At first I thought he just made a great product and that was it, but at closer inspection, I'm having doubts.
1. Earlier today, a reddit thread on the digitalnomad subreddit completely bashed nomadlist. Hundreds of upvotes saying nomadlist wasn't worth it, with dozens of comments agreeing. Only one person raised defense for it.
2. When looking at the nomadlist product itself, it's kind of ...rough. Not that I care about that sort of thing, but it's riddled with bugs, design flaws, etc.
3. He publishes his refund rate, which is just above 10%. This seems really high.
Is this a case to where he got lucky and owned the digital nomand / remote work market early enough that the product actually doesn't matter? Or am I missing something?
I'm sure he gets the same thing. Talk == traffic. Or, if you prefer, the standard cliche is: "Any publicity is good publicity"
The more successful you or your product becomes the more haters you'll have. That doesn't only apply to software. Pick any 'classic' novel and check out the reviews on Amazon. 5% of them will be haters.
Microsoft and Google haters wouldn't hate them at all if they were still scrappy startups that no one had heard of and that had achieved zero success.
From my own experience, I released an app for creative writers 5 years ago that generated a lot of positive attention, as well as a bunch of haters on one very specific niche forum. The guys on this forum went so far as to dig up info about another Irishman with the same name as me who ended up in court for passing bad checks -- citing it as clear evidence of how I couldn't be trusted, and neither could any software I made.
It bothered me for a whole day, then I decided never to waste my time reading that forum again.
Having haters who hate you is a sign that you're achieving some measure of success.
I wouldn't want to speak for Pieter but I suspect he isn't bothered by those sorts of things.
For some insight into his mindset check out his interview on Indiehackers https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/043-pieter-levels-of-no...
I think it's one of the best episodes.
Sure, the site is buggy and could be better, but for what it does it works well enough. No one is spending all day in there, depending on everything working perfectly. It’s good enough for what it does, for most users.
Pieter is a nice guy who figured out a way to support his own nomadic lifestyle while offering something people found useful. If you don’t like it he refunds your money.
Disclaimer: Pieter Levels gave me free membership years ago. I used to participate actively on NomadList but haven’t logged in for several years.
His refund rate: https://nomadlist.com/open
He makes about $700k a year on nomadlist, $70k in refunds.
Once people actually get a benefit from the product, they're happy. Quality/programming language/design is rarely a consideration for customers in pain/looking for a solution.
He still uses sqlite and proud of it. Nothing wrong with it. But at least invest some money in system design as you grow.