I went on the Building Remotely podcast with Sondre Rasch to discuss Rebase, my immigration service that helps people move to new places that are trying to attract remote workers.
我和Sondre Rasch一起参加了Building Remotely播客，讨论了Rebase，我的移民服务，帮助人们搬到新的地方，试图吸引远程工人。

Topics we discussed: 我们讨论的主题：
- The process and difficulty of building Rebase
- 构建Rebase的过程和难点
- Major trends in the nomad community
- 游牧社区的主要趋势
- Working on a big vs small company (indie projects vs VC funded startups)
- 在大公司与小公司工作（独立项目与VC资助的初创公司）
- The rejection of creativity in modern society.
- 现代社会对创造力的排斥。

Pieter (00:01): 彼得（00：01）：
In society in education, like the industrial society kicks creativity and kicks individual crazy, weird ideas out of you because you’re being laughed at, in a group like, ah, what a dumb idea. When, if you don’t laugh at it, if you let it kind of like evolve, it might become, you know, art, or it might become a company society’s very scared of different thoughts, ideas, and you need to take the risk to be embarrassed and laughed at by people. To be honest with yourself.
在社会中，在教育中，就像工业社会踢创造力，踢个人疯狂，奇怪的想法，你因为你被嘲笑，在一个群体中，啊，多么愚蠢的想法。如果你不嘲笑它，如果你让它进化，它可能会成为，你知道，艺术，或者它可能会成为一个公司社会对不同思想，想法的恐惧，你需要冒着被人们尴尬和嘲笑的风险。对自己诚实。

Sondre (00:28): Sondre（00：28）：
Welcome to building remotely. Our goal is to create the world’s first guide to building a remote company inspired by founders and leaders at remote startups. I’m Sondre the founder and CEO of SafetyWing the company, offering global health insurance for remote teams. Let’s begin. In this episode, we are joined for the second time by Peter Levels. Peter is the founder of several projects for nomads and the remote work community such as nomad list RemoteOk And most recently, and the topic of this episode Rebase. Welcome back to the podcast. Pieter.
欢迎来到远程建筑。我们的目标是创建世界上第一个建立远程公司的指南，灵感来自远程创业公司的创始人和领导者。我是Sondre，SafetyWing公司的创始人兼首席执行官，为远程团队提供全球健康保险。我们开始吧。在这一集中，我们第二次加入彼得水平。彼得是游牧民和远程工作社区的几个项目的创始人，如游牧民列表RemoteOk和最近，以及本集的主题Rebase。欢迎回到播客。彼得

Pieter (01:01): 彼得（01：01）：
Thank you for having me again. It’s really good to be back
谢谢你再次邀请我能回来真好

Sondre (01:04): Sondre（01：04）：
Together with Pieter. We are going to talk about the migration of the new remote workforce Rebase why it’s so hard to build and scale, and what’s so great about it. And also we will cover inflation and what’s happening with the great designation. With that, Pieter, last time we touched on, you know, remote towns, nomad visas, I feel like every time I talk to you, it’s like a little peak into the future. You really have a good sense. I feel like of where things are going. Like the things you’re interested in has this like caring way to it. I wasn’t planning on starting with this, but I’m very curious. Like, do you have a self-reflection on like, why that is like why the things you’re interested in tend to be real and not kind of fads?
和彼得一起。我们将讨论新的远程劳动力迁移Rebase为什么它如此难以构建和扩展，以及它的优点是什么。我们还将讨论通货膨胀以及伟大的指定正在发生的事情。有了这个，彼得，上次我们谈到，你知道，偏远的城镇，游牧签证，我觉得每次我和你说话，就像一个小高峰到未来。你真的很有判断力。我对事情的发展方向很有信心。就像你感兴趣的东西有这种关心的方式。我不打算从这个开始，但我很好奇。比如，你有没有自我反思，为什么你感兴趣的东西往往是真实的，而不是某种时尚？

Pieter (01:49): 彼得（01：49）：
Obviously, I don’t know if I’m right every time. Right. But I do feel like, I think I’m honest with myself and I think I’m some kind of like proto user or adopter, you know, like they have these these personas, when you build a startup, they have personas in marketing, right? Like what’s kind of user, I’m like my own persona for my own businesses. So what I feel, what I’m annoyed with or what I struggle with in my own life, because I do all this stuff with remote work and nomad stuff in my life too. I see as problems that might become a problem for more people after a while, cuz I’m kind of like an early adopter. And then like if you listen to yourself, like honestly like, okay, everything that’s in your brain in your mind that comes up, you don’t need to be embarrassed about it.
显然，我不知道我是否每次都是对的。对的但我确实觉得，我认为我对自己很诚实，我认为我有点像原始用户或采用者，你知道，就像他们有这些这些人物角色，当你建立一个创业公司时，他们有营销人物角色，对吧？就像什么样的用户，我就像我自己的企业的个人角色。所以我的感受，我对什么感到恼火，或者我在自己的生活中与什么斗争，因为我在生活中也做了所有这些远程工作和游牧的事情。我看到的问题，可能会成为一个问题，更多的人在一段时间后，因为我有点像一个早期采用者。然后如果你倾听自己，就像诚实地说，好吧，你脑子里出现的一切，你不需要为此感到尴尬。

Pieter (02:30): 彼得（02：30）：
You need to think about it. Like, do you have problems with dating? For example, all this traveling around, for example long term, okay. Maybe slow down, go to less places. Maybe you can make a dating feature for remote works or whatever. Or there’s like a recent problem with matching regular people who still have office jobs. And now a lot of people have remote work and they cannot hang out together because they’re remote working people. They kind of work ay. And they can meet up on Tuesday and they can go for a walk. But the office people have to be in the office at Tuesday afternoon. Mm. So these people, there’s a mismatch. That’s another thing, for example. So there’s always something in my life when a person life going on, where I’m like, ah, this seems to become a problem for more people in the next six months or the next few years. And it often happens because this is like a new movement still, and now it’s going mainstream, but you can really quickly see these problems if you’re honest with yourself, I think.
你得好好想想。比如，你约会有问题吗？例如，所有这些旅行，例如长期旅行，好的。或许可以放慢脚步，少去一些地方。也许你可以做一个约会功能的远程工作或什么。或者最近有一个问题，匹配仍然有办公室工作的普通人。现在很多人都有远程工作，他们不能一起出去玩，因为他们是远程工作的人。他们有点工作。他们可以在星期二见面，他们可以去散步。但是办公室的人必须在星期二下午到办公室。嗯。所以这些人，不匹配。这是另一件事，例如。所以在我的生活中，当一个人的生活继续下去时，我总是会想，啊，这似乎会成为未来六个月或未来几年更多人的问题。 这经常发生，因为这就像一个新的运动仍然，现在它正在成为主流，但你可以真的很快看到这些问题，如果你对自己诚实，我想。

Sondre (03:20): Sondre（03：20）：
Hmm. I think that’s perfect. You’re you’re an early adapter and you’re honest with yourself, by the way. Why do you think, think a lot of builders, founders, you know, when they make these kind of products that are kind of solving problems for nobody. And I often find a sense that they’re not honest with themselves, like why do you think it’s so hard for people? Some people like to be honest with themselves,
嗯.我觉得很完美。你是你是一个早期的适应者，顺便说一下，你对自己很诚实。为什么你认为，很多建筑商，创始人，你知道，当他们制造这些产品时，没有人能解决问题。我经常发现一种感觉，他们对自己不诚实，比如为什么你认为这对人们来说很难？有些人喜欢对自己诚实

Pieter (03:42):
I think it comes down to education where like, when you’re kids, like this is quite common phrase. But like when you’re a kid you’re really creative and you draw and you play and everything’s fun. And once you get older, well, no people start saying like, no, you made the wrong drawing. That’s not how you should draw. Like people start telling you what to do. Right. And you’re embarrassed by your true feelings or your ideas, your creative ideas, even your drawings, you’re embarrassed. Like, oh this is not like my friend was colorblind demo. And he would always draw the sky purple. And the art, the teacher was like, you’re doing wrong. The sky’s not purple. And he didn’t even know it, but that kind of makes him interesting person cuz he’s color blind. And he thinks the sky’s actually purple mm-hmm I think in, in society, in education, like the industrial society kicks creativity and kicks individual crazy weird ideas out of you because you’re being left at it for, in a group.

Pieter (04:31):
Like, ah, what a dumb idea. When, if you don’t laugh at it, if you let it kind of like evolve, it might become, you know, art or it might become a, a company it might become like I wanna go to Mars. Like Elon Musk probably said as a kid, people laugh at him, but I think society’s very scared of different thoughts, ideas, and you need to take the risk to be embarrassed and laughed at, by people. To be honest with yourself on Twitter, social media, Instagram, or in real life even. And I try to do radical honesty where I try to be as open and honest as possible in my business and in my personal life too. And it has helped me a lot. I think you waste no time with lying or I’m not perfect. I also have lied. Of course, I’ve also done that, but you pursue a life of honesty and you hear a lot of philosophers or like internet philosopher. People also talk about like, don’t lie, be honest and it’s not easy, but yeah.

Sondre (05:31):
Mm. I think you’re totally right. So people lie to themselves so that they won’t get left at or rejected by society.

Pieter (05:39):
Yeah. Fear of rejection is huge.

Sondre (05:40):
Right? Yeah. It’s terrifying.

Pieter (05:43):
The most interesting part of humanity is that every brain is different and you have these different experience and different ideas and that makes you beautiful. That makes you cool and interesting. That makes conversations so fun. When you go to the bar or something with your friends, some person will say something outrageous and you’re like, wow, that’s interesting why you think that? You know, and we’re too scared to do that in general. I think it trifles stifles, is that the word? Innovation.

Sondre (06:09):
So I wanted to get into rebates, but first I wanted to just touch briefly on a topic that everyone is very interested in today. As headline inflation was announced 8.5% and you made a fun project by called inflation chart. So I was very curious to just hear your take, like what’s happening and what will happen with inflation. You think like what’s the facts.

Pieter (06:30):
Yeah. So I was noticing inflation about two years ago, I think, or maybe a year ago. And I was like, okay, what if we track prices ourselves? Cuz the government has these price indexes called consumer price index. And they’re the ones telling you what inflation is. And it’s always something like 4% or something. And you’re like, Hmm, interesting. Cuz the rent is getting outrageous. The housing price is getting outrageous. Why is it only 4%? This was like a year ago. So I’m like, okay, I’ll just start collecting all these prices like price oil, price of the S and P 500 prices of stock markets. I started tracking the money supply, like how many dollars are being printed. I started tracking food price index, worldwide. All these data sets are public. You just need to find them. And then you need to put ’em in a spreadsheet.

Pieter (07:10):
And then in a database I make a website and I made this site called inflation charts.com and you can kind of use two metrics. So for example, you can see the it’s quite difficult, but you can see the price, the real price of a us home, for example, in the money supply, essentially it means you can track inflation. You can check the real value of the stock market and the real value of the prices. And what it shows is that the real inflation based on my data is much higher than even the today reported inflation, which is 8.5%. My inflation is around 17 to 18% per year. And that is based on that. I include housing rent and I also include real estate prices based on the average spending on those and the governments in general, European governments, the British government, us government. They generally don’t include housing in the consumer price index, which is insane because that’s usually the thing that goes up most like only recently it’s food.

Pieter (08:04):
So I think inflation is a very hot topic. And I think that people forget that inflation literally just means if it’s, you know, 10% or something or 8.5%, it means you get 10% poorer every year. And even if your bank balance stays the same, you have less money because you can buy 10% less than the year before. And your bank balance stays the same, but prices change. So it’s hard to see that you’re getting poorer, but you’re getting poorer. And I think what’s scary about it politically, where I just read the white house, made a statement that they call it the Putin price hike, which makes it a political thing. And of course it has to do with it. And let’s not go too far in politics, but let’s not forget that the us printed, I think 40% of the entire us dollar supply in the last two years.
所以我认为通货膨胀是一个非常热门的话题。我认为人们忘记了，通货膨胀的字面意思是，如果它是，你知道，10%或8.5%，这意味着你得到10%的贫困每年。即使你的银行余额保持不变，你的钱也会减少，因为你可以比前一年少买10%的东西。你的银行余额保持不变，但价格变化。所以很难看出你越来越穷，但你确实越来越穷。我认为这在政治上是可怕的，我刚刚读到白宫的一份声明，他们称之为普京的价格上涨，这使它成为一个政治问题。当然，这也是有关系的。我们不要在政治上走得太远，但我们不要忘记，美国在过去两年中印刷了整个美元供应量的40%。

Pieter (08:47): 彼得（08：47）：
And how can you not include that in your statement about inflation because of COVID we’ve printed our way into this problem. I think, and, and the scariest thing about inflation is that it hits poor people most. So if you’re rich or if you’re middle class, upper middle class, you can invest in the stock markets. The stock market goes up with inflation. Usually a lot of middle class lower don’t have the means or even information to know how to invest. And they are not exposed to the stock market. They didn’t even have the amount of money to invest. And all they see is that the prices go up and their salary usually stays the same. Yeah. Inflation is theft from poor people to, you know, upper middle class and rich people and to the government. And I think that’s really, really not a good thing. Like it’s not nice.
你怎么能不把这一点包括在你关于通货膨胀的声明中，因为我们已经印进了这个问题。我觉得，而且，而且通货膨胀最可怕的就是它对穷人的打击最大。如果你很富有，或者你是中产阶级，中上层阶级，你可以投资股票市场.股票市场随着通货膨胀而上涨。通常很多中产阶级下层没有办法甚至没有信息知道如何投资。而且他们不接触股票市场。他们甚至没有足够的钱来投资。他们所看到的是价格上涨，而他们的工资通常保持不变。是啊通货膨胀是从穷人到中上层阶级和富人以及政府的盗窃。我认为这真的不是一件好事。好像不好似的。

Sondre (09:33): Sondre（09：33）：
No, it’s not like many things becomes really hard to do as well. We have a person in the company, April wonderful designer. We have, so she’s from Argentina and there’s like 40 50%. And she said the exact same thing. It’s like, okay, here’s why it’s so hard. Your rent goes up, all food goes up, salary stays the same and you can’t like make investments. Like she said, her dad ran this like machine rent thing and it’s like, you have to change prices almost daily. And it just becomes so unpredictable. So you just end up not doing it.
不，这并不是说很多事情也变得很难做。我们公司有个人，四月的设计师。我们有，所以她来自阿根廷，有4050%。她也说了同样的话。就像，好吧，这就是为什么这么难。你的房租上涨了，所有的食物都上涨了，工资保持不变，你不能投资。就像她说的，她爸爸经营这个机器租赁的东西，就像，你必须改变价格几乎每天。一切都变得难以预料。所以你最后还是不做了。

Pieter (10:07): 彼得（10：07）：
Yeah. It’s really bad for business, really bad for people. And it’s very interesting. A year ago I was tweeting about this website and there was a lot of replies, like, nah, inflation is not a problem. Like a lot of people believe this, it was unpopular to talk about inflation. It was like not done. It was like, you know, it’s not bad. Inflation is, inflation is healthy and now you don’t hear those people anymore. And it’s a little bit like vengeance again, like, look, we could have seen this coming and now it’s here. And now inflation is for sure a problem. But yeah, I hope this website helps with giving people information about it. And hopefully it helps them also to learn to invest like in the stock market, in ECFS or something, because at least it keeps your money the same. Usually the stock markets go up with inflation and it protects you a little bit, but there’s this quote about, yeah, I’ll find there’s a really scary quote about inflation.
是啊这对生意和人们都不好这很有趣一年前，我在推特上发布了这个网站，有很多回复，比如，不，通货膨胀不是问题。就像很多人相信的那样，谈论通货膨胀是不受欢迎的。就像没做完一样。就像，你知道，还不错。通货膨胀是健康的，现在你再也听不到那些人了。这又有点像复仇，就像，看，我们本可以预见到这一点，现在它就在这里。现在通货膨胀肯定是一个问题。但是，我希望这个网站能给人们提供相关的信息，希望它能帮助他们学习投资股票市场，ECFS或其他东西，因为至少它能让你的钱保持不变。通常股票市场会随着通货膨胀而上涨，这会保护你一点，但是有一句话是关于，是的，我会发现有一句关于通货膨胀的话非常可怕。

Pieter (10:58): 彼得（10：58）：
I put it up, but it was too scary. So I removed it. The end game of rampant inflation is always war or revolution. Mm-Hmm show me a regime change and I will show you inflation when you work your ass off to only stand still or get poorer any isn’t that promises affordable food and shelter for the unwashed. Masses will rain Supreme. If you’re starving to death, nothing else matters except feeding your family. And it goes on, but it’s it’s about like, if inflation goes on too long, you get revolutions, you get unstable societies. It’s in history. It’s happened so many times. It’s a real problem.
我把它挂起来了，但是太吓人了。所以我把它去掉了。恶性通货膨胀的最终结果总是战争或革命。嗯，嗯，给我一个政权的变化，我会告诉你通货膨胀时，你的工作你的屁股只站在原地或变得更穷，任何不是承诺负担得起的食物和住房的平民。群众会下超级女巫的雨如果你快饿死了，除了养家糊口什么都不重要。它还在继续，但它是关于，如果通货膨胀持续太久，你会得到革命，你会得到不稳定的社会。历史上有记载。已经发生过很多次了。这是个真实的问题。

Sondre (11:30): Sondre（11：30）：
I do still think that the us will reign itself in, I mean they had like 10 to 20% inflation, like in the seventies. Right. And they were able to turn that around.
我仍然认为美国会控制自己，我的意思是他们有10%到20%的通货膨胀，就像在70年代一样。对的他们能够扭转这种局面。

Pieter (11:38): 彼得（11：38）：
Well, it’s about like, you need to raise the interest rates. Right. And they’re scared to raise interest rates because if you raise them then the market crashes. Yeah. They’re starting to raise it now. So that’s good.
嗯，这是关于，你需要提高利率。对的他们害怕提高利率，因为如果你提高利率，市场就会崩溃。是啊他们现在开始提高了。所以这很好。

Sondre (11:46): Sondre（11：46）：
I think we’re just gonna have to take a market crash now.
我想我们现在只能承受市场崩盘了。

Pieter (11:49): 彼得（11：49）：
Yeah, I think so too. And it’s well at least that makes the rich poorer doesn’t make the poor poorer so much. Well maybe, also cuz you get fired, but yeah. Economics is so complicated. It’s hard to see what does, what, and what’s the consequence of what and yeah,
我也这么认为。这至少让富人变穷了，而不是让穷人变穷了。也许吧，因为你会被炒鱿鱼，但没错.经济是如此复杂。很难看出什么是什么，什么是什么的后果，是的，

Sondre (12:03): Sondre（12：03）：
One last curiosity question before I get into to DVA, sorry, which is that if you were to kind of examine your own interest, whatever you’re interested in, that seems like niche and weird now and you don’t have to like expect that it becomes big, but it’s like, what’s something that you’re like kind of interested in lately. That’s niche.
在我进入DVA之前，还有最后一个好奇的问题，对不起，如果你要检查你自己的兴趣，无论你感兴趣的是什么，现在看起来都很小众和奇怪，你不必期待它会变得很大，但它就像，你最近对什么感兴趣。这是利基。

Pieter (12:22): 彼得（12：22）：
I think a new thing and I’ve experienced it here in Asia where I’m renting instead of renting like a, an empty apartment, like in Amsterdam where you furnish it yourself and stuff. I rent now from hotels, which have switched to remote workers kind of. So you’re talking about like big hotels, like Intercontinental, whatever they have these sub brands and they’re starting to sell long term deals and they’re also starting to install kitchens. So they’re starting to compete with Airbnbs now for long term, staying people that want furnished and service apartments also for families like it’s like two bedroom, three bedroom places they’re changing the hotel format from tourists to more long term stay people actively because of remote work even for the local market in Thailand, in Asia actively for that. And I think that’s very interesting and the prices you’re talking about are like 1.5 to two times more than regular rent.
我想这是一件新鲜事，我在亚洲有过这样的经历，我在那里租房子，而不是像在阿姆斯特丹那样租一个空荡荡的公寓，你自己装修。我现在从酒店租房子，那里已经变成了远程工作者。所以你说的是像洲际这样的大酒店，不管他们有什么子品牌，他们开始销售长期优惠，他们也开始安装厨房。因此，他们现在开始与Airbnb竞争长期住宿，想要家具和服务公寓的人也适合家庭，就像两居室，三居室的地方，他们正在积极改变酒店形式，从游客到更长期的住宿者，因为远程工作，即使是在泰国当地市场，在亚洲也是如此。我认为这非常有趣，你所说的价格是正常租金的1.5到2倍。

Pieter (13:12): 彼得（13：12）：
Like it’s a little bit of skill, but I think you can get a washing machine, but you can also get the laundry done. For example, it’s, it’s more service where you can focus on your work and it’s kind of like a living solution. They call it, I think. And that’s getting really big here in Southeast Asia. And I think it might also be able to get big in, in America or in the rest of the world where what you see is hospitality moving into the Airbnb space and into the rental space, even. So you have regular housing buying a house or renting house. Then you have Airbnb, which is in those houses, you get your guest, a hotels and hosts and they’re all merging into each other and competing with each other soon. Yeah, because it saves me so much effort because always in AMAM apartments, the water pipe breaks and you need to get the water mechanic guy to come and needs to fix this shit. And it’s and always the heating breaks and this breaks and that breaks. And if something breaks here, like you get a new room, you get a new apartment or, you know, they switch you up. So I think that’s also for families. I think that that could be definitely future.
就像这是一个小技巧，但我认为你可以得到一台洗衣机，但你也可以把衣服洗好。例如，它是，它是更多的服务，你可以专注于你的工作，它有点像一个活生生的解决方案。他们叫它，我认为。这在东南亚变得非常重要。我认为它也可能在美国或世界其他地方变得更大，你看到的是酒店进入Airbnb空间，甚至进入租赁空间。所以你有固定的住房，买房子或租房子。然后你有Airbnb，在这些房子里，你有你的客人，酒店和房东，他们都在互相融合，很快就会互相竞争。是的，因为它节省了我这么多的努力，因为总是在AMAM公寓，水管破裂，你需要得到水机械的家伙来，需要修复这个狗屎。总是暖气坏了，这个坏了，那个坏了。 如果这里出了什么问题，比如你有了一个新房间，一个新公寓，或者，你知道，他们把你换了。所以我认为这也是为家庭。我认为这绝对是未来的趋势。

Sondre (14:16): Sondre（14：16）：
Yeah, no, that, that sort of for term model is great. Like, you know, run the maintenance of your building in this like very customer service oriented way, as opposed to a lot of landlords who are just awful at customer service
嗯，不，那种，那种短期模特很棒。就像，你知道，以这种非常客户服务为导向的方式来维护你的建筑，而不是很多房东，他们只是在客户服务方面很糟糕

Pieter (14:30): 彼得（14：30）：
Like European landlords are well probably American too. They’re horrible. They’re like they don’t care and they never wanna fix stuff. I think the flip side is you cannot customize a furnace service apartments. It all looks the same. It’s very uniform. Uniform is very accepted in Asia. Uniform is not accepted in the west. Everybody wants their own individual apartments here. Everybody has the same looking apartments, but it’s a really good looking apartment. So it’s kind of like less individualistic, but less struggle and less errands. And also like around here, for example, there’s a really good supermarket, five minutes away. I can just walk. It’s all kind of part of the same project and there’s a really good cafe near here. Really good restaurants. And it’s all in walking distance kind of a little bit like Chango valley also like Chango did it organically. Mm-Hmm here. They did it more artificially. It has its flip sides, but it’s an interesting way to live. I think it could be, it could become a thing, especially with remote work
就像欧洲的房东很可能也是美国人一样。太可怕了。他们好像不在乎也不想修东西。我认为另一面是你不能定制一个火炉服务公寓。看上去都一样。很整齐。制服在亚洲很受欢迎。在西方，制服是不被接受的。每个人都想在这里拥有自己的公寓。每个人都有同样的公寓，但它是一个非常好看的公寓。所以这就像是少了点个人主义，但少了点奋斗和跑腿。比如说，在这附近，有一家很好的超市，离这里五分钟的路程。我可以走过去。这是同一个项目的一部分，附近有一家很好的咖啡馆。很好的餐厅。步行就能到，有点像昌戈山谷，也有点像昌戈有机地做的。嗯，嗯，在这里。他们做得更人工。它有它的反面，但它是一个有趣的生活方式。 我认为它可以成为一种东西，特别是远程工作

Sondre (15:24): Sondre（15：24）：
For sure. And you saw the, the Bryan ske put out that Airbnb data that now the majority of their revenue was 30 plus days stays. I mean, that’s remarkable.
当然了你看到了，Bryan Ske发布了Airbnb的数据，现在他们的大部分收入都是30多天的住宿。我是说，这很了不起。

Pieter (15:34): 彼得（15：34）：
Yeah. It’s gonna, I think flip the whole hospitality industry on its head. Like a year ago I started like investing in stocks or ETFs. And I also did like a mini ETF build myself about hotels. Cause I thought this was gonna happen a little bit. So I Googled all the big hotel change and I Googled remote work and see if remote work is on their website and how much, and I found it on the Marriot website, the hyats and the IHG into continental. So I bought those stocks. Yeah, just cuz I was like, they might get big with remote work.
是啊我想这会颠覆整个酒店业。一年前，我开始喜欢投资股票或ETF。我也喜欢一个关于酒店的迷你ETF。因为我以为这会发生一点。所以我在谷歌上搜索了所有大酒店的变化，我在谷歌上搜索了远程工作，看看远程工作是否在他们的网站上，多少钱，我在Haviot网站上找到了它，Hyats和洲际酒店集团进入大陆。所以我买了这些股票。是啊，因为我想，他们可能会因为远程工作而变得很大。

Sondre (16:04): Sondre（16：04）：
So let’s get into Rebase. Let’s start with the beginning. Like why did you build it? What was the building process like
让我们进入Rebase。我们从头开始吧。比如你为什么要建它？建造过程是怎样的

Pieter (16:12): 彼得（16：12）：
Rebase is the first immigration as a service company where it sounds really cool, but it means that before you had to go to lots of dodgy, weird agencies to, to immigrate to a country and I want to try and get it all online, where you just sign up, you pay money, you enter your details and you can move to a country. And a lot of people have predicted this was gonna happen. Like con companies are kind of starting to compete, just like the prediction of this book, sovereign individual from the nineties, like government countries are gonna compete for talent and stuff. So I thought, okay, I’ll just build this. And during COVID I ended up in Portugal kind of randomly when COVID started, I flew back to Europe cuz I asked Twitter on a poll like, should I stay in Asia? Or should I go to Europe back then?
Rebase是第一家移民服务公司，听起来很酷，但这意味着在你不得不去很多狡猾的，奇怪的机构之前，要移民到一个国家，我想尝试在网上完成这一切，你只需注册，你付钱，你输入你的详细信息，你就可以搬到一个国家。很多人都预测到了这会发生。就像骗子公司开始竞争一样，就像这本书的预测一样，90年代的主权个体，就像政府国家一样，将争夺人才和资源。所以我想，好吧，我就做这个。在新冠疫情期间，我在葡萄牙结束了一段时间，当新冠疫情开始时，我飞回欧洲，因为我在推特上问了一个民意调查，我应该留在亚洲吗？或者我应该回到欧洲？

Pieter (16:56): 彼得（16：56）：
COVID wasn’t in Europe yet. So it wasn’t China. And they were like, well of course go to Europe because it’s no COVID and you know, it’s not gonna come to Europe. And of course was really bad in Europe, much worse than in Asia. So I ended up in Europe and I was with mark and we did kind of like a road trip with a lot of masks to see where we could kind of live long term a little bit for during COVID cuz we didn’t wanna stay in Holland, both for our countries. And mark is my best friend and we we know met together. So I ended up in Portugal cuz it was really high on noit list suddenly. And a lot of people were, were there suddenly. So I organized a meet up and 40 people were gonna come and I had to cancel it cuz it was COVID.
当时COVID还没有蔓延到欧洲。所以不是中国。他们说，当然要去欧洲，因为它不是新冠病毒，你知道，它不会来到欧洲。当然，欧洲的情况真的很糟糕，比亚洲更糟。所以我最后去了欧洲，我和马克在一起，我们做了一次公路旅行，带着很多口罩，看看我们能在哪里长期生活，因为我们不想留在荷兰，为了我们的国家。马克是我最好的朋友我们认识。所以我最后去了葡萄牙，因为它突然在名单上很高。很多人突然就来了。所以我组织了一个聚会，有40个人要来，我不得不取消它，因为它是新冠肺炎。

Pieter (17:34):
It was like, I think December, 2020 and I had to cancel it cuz it was really dangerous with COVID. So we couldn’t even do the meet, but it showed me like, okay you organize the meet up 40 people show up. This is quite exceptional. There’s a lot of people for my website. So I was like, okay, Portugal’s really popular. And then I spoke to people there and a lot of them said that they moved to Portugal. They became a resident and Portugal is very foreign friendly. They also had very beneficial like tax discounts for foreigners. If you come there and I was like, okay maybe I should try. So I got a lawyer, I got an immigration advisor and I did it myself. Cause I also was looking for a place to live legally and actually live, you know, at least half the year because I was still kind of roaming around the world and I had the problem that I couldn’t even take out money from my company because I wasn’t living anywhere.

Pieter (18:19):
And I left Holland officially. And if you leave a country like Holland or you know, Sweden too, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the tax authorities are really strict. So if you leave, you need to kind of find a new place to live and start paying tax there. And if you don’t, it kind of falls back to Holland again. So I didn’t take out any money for two years. And I lived all my savings and my savings ran out and I had to borrow money for my friends. Meanwhile, my companies were making lots of money. I would be tweeting about, look this new revenue milestone like $400,000. I couldn’t even spend it. I was borrowing money for my friends. It was hilarious because I wasn’t a resident anywhere. And then finally I came to Portugal and I became a resident and I pay tax and I can get money now for my company.

Pieter (19:02):
And, and I lived there and Portugal is, it’s amazing. It’s good air quality. It’s on the coast. There are so many beautiful places. The beautiful nature. It’s very calm. It’s very affordable. It’s getting higher. But the cost of living is about, I’d say Bangkok and Thailand in terms of like food and stuff. And it’s really quite cheap. It’s, it’s one of the cheapest places in Europe and the people are the nicest people you’ve met. I think Thai people are really nice. Portuguese people are really, really nice. They’re so friendly and hospitable and yeah. So anyway, so I ended up in Portugal and I found out about all these people moving there, all these nomads moving there, cuz nobody could go to Asia cuz of COVID cuz the borders were closed. So everybody ended up in Portugal and people started becoming residents there and I kept getting people asking me like, who’s your lawyer?

Pieter (19:49):
Who’s your lawyer. And I was like, okay, this and it like 20 times. And I was like, okay, let’s make a little type form. So I made a type form, a moment list. Like if you wanna move to Portugal, I become a resident. You can do this. And it was like a few people signing up. Like I would say 50 people. Then I made a real website about it, like a real beautiful landing page with video and stuff. And I accidentally launched it cause I made a photo of my badge over my laptop, like with the landing page on it, which I was still working on. And I, I tweeted like just, I didn’t meant it to go viral. I just tweeted like a POV working on my immigration as a service startup. And I went like really viral, like I think a thousand retweets.

Pieter (20:26):
And then people started going to the websites cuz I saw it in the screenshots and I started going there and website was of course already live cuz that’s how I kind of worked. And they started screenshoting the website with all the benefits, nice country tax benefits that went viral by other people also. And hundreds of people started signing up and I think we had like 500 signups in one month of people wanting to move to Portugal and it was outrageous. And then I looked up the statistics of how many people moved to Portugal and it was like 60,000 a year by month. That’s like, like what like 5,000 per month. So I was doing 10% of the entire Portuguese immigration markets within a month. So I was like, this is insane. Yeah. And my lawyer said, you need to close the applications or my immigration advisor because he said, you can’t do this. This is too many, too many. He was getting calls, doing calls all day. These onboarding calls, he was going burn out. So we closed applications a little bit for now, but it’s soon gonna open up again and I’m trying to automate all the steps to make it more smooth, kinda like Stripe Atlas, which is like a way to start a company. Yeah. Yeah.

Sondre (21:35):
Now I saw you commented. Actually I recall to that thread that you wanted to digitize the physical process of doing immigration, similar to how Atlas did it for starting a company hundred percent yet. I think that’s such a great thing because so many processes when interact with government are so bad, but you can, you know, with a lot of patients automate some of that, certainly, you know, it’s possible to fill out PDFs.

Pieter (21:58):
That’s literally what I’m working on this week. I have a PHP module to pre-fill PDFs. Mm-Hmm you’re a hundred percent right? The good thing about these forms, cuz a lot it’s all forms, right? Like let’s get to the practical government is all writing down forms and signing them. The good thing is these forms don’t change. That much. Government is very slow mm-hmm so it might take five years for form to change. And in that case you do need to change the code and stuff, but generally it just keeps working. So once it’s automated, it kind of runs and then you can submit it. You can even probably ship it via API to the government. You can even do signature, right? You just make a canvas and people draw their signature and then you put it in the PDF. That’s what I’m gonna do.

Pieter (22:39):
The only limitations are like, for example lawyers say stuff like Peter, I don’t think we can get the signature from a HTML canvas into a PDF. It’s not really legal or something. And then you need to like figure out the legality, how can we make this legally defensible? There must be a law article that allows for this. So you need to find that it’s a really different industry than just making a little SaaS app. It’s really interesting. It’s really different. And people are really grateful. It’s so different than my other websites because you have people like go through this whole process and then they end up in Portugal and they live there and they live there with their family and you help do that for like a few hundred dollars or something. And you’re like, wow, this is so cool. Like the other websites are also cool, but this is so physical. Like we have Venezuelan families now getting out of Venezuela to Portugal, like that’s like Venezuela is, is a very country not doing so well, like Argentina. So it’s a really cool business. It’s really so different and yeah, you must have the same of insurance. It’s a, it’s a very different business than just a normal, you know, iOS app or something or website it’s, it’s much more it’s about people’s lives in your case is, you know, medical.

Sondre (23:48):
Yeah, no. And insurance is similar in both of the ways you mentioned there. So one is that you’re dealing with people who have real personal catastrophe and it’s also similar in the first way you said, which is that you interact with infrastructure that is pre-digital regularly. And you know, thankfully our co-founder and CTO, Sarah, one of her first jobs was that she built this automation for government agency in Norway. And so she built this like PDF generator that you’re building this week, several things you know, it’s like will come up pieces where we’re interact with some entity that can only receive a form in this particular way. And the API project that’s gonna take years. So instead we automate it by filling in the PDF and sending it off as the email, just like they received it normally

Pieter (24:38):
exactly. I think startup people think that it’s easy to change regulation. They’re like, ah, let’s just, or they think it’s easy to not follow it, but that’s not at all. You can’t, you can’t really do that. You have to follow the law and it’s much easier to just do what they want you to do, but in a very robotic way where like, okay, we’re not gonna hand write these forms. We’re just gonna put letters. And they’ll say this form is not the handwritten. It’s like, yeah, but it wasn’t. Where does that say? It should be handwritten. It’s really fun business because you know these other business, other websites, they get boring after a while a little bit. And it’s fun to have something new. It’s almost infinite because you also can go to different countries. So for example, we kind of wanna go to Spain now with the immigration advisors, Spain is extremely bureaucratic. It’s like 10 times more bureaucratic than Portugal apparently. So it’s kind of like scary, but I don’t know. Maybe that’s a nice challenge. You know, there’s a lot of different countries and Andreas clinger keeps DMing me. He’s always DMing me, Peter. This it’s gonna be billion dollar company. It’s so good. Maybe that’s maybe I should give that secret, but, but he’s really supportive. He’s like you need to expand as fast as possible.

Sondre (25:44):
It’s a hundred percent correct for people listening. I’m sure there are people listening who want to apply. If you could just give a quick walk through like how easy is it? What are the steps people go through?

Pieter (25:54):
The website is rebase.co. You fill out a form of your personal details. Stuff. Like I think like your income cuz there’s income requirements, but it’s not supervised like $15,000 a year by a Portuguese government. There’s a few requirements. Depending if you’re European union citizen or a non-European union citizen, or even American cuz American government is quite crazy with stuff. They still want you to pay tax. Anyway. Even if you’re out there outside us, you apply, you do an onboarding call with the immigration advisors, which is one hour where they guide you through the steps of like actually doing it. And I’m starting to automate that call. Also, I’m starting to make it, you know, straight to this forums and pre-filling depending on the situation, you need to get a visa for Portugal. If you’re outside European union use, you need to get a visa, which is a, I think a D seven visa, which lets you live in Portugal to get all this stuff sorted.

Pieter (26:44):
Then you fly to Portugal. I think you go to city hall, signed documents. After a while you end up as a resident, then you apply for the special foreigner benefits because they want to attract the foreigners, which is called NR. And then you get approved and then you live in Portugal and, and the cool thing is after five or six years, you can apply for a Portuguese passport. So it’s really beneficial for people like from Venezuela or outside you that want access to you know, I mean European union passport is always great. And yeah, so if you have a stable life there, if you don’t have a criminal record, if you make nice money, not even a lot, but just okay. You can probably get a Portuguese passport. It’s really cool. We’ve, we’ve been helping a lot of Ukrainians. Also since the war, we already had a lot of Ukrainian customers and we refunded all of them because now the European union allows Ukrainians to just come and, and we’re still helping them get all the benefits too, but Portugal’s been very open for Ukrainian refugees and it’s a great place. Yeah. You can just apply. I think it’s like a hundred dollars to apply. And then the legal costs after are like, I think somewhere like $800, but it kind of depends. I don’t know exactly pricing, but yeah.

Sondre (27:54):
Could I explore that choice with you about whether to build this into, you know, a billion dollar company or not? Yeah. You know, it, it has real trade offs and you know, it’s like the upside is you get a billion dollars. The downside is it’s like you sacrifice big portion of your life on the way there you take on a lot of stress. Yeah. And often, you know, when, when we go through these periods of, you know, raising money yeah. Like by the time this is live, you know, we’ve announced there’s serious B so we’re going the venture route and it’s great. In some ways, you know, you can advance the scaling head of the revenue and you have a real shot at building like billion dollar company pretty fast, you know, a few years. But I’m wondering, how do you think about that choice? You know, it’s always bittersweet when we raise those rounds, you know, it’s like I do have this part of me, which is like, gosh, it would be so romantic to just only company a hundred percent. And , you know, just bootstrap and automate everything and have this people light company. I, I do find it more. There’s something more wonderful about it. What do you think about that choice for rebates?

Pieter (28:57):
Okay. This is so radical, honest, right? I talk to so many founders like VC funded founders who talk to me in the and say the same thing after 10 employees, it gets really stressful after 10 people. And they say like, if I would do it again, I would probably do it with max 10 people and I would go maybe India and stuff, but you need to understand VC founders are also in a lot of stress. So of course they complain a lot about, and they look at grasses greener, like, oh, look at Peter levels with his little PHP scripts, making money, it’s always grass green. I also have grass greener about VC. I’m like, you know, it would be cool to build this giant company. And it seems so much easier if I see these other companies. Like if I look at remote.com for example, and they’re really VC funded and they’re doing really well.

Pieter (29:38):
And I look at like, wow, this side, this landing page looks so cool. Cuz they have these designers, the logo looks so cool. And they entering all these different markets and it’s like worldwide and blah, blah. I’m like, wow, it’s cool. And then I look at myself, I’m like myself is kind of simple, kind of basic, but it also is really nice, but the, the skill is different and you can reach people’s hearts and minds in both ways. Like I do think my websites do reach millions of people and then they also make millions of dollars now. So it’s kind of nice per year. I do think it’s less stressful than VC or than getting funded because you’re always with this runway and you’re always looking at what’s, you know, are we gonna be on time for the next raise? And are they gonna, you know, what if the market crash, is there gonna be a next round or this stuff goes in your brain and it’s difficult to maybe sleep with that, for example.

Pieter (30:23):
So the question is, would I do, for example, funding for rebates, I would do it if I was 10 years younger, cause I’m 35 now. And I already spent, you know, last eight years working quite hard on all these websites, cuz it was a really momentous effort as an individual. And it was really fun and really great. But I think it might be dangerous cuz a lot of my life is my work. Just like with you, right? We are those kind of type A people where we probably don’t have a lot of hobbies next to this. This is our work and we, we, we sleep and we think, and we, this whole company, it dominates our life. When we shower, we think about it and less now for me. But a few years ago, this was everything always in my head when I walk, when I talk.

Pieter (31:04):
And I think the problem is after a while, if you do that for over a decade, you become a very mono type of person, like with a very narrow minded interest. I did some great effort with this company, but you need more than just a company you need…Maybe you’re into pottery or whatever painting or some other stuff. And I think for me increasingly trying to spend more time on those things as my startups are now automated, increasingly more of a like balanced life and I’ve I have had a balanced life. I didn’t work so hard, but as people think, but you know what I mean? Like it’s still always about this company. It’s always about this web. It’s always about Twitter, you know, your identity, your personal brand on, on all this stuff. And I think if you do it for too long, you become that and that’s, you know, dangerous maybe cuz you don’t live forever. You know,

Sondre (31:55):
You wanna preserve the source of the uniqueness. Like you don’t wanna become your work entirely and become this like flat person. Who’s like yeah, perfectly optimized to the problem at hand,

Pieter (32:11):
Like startups is about money, right? Like you make a lot of money and you get these millions of dollars in revenue and that’s a momentous achievement. That’s like, that’s a lot of money and you get millions of customers or users and that’s so high in dopamine. That’s why we like it. It’s so difficult to achieve that. And it’s so difficult to run that. And when it runs, you’re like, holy shit, why we did this? This is amazing. Like this is miraculous. It’s so difficult. It’s like pro athlete stuff. And that’s why it’s so hard for that to compete with a normal life, like a normal personal life, like walking your dog or something or family life. A lot of entrepreneurs have difficulty, even family life, right? They’re not there for their kids or something. I don’t wanna do that because we live in such a capitalist society, which is fine with me.

Pieter (32:56):
But you start thinking, wow, this is so important cuz it’s about millions of people and millions of dollars. But you know, what about your life? Like life is about more than money, more about success, more than about status. It’s also about friends, barbecuing and not talking about work, but talking about like, you know, the sky is purple, but it’s not cuz your color blind, but that kind of stuff, you know, it’s it’s, it’s about more than that. And you need both of course, but it’s really easy to get lost into entrepreneurship, into like this obsessive thing because it’s so monumental. I think,

Sondre (33:25):
I think that’s a great place to, end I’m gonna go for a walk now and reflect on that. Yeah, exactly. Don’t worry, I’m definitely still committed to SafetyWing

Pieter (33:36):
Angry investors.

Sondre (33:37):
Thank you so much, Peter. I, I see we’re coming up in time. I’ll be respectful of your time and thank you so much for joining us. People of course can go to rebase.co. I believe it is. Is There any other of your projects you would recommend people check out?

Pieter (33:53):
Did I make something new? I don’t think so. I think this is it. Yeah. This is all like Twitter, twitter.com/levelsio as always. That’s where you can find all my stuff.

Sondre (34:02):
One of the best Twitter accounts in the world definitely check out @levelsio.Thank you so much. Peter, I always enjoyed talking with you and me too. This was definitely one of the best. Thank you very much.

Pieter (34:14):
See you next time.

Sondre (34:16):
You can also get more insights from other remote leaders on buildingremotely.com here. You’ll find the first chapters of the building remotely book as well as articles and events relating to remote work. See you next time.

P.S. I’m on Twitter too if you’d like to follow more of my stories. And I wrote a book called MAKE about building startups without funding. See a list of my stories or contact me. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below: