How JobPaths CEO Jack Fanous grew to $2.8M revenue and 25 customers in 2024.

jobpath.com check it out Grew From 600 Grand a year last year to 1.2 million this year great growth they've done this bootstrap which we love serving 25 customers local governments uh businesses today to connect with folks that are non-traditional candidates right these are expats these are ex-incarcerated these are folks that need extra help and re and they want extra help and resources to get connected with folks like Amazon looking to hire or the New York state government looking to hire uh or just have a relationship with those kinds of folks to get grants and things of that nature looking to raise three million now nine people on the team we'll see what happens next hey folks my guest today is Jack finus he's the co-founder and CEO of job paths a SAS enabled Marketplace bringing non-profits governments companies together to create their own new online tools to support diversity equity and inclusion clients Jack you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right so give me an example here uh what are some companies that are using job paths today and what's their success rate look like sure so we have a wide array of clients so when we talk about some of our customers we have companies that are looking to recruit veterans and and others from the diversity equity and inclusion space but we also partner with non-profits and communities and cities and states to provide them our technology license it to them so that they can power their own uh initiatives to help people find jobs so some of our biggest clients we power the city of New York's initiative uh to help veterans connect with jobs both on the global process with civilian positions but also within the city uh for some civil service positions within the city so really working with major institutions and entities companies like uber and apple have partnered with us in the past uh Amazon and FedEx have all posted jobs with us we're really focused on connecting the dots between the communities that serve underserved populations and then the employers that ultimately want to connect with them and build out their diversity uh hiring goals so just to be clear the demand side of your Marketplace our good groups like The New York state government Uber or Amex that want to recruit veterans and other other minorities the supply side though how do you get all the veterans signed up great question so the reason why so before I started this company I started a non-profit for veterans 20 years ago called GI gofund were the largest veterans organization in the state of New Jersey now but it was in that process that I learned that when you're trying to work with the underserved populations the way you actually capture them is by working with the communities the organizations that are on the ground helping those communities so a lot of times companies like Panasonic would come to me and say we want to hire veterans but where do we find them the reality was they were working with my non-profit locally that small community group so our thesis is if we Empower all of those communities all those same communities whether it be Wichita Kansas Newark New Jersey Atlanta Georgia you name it with the same level of Technology then everybody's working off of the same platform we capture all the users that are going to those organizations by Pro and then ultimately provide a big Marketplace for companies like apple and Uber and Facebook to recruit from okay so how many veterans today have active profiles on job paths so we had 24 000 new users every single month we have 200 000 active job seekers in the system uh and it's not just veterans anymore now we've we've expanded to individual disabilities in the formerly incarcerated and others that they're looking for for additional services to help them find jobs but a really robust platform uh the largest dni platform in the country by by far and it comes from the network Itself by providing front doors as we as we see it front doors into our platform uh on the on the ground level in the Grassroots and the community level uh we ultimately build a large platform and capture those those users that have been uh hard to find over the years how do you define you say 200 000 active job Seekers how do you define active somebody who's been in the system in the last 90 days so somebody who's looked for a job applied for a job taken some of our training classes updated their resume done something in the system to indicate that they're active 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 valuation 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 what if they just logged in and clicked some buttons well it depends on which buttons but yeah as long as they're logged in as long as they're logged in they're an active user okay got it so even if they just log in even if they don't click any buttons you count that as an active user and the 200 000. yes yeah yeah okay fair and then what's the success of the marketplace look like right what's the success rate look like how many of these folks have you placed into jobs in the past 30 days so uh job placement is something that we typically our our success rate is is measured mainly by the number of communities that we Empower we we understand that each Community organization is going to work with their veterans or work with their individual disabilities in a different way some of them are very Hands-On some of them are working with with individuals that have developmental disabilities others are working with people with physical disabilities so we we allow the communities themselves to run their programs which is nothing that's that's ever changed in the past these organizations have always done so we're empowering them with Next Level technology so they can connect with those employees all right you should be able to quantify I mean you want to know if it's working or not I mean you use the word empowered I get it but like you can quantify this you can go to the city of New York and say the New York City Government want to hire 300 veterans last month we help them hire 200. right okay that's empowerment we help them fill 66 of their openings right so what's the question the question is how do you measure the success rate you you go back and you sort of use a I would say a fluffy term which is in power but what's the number there actually if the New York state government wants to hire 300 vets last month how many of them did you help fill so let me be very clear on what our what our objective is as a company and I think this is getting lost in this interview the objective of the company is to provide those Community organizations with the software to run their programs I'm not responsible for what they do with them after that we just want to give them the tools like resume building job training access to Community Resources local organizations and non-profits to help with mental health providing them the resources to do so is how we gauge our successes our goals are not necessarily on the total number of people that are hired in each one of those local communities our goals are to connect the employers with those communities in a way that's never happened before those local communities have never had technology to connect with employers ever before there was never a way for them to do so the old way of doing things was a company like Amazon would send an email to a non-profit and say hey we have a job opening can you please distribute this to your to your distribution list that way doesn't work now we've built that Technologies yeah it doesn't work that doesn't get filled that's a zero fill rate now if you've built something that works you'd have 100 flow rate that's why I'm asking I'm a little confused here if you are selling software to New York City government to connect with local and because the New York City Government wants to connect with local non-profits to help companies like Amazon hire locally there in New York don't you want to track how many folks Amazon actually hired using the technology isn't that a good indicator if your technology is working absolutely and we and we do track that but what I'm saying to you is that the number one focus of mine is to make sure that Amazon has a way to talk to veterans that live in New York City which they've never had before that's why the company was founded you understand so before before I can get to that next step we're we're solving the first problem of the communities themselves have never had a way to communicate directly you're fine if Amazon is just talking to a bunch of vets but not hiring any of them no that's not my goal my goal is ultimately to connect the dots if we had an opportunity to talk about that Mike what what job path's mission statement is is that these communities are underrepresented in the employment sector and mainly because most employers don't have a way to communicate with those communities they're they are non-traditional candidates for a reason that's what determines that we're focused on here is non-traditional candidates I actually clearly understand that I just finished non-traditional candidates are coming out of traditional candidates are graduating from college they're going through Career Development programs they have all those resources at their fingertips veterans are coming home from from the battlefield don't have those resources individuals with disabilities don't have those resources people who are competing in the Special Olympics don't necessarily have those resources at their fingertips so step one for us is to empower those communities with those resources first make sure that the employers that we're connecting with understand that these people and these individuals have talent they have the skills to be placed into positions we are gauging our success rate mainly by the number of users that are taking our training classes or building resumes those are all big wins in this space when it comes to the diversity even if they take your training within don't get a job no that's not the goal I don't really understand that's why I'm getting confused what you keep saying is that I understand the product I understand exactly what you're saying I agree with these six percent but isn't the way to measure if the training is working for our new for a vet or someone who is X incarcerated isn't the way to track if the training worked is okay then they then got it okay they talked to Amazon great but then they actually got a job isn't that the win if you if that's what your goal was well is that I'm asking you is that you're right because jobs if I could just finish right I mean I didn't really okay let me let me just finish this so to understand why this company was created would be to understand why what the problem is in this space Sorry I know you just repeated this twice over the past eight minutes of running strong you repeated the same question twice I'm trying to get you my answer you're trying to redefine what the company's about I'm telling you what the company is about you don't what I'm saying is you do not care you're not measuring internally if jobs are actually created you care about the training and the access and the communication the open line of communication I believe that's accurate right I I believe in people finding jobs our number one goal is to measure how many jobs were created we do measure that but I'm trying to focus because I think I only have 10 minutes I really want to get to the point of what's important in my company's founding why we exist I think that's really important for me to get that message out that the people that we partner with the communities that we partner with again understand what my goal is my goal is to we understand we I'm telling you sorry I've done almost 3 000 of these episodes I can tell you my audience as they're rooting for you they want your technology to work everyone's on board with that no one disagrees with that I'm simply trying to understand if your end goal is to find jobs and help these folks get jobs how successful have you been in accomplishing that how many jobs have you played this is this is the problem with why I cannot answer that question because each community has their own programs they are running their own data they're connecting with their own employers they're just using my software you're upgrading me as if I'm indeed I'm not indeed okay so you can't track that local data I can't track it if I don't have the employer's information if I don't if we're not the ones running the program we're impressed again we're giving the program to the community to run it again like I said you're grading me as if I'm in the indeed I'm not indeed what I am is I'm giving each Community their own indeed I'm giving each local organization their own opportunity to do that and run their programs that's what job is all about under and you do that through online job training resume generator online mentorship I I understand that um I imagine though these local folks that pay for your software would cancel if jobs are actually getting placed right so so how do you um I guess the first question is how many local governments or or or Amazon's the world how many folks like this are paying to use your software right now to set up these local job job boards so we have in our network if you look at our network of sites we have about 25 organizations that range from you know major uh non-profits like the Bob Woodruff Foundation is one of our newest clients that's come on board Gridiron capital is a partner of theirs that's come on board they all want to create their own veteran hiring programs and again this is an example of us giving those organizations the technology they need to translate military experiences right which is a big problem so if you were if we had an opportunity to talk about this I would say that most veterans who were big at a job code in the military called an MOS and that's that's your military occupational specialty when you get out of the military you know that doesn't mean much to the civilian world right you're an 88 Mike in the military but what's an 88 mic mean if you put that on your resume it's meaningless to an employer they don't know what it means and you don't really know how to translate it but the basics of it is you were a truck driver in the military so that's very that's very attractive to an Amazon that's very attractive to a FedEx it's very attractive to a company that all has as Trucking shortages and driving shortages but don't have the ability to connect with those users so by giving those employers the ability this is exactly what we're doing here is what I'm trying to explain is you literally I am I understand what you do I think my audience does too I I'm I'm a little confused why you keep you keep repeating the same thing we understand it there's 25 now of these installed I want I'd love to understand I mean this seems like a great Mission how do you go from 25 to a thousand right how do you grow great question that's exactly what we're we wanted to talk about so in the in the original way of of building this system out it would take us about two three months to build out a system for somebody it would take us a while to get to the point where we were you know comfortable with this being a customized system it would take a lot of Dev time for us to build out each individual system the sales process took over 12 months it was very complicated uh but the reality of it is we built over the last two or three years we spent a lot of money invested a lot of money into the business to focus on scalability say that again how much did you invest I don't have that no I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars but we spent we spent a considerable amount of money over the last several years to try to make sure that the business is scalable so what we've designed now is almost like a website builder so again to the point that we're building these these sites for the communities not running them ourselves now a community can come to us on their own without a long sales process be able to sign up on their own build their own site put together their own Resume Builder really a like a site Builder or a wix.com but with actual tools and resources built in there we have over 250 training classes that these communities can now embed into the systems they can build community dashboards out so that they can connect people with resources and they can really grow their communities digitally which has never happened before if you're looking at programs that run things for the homeless in Camden New Jersey they don't they don't have a lot of money to spend on technology or software we're putting it in their fingertips now at a scalable way very very quick and easy and they can do it all on their own and so um you've got 25 folks paying you today um how what are they what do you charge for this on average per month to use the technology so it's just it's a sliding skill depending on the number of users that they're bringing to the table and and what this specific deal is again the that's a price Model that was very heavy on dev um and it's not one that we're we're using moving forward we're moving forward now we're going to be using a scalable model which will be several hundred dollars a month as opposed to several hundred thousand dollars a year okay got it so if there's the reason I'm asking if there's a local city right now or an employer that wants to connect with veterans right or these folks that you've mentioned they could expect to be able to pay you something between 200 and 300 bucks a month to get started is that accurate uh more than like 500 a month but yeah okay so your average customer is paying more like 500 bucks a month to get this technology tool set moving forward yep okay I guess I'm a little confused historically what you're saying is they haven't paid anything per month no they used to pay 250 000 a year okay so of the 25 customers you have today all of them were paying 250 000 per year that's the high level and the low levels of a hundred thousand dollars a year okay so so you had 25 customers that you base that you charged a hundred thousand bucks to build this sort of custom for them and now you're moving to a pure SAS model correct okay so 25 out of 100 000 minimum I mean you've done over 2.5 million bucks in Revenue since you launched the company we have okay that's great and it sounds like that was really an agency model right again now you've invested reinvested that agency Revenue to build pure SAS so you can serve more communities faster correct are you still allowing and doing doing custom build work or you've shut off that Revenue line completely we're still doing it so like a major city for instance more than likely is not going to want to build their own site they're going to want us to build it for them so that product is still available but if a local non-profit a small group like my non-profit was when we first started we didn't have that kind of money we never would have been able to sign up for this product when we got started but if it was 500 or 700 a month something like that I would be able to to build it in because it would be enough value because so many of these organizations again they use this software to go get grants they use this software to qualify for federal grants they use this software to get funding from different partners that's how we gauge our successes how our partners are succeeding and when they're succeeding using our software we know that they're getting people placed we know that they're getting people trained uh and we know that they're staying with us they're not going anywhere but Jack how do you know they're getting people placed I asked you for that number and you said you don't know what that number is so I don't know that all right so here's a easy explanation I didn't realize we're going to get this much into the Weeds on this when someone applies for a job on any site indeed LinkedIn you name it they go into something called an applicant tracking system are you familiar with that term so when you go into it just for familiar we've interviewed Colin day with I Sims we've interviewed uh Pete from job board we've interviewed all the players in the space people when you go to an ATM just so you're aware all these companies know and they are driven around how many jobs are placed every month that is the number one success metric of any of these companies right but our company is different our company is focused on a different clientele our our company is focused on a clientele that has never been able to provide their users and again you're talking about traditional job Seekers and I think that's what's lost in this translation you're talking about traditional job Seekers and we're focused on non-traditional job Seekers we're doing things that have never done done before which means it's the the metrics are a little different our metrics are gauged by how successful our communities are by North grants grants landed jobs placed what's what's the quantity number veterans or users assisted so again we have other resources how many was that last month so let me give you an example as an example for you well Jack sorry we're running really short on time I think we're talking I really wish yeah I really wish we could have spent some time on this stuff but the the reality is we provide users with again because we're talking about non-traditional candidates some people are facing mental health issues or homelessness issues we totally understand who you're serving you've said it no no but what I'm saying is I think you're getting caught up in our name job path and you're focused only on that but when we connect people with housing when we connect people with Mental Health Resources how many people have you connected I've asked this question seven different times how many people have you if it's not job placements how many of you connected last month so 24 000 new users have signed up for our system okay 18 000 new users 18 000 new users every month have connected with a new resource close to 12 000 users have applied for a job so not everybody's even applying for jobs not everybody's looking for work we do other services so 12 000 people have applied for jobs every month the new users have applied for jobs the placement rate for that is close to 20 but that takes over 90 days to place yeah so to make to make it very clear to you again each one of those communities is different and some of them are acting faster because they have analog resources right like so a small non-profit is still working with a small company and they have a longer process to prove while a bigger non-profit like Bob Woodruff Foundation has a lot of staff and is able to report these things much quicker understood how many folks are full-time at the company today nine and and are you bootstrapped or have you decided to raise capital we are just starting to raise Capital right now how much are you looking for three million dollars and why what makes this expensive to build why can't you try and keep control and keep bootstrapping so we we're cash flow positive we're in Revenue right we make we make money we're doing well the issue is can we grow this and scale it fast enough and the truth is if we can get some gas poured onto this in a in a sales process in a marketing process to get this word out to as many communities as possible so again we we see the the nonprofit Community the Workforce Development Community as a enormous enormous Market you're muted Jack you muted yourself we understand that all of those organizations all of those nonprofits are in dire need of software and resources to grow out their communities we ultimately just need to get the word out to them that we exist and when did you launch the business the original business was 2013 and this model of Licensing our technology was 2018. and in terms of just licensing Revenue today how much are you doing per month and and how quickly do you think you can break you know a million dollar run rate so we are at um this this coming year we're at 1.2 million dollars for the year is our is our Revenue um we're sched we're on Pace to do over 2 million for the for the following year for the next year um but really want to see that grow want to see that multiplying bro and and feel we can do that with some with some capital and if you're gonna do 1.2 this year what did you last year 6.85. that's great growth and how much of that how much of the 1.2 you're going to do this year is SAS first the one-time fees the setup fees none of them are are one-time fees those 250 000 that's a year so it's 250 000 a year is our bills but after you build it in the first year do you keep charging 250k every year yeah that's the licensing fee ah okay got it got it I see I see so you've got 1.2 million coming in across 25 customers that's 50 000 per year on average uh right across those 25 customers or about four thousand dollars per month sounds about right interesting I love it all right very cool so you're raising now we'll see what happens in the meantime let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite book um George Bush's leadership book number two is there a CEO you're following or studying I I would like Damon John number three what's your favorite online tool for building job paths job as besides your own um it's an interesting question uh I guess I like collaboration we'll go with uh zenhub Zen Hub number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night three That's not healthy I'm a busy guy well still three hours I mean any VC looking at it you're about to die at three hours of sleep you can't live even when I was a kid I was like that my whole life you've you sleep on average three hours per night yep except for Saturdays I might get five my wife makes me sleep in another room because I wake her up I didn't scientifically I didn't even know that was possible to survive on three hours of sleep interesting um okay and so you're married any kids nope okay no kiddos and how old are you 42. last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. that this interview was going to be this hard what makes the interview hard I I didn't uh you know I was hoping to be able to have a conversation about what our mission was and not Jack I'm going to tell you people are going to be in the comments after this you said your mission like eight times I guarantee you I want people to know the mission because not many people are a part of that and not Beyond people understand what we're doing and our our goal here our objective is to get people to Rally around the idea that non-traditional candidates need extra help and that extra help comes in one traditional you made that very clear and people are gonna be rooting for you I can guarantee you uh like I promise you um so listen hey nice work guys jobpath.com check it out Grew From 600 Grand a year last year to 1.2 million this year great growth they've done this bootstrap which we love serving 25 customers local governments uh businesses today to connect with folks that are non-traditional candidates right these are ex vets these are ex-incarcerated these are folks that need extra help and re and they want extra help and resources to get connected with folks like Amazon looking to hire or the New York state government looking to hire uh or just have a relationship with those kinds of folks to get grants and things of that nature looking to raise 3 million announced nine people on the team we'll see what happens next Jack thanks for taking us to the top appreciate everybody 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 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