In this episode, we’re diving into the journey of Lior Neu-ner, the master of A/B testing pricing and the founder of RemoteRocketship.com, who balances a 9-5 job with running his successful job board in the evenings and weekends.
It's been a while! My consulting business has really taken over life so the personal blog and the Leanpreneur newsletter hit the back burner for a few weeks.
Apologies out of the way, I have a new episode for you, this time with Lior Neu-ner, the founder of RemoteRocketship.com. He works a 9-5 and runs his candidate-focused job board on evenings and weekends.
He's a master of A/B testing pricing so let's dive in!
Click here to watch the interview (32mins)
The idea for Remote Rocketship came about when Lior’s wife was searching for a new job.
He spotted that she wouldn’t see job vacancies that he knew were available. This happens when companies choose not to use certain websites or pay for listings.
As he had left his role at Meta as an engineer, he was searching for problems to solve and solutions to build.
He set about building a solution.
The website took around 3 weeks to build, and gathered significant traffic on launch.
His idea was to scrape as many remote jobs as possible, creating a one stop shop for job seekers.
This was November 2022, he shared it on social media and it did very well on Reddit notching up 150k unique visitors soon after launch.
It found favour with one Reddit community in particular, r/overemployed.
For the uninitiated, overemployed is a term to describe those holding down multiple remote jobs.
The tag line on Reddit is “Work two remote jobs, reach financial freedom.”
After trying the usual monetisation routes for a few months, the website was making no money despite the high traffic. Only one company paid $200 for a post.
Lior put this down to market conditions and an abundance of strong competitors.
So, he made the brave move to flip the business model to start monetising on the candidate side - essentially charging for his curation service.
He A/B tested to 10% of users and despite his doubts he made sales in the first 2 weeks so rolled it out to everyone after that.
After this initial success, he decided to double down on improving the candidate experience and make it as best as possible.
Lior is a master of A/B testing his pricing theories, using the data to inform his changes. You can check out a detailed article on his 6-steps of price testing here but I’ll summarise for you here.
1. Moving the job board behind a paywall >> 10 subscribers ($10) after 2 weeks but traffic drops 50%
2. Doubling the price >> 66% decrease in sign ups, 35% less revenue
3. Adding a 2-day trial >> No change in sign ups, less revenue due to cancellations before the trial ended
4. Offering half price and bursaries >> signups increased by 30%, revenue remained static
5. Weekly subscription rather than monthly >> signups were consistent, churn increased but revenue stayed the same
6. Offer annual subscriptions in addition >> revenue doubles, LTV from $35 to $45 per user
Throughout, he used PostHog for his testing and tended to run his tests for 2-3 weeks. You should use an A/B test calculator to check for the optimum time to run these experiments.
So, Lior runs Remote Rocketship as a solopreneur.
I had assumed he was a full time founder but no, he also has a 9-5.
In fact, he found his 9-5 during the time he was trying to monetise via the B2B route and struggling.
He found gains in his mental clarity when the pressure was removed from making the site work to drive his income. He also became a lot more focused on using his time wisely when building with less time.
So, he built for overemployed people and then (kind of) followed the very same ethos. 🙌
The website runs itself, taking up very little of Lior’s time.
When I asked Lior for advice, he gave some excellent tips.
Be intentional about your effort vs impact; so focus on actions that have the highest impact for the least effort.
And, always be looking for ways to cut corners as long as you can maintain quality.
Lior took a good dose of inspiration from Phil at 4dayweek, who I interviewed earlier this year.
Some of Phil’s tweets about SEO convinced Lior that he should have a go at building in this space.
Lior's journey is a testament to the power of a lean, data-driven approach to business.
By focusing on impactful efforts, leveraging AB testing, and balancing a full-time job with entrepreneurial pursuits, Lior has built a successful venture that continues to grow.
In addition to Remote Rocketship, he has also now launched:
Replicating his approach and tech to test multiple markets; a great tactic.
You can follow Lior on X here
If you learned something, can you help spread the word forwarding it to a friend? TIA.
