Euroremote

I've been postponing to write my first post on Euroremote for quite some time now but I figured getting “Product of the Week” on Remote Tools is a nice occasion to finally do so.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to launch something. Tried launching a couple of ecommerce projects, a workout-related information blog and played around with some Android apps but I never actually launched. I never pushed through. I knew that I need to be more consistent and patient so I pledged to myself that the next idea I have – I will actually launch it.

Last year around this time I was really not enjoying my day job and I decided that it was time to move on. COVID-19 hit and remote work became the norm. I was so intrigued how small, medium and big companies all adjusted very quickly to the situation. How old school-minded enterprises embraced the remote model because they had to. But the great thing about it – it actually worked. The Fortune company I was working for back then had no problem turning the switch to WFH mode. Smaller and larger companies where my friends worked at did the same. It was amazing how alongside the whole chaos around COVID-19 the business continued as usual (well almost, depending on the industry).

This got me thinking that if we are all working remote, maybe I should not limit my job search just to companies in my city or country. I started browsing job boards for remote work to see what’s available and how does the search differ from my regular routine on LinkedIn and Bulgaria’s job sites. There were a lot more interesting opportunities. I was finding myself going on rabbit holes, researching amazing companies. But there was one problem – majority of the job posts were searching for applicants who reside in the US or can work US hours. Living in Bulgaria and having an American boss was tiring, so I couldn’t picture having 8 hour difference with people who I would need to work day to day with.

Then I followed the standard path – googling for a specific job board for remote work in Europe. I didn’t find much. That’s when I realized that maybe there is a gap. I remember thinking – “no way I’m the only person who has this problem”.

Next step - disregarding all the advices. No validation, no interviews, no market research – straight to building! It took me a couple of months to learn Bubble, then experimenting with Boundless and finally diving into Webflow. I was examining the model of RemoteOK and absorbing knowledge from Makerpad (thanks to @levelsio and @bentossell for being great motivators and teachers). Finally I launched Euroremote in October last year. I reused a logo I had from one of my unrealized ecommerce projects and wrote some VBA code to help me get RSS feeds from various job boards. Ever since, I have been manually curating every post and making sure that whoever uses Euroremote will not have to think if the job is eligible for Europeans or if the time zone will be totally different.

After the launch – again ignoring all advice – I started building more. Adding more functionalities and trying to figure out the tiny details which only I’m aware of instead of getting the word out.
I decided that I will cap my Trello board and once I ship the “very very important details” I will focus on other activities.

And here we are now. I started reaching out to companies, to customers and to different founders and communities. One of them was Remote Tools. Today I learned that Euroremote is product of the week and that made me really happy. I was smiling the whole day and even peaked at my badge a couple of times. 😊 Kudos @hrishikesh1990 and team and the lovely platform they have built helping remote workers everywhere.

I'm excited for the next milestone!