Aside from a few interactions on Twitter, I’ve never met Pieter, so everything I know about him is from what he writes and posts online.
Pieter cranks out web apps, websites, SaaS, whatever it is that you want to call it.
I first became aware of him a few years back when he was shipping a new product every month, so that got me thinking about what it would take to do something like that.
Building and shipping a new product every 30 days means you have to cut out the nonsense.
No daily meetings to eat donuts and sip coffee while we go around the room listening to what everyone watched on TV last night.
No arguing about architecture decisions, tools, databases, and programming languages.
No requirements analysis, design, UML, user stories, focus groups…well maybe some of these, but not in the way you would do them in a huge anonymous organization.
To develop and ship fast you use a tech stack you’re comfortable with and go for it.
Here are a few sites that Pieter has created:
Those are the ones that got some traction.
Saturated Market?
When I first discovered RemoteOK a few years ago, I thought “another job board? Meh.”
RemoteOK is the #1 most visited remote job board on the planet.
Pieter is the sole owner (unless he sold it last night) and has made him a good bit of money.
How about AvatarAI? It’s a site he created where you upload pictures of yourself and it creates killer profile pics using AI. It’s taken off like a rocket. Amazing.
BTW - all of his sites are for sale.
How does he do it?
The last I read, he primarily uses PHP (no frameworks), HTML, CSS, and JS (only when necessary on the front end).
Using tools he’s familiar with lets him create fast, ship, and see what sticks.
He uses readily available and relatively inexpensive hosting to get things out the door.
Leave everything up and running, you never know when (or why) something will take off. 🚀
Then when something does take off, work on optimizing at that point.
He also wrote a book called Make that describes his process in detail: https://readmake.com/ — that’s not an affiliate link, I’m sharing it because it’s awesome.
So what’s the point of all this?
Learning programming languages and frameworks is fun.
Watching tutorials is insanely informative, and completing organized curriculums like FreeCodeCamp.org will take you far.
But not as far as working on your own product.
You are responsible for everything from conception to delivery. You will need to google when you hit a roadblock, call a friend, or reach out to weirdos like me on Twitter when you’re really desperate.
Build something, ship it, then build something else.
Don’t fall in love with anything unless it gets some traction.
You will grow as a developer faster than you would have ever thought.
If you want to support my efforts, rent my brain for a month: private mentoring/coaching via email.
Thanks for reading, hope to talk soon.
Email me with any questions.
Travis