How Prentus CEO Rod Danan grew Prentus to $380K revenue and 8 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is rod danny's founder and ceo at a company called prentice where he matches startups with job-ready tech interns in as little as seven days and runs a community with 165 plus boot camp graduates he's also part a part-time data science mentor at thinkful previously he founded denanza an influencer marketplace for local businesses right you ready to take it to the top let's do it all right man so what is the apprentice business model i mean are you like a recruiting agency taking 20 or 30 percent of placements or is it a sas model how does it work yeah so it's kind of completely new so we do intern to perm basically that's the goal so uh business comes to us they pay for the hiring fee you can call it it's per intern and we charge 1500 for that and then they work it out for three months and if they want to hire the intern then we charge a 15 1500 hiring fee so kind of below you know recruiting fees interesting okay so i'm trying to think okay so if i was gonna use you i would pay you 1500 bucks up front you would go find me i start it's called a data science intern i'd give them a project for three months i'd still have to obviously pay do you pay the intern under the 1500 i pay you or do i have to pay the intern directly oh it's up to you so we only work with you know startups that have a mentor so these interns are mainly looking for mentorship uh we do have you know some startups do pay them but some startups don't it depends on their kind of level uh so it's up to the business to decide on that okay and so is there a sas component here or do you really have to wake up every month and sort of go find you know 100 new companies that want to hire at least one person to build your revenue that month uh so it's it's definitely you have to go out and get more customers but so far with the customers we do have you know i do interviews every week and it seems that they are satisfied so they kind of describe it as outsourcing your hr which is kind of important for an early startup and i do expect that many of them will end up being repeat customers when did you launch the company when did you make your first hire through the platform um so we launched april 20th and the first internship started on june 8th i love it so you're like fresh out of the womb dude you launched the middle of coven yeah it's like i was doing that other other startup before and then you know just it was it we ran out of money and then all the businesses that were focused on shut down so the apprentice idea came in my head like that same week and i just went straight into it all right so how you doing i mean tell me about the hustle i mean what did you use how did you get your first 1500 company to pay you uh well so we built up like i initially the first the first company was 100 um you know we're just trying to get you know internships started that way we can get testimonials which will boost revenue in the future and then from there went to 450 then to 600 and then i spoke with a kind of an advisor that worked in recruiting and he's like yeah you're charging way too cheap and then i talked to a founder that was also saying hey you're charging way too cheap so you raise it to 1500 and you've got a few customers on on that level in the past couple weeks that's great so you've obviously changed price price points over the past couple months but total how many companies have paid you at least a buck it's been eight companies now eight companies okay and how many interns eight or do they do more than one two have more than one so ten interns ten interns interesting any now have you been around long enough have any of them actually hired the interns full time yeah so the longest one is actually in their eighth their ninth week uh so it's if nothing has finished yet uh but the plan is after the second month then we kind of talk about whether they're planning on hiring so what i mean what do you think is going to happen i mean you're in like the learning phase right now you're watching this stuff closely going am i gonna get another 1500 bucks here or not what's going to happen uh well the initial people those though they're not on the 1500 plan so it's only for the new customers but you know we still want to get the bootcamp grads hired that's kind of my main focus um and you know like for the first customer they weren't really planning on hiring they were just kind of looking for a project but because they're so happy they're saying maybe we're gonna open up a position for that person so that's great to hear yeah now how did you i mean again tell me how you found the first customer i mean you're doing something really challenging uh you have to find companies and you have to find interns and you have to make companies i want to hire in the middle of a global pandemic that we've never seen in like 100 years i mean some would say this guy's like insane or stupid yeah i can get that sentiment so on this on supply side like it's actually kind of easy because you know a lot of boot camp grads they come out and getting that first job is really tough because they don't have experience so they're all looking for this there's a lot of supply uh and on the business side you know there's startups that maybe they're not they're not funded yet or they're not ready to hire so an internship makes lets them kind of get this low risk employee and then if it does work out they can hire them but it lets them move forward before they have the cash to bring on a full team mm-hmm so i mean can you tell us that story who was the first company that paid you yeah so the first company uh it was a sas company they built software for executive assistants and they the guy said he saw me on twitter so i i only have like 50 followers and and like in the beginning i probably only have 10 so i don't know how he found me but he said that was what he saw and end up signing up and what's the company name base they oh yeah yeah the base crm no it's not not base crm they make software for executive assistance oh interesting okay i have to look them up um okay so he saw you on twitter anybody like dm'd you and said hey can you help us hire people yeah initially i had a sign up for him so like once like an email on my like landing page and then he signed up for that sent a survey to all the people on it and he was one of the people that filled it out and i was like i think that company would be a great fit so reached out and we got it we got it started so did you start with him or her telling you know the base person telling you we want this sort of intern or did you start with a big list of interns that needed work uh so i started with a few interns like from my last company i had interns working there and also interns that were kind of getting ready to come on our company so i had lists about eight like going into apprentice already uh so they got a designer and you know ended up matching them out and so far it's been working well they both love it and that was good to hear so i mean what is your priority over the next like what are you doing later today after this interview are you focused on building the number of comp like companies that are hiring or trying to get more interns in your program companies that are high so yeah i'm actually interviewing like a bunch of salespeople throughout this week because i'm trying to bring on a sales team uh that way we can build that out because i'm building a platform also for to do all the matching because right now it's been all manual by me but through that i learned what to build with the technology yeah that's great so what has revenue been out of all your revenue the past couple months we're talking like what four five six grand something like that um yeah so we're at 56 so 5.6 k and that's great should be another 750 coming in later this week so it's going pretty well so far especially you know my last startup i mean i didn't make one buck in 15 months so it's much different now were you oh so you were founder of your last startup yeah got it and what was that product just tease us a little bit it was an influencer marketplace for local businesses so really focus on simplicity but you know local businesses are not on twitter not on email lists so it was kind of i was going door to door in miami weather that's crazy and today they're all focused on you know just trying to stay open and and you know get a pp loan and not close right exactly interesting so how much money did you spend building an mvp before you said you know what i got to shut this thing down i got i got to kill my baby oh i spent way too much first time founder and like i remember i paid a bunch of different contractors in total i spent 90k between contractors and then employees and you know kind of went down the drain but it was lessons you know yeah all that put me on the path to build this and and and how old are you today say it again how old are you today i'm 26 and just turned uh six months ago so congratulations so there's other early founders that are out of school they can't get a job right now they're probably really talented they're also hustlers they're going where does this rod guy get 90 grand to sort of experiment with and learn these lessons i mean did you raise capital or did you just like hustle and save your salary or something um it was 401k it was savings from my other my previous job and then also a lot of credit card debt which i do not recommend that uh well this is the real thing i mean that's a real thing though right so i mean thanks for talking about it right so how do you i mean how do you make sure that you're like your mental state is free to build this new business while you're also not thinking about okay i put 90 grand down the drain i've got to pay off the credit card debt as well yeah just it's taking it one day at a time you know it's like uh like with this it's like sometimes i'm like yeah i want to move faster but if you think about the future too much you never end up doing well in the present so yeah you know like when i when it happens like it kind of gets more pressure then i'll get to it but it's right now the focus is apprentice that's great i love that okay so how do you think you said you want to hire sales people right now why is that the next hire uh because i'm handling you know as a sole founder i'm handling a lot of things and i think sales is the one area where i'm i'm ready to like bring someone on train that so i can't train someone to kind of do you know the customer success part or building the product or stuff like that so sales is where i would like to get help and then also get more momentum because you know like i said we have we have right now like 110 interns that are waiting to get placed and i don't want to run that's incredible you have 100 you went from eight to 110 interns in your waitlist over the past like since april yeah how did you do that where did you find these people it's mostly linkedin just like posting connecting with the right people um i've been doing some like live youtube events the past month so that's been well what is that what if i went on your youtube channel what would i see i see interviews just with people in technology and the boot camp community in general so resume critiques uh we spoke with the vp of engineering at clorox uh yesterday we spoke uh vp of technology at one of the major banks so just people that can give advice to boot camp grads looking for jobs because even if they're not you know going to get hired through me through apprentice and like be an intern i'd still want the best for them mm-hmm that's great so are most these interns like fully committed to like going through your platform or they sort of like they signed up on a hundred different recruiting platforms and they're just praying for whoever brings them the job first oh they probably signed up on a bunch but um but so far like each time i reached out it's been like everyone's been available they've been like yeah like this opportunity okay i'm in for it yeah yeah i see this yeah you posted yesterday on linkedin tomorrow at 8pm we're going live with jason cox um yeah i mean i can see you you're clearly doing the linkedin thing well uh but this is interesting yeah and also with the with the interns like yeah like i mentioned we have the boot camp community so right now we're at 212 members uh and not just you know general kind of forum that's posting questions and we have some people working on side projects as well so might be some startups coming out of there what does that mean cycle we could go on linkedin you said you had 163 members now you're at 212 and you said those members were in 27 different boot camps across the united states what does that mean yes so it's all so boot camp guys you know there's some big ones like you probably heard of lambda which is like the biggest one uh but there's a bunch all across the united states and these p these people are graduating they have skills they've worked on projects but the next step is kind of hazy so with the community it's like hey you might not have like a harvard alumni community but you can have the boot camp along that community you guys have all gone through this program now connect work together help each other find jobs and you know sign up for our internship program as well that's interesting yeah i mean look i think the court like the best mvp today is community even if you're like for sas platforms for anything it sounds like you're like all in on that yeah and i've i definitely read that on linkedin twitter um so community is huge and yeah overall i think the biggest thing is just building a brand that people trust not just on the internet side but also on the business side and you bootstrapped this company corrector did you raise yeah boot shopping um you know if we have revenue now like i think we'll be fine for for a while like the only time i think of raising is in case like we have to expand some sort of project something big like that but otherwise i'm good for now rod good stuff man let's wrap up here with a famous five number one favorite business book oh favorite so some biography just tips um let's do biography biography uh napoleon a life number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh not a ceo but i do like dave gerhart uh so i really like the copyright and stuff yeah i was gonna say if you're a linkedin guy you love dave and you now love privy because he's dave's at privy number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company for what my company for building your company um i like click up honestly that's probably the number one tool i recommend everyone number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night sleep eight hours at least i'm on a strict schedule that's good i like that all right and why are you on a strict schedule out of curiosity uh because you gotta make every second count you know each thing you give time to has to be a priority that's good all right uh and what's your situation married single kids i know you're 26. i am single no no kids running around yeah no kids uh i live in my parents so so that's that's why i'm also not worried about the debt yet so to say you keep your living expenses low right exactly all right last question here rod what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um that i was not going to use my my degree that would have saved me a lot of student debt too what did you study i studied information systems but i got my bachelor's and master's so a lot of studying but only used it for a year and a half i guess okay i got a big beautiful framed receipt guys there we have it rod apprentice.com his first startup sort of failed but he spent 90 grand in the whole credit card debt thing learned a lot of lessons and had the courage to shut it down and go all in in the middle of a covet apprentice uh to launch prentice.co where he's now placed over 10 interns across sorry eight interns across 10 companies uh sorry 10 interns across eight companies um and is hoping to scale this community and continue helping these boot camp graduates find jobs even in a time when again a lot of people are not hiring so we're out of room for you man thanks for taking us stop thank you for having me