In 2013, I sold all my possessions, packed a backpack and a laptop, and flew to Thailand to begin my digital nomad life. I was once a lost musician earning modest income from YouTube, but felt suffocated by traditional career paths.

The 12 Startups in 12 Months Challenge

In 2014, inspired by Jennifer Dewalt's "180 websites in 180 days," I started my "12 startups in 12 months" challenge, forcing myself to act quickly. My first project, Play My Inbox, which organized music from users' inboxes into playlists, wasn't a huge success but taught me to launch rapidly.

The Birth of Nomad List

Nomad List grew out of a crowdsourced spreadsheet with data about cities around the world (like cost of living, internet speed and safety) that I turned into a website. I didn't start by creating a product - I started by compiling information into a spreadsheet and sharing it on Twitter.

After a while, I looked at Twitter and saw that I had created a big buzz. I had mistakenly set the permissions to allow anyone to edit it, and this created huge engagement as many strangers added new cities and information and shared it.

Growth and Revenue

Nomad List is now used by millions of people every month and its revenue ranges from $20k-$40k/month or ~$300k/year with thousands of paying members. I've since expanded to other products like Remote OK and Photo AI.

• Time to significant revenue: ~1 year
• Current portfolio revenue: $2.7M+ annually
• Total projects launched: 70+ (only 4 significantly profitable)
• Team size: Just me