A Step Backwards 🤔

Remote Weekly v2.0 is out! API included.

I call this release "back to the drawing board", because in 2020, RW went full circle:

• target audience-wise,
• business model-wise.

RW launched before the pandemic. The goal was to deliver highly personalized job offers to remote working professionals using:

• basic word processing and analysis,
• machine learning,
• and eventually, an AI.

The early feedback and traction were good. So what happened?
I got sidetracked.

When the lockdown started happening around the globe, I saw huge traffic and sign-up spikes.

But that's good, right?
Well, it depends. Most of the new traffic wasn't my target audience.

It was people suddenly finding themselves locked at home, looking for a remote job. Any remote job.

They had no preference, experience, or focus. I couldn't categorize them and deliver relevant results. And yes, sadly, they had little to offer to any potential remote employer.

I failed to notice this and started steering RW in the wrong direction.
While listening to the wrong feedback, I made a series of bad decisions.

1. Prioritized quantity of jobs over quality
2. Made the service free for everyone
3. Introduced paid "post a job" option (b2b)
4. Introduced paid ads (b2b)
5. Built a bunch of new features no one really needed (classic)

And then the worst, absolutely unspeakable thing happened. I have effectively transformed RW into yet another job board with all those changes. The fate I have actively tried to avoid and feared from the beginning.

Yes, the project was somehow profitable during that period. This, however, wasn't a recurring revenue. There was also no product-founder fit.

To be more specific. The business model seemed to be doable, but... would require time investment in areas I did not want to participate in. At least not full time.

1. Getting much higher traffic and more subscribers.
2. Looking for b2b clients to advertise their remote job openings or products, mostly through cold outreach.
   This vision did not please me at all. Something had to be done. And it was.

Today, I am happy to release Remote Weekly v2

What's new?

1. Much more aggressive job filtering.
2. Ditched both sponsored jobs & ads since it didn't fit into the core idea.
3. Switched to a freemium model. Thanks to this, I have to grow only one channel instead of two. The funnel is also much simpler.
4. Released paid API access. Guide how to build stuff on top of it incoming, #nocode version included.
5. I have kept some of the new features. Like public profiles or full-text search.
6. United everything under a new domain, remoteweekly.ai

Explore the latest version at remoteweekly.ai, API at api.remoteweekly.ai.

Cheers!
Petr from remoteweekly.ai