I Created The Best Resume Builder In The World ($2.5M/Year)
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hello, I’m Jacob Jacquet. I am the founder of Rezi! Rezi is the best resume builder in the world.
It does an amazing job of creating a resume that follows best practices which usually results in interviews for the job seeker who uses it. It’s been used by about 2,620,883 job seekers and is currently at $215K MRR.
As a fun fact, we were the first resume builder to incorporate GPT into the workflow in December of 2020 with GPT-3. The fact that we were the first meant that by the time ChatGPT took over, we were well established as the leader in using AI for resumes.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
The founding story of Rezi is pretty cool - I write about it quite a bit so if you are interested, I’ll leave some links to the bottom of this post.
I started Rezi in 2015, as a graduate who was job searching with outstanding success considering my GPA was 2.2 - as it turned out the interviews I was getting were largely thanks to how well I created my resume - tailoring the content and optimizing the formatting for parsability of hiring systems resulted in interviews at Google, Goldman Sachs, and a bunch of other competitive companies.
I guess it is the personality flaw of the entrepreneur to seek risk - but I saw that my success was something that could easily be productized and communicated online to good reception. I decided to post my resume on Reddit and the feedback was incredible. I believe the story I told of being a bad student but still having great results was the perfect narrative to stir up interest.
After the post, I came up with the name of Rezi - a short, cute name that sounds enough like a resume to stick with the user for a long time. In fact, I don’t think the name could be any better. This early focus on branding, execution, customer experience, and design was the DNA of how I operated Rezi. Now, that has paid off in the tune of millions of dollars per year. Looking back, these tenets have also given us our greatest competitive advantages.
In 2016, at 23, I decided to move to South Korea to take advantage of the growing ecosystem for global startups. I think this was the most important fundamental decision I’ve made during my time operating Rezi.
I know that Korea was the third largest English market in the world, and Google Campus had a startup space in Gangnam. Being a young dude with big dreams, I signed up for the adventure and got a job teaching English as a way to get a visa and decent job as I started to build Rezi.
Rezi is now very well known in Korea as the earliest foreign-founded startup. Here are some articles that go into depth on Korea:
American entrepreneur confident to revamp Korean resume market
Korean startup Rezi’s founder Jacob Jaquet about sustaining a successful resume service
Youtube Interview for Korean Accelerator:
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
The first version of Rezi was very simple - simple enough that I was able to launch an MVP as a broke recent graduate. The MVP was simply a Microsoft Word document of the resume, along with a user guide with best practices. I sold this resume template for about $9.69.
The cool and brilliant thing about this is it validates the need, and product with a non-technical solution that easily translated to a saas product.
From 2015 - 2018, I spent my time seeking financing to operate the company and hire an agency to build the first iteration of the software version of Rezi. About 5 years later, Rezi was launched as a b2c saas in September of 2019.
An earliest version of the Rezi website.
The earliest MVP of the Rezi Resume builder - all information saved locally & no auth.
Rezi today - the sexiest resume builder that exists.
Describe the process of launching the business.
It’s been 3,340 days since I had the idea of Rezi in May of 2015. It’s been a consistent effort ever since. Specifically, I am not sure what more I would have to say other than that you just have to do the work, avoid mistakes, and do better than your competitors.
In the early days, I really enjoyed talking about the start up journey anywhere that I could. The best and more authentic channel for that turned out to be Reddit.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
I like to write about growth as it is the most essential characteristic of a startup. Two articles that would be relevant to this question are
0 to 50,000 Users: A Candid Look Into Creative Growth
Initially, we simply focused on creating really good software. Our partnerships with AppSumo and StackCommerce were pivotal; AppSumo helped us gain users through a deal during the COVID-19 pandemic, while StackCommerce drove revenue-focused growth. Organic growth followed as we improved our SEO strategy and website content, leading to sustained user acquisition.
Repeated Virality: Our Growth Hack Equation
In this article, it outlines the strategy of forcing viral reactions on social media by giving away our most expensive subscription at no cost. It’s a bit outdated, but the idea held up recently, October 2023, as we were able to replicate success again, this time resulting in just under 70,000 sign ups in a single day.
Outside of one off events, our user acquisition is driven by ranking for relevant keywords. Specifically Rezi dominates keywords related to “AI Resume Builder”
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Rezi is profitable. We have a lean development-heavy team where managers don’t fit in.
Profitable: 54.97%
Our 11 employees account for approximately a fourth of the total expenses. Being in Korea helps keep development salaries to a reasonable amount.
Employee costs: 24.90%
We do not measure customer acquisition costs. If we did, I’d look at the cost of the website, cost of the content team and make a rough calculation related to those metrics.
customer acquisition costs: ?
We no longer run ads - we’ve spent about 15K a month for the last year attempting to have a +1 ROAS. A mistake I made may have been hiring an agency to do them rather than hiring internally.
Ad costs: 0
Customer Lifetime Value has steadily increased over the past few months since we removed our Basic plan which was $3/mo. Additionally we implemented an anti-churn cancellation flow that has improved our CLV.
Customer Lifetime Value: $101.90
Traffic is steadily going up week over week. We were lucky to make a great hire to lead content and the results have followed our effort to organize and scale Rezi’s content team.
monthly traffic: 432,638 total visits during the last 30 days. Up 18% m/m
What your operations look like today.
11 employees out of our office in Seoul, South Korea.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I made a great first hire for our founding engineer. Back in 2019, I was able to hire a French-national in Seoul to join as we received the new software from the development agency. He had a scrappy-self taught full stack engineering background but was just pushed out of a startup himself. Since hiring, we’ve worked together nearly in perfect harmony across product, business, hiring, and operational decisions.
Another good decision would certainly be proper management of the cap table. I was able to avoid taking on excessive dilution or losing control while reaching profitably and surviving many years. Far too often, funding is tied to the idea of success when in reality, it may do more harm than good for inexperienced founders.
Mentioned earlier was the fact that Rezi was the first resume software to incorporate AI into the resume building process. When the world collectively lost it’s mind over AI in the earliest days of December 2022, we had a fully working, optimized, and loved consumer product ready for the masses to experience and get their first taste of what GPT is all about.
I believe this was a key moment for us as it was disruptive for existing resume writers, and resume builders that were slow to adopt the new technology. Now, you’ll see Rezi being constantly recommended on Linkedin, Reddit, Google, as the best AI resume builder.
Prepare to be successful and let it shape your habits and behaviors. Hold yourself to high standards in terms of internal thinking, self image. Hold yourself to routines that promote healthy living by way of frequent exercise and a reasonably healthy diet. The more consistently I adhere to a strict routine, the better I perform as a CEO.
Be an interesting person and seek out other interesting people who have unique experiences. Avoid lame distractions as much as possible. Be kind and help those around without expectation of anything in return.
Don’t obsess over money as money seems to follow ability, commitment, and passion like an unavoidable consequence.
My skills as they would relate to Rezi would include an eye for product design, knowledge of using Webflow (built Reiz.ai solo), public speaking, avoiding mistakes, and making somewhat good decisions over a long period of time.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
If it is your first time starting a company or building a product - 100% focus on execution rather than being obsessed with a new/complicated idea. Understand what success looks like and emulate it. Remember that users are interacting objectively with your product/software and it will be judge according to how it makes them feel. If you aren’t a good designer, find one before it’s too late (wasted a bunch of time and money building something that sucks).
Be unrelentingly optimistic and seek risk. If you start to doubt yourself, do something healthy that makes you feel good. For me, it was running.
Ship and share. Make things and scream how wonderful it is on the internet. When people take interest in it, talk to them to learn how they receive it. Once you start talking to users, it gets a lot more interesting.
Try to avoid business people. Align yourself with innovators or technical professionals. The later usually seeks knowledge or impact while the former usually seeks a percentage.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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