Nomad List
Est. 2014Pieter Levels' product was a public Google Spreadsheet — strangers filled it in, so he turned it into a business.
▶ NOMAD LIST · 2014
NOMAD LIST · 2026 ◀Drag the handle — Nomad List, 2014 → 2026.
Original spreadsheet screenshot: Pieter Levels / levels.io.
“I do work fast and rough.”— Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List
The ugly part. There was no app, no backend, not even a site — just a Google Sheet Levels tweeted out, asking remote workers to add the best cities to live and work in. Around a hundred people filled it in within a day, inventing their own columns for wifi speed, cost, and safety as they went.
What he shipped anyway. He turned the spreadsheet into Nomad List — a city-ranking site built, in his words, fast and rough — then posted it to Product Hunt and Hacker News. It was part of his '12 startups in 12 months,' and the one that stuck.
Now. A profitable membership community for digital nomads (now Nomads.com) doing millions a year — still run, famously, by one person.