about capital allocation, managing investors, and how Mark Zuckerberg has changed over the 17 years of working together.

Full episode transcript

https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/2/transcript

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(01:20) Early education and career

(02:15) Lessons from Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley

(03:12) Leadership traits and succession planning at Meta

(06:05) Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership and culture of feedback

(09:06) Financial forecasting and capital allocation

(14:18) ROI on Meta’s portfolio of bets

(15:05) Investor sentiment in 2022

(17:49) The story behind the “free cash flow” hats

(18:58) CapEx trends in the AI era

(21:48) A memorable earnings call

(24:16) Challenges of allocating compute vs headcount budgets

(26:55) AI’s impact on productivity and operations