Levels.io 梳理 AI 时代剩余护城河并调整产品与投资方向

In a similar scramble I did to jump on AI in late 2022 (moving from remote work and nomads to AI apps), I am now scrambling to chase any remaining moats

As AI companies will suck up everything else (in my humble opinion)

So for every moat left I see where I can pivot towards to that with my sites/apps

Proprietary data or content:

• I launched a nomads.com paid data API for companies from $2,490/year to $9,990/year, the city data is great because it's made by real members who for example review/like/dislike a city after visiting it, or being able to see which places are growing or shrinking (interesting of real estate, coworking, or gym investors)
• hoodmaps.com neighborhood data is very valuable and I'm building a paid API for that too, as well as including it in the Nomads API

Network effects / community:

• I made the nomads.com community free (before $99, now just $1 to avoid spam), the more people, the more network effect

Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand

• I have an @X audience and I get paid well for it (about ~$15K/mo), but I've also diversified that with my blog levels.io's email list and Telegram subscribers, which is now 187,279 people who get daily/weekly/monthly email digests of my posts

Physical component: hardware, locations, IRL:

• I have been improving and promoting nomads.com meetups, there's now 8 meetups planned in the next 30 days, but is has to keep growing, I've also added fitness meetups etc.
• I've been using and working on hotelist.com a lot and improving it, it seems to fill a real void in booking sites that all suffer from rating inflation and filters that are not modern, I'm adding features I want and it seems that's working. Today I'm adding a filter for Longevity Hotels, that have a strength training gym, wellness area, blackout curtains, as a counter balance to the boomer hotels with champagne on check in and a gym with only treadmills etc. Hotelist is fundamentally IRL because hotels are IRL
• Not really IRL but vibejam.com is an annual event that's every year has ~1000 people participating vibe coding games and this year had over 1 million people playing the games, and AI companies really like to sponsor it because it's a great way to get exposure for their AI building tools
• I am building a pieter.com 1990s retro PC mini remake, like the SNES Mini, or the ModRetro M64, a hardware product I can sell marketed for nostalgia, especially after the last few weeks where it took off finally, I think there could be some market, and hardware is fun to try
• I sell merch on levelsio.com and make about $1K/mo from it, I haven't been very active on it but could expand this if I want

Capital: owning assets and investing

• I was already heavily invested in AI companies but have been even more with the acquisition of Cursor giving me $SPCX stock, I'll hold on to that, I think money will keep getting sucked from the traditional economy and replaced with paying AI companies money
• As a hedge, I've also put more money in bonds with IB01 ETF in case the AI bubble pops, $IB01 is a nice simple ETF for that
• I am actively looking at buying more land and real estate (especially coastal) as that's a scarce asset that will remain scarce post-AGI
• I am actively investing in startups with levels.vc although I'm wondering what startups are still valuable to invest in as Big AI and Big Tech suck up everything, if you look at the last YC batch, it's all "Cursor for {industry}" harnesses and hardware, I think robotics could be interesting to invest but it's unclear who will be the winner as ironically robots have a low barrier to entry. Most robots are just Chinese-made components put together with some vibe coded software by their Western founders!
• I am open to buyers for photoai.com and interiorai.com to increase the amount of capital I can invest elsewhere

Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers

• I am bad at this, and don't like regulation by nature. So I don't have anything here. And I don't think I will try pursue anything in here. I have friends building apps that work on getting EU subsidies or EU government program credits for emissions etc. But it's not my thing

So yes, chasing moats it is! Let's see if it works

Here's my audience / distribution moat chasing

levels.io/subscribe

An email box inside a tweet, idea by @tibo_maker!

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P.S. I'm on 𝕏 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.