How Acadium Reached More Than 3,000 Business Members and 70,000 Apprentices Since Launch (Interview with Co-Founder and CEO Moe Abbas)

Introduction and Moe Abbas Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Moe Abbas. He started his first landscaping business when he was 18, sold that and started a residential design and build company, and that he grew that to one of the largest in North America. After reaching the top of that reaching the top of that industry, he wanted new challenge where his work could have a positive impact on the world and he founded Acadium as a result. It's a way to enable

00:18economic mobility to anyone with an internet connection. Moe, you ready to take us to the top?

Moe Abbas

00:23>> Let's do it.

What Acadium Does: The Marketplace Model

Nathan Latka

00:24Alright. What's the business? What are guys working on?

Moe Abbas

00:26>> So Acadium is a marketplace that enables anyone with an Internet connection to launch a career and come to an apprenticeship with a business owner, get work experience, skills, relationship. It's totally free. It's ten hours a week. It's on their own schedule. There's also free courses. On the other hand, you have small business owners who often are cash constrained and wearing multiple hats, they need help. In exchange for mentorship, they get help from their apprentice, ten hours

00:53>> a week for three months to 120 hour relationship, and it's totally affordable for businesses. They pay a fee to use the marketplace. They can get one or multiple apprentices. The apprenticeship itself is unpaid. The exchange of value is help for mentorship. Traditional marketplaces, it's help for pay. But in our marketplace, we're very focused on the education aspect and ensuring that apprentices get a good training experience. We move the pay aspect and allow both sides to focus

01:32>> that's motivating for both sides.

Apprentice and Business Activity on the Platform

Nathan Latka

01:36Help me understand, last month, how many businesses paid for at least one apprentice and how many apprentices did at least one hour of training?

Moe Abbas

01:46>> We have over 70,000 apprentices that have used our platform. Last month, I don't know the exact number for last month,

01:55>> and for the businesses, there are several thousand that are active at any time looking for an apprenticeship.

Nathan Latka

02:04How do you define active? Does that mean they actually find and pay you at least once per month?

Moe Abbas

02:10>> Yeah. So in order to get access to the platform, they have to become a member, then they have complete access.

Business Membership Pricing

Nathan Latka

02:16Okay. What does it cost the businesses to get access to the apprentices network?

Moe Abbas

02:21>> It costs $400 a quarter. It's about a $100 a month.

Nathan Latka

02:25About a $100 a month. Interesting. So you have this flat fee model. Is there any other revenue you make sort of in between the transaction between these two parties or just the flat fee model?

Moe Abbas

02:35>> Right now, it's just a flat fee, but many businesses end up hiring their apprentice. So there is a scenario in the future where we'll help them hire. Businesses that are looking for full time hire can enter a more

02:49>> concierge type of experience where we'll help them find a great match that they could use as a full time hire.

Nathan Latka

02:56Okay. Sorry, just to make sure I got this to you, you said you've got a couple of thousand, like what, 3,000 businesses actively on the platform, something like that?

Moe Abbas

03:03>> Yeah. I think a little more than 3,000 businesses.

Launch Story and First 300 Customers

Nathan Latka

03:06Okay. Great. Give me the backstory here. When did you guys launch?

Moe Abbas

03:09>> So we've launched about two and a half, three years ago and it's been quite a journey just figuring out what both sides of the marketplace want. We had this crazy idea that businesses can provide job training. There's two worlds that exist. In one world, job training is controlled by centralized

03:32>> post secondary institutions that are very expensive, cost a lot of money, only available to a small subset of people, and frankly do a really bad job. Fifty three percent of graduates are underemployed. That's the world that we live in. That's the world that's actually changing very quickly, especially with COVID. The world that we imagine and we are building with Acadium is one where anyone with an internet connection can launch a career. As long as they have

03:53>> the motivation and will to, they can come to Acadium, they can get access to courses, work experience, hiring relationships for free wherever they are. This enables economic mobility to anyone around the world. This is something we're very, very passionate about. The coolest part is, particularly the people that benefit the most are the underprivileged, those that have barriers that are related to socioeconomic barriers or geographical barriers, we remove them. We have tons of stories of apprentices who

04:25>> were able to launch new careers for free because of Acadium.

Nathan Latka

04:31Do you remember that first year in business in 2018, how much revenue you were able to do?

Moe Abbas

04:37>> It was really hard at first. We actually built a one player mode. It's a two sided marketplace. You have a chicken and egg problem. In our business, we focus on the student side. We actually focus quite heavily on both sides, but on the student side particularly, it was super important to get liquidity there. We built a whole course curriculum in digital marketing, got one side of the marketplace through some growth hacks that we knew, and then

05:00>> we focused on the other side. We had no revenue for a while, we were close to death for a while, and it came to the point where we just had to hustle, and I ended up signing the first 300 businesses myself, just really hustling in Facebook groups.

Nathan Latka

05:16What year was that?

Moe Abbas

05:18>> I think it was 2017, 2018.

First-Year Revenue and Current Monthly Revenue

Nathan Latka

05:21Okay, so that was the launch there. So when you signed up those first 300 customers, do you remember that first year, what total revenue was, 2018?

Moe Abbas

05:28>> Yeah. We went from $0 to 30 or 40 k in revenue pretty quickly. Then from actually, we went from 0 to 70 k in revenue within the first year.

Nathan Latka

05:37Okay. So it's about $70,000 that first year. And now fast forward to today, can we take 3,000 customers times $400 a quarter? That means what you guys are doing, like $300,000 a month in revenue, something like that?

Moe Abbas

05:51>> Yeah, there are some older customers because we've actually increased the price over time. We've more than doubled the price, actually. So some of the legacy members of Acadium have a different price point, but that's roughly what it looks like. So

Nathan Latka

06:07do you think you can pass $200,000 this month, or are you still pretty far away?

Moe Abbas

06:12>> I I don't mean, think we'll pass it this month.

06:17>> Yeah. So the goal of this month is not to pass 300,000. Sorry. There's a bit of a delay there. Don't know.

Nathan Latka

06:25Yeah. Moe, we're we're doing our best here with the connection. Sorry. What what I was asking was to try to get a sense of where you are right now in terms of revenues. Last month, how much revenue did you guys do?

Moe Abbas

06:35>> Last month, I don't have the exact revenues on hand. For us, we focus quite heavily on apprenticeships and ensuring that our business members get value out of Acadium. That's really the main focus, is ensuring that we bring in the right members who have the right expectations, who can provide mentorship to our students. And on the flip side of that, getting students who are here because they want to launch a career in digital marketing.

Nathan Latka

07:04Yeah, I get that, but you don't have a business to invest in that cause if you're not making money. So that's what I'm trying to understand. I mean, you north of $200,000 a month in revenue at this point?

Moe Abbas

07:13>> It would be around $200,000 in revenue.

Nathan Latka

07:17You cut out right when you said that. How much?

Moe Abbas

07:20>> It would be around $200,000 revenue.

ISA Program and Additional Revenue Streams

Nathan Latka

07:22Okay, got it. Is the path moving forward to continue charging businesses, you think? Are there any other revenue models you might experiment with?

Moe Abbas

07:29>> We actually have one that's active. We do ISAs on the apprentice side.

07:36>> Apprentices who are dedicated on launching a career in digital marketing, they have the option of joining our Acadium Plus program where it's an ISA model. We help them launch a career. It's more touch points. It's a more in-depth experience. And then we do an ISA income share agreement for them. So we do monetize both sides.

08:02>> The next focus is to extract, really to deliver more value to our businesses, because we create a lot of hiring relationships in Acadium,

08:14>> gives a positive churn, and it's also a revenue generating opportunity. So the future is one where we help businesses find talent, not just get help, but find and onboard talent around the world.

Nathan Latka

08:27With this sort of focus, the current revenue stream, the ISAs, what has growth looked like the past year? If you're at $200,000 a month today, what were you at a year ago?

Moe Abbas

08:37>> I know the ISA program has grown about fivefold in the last year, and it's all been through the marketplace. We don't actually market externally. It's just an offering we have. It's almost like a freemium model in the marketplace itself.

Revenue History: 2019 Growth, the 2020 Dip and the Rebuild

Nathan Latka

08:52Yeah, Moe, sorry. Just looking at your recurring revenue, You're at 200,000 today. What were you at a year ago?

Moe Abbas

08:58>> I mean, to be honest

09:03>> where our revenue was we actually had slightly higher revenue at one time, and then it dipped quite dramatically. When we on

09:17>> quality over quantity, we grew our revenues very quickly in 2019. It was in an unsustainable way where we were selling members that were churning very rapidly. We weren't really vetting them, I never hear for the wrong reasons, we decided that we'd rather have a quality community that could deliver on our mission of Acadium than just jack up revenues. So we took a big revenue hit in 2020, and now we are rebuilding that back to where it

09:44>> was and beyond 2019.

Nathan Latka

09:47Would you say maybe the past twelve months you've basically been flat over that period?

Moe Abbas

09:52>> Well, now we are growing. We've been growing 15 to 20% for the last few months, but there was a long period where we were contracting. We just were not focused on generating revenue, were focused on unit economics, on delivering value to our members, and just really ensuring that

10:18>> In a marketplace especially, the problems compound as the marketplace gets bigger. We just didn't want a marketplace, we didn't want a business where you've sold thousands and thousands of businesses and they were not getting a great experience, so we refocused on the experience in 2020, put a lot of effort and energy on that, and then now we are back into growing our member base aggressively

10:41>> in 2021.

Fundraising: $1M Raised and Investors

Nathan Latka

10:43And have you guys bootstrapped this or raised capital?

Moe Abbas

10:45>> We've raised some capital.

Nathan Latka

10:47How much?

Moe Abbas

10:48>> We're pretty capital efficient in general, and we have good unit economics. We raised about a million dollars from some fantastic investors, Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt, Eric Blatchford, who's the CEO of Expedia. We have 500 Startups as well.

Nathan Latka

11:06What year was that raised?

Moe Abbas

11:08>> That was '20 the end of twenty nineteen, 2020, early twenty twenty.

Nathan Latka

11:13Okay. Okay. Great. And do you have plans to sort of stay on the VC track? Do you have any plans to raise this year or no?

Profitability Plans and Future Raise

Moe Abbas

11:21>> There is a scenario where this year will be profitable. We're going to make a decision where we will likely end up raising because although we'll be profitable this year, the mission of Acadium is super important, and there's something to be said about providing these life changing opportunities to people around the world.

Nathan Latka

11:46And so how much do you think you'll end up raising? Or targeting at least?

Moe Abbas

11:51>> We'll be profitable, right? But at the same time, we have unit economics and we have some levers on the business side that we can pull on. We're still not quite there yet, in my opinion. We still need to nail those levers and the unit economics, but they are profitable right now. They are

Unit Economics: CAC to LTV Ratio

Nathan Latka

12:13So you are profitable. Last month, you made more money in your bank than your expenses.

Moe Abbas

12:20>> Sorry. I meant the unit economics are profitable. So for every $1 we spend, we generate greater than $4 in revenue.

Nathan Latka

12:29It's $4 in ARR?

Moe Abbas

12:32>> In LTV, so CAC to LTV ratio.

Nathan Latka

12:35Okay. But that can be super dangerous, right? Because if it takes you four years to get those $4 We

Moe Abbas

12:40>> get it in sub one year.

Nathan Latka

12:42Okay, then you're adding $4 in new ARR for $1 spent?

Moe Abbas

12:47>> Yes.

12:49>> Although ARR is not the best metric to use in our business, to be honest, it's not like a traditional SaaS company. We do have an inherent churn where businesses end up hiring. If they get a lot of success out of Acadium, they're going to hire their apprentice. Now, it doesn't have to be churn, that could actually be expansion revenue, but you have to monetize that for it to be expansion revenue. So something that we're just

13:20>> really getting those unit economics in place, and then when we do have them in place, we can go have some meaningful conversations with investors and we'll have areas to deploy capital to really accelerate growth.

Team Size and Co-Founders

Nathan Latka

13:33What's your team size today? How many people?

Moe Abbas

13:36>> 20 people.

Nathan Latka

13:37Any engineers?

Moe Abbas

13:38>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

13:39How many?

Moe Abbas

13:42>> Three engineers and one of my co founders is an engineer.

Nathan Latka

13:47How many co founders do you guys have?

Moe Abbas

13:50>> Three co founders.

Nathan Latka

13:51Oh wow. Getting three people to decide on one thing is not always easy.

Moe Abbas

13:56>> Pretty easy for us.

Nathan Latka

13:57You guys have never had a disagreement, you're always on the same page.

Moe Abbas

14:00>> Oh God, no, there's plenty of disagreements, but the truth comes out. You just have to have conversations with people. That was part of the problem, actually. There was a time when we were growing very quick in 2019, and we grew the team to a

14:19>> few different management teams, and it became really, really slow, actually. That was just a bad thing in general for a startup, in my opinion. So we actually leaned down our management team and refocused being leaner, frankly, and being able to move faster because of that.

14:38>> Me and my co founders, we've been together for a while, we have a great relationship, we're able to make decisions, and they all contribute different value. They think differently, or we think alike in a way, but we also think differently. One is a product manager designer, the other one is an engineer, and then there's myself.

Famous Five: Books, CEOs, Tools, and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

14:57That's great. We'll see what happens over the next year as you keep going to the marketplace. In the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Moe Abbas

15:08>> The book that I got the most value I read every day for one to two hours, and I could have lost count of how many books I

15:18>> but I'm got, most valued out of is the Dune series. It's a science fiction book, I don't know if it counts as a business book, but the benefit of Dune is the time horizon. The saga spans over

15:36>> five thousand years, so it really gives you a long term perspective on things, and I find that to be tremendously valuable in business.

Nathan Latka

15:45Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Moe Abbas

15:49>> Yeah, I obsess it again, this is something. Right now, I'm reading the Twitter story, I think it's called Hatchling, But I've studied all the tech CEOs. I think most tech founders do this.

Nathan Latka

16:02So, Mo, pick a CEO. Is it the CEO you're following most right now, where you learn the most from?

Moe Abbas

16:08>> It's hard to pick one. Right now, it would be first, I'd be the greatest CEO, to be clear, by any means. But he's the person I'm currently studying. I don't think he's the greatest CEO Great. But he's currently studying.

16:23>> Jack Dorsey.

Nathan Latka

16:24Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Acadium?

Moe Abbas

16:31>> Building Acadium. I mean, you're talking engineering wise, you're talking community of business?

Nathan Latka

16:37Online tool, whatever that means to you.

Moe Abbas

16:39>> Alright. I like Slack.

Nathan Latka

16:41Okay. Number four. How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Moe Abbas

16:44>> Solid eight hours of sleep, buddy.

Nathan Latka

16:45That's important. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Moe Abbas

16:49>> I have two children.

Nathan Latka

16:50Oh, great. Are you married?

Moe Abbas

16:53>> Tell you, yeah. I guess you could say I'm married. I'm separated.

Nathan Latka

16:56Uh-oh. Okay.

16:57Two two kids.

Moe Abbas

16:58>> I have a it's weird because I'm separated, but we have a great relationship.

Nathan Latka

17:01That's good. That's important. Okay. And how old are you?

Moe Abbas

17:04>> How old are Yeah. I'm 35.

Nathan Latka

17:07Okay. Take us back to when you were 20. What's something you wish you knew then?

Moe Abbas

17:15>> I

17:20>> wish I knew about Silicon Valley when I was 20 and technology and the mobile world and the internet. It was just coming out when I was 20. I was in Canada where you just didn't really know of the impact that would have. I wish I knew about that place of the world.

Nathan Latka

17:38Acadium did $70,000 their first year in 2018 in total sales as Moe hustled for their first 300 customers. Today, where 3,000 businesses pay to find apprentices through the platform. They pay on average $100 a month or about $300 to $400 bucks a quarter. They're around $200,000 a month in revenue. Call it up a little bit year over year, but they're still trying to grow back to where they were back in 2019 levels when they had really incredible growth.

18:01They've got a team of 20 people, three engineers. They raised a million bucks to keep driving this growth. We'll maybe raise later this year once they keep improving their unit economics. Moe, thanks for taking us to the top.

Moe Abbas

18:11>> Thank you so much.

Nathan Latka

18:13One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, one

18:37p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's

18:58an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement, or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You wanna get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are

19:19saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter

19:38those people. We gotta push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys' support. Alright. I'll be in the comments. See you.