The largest crowd-sourced database of cities for digital nomads — a bootstrapped SaaS success story.
| solo (Pieter Levels) |
| solo |
| Small team |
Nomad List started from the question 'which cities are good for remote work.' Find a domain where a group has strong decision-making needs but information is scattered everywhere. You don't need perfect data — a rough MVP list is enough.
Don't write code. Use Google Sheets to list 50-100 core entries, manually collect key fields (cost, internet speed, safety, etc.), share the link in target communities (HN, Reddit, X) to collect more data.
Pieter went viral with just a simple HTML page + filters. The key isn't features — it's whether the data itself is useful. If 100 people visit on day 1 but don't share it, the niche is wrong.
After free data attracts traffic, create paid tiers. Nomad List's key insight was 'free data → paid community + tools.' Design a product where free users see the value but paid users get 10x the efficiency.
Data can be copied (Numbeo is doing similar things), but community cannot. Nomad List's paid Slack/Discord community is its true moat. Let paid members help each other, share experiences, and form a sense of belonging.
Nomad List spawned Remote OK (job board), and later Rebase (immigration services). The core user base's trust is the biggest asset — once trust is established, you can launch adjacent products they genuinely need.
The biggest challenge of crowdsourced data is keeping it updated. City data goes stale and users churn. When communities grow large, noise appears. This is the biggest structural risk for solo founders — one person maintaining data for 1,400+ cities is a marathon battle.
1,400+ cities' data needs continuous updating. Pieter maintains the entire platform alone; if he stops updating, data goes stale and users churn. This isn't a technical problem — it's the human capacity ceiling of 'only one person'.
Nomad List's city data can be replaced by Numbeo, Expatistan, or even ChatGPT. The core moat isn't the data itself but community + brand + first-mover advantage. If you're building a similar product, first ask: if ChatGPT can answer the same question, where is your value?
Pieter could post a Google Sheets link on HN in 2014 and go viral because 'public data sharing' was still novel. By 2026, the internet is saturated with AI-generated content and Notion templates. A pure data list won't automatically go viral — you need to add a unique editorial perspective or a tool layer.
Nomad List went viral through HN and Product Hunt. Alternative channels in 2026: X threads, Reddit deep posts, Hacker News Show HN. The key is finding where your target users gather and impressing them with a genuinely useful MVP, not posting ads.
Nomad List's subscription price of $99-299/year is moderate to low for SaaS. Its user base (digital nomads) is highly price-sensitive. To break through the revenue ceiling, you need horizontal expansion like Pieter (Remote OK, Rebase) rather than relying on price increases for a single product.
