Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life | Lex Fridman Podcast
22 Aug 2024 (25 days ago)
Building and Creative Expression
- Physical labor, like construction, can be therapeutic and help alleviate depression.
- Building and creative expression are intrinsically rewarding and provide a sense of purpose.
Elon Musk and Startup Inspiration
- Elon Musk's approach to building companies, focusing on tangible products and innovation, is admirable. (00:09:30)
- He started a project called "12 startups in 12 months" where he would create and launch a project each month using Stripe for payments.
Early Experiences and Digital Nomadism
- At age 27, he traveled to Asia and became a digital nomad for a year, but it made him feel worse.
- He learned to code a little bit through creating electronic music mixes for his YouTube channel, Panda Mix Show, and building a website for it using Flash and ActionScript.
- The speaker worked with people who were involved in shipping unapproved items, such as diet pills, to America.
- The speaker enjoyed working with friends in Bali, often working through the night in co-working spaces while listening to techno music.
Travel Experiences and Perspectives
- The speaker found Bangkok and Shanghai to be the best places they visited.
- Thailand is a great place to start out due to its affordability, but it suffers from poor air quality.
- Brazil, while appealing, faces safety concerns, particularly in certain areas.
- A sense of danger can be intriguing as it reveals insights about oneself and others.
- Pieter Levels believes that travel can inspire new ideas by exposing individuals to different cultures and solutions to problems that may not exist in their home countries.
Startup Building and Technology
- To build a startup in 30 days, it is important to focus on the essential features and avoid adding unnecessary elements.
- A basic login system can be implemented using a hash in a static link, which is less secure but faster to implement than a full-fledged login system.
- When promoting a new startup on platforms like Reddit, it is crucial to avoid being perceived as a spammer and instead focus on providing solutions to existing problems discussed within specific subreddits.
- Levels suggests starting a business with familiar technology, such as spreadsheets or website builders, to validate the product idea before focusing on complex tech stacks.
AI and Image Generation
- Levels' process for generating ideas has evolved; while he used to maintain a list of potential projects, he now focuses on exploring the possibilities of new technologies, such as AI, to identify potential applications.
- Levels created Photo.com, a service that uses AI to generate personalized photos based on user prompts and a small set of input images.
- AI image generators require prompting to avoid producing NSFW content.
- Stable Diffusion, a generative image model AI, excels at generating images of architecture but struggles with creating realistic images of people.
- A website called "this house does exist.org" was created to showcase Stable Diffusion's ability to generate images of houses.
AI Startup Examples
- HousePorn was a website that used an early version of stable diffusion to generate images of houses and write descriptions of them. The website used an upvote system to rank the generated houses. (00:49:23)
- Interior AI was a startup that allowed users to upload photos of their interiors and have them redesigned in different styles using image-to-image technology. The creator fine-tuned existing AI models on a gallery of beautiful interior designs to improve the results.
- Avatar AI was a startup that allowed users to generate stylized avatars of themselves. The creator trained an AI model on photos of himself, which allowed the model to understand him as a concept and generate avatars in different styles.
AI Model Training and Development
- In October 2022, a machine learning model was trained using a small number of photos, which despite not being high quality, was able to capture enough information to create AI-generated avatars.
- When selecting photos for AI model training, it is recommended to have others choose the photos because individuals may have an inaccurate perception of their own appearance.
- Pieter Levels mixes full body photos and face photos in his training data for his AI model to capture both facial and body features.
- Levels believes that diverse training data, such as photos with different lighting and clothing, is crucial for training an AI model to focus on the desired concept, such as a person's face.
- Lex Fridman acknowledges Pieter Levels' expertise in using AI to generate realistic and aesthetically pleasing images of human faces.
- Lighting can drastically impact the emotion conveyed in a portrait, influencing attractiveness, scariness, and loneliness.
- ControlNet allows for the creation of AI image poses, such as a specific angle, that can be applied to all generated photos.
Replicate and AI Model Deployment
- Replicate is a platform where users can run and scale machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models, including large language models (LLMs).
- Replicate's popularity increased due to the ability to build avatar apps using fine-tuned Stable Diffusion models.
- Replicate is a platform where users can experiment with AI models and adjust parameters to create desired outputs, which can then be integrated into apps or websites.
Stable Diffusion and Monetization Challenges
- Stable Diffusion 1.5 was considered a better model by users compared to later versions like 2.0 and Stable Diffusion XL.
- Stable Diffusion, the company behind the open-source model, struggled to monetize it despite its widespread adoption and ultimately the CEO left.
Idea Generation and Validation
- Ideas are tested for viability based on the creator's current capabilities, with an example given of a preference for building a robot for asteroid mining over starting a space company.
- Pieter Levels believes that the first idea about a topic is often the best because it emerges from the subconscious mind, which has been processing the idea for a long time.
Robotics and Technological Limitations
- Many robotics companies have failed because the technology is not advanced enough to create profitable products, making it a solution in search of a problem.
Embracing Uncertainty and Starting Simple
Crowdsourcing and Community Building
- Levels highlights the benefits of crowdsourcing, citing his experience with NomadList, which started as a public Google spreadsheet and gained valuable contributions from users.
Hood Maps: A Crowdsourced Mapping Project
- Pieter Levels created an app called Hood Maps that uses color-coded areas on a map to represent different characteristics of a city, such as tourist areas, wealthy areas, and hipster areas.
- Hood Maps allows users to contribute by drawing on a map of a city and labeling areas with different colors, with the most common color for a given area being displayed on the map.
- The data for Hood Maps is crowdsourced, with users able to draw on the map and submit their own labels, and a robot then processes the data to determine the most common label for each area.
User-Generated Content and Mapping Challenges
- The speaker describes a project where users could tag locations on a map with descriptions, leading to humorous and insightful user-generated content.
- The project used a pixel-based system to collect and display data, which was then normalized to correspond to GPS coordinates.
- Despite its popularity and going viral multiple times, the project was expensive to run due to map hosting costs from services like Google Maps and Mapbox.
Nomad List and Revenue Generation
- Hood Maps does not generate revenue, and there are no plans to introduce advertising or seek sponsorship.
- Nomad List, which has been operational for nearly a decade, does generate income.
- Nomad List started as a crowdsourced spreadsheet to identify suitable cities for digital nomads based on factors like internet speed and cost of living.
- There are approximately 30-40,000 members of the NomadList community in Austin, Texas with around 30 member-organized meetups occurring each month.
Challenges in Finding Suitable Workspaces
- Finding a suitable hotel for podcasting can be challenging due to unreliable Wi-Fi, lack of tables, and noise pollution.
- Hotel websites often lack detailed information about rooms, such as layout and views, making it difficult to find suitable accommodations.
Bureaucracy and Innovation in Large Companies
- Great software engineers are not allowed to make changes in large companies because of bureaucracy and too many managers.
- Booking.com is an example of a company that prioritizes revenue generation over user experience, as they have teams dedicated to running A/B tests on small areas of their website to optimize for conversions.
- Companies should emulate a free market internally to foster an entrepreneurial mentality and encourage innovation, similar to how Apple has competing product teams that operate like startups.
Learning and Personal Growth
- A 30-day learning session was undertaken to learn virtual reality, driven by the belief that it would become a significant technology.
- The most effective approach to learning involves continuous action, such as creating projects, rather than relying solely on books or courses.
- Documenting the process of building projects, like the creation of Nomad List, can be beneficial as it highlights the challenges and rewards of the learning journey.
Product Development and Monetization
- Building a product iteratively and incorporating user feedback, even negative criticism, is valuable for improvement.
- Gaining organic traction through platforms like TikTok, YouTube Reals, and Instagram Reels is an effective user acquisition strategy.
- Monetizing a product from the beginning by charging users is more effective than relying on a free user base that may not convert to paying customers.
- Individuals building their own apps should charge at least $30 per month per user to make it financially worthwhile and build a community invested in the product.
- A thousand paying users at $30 per month generates $30,000 per month in revenue, which is substantial income, though hosting costs should be factored in.
- Negotiating discounts with AI vendors by simply asking for them, especially during economic downturns, can lead to significant cost reductions, even up to 50%.