How Careerist CEO Alibi Duisenaliyev grew Careerist to $33M revenue and 6K customers in 2024.

careerist.com launched in 2019 after he sold his first company trucker path which hit 800 000 truckers using it and five million Revenue in 2017. career is today he put in fifty thousand dollars of his own money in a pre-seed round to raise 1.2 million seated at a 20 million post money valuation and then close it as series a in 2022 raising 8 million on 80 million post money evaluation for 6.6 X multiple today 500 folks that want to learn technology and transition into Tech sign up private's platform every month and pay four thousand dollars they'll do 12 they'll do 25 million dollars in Revenue this year they did 12 million last year and 5 million and 20 21. hey folks my guest today is Ivan sabayev he was born in Russia and lived most of his childhood in and near on an island near Japan he's fond of programming at school won many competition about the time there was no online education his parents were poor so he couldn't get a professional programming education and got a financial management degree instead way more boring okay his first job in finance was in Exxon Mobil but after a year he decided to start his own company he started company many companies But ultimately want to get into Tech in 2009 he moved to New York and 2013 moved to Silicon Valley to start a tech startup they built the most popular Tracker app in the US called trucker sorry trucker trucker not tracker trucker path which they monetized through financial services he sold it in late 2017 and in March co-founded the Ed fintech startup careerist where they finance train and place talent in Tech Ivan you ready to take us to the top yeah sure all right tell me about trucker app first what was the website URL for that uh it's trackerpass.com interesting and how many how many truckers I guess would use it in your best month uh uh uh I would say if you ask like 10 long cool truck drivers what app uh they use uh in the United States probably seven uh or around that will tell you they use the tracker path app uh so uh and we served only a long call truck drivers uh so there are around like uh 1.2 million of them and uh around 800 000 for our active users did you say coal like the black stuff coal truck drivers uh long call Long Haul Oh Long Haul long-haul driver yep okay and 800 000 were your users now did you make money from them directly did they pay a fee uh yes they either pay directly or their companies paid for them okay so how much revenue was trucker path doing uh on the top it was around like 5 million per year okay and what year was that uh that was uh 2017 2017. okay and why do you say on the top or your margins really bad uh yeah so um the industry is very tough uh so it's kind of hard to grow and uh we actually wanted to build um I kind of Transportation Marketplace connecting uh trackers with Brokers or with shippers and you know ultimately I'll figure out that's like uh too too difficult to do uh because the industry is very conservative um and we try to attack the chicken and neck Problem by serving trackers first so we were very successful uh in that but unfortunately we're not very successful in Syrian like the other side of the marketplace and that was like initials uh so we built it into monetizing mostly from financing products like factoring uh Factory is very super challenging in the industry uh transactions are slow like people still using the faxes to send invoices and stuff well what specifically were you doing if a long-haul trucker got a ten thousand dollar job with a net 60 payday they could give you that invoice you'd pay them immediately and then they'd go collect the net 60 later yeah so we pay them uh right away uh the issue was to collect from the company so uh we tried to collect within like uh 30 days usually but uh you you it took like much longer because of that document turned over uh there there is also a lot of fraud in the industry that's like another side of the problem and ultimately that created issues for scaling what was your margin let's say you factored a ten thousand dollar contract how much would you wire the trucker on day one yeah we usually wire 90 of the invoice okay so 9k there and then you've got what 30 days to go 60 days to get it back from the company and how what how successful were you and actually getting that money back on a percent basis uh I don't remember really that was a long time ago uh but I would say uh that uh we usually wait around like one uh two percent of the invoice snap like after like all the costs okay and how much money did you put out on your financing product in 2017 uh we got the credit line uh for around like 30 million and uh so we used like roughly around uh 15 million of that okay and what was your cost of capital on a 30 million credit line truth I'll remember I was quite expensive like 15 16 17 yeah yeah interesting okay so you didn't like that model it is by the way we're doing this at founder app it is a hard model it is not easy it's tough model so anyways you built this company you're doing five million year in Revenue then what you sold it yep how much uh we don't disclose uh this uh but the deal wasn't very good so basically uh the deal was mostly to return money to investors oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when I hover over here here right so the teal is what a VC would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview who bought it uh we got several offers and actually it was like another issue uh for this industry uh if it was another industry we would be able to get much higher offers just because of large user base uh but companies in this industry developed us uh for the revenue like specifically revenue and margin specifically so that's why offers were like not uh that good and we got several offers from the companies in the industry and then ultimately uh one of our investors is a publicly traded company uh who made the best offer and they decided to take over the company and to this was this Alpine investors uh now it was a public company called Ren Ren say it again ran ran ran yeah oh interesting okay and again that website was truckerapp.com right uh trackerpass.com oh truckerpath.com okay interesting all right so you sell that company now take us into careerist what does careerist do and how do you make money uh do you want a short answer long or very long time explaining the problem yeah simple as simple as the hardest so simple as this is the challenging one yeah career list is an online education and feed tech company uh it finances the enrollment of underserved job seekers in the United States uh then trains them for tech jobs with software and freelance instructors and then automates their job search okay so who um I guess name a customer that might come to you is this someone who just graduated school that's looking for a job uh actually our sweet spots are people 25 to 35 years old with some career in the past and you know looking to switch careers and get into the tech industry uh freshly use our second uh biggest audience who uh fresh graduates the graduates oh fresh graduates that you mentioned yeah yeah interesting okay and so someone might come to you that wants to switch into Tech and so they sign up for your platform are they paying you at the beginning uh since we're fine uh sintech companies well we offer uh deferred uh payment options so either can pay cash up front uh or you can like sign up for the deferment deferred payment plan how much cash up front on average four thousand dollars four thousand okay and how many people when they sign up choose the 4K up front versus the finance version yeah right now it's around 50 50. uh so we're becoming more aggressive on the deferred payment options so by balancing like the prices and making the terms better uh but right now it's like roughly the same if if I go to deferred route obviously I'm going to pay more than 4K What's the total deferred uh the total default will depend on uh your credit score because we have tiers uh so like roughly I would say you pay like uh around like 15 100 more okay over what period of time two years okay got it so for I'm paying 1500 for the right to pay this 4 000 over a three year period instead of all up front yeah okay very interesting um let's get into the sort of more of the building of this application when did you write the first line of code what year uh 2019 2019 okay and when did you sign up your first dollar Revenue your first customer uh actually same month we started uh we started in April and uh we got first paid customers in April oh wow how did you get tell me how you did that yeah it was funny uh I'm a fan of Tony Robbins and uh I couldn't figure out uh the company and then I went to the Tony Robbins event uh so I changed my state and got a understanding of how to do things uh so I might you walked on the calls you burnt the hell out of your feet and now you know how to get back yeah exactly and then and then I motivated the team to work like really hard on building the code so called my co-founder uh right from the Tony Robbins event and like told you hey man like I figure out how we do this what's going on no no listen listen so I explained like everything to him and he didn't sleep for a few days so he wrote like uh the the first version of the code enough to get the first customers and we started selling a week after that uh Tony Robbins event did you guys support Equity 50 50 uh we have three co-founders uh I I'm a majority uh Sheriff holder and then I have two other co-founders uh they have Equity uh stock okay so you you own more than 50 and they split the other 50 yeah okay very cool but you didn't tell me how you got the first customer was it a Facebook group was it a tweet you sent out where did the first customer come from yeah uh that's another interesting story uh so uh while marketing was for free we used Facebook groups uh especially I like um uh the women groups uh so I couldn't post from my own account so I took my wife's account and I started posting from her account on those groups and I got a lot of interest uh and yeah I think the first customer was from the women's name name two of the groups that got you a lot of customers uh women in the Bay Area and mamas in the United States mamas in the united mamas in the United States interesting now did you work with a group owners to make an affiliate agreement or did you just post and hope they didn't ban you yeah uh one group they allowed uh the paid post so I paid them like very small money for the people I think I think it was like twenty dollars or something like yeah uh the second group uh didn't allow the paid posts uh so I just like had to tweak a language so it was kind of uh question slash advice and I posted from my wife's account since 2019 how many customers have signed up uh oh since 2019 uh I think it's around uh 6 000 customers right now uh so we have 500 new paid customers every month now and how many how many new free signups do you need to get 500 new paid no everybody pays everybody okay so you don't have it's not a premium go to market model yeah yeah it's not freemium uh we give you like one class for free we have some free webinars but that's only for client acquisition yep so how many this isn't really a recurring model because they pay and they're done is that right uh actually no uh they can come back to the platform uh and uh these scenarios uh first uh you start with uh some uh simple Tech job uh so we help you to get into a you know kind of a simple career path like software tester for example you start as a manual software tester initially you don't need to learn like any coding and then we help you to get the job and then you come back to the platform uh to grow so you can be kind of like test automation engineer and that's how you come back uh second scenario is that we have a job application automation tool so we built the software that automates your job hunting and that's why our graduates they come back to the platform to use it like when they're ready to switch jobs you know like usually people switch jobs within like two or three years and also people come back as kind of evangelist of the platforms so they bring referrals we pay them a referral fee and that's one of our biggest marketing channel when our old customers bring new customers what referral fee do you pay uh 350. okay so if someone brings you a new customer that pays four thousand dollars to sign up you'll pay the referral partner 350 immediately on day one yeah oh interesting how much how how many people uh uh when the uh when they pay us uh so as soon as we get uh the payment uh there are a few days uh uh where we can get issue the money back if the person that doesn't like uh the program and then we create the referral fee yeah I see within within a week um how many how many uh how many Affiliates entrepreneur at least one sale that you've paid them at least a dollar uh come again how many Affiliates have driven you at least one new paid customer uh yeah so I would actually reverse the question uh how many um uh people uh bring those um uh Affiliates uh so uh an average number is five uh but we have uh some uh people who bring us like around like 100 people so each affiliate brings you five on average but that's why I asked right who so you have big Affiliates that bring in like what 100 new customers a month or something yeah because uh some of our old customers they start blogging so they became influencers themselves and they grow their brand and they can you know like bring a lot of customers to us what's the name or the website of the blog that drives you the most customers uh sir the guy called Cyrus he built a community called Black in Tech and uh he graduated from our sales engineering course so he learned how to become a salesperson in Tech and then he starts a blogging and he's very successful and um kind of giving advice uh to diverse customers specifically African-Americans what's the website of the black and Tech Community uh I forgot you can Google it and uh you'll you'll find it out I can't find it how do you spot what's cirrus's last name uh Cyrus um I forgot his name but if you Google Cyrus and black and Tech yeah you can find out okay um um cool yeah I can't find it I'm typing those in I can't find it but yeah I can study it after it'd be interesting to study his mind is it c-y-r-u-s yes c-y-r-u-s okay cool um great let's move on um take me back to sort of like Revenue right so last year 2022 what was total revenue uh uh last year was 12 million okay and that's actually collected Revenue that doesn't include people on the 4 000 with deferred future payments yeah it's the only cash revenue and then how much the year before that in uh 2021 it's five and the year before that uh 1.717 okay so your first year in business then in 2019 you did what half a million uh I think around uh four hundred thousand four hundred thousand and have you done all this I've been bootstrapped uh I put my own money initially and then a year after that we raised some money uh so totally we raised around 10 million from a white combinator and a few other investors give me the full history so in 2020 how much did you raise I so we raised 1.2 million okay and that was like your pre-seed uh actually I will see it so I financed the precede uh so and the valuation on that round was around 20 million 20 million post money and when you put money in before the pre-seater on how much did you personally put in uh fifty thousand dollars and then also I gave some loan uh to the company it was additional like 200 000 why structured as a loan instead of all equity uh we had some default payments uh so at that time uh we experimented with the model called income share agreements uh so basically we allowed a lot of people to uh learn for free and then they paid us back uh when they get the job yep are you still doing this is a very popular sort of factoring thing right now are you still doing sharing income share agreements yeah unfortunately uh Regulators uh are not big on this model and uh right now there are like issues it's hard to collect on them so and we had to stop that yeah yeah Lambda school is there too okay so 1.2 seed round in 2020 then what uh and then uh after that uh from the end uh 21 uh 2021 to the end uh 2022 we erased uh like another um 8 million and what was the last money that came into that eight million round what was the valuation at uh I was 80. eight zero did that feel fair to you 80 million evaluation uh yes uh uh for the market conditions you know like the market is not good these days uh yeah otherwise it would be bigger yeah it's a 6X multiple on your 12 million in ARR so I would say that's not a bad thing that's not a bad thing that's fair yes yeah what do you think you do this year in Revenue uh this year uh we uh Target 25 25 interesting um would be very interesting to see what happens tell me a little bit as we wrap up here about the team how many folks are full-time helping you out yeah uh and one more thing to mention that we're actually profitable uh so we turned profitable in August of last year so oh wow that's huge to grow a profitable yeah right how much profits last month uh so we make around three four five hundred thousand dollars per month last month was uh three hundred thousand dollars what do you do with that money uh we just uh uh use it as a reserve and then we're going to use it uh to push more our deferred uh payment options yeah your own debt your own debt fund right yeah all right 300 000 there and then um okay so that's profits um and sorry remind me how many paying customers do you have today like paying something you know once every four quarter or something like that uh everybody pays uh uh so we have uh 500 new customers every month uh so like this year we estimate like six thousand customers yeah yeah interesting okay um yeah take me into the team a little bit how many folks are full time uh over 300 people oh you have 300 people full-time holy cow yeah yeah how many are engineers uh 50 engineers and uh well what's good that most people are outside of the United States uh so we have only about like 20 people in the states and everybody else is remote uh that helps us not only to save money but also to hire best talent in those other areas you know it's really hard to continue here yeah 12 million in Revenue 300 full-time you're paying an average of 40 000 salary so 20 in the U.S tell me the other regions where you have concentrations of employees uh we have sales people in Latin America and India uh we used to have developers in Russian Ukraine but because of War we had to move most of them uh so right now most of people are in turkey and Armenia and those Engineers uh some people in marketing as well and yeah we have some tech support on Philippines too that's amazing so it's crazy you can profit 300 000 per month on a million of top line revenue monthly and still pay 300 people that's that's great do you spend anything else on marketing and sales or is it all your affiliate model now we spent uh every month we spent around half a million on marketing uh so we still aggressive on Google ads Facebook ads and other uh sources of paid marketing however our biggest channels are organic and those Affiliates that's crazy so if you have 500k of paid spend plus 300K of profits right so that's 8 million or 800k there you have a million Top Line right so that only leaves 200 000 left to pay salaries divided by 300 people what is that that's like 650 bucks per month per person on average uh uh pretty much pretty much very cool all right let's wrap up here I've been with the famous five um I guess I should wrap up before I wrap up is there anything I missed that you want to make sure you chat about uh no not really uh everything uh you need to ask feel free uh but uh yeah all right Famous Five number one favorite Business book uh hard to think about hard things number two is there a CEO you're following or studying uh as for the CEOs uh uh I would say Tony Robbins that would be the funny uh though he's not a good example but yeah I I started uh other seos but still uh like more more most most of advice I get from like Tony Robbins uh seminars and uh his uh coaching yeah number three what's your favorite online tool for building careerist [Music] that's good and situation married single kids uh I'm married with two kids my wife that's great how old are you I'm 36. okay last question Ivan what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. uh I wish I went for the Tony Robbins seminar earlier guys there I have it careerist.com launched in 2019 after he sold his first company trucker path which hit 800 000 truckers using it and five million Revenue in 2017. career is today he put in 50 000 of his own money in a pre-seed round raised 1.2 million seated at a 20 million post money valuation and then close it at series a in 2022 raising 8 million on 80 million post money valuation for a 6.6 X multiple today 500 folks that want to learn technology and transition into Tech sign up private's platform every month and pay four thousand dollars they'll do 12 they'll do 25 million dollars in Revenue this year they did 12 million last year and 5 million and 20 21. Ivan thanks for taking us to the top thank you one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS 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 our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every Thursday 1 p.m Central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 SAS World whether it's an 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 want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack Community for B2B SAS Founders you want to 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 saying sign up for that at nathanlacka.com forward slash slack in the meantime I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube I'll be in the comments for the next 30 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 those people we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys's support all right I'll be in the comments see ya