🗞 What's New: Pieter Levels on increasing European competitiveness

Pieter Levels has been beating the drum on the need to make Europe competitive in tech:

• A new report contains many of Pieter's suggestions, including introducing regulations that view tech and AI as friends with the EU, not enemies.
• How do you turn your passion into a sustainable career? Follow the PARTS Model, starting with a strong premise.
• Saving lives with an emergency aircraft tracking app. Ernst Mulders is tracking 550+ aircraft in real time, and expanding internationally.

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by Stephen Flanders

Pieter Levels is many things: Indie hacking legend, podcast extraordinaire, and now, European power player.

For months now, Pieter has been beating the drum on the need to make Europe competitive again in tech. He even started selling "Make Europe Great Again" hats, and eu/acc hoodies to spread the word.

Well, his efforts are beginning to pay off. He was one of the experts tapped by economist and former Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, to help inform his new report on European competitiveness.

The suggestions

Several of Pieter's suggestions made the final report:

• A minimum revenue cut off for current and new regulations.

• Creating an EU-wide incorporation business form, making it easier to start a pan-EU business.

• Making it easy to start an online EU business.

• 0% corporate tax for the first three years of a new business.

• Viewing tech and AI as friends, not enemies.

• Teaching tech, AI, and coding in all schools.

What does this mean?

That all sounds great, but considering that this is still at the "report" stage of the legislative process, it's a little premature to bust out the champagne.

However, we can celebrate two things:

1. The vibe shift happening in Europe: Europeans are finally realizing that they are falling behind the West and East in tech. The hope is that this spurs a European renaissance, and in the process, makes Europe a more favorable place for founders.

2. The influence that a successful, smart, chronically online person can have: As Pieter himself put it, if you want to support the eu/acc movement, the best thing you can do is post about it. The powers that be are listening. All you have to do is speak up!

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by Jay Clouse

How do you turn your passion into a sustainable career? Enter the PARTS framework: Premise, Attention, Revenue model, Trust, and Systems. Each component is crucial, and builds upon the previous one to help you create a thriving business.

1. Premise

The cornerstone of a successful creator business is a strong premise, which serves as the foundation of your content, and overall platform. A premise goes beyond simply identifying a niche; it involves defining a specific, defensible purpose for your project that resonates deeply with your audience.

Jay Acunzo's concept of the "XY premise pitch" is instrumental here: It involves clearly stating your project’s focus (X), and distinguishing it through a unique angle or approach (Y).

The XY premise pitch runs like this:

• This is a project about X.

• Unlike other projects about X, only we Y.

To craft a compelling premise, ask yourself:

• Who do you help, and what do you help them do?

• Why does your content need to exist?

• Why are you the right person for this?

• What is your unique perspective?

2. Attention

Once your premise is established, the next step is to capture and retain attention. This involves two main tasks:

1. Reaching new audiences: Leverage discovery platforms, like social media, YouTube, Google Search, guest appearances, and collaborations. Your goal is to engage with spaces where potential followers are already active, and contribute valuable content to those areas.

2. Maintaining their interest: Retained audience attention focuses on maintaining and nurturing relationships with people who have shown interest in your content. Build direct communication channels with your audience through email, private communities, or podcasts. This approach helps you reduce dependency on external platforms.

3. Revenue model

There are two types of revenue streams:

1. Direct: This includes income from products and experiences you create and sell, such as courses, coaching, memberships, or physical products. Focusing on a signature product at the start allows you to refine your offering, and build a solid foundation for further products.

2. Indirect: This includes revenue from affiliate marketing, sponsorships, or brand deals. These streams leverage the attention you’ve captured, and provide additional income opportunities.

tl;dr: Build a diversified revenue model!

4. Trust

Trust is critical for converting attention into sales. In order to build trust, you have to show your users that you are reliable, and can deliver value consistently. Create consistent, high-quality content that genuinely helps your audience, and trust will be built over time.

Developing trust involves frequent touchpoints with your audience through valuable content and interactions. Things like email lists and podcasts are effective for nurturing trust, as they allow for direct, meaningful engagement with your audience.

5. Systems

To scale your creator business effectively, you need to implement systems. Systems are processes that automate, streamline, or outsource repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on creative, strategic work.

Concentrate on activities that leverage your unique skills and talents, such as content creation and relationship building. By optimizing these systems, you can enhance productivity and grow your business sustainably.

Your unique perspective

This is a concept that I can't stop thinking about. Entire creator businesses have been built on the back of what Wes Kao calls a Spiky Point of View:

If you're looking for a place to start, maybe getting a little "spiky" can help!

Discuss this story.

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by Katie Hignett

Ernst Mulders has been building side projects since he was a teen. He always made products with monetization in mind, until the one time he didn't.

He built AirAssist, an emergency services tracker, four years ago. Now, it's his most successful project, and it's saving lives.

Always launching

I've been building side projects since I was about 16 years old. I'm a very product-minded person, and I just want to build everything that pops into my head. I'm always launching things!

When I was about 18, I made time-tracking software to keep note of my working hours. I was so surprised when it made money. But, with the knowledge I have now, I know it could have been a way more successful product.

I also made a travel website called Seven Places. It gave you examples of bars or restaurants with a similar vibe to the spot you were currently in.

It used Instagram to pull popular posts about a particular place, look at who posted them, then gather information about other locations they'd posted about. It would do some algorithm stuff, and suggest other similar places to visit.

Then, Instagram killed my API key after a policy change, which highlights the danger of platform risk.

A simple demo project

I wanted to get to know React Native, and I needed an idea to work on. Meanwhile, a friend of mine was interested in trauma helicopters here in the Netherlands. We have a public network that shares information about where ambulances need to go.

I made an app that displayed the location of four or five different helicopters every minute on this gray map. It was just a demo project for me at this point, and there was no monetization.

I'm now tracking over 550 different aircrafts in real time. You can set time zones and get notified when aircraft will fly past you.

I've also built out international versions. In the UK, I have a big incident notification for when more than two aircraft respond to the same area. This isn't public information there, and can often beat news agencies.

Professionals were also using the app, which I hadn't anticipated.

Building a freemium model

I realized then that I needed to look at monetization. I started placing ads in the app, and introduced a premium option to remove ads. After that, it made sense to put new features behind the premium option.

It was scary at first, but people started paying straight away. Last May, I doubled the prices again, and people are still paying.

I didn't really do any marketing. People in the Netherlands search for the messaging network, which is called P2000. So, I included it in the name of the original Dutch app. It was all App Store search optimization.

Launching in the UK and Germany was a lot harder because I don't have a specific word that people are searching for. In those countries, it grows more by word-of-mouth.

I expand the app country by country. I'm currently looking at France and Austria. It's already in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Belgium, but it's hard to expand. You have to get a list of all the relevant helicopters, and when you launch, you start out with zero users again.

Saving lives

I have a lot of professional users, and a police officer once contacted me to tell me that the app saved his team a few minutes...and that helped save a person's life.

I didn't expect AirAssist to take off. Sometimes, it's the unexpected thing that works.

My advice is to keep it simple. The first version of my app was rubbish, but people still really liked it and started using it. Don't over-engineer, and don't wait too long to launch.

Listen to what your users say. Don't forget that the product is only a small part of what you're doing. You need to monetize and market it if it's ever going to work.

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Darko, Jay Clouse, and Katie Hignett for contributing posts. —Channing