How SkilledUp Life CEO Manoj Ranaweera grew to $26.9K revenue and 30 customers in 2024.

scaledup.live launched in 2020 doing a thousand dollars a month in Revenue today helping volunteers connect with tech companies to get experience again a two-sided Marketplace model is tough but they do have 30 customers today building a V2 they're bootstrapped with a team of five hey folks my guest today is Manoj ranawira he is a building he's been building Tech startup since 2004 has plenty of failures but also two exits so far currently building three different Ventures the main focus though is skilled up dot life giving a leg up to Tech Founders you're ready to take it to the top sounds good yep all right so let's just to be clear you're You're Building to accelerate uh deal light and skilled up life skilled up life is the largest in terms of Revenue no it's it's not in terms of the revenue but in terms of the global opportunity it's probably the the biggest one which of the three does the most Revenue today um so we are small in in terms of so tax rate is is a community of tech founders um Delight is a tracking what happened in the UK Tech investment market so probably tax rate is probably the biggest but it's a local opportunity whereas skilled up life is a global opportunity so tell us more about skilled up life is this a SAS player how do you make money so we had a two-sided Marketplace and we are only monetizing one side through subscription plans uh what we try to do is to help the early stage Tech Founders as you very well know uh probably about one percent of tech tech companies get investment quite a number of the rest of the 99 you know quite a large number of them we then die over time and the main reason for that is you know it's hard to build a tech company by yourself you need to have a team if you don't have Capital to hire people then you are struggling so I've seen this happening all over since I started in 2004 I suffered from the same problem someone else just to be clear you launched the company in 2004 no no this company was launched in August 2020 2020 2020 and again you've got a two-sided Marketplace demand Supply there's tech companies and you're connecting them with free Talent volunteers which site are you monetizing today companies and what do they pay on average per month so they paid from 30 pounds a month to about um uh 200 pounds plus but we are at the very early stages so we are monetizing you know we are on tier one and tier two customers so when you say early stages how many customers today so we have roughly about thousand sorry roughly about 30 customers we are we're still at revenue-wise we're still very early we are hovering around 1000 um pounds a monthly recurring Revenue so very early in our journey we like early there's no problem with that walk me through how many volunteers have you placed at these 30 customers Year to you know all time um so we don't have a figure at the moment but we have um 27 000 volunteers on our platform now what good is it though to have them on your platform if you're not helping deliver and connect them with the companies and why do you not know that number um so at the moment we are still running a very very early stage version of the product so we are unable to extract that because the workflow in terms of what we are doing with the the initial product is to bring the two parties together but in terms of the actual the recruitment part happens outside so we have no real visibility of the real numbers at the moment oh how many though you just told me your main objective is to connect the volunteers to tech companies so how many of the 27 000 volunteers have you connected to a tech company that's what I'm saying so we have companies sometimes have about 30 individuals and sometimes about five uh and the volunteers come in at three months batches so it's very hard because the the actual the recruitment side because it's happening outside so it's very difficult for us to track right now so the next version We Want to Build That workflow in then we can actually share the numbers so I don't want to give you a false number just uh well no no it's fine I mean but isn't that a major problem you're telling me the number one thing you care about is connecting these but then when I say how many of you connected you don't know we don't know yeah I mean it sounds stupid but we can't actually tell you that figures so that's why I mean so how do you know if it's working uh we know we are working with the companies we understand that uh you know they're taking on um you know the volunteers from our site but in terms of um how they're you know in in terms of numbers we don't have oversight that's what I'm saying 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 around 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 how did you get 27 000 volunteers signed up um you obviously you know they're gonna say well why do you want me to sign up there's only 30 companies on your platform today uh yes so what we've tried to do is we try to do the supply side first and then we are building the the demand side second so as you know you know building a two-sided Marketplace is always tricky you have to focus on one side first um so we have a team dedicated to building the the the volunteer side and then we haven't actually you know we are starting to build the team for acquiring customers right now uh we are you know we ourselves have about five employees and about 80 volunteers helping ourselves sorry the question specifically is how have you signed up 27 000 volunteers right how have you done that how have you recruited them how have you emailed cold email call them door knocking how are you coming to sign up on the platform when you only have 30 companies on the demand side yes so we have a whole team uh dedicated to uh Aqua volunteers so we use a number of different strategies we use social media uh we are continually building our brand we are running events I know we have Partnerships with education providers so through all these different channels we acquire volunteers how do you define a volunteer as being acquired is it a very simple email sign up or something else um sign up and then if you have the next process where obviously they have to come and build their profile because without building a profile uh it is very hard for companies to access their suitability so since 2020 you've gotten 27 000 potential volunteers to give you their email and you consider that a sign up uh yes they have created account on our platform yes well what does my audience doesn't know what your platform does so they don't know what create an account means it means specifically from what I understand they've given you their your email their email um no they have come on on the website they have created a Prof you know they have sign up as a volunteer and they end up then they will go on to create their profile you know what are the fields what are Fields they have to upload when you say creative profile is it a headshot no I mean there's a headshot there's a full profile uh am I allowed to show the screen so is that no no there's no screen sharing okay okay so so it's been like the building the profile on LinkedIn similar similar way you want to build the profile you have an introduction uh you got to build uh if you have previous work experience previous education so you just you know so when a company comes and they have enough information to access the suitability yeah so I guess the reason I'm asking is if someone came to me and said Nathan we want you to sign as a volunteer on our platform because we're going to connect you with tech companies that you could volunteer for and then you say upload a headshot put a bio in fill out your whole profile it's going to take 10 20 30 minutes of my time and I'm going to say Manoj why should I make time to do this I don't know what companies are here I don't you can't tell me how many volunteers you've actually successfully placed how do you convince a new volunteer who has you know restrictions on their time to actually create the profile so so you could see the current opportunities on the website there you could see the uh the companies on the website so that's that's sufficient enough to make um you know they're trying to get experience to improve their career prospects right so like I see simplify copy blue Cosi deal light listed on the website right as as tech companies on the platform why why don't they just Reach Out directly to these companies on LinkedIn why should they go through your tool what value are you adding so if you are you know first of all we are we are a marketplace right so uh what we are doing is we're building a brand so they know that uh when you come to skill up life um you can apply for opportunity and you can you know there's a process to process we have established so that it's it's almost like a safe environment say if you go to somebody's website you know you might not see volunteer opportunities right companies don't have a section called volunteer opportunities we are just a side where you are volunteer opportunities so if anyone want to get an experience let's say you do a course data analytics course and you want to get some real experience uh that's where that's why we come in so we have both inexperienced individuals as well as experience understood okay very cool so what's the next step I mean how do you how do you scale from a thousand dollars a month to 30 000 a month yes so we have we have to improve our product uh we go to build devotion too um we have to continue why we need a version two when your version one doesn't have I mean shouldn't you get version one up more Revenue first uh I think it is it's a couple of tweaks right because the the question that I couldn't answer you know the further example of the workflow is not there so we can't actually prove that you know this company moved from when they joined to the next stage as a result of our the volunteers coming through us right so we have we don't have that essential data so that's not holding us from getting more revenues the the what we're trying to get do now is to try to build our sales team first how many folks are full-time on the team today at five and how many are our own Equity are you the only co-founder I'm I'm the only phone and you bootstrapped yeah definitely that's awesome that's great okay so the whole idea because life is that we want to help bootstrappers you know people who are who doesn't have the capital and it's really struggling that that's how you're trying to focus on yeah no I think it's great look it's just look I run a tech company if someone like you came to me and said Nathan we want you to list your tech company volunteers on our website what I would tell you they say manage it takes a lot of my time to onboard a full-time employee it takes the same amount of time to onboard a volunteer I don't have time to onboard volunteers who are going to leave in three months so I'm not interested that that would be my reply yeah so so we we understand that challenge and we are trying to overcome that and I think probably uh one way we've done that is that we we suggest you take on two people straight away one is a travel interior who can then find all the talent that that's needed second is that maybe you could take on a virtual assistant who could help you with your own productivity um and and I think the the issue is that you know if you don't have Capital you know your options are limited right um so how do you actually build this team to take your proposition forward and and that's where we're trying to come in and trying to help but the second um area is that if you want to go internationally you want to have presence in different countries you could actually build multiple teams and that's exactly what we're doing in terms of our own growth we have a we have a team in Africa in multiple countries we are building a team in Indonesia we're building a team in South America to help the the America Northern and South America um so you could start to build this Regional teams that could actually start to help you awesome well listen we're rooting for you we're out of time now for today let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite book well um I'm reading a hard thing what's it called the uh Ben Harris books uh hard things are hard things right or hard thing about hard things number two is there a CEO you're following or studying not at the moment no I think that what I'm doing is I'm I have a community of people who are about me and below me and so you know it's I'm not trying to follow on Elon Musk right I can't be anonymous there's no point so I'm trying to follow people who who will help me to get to the next stage where they have done it before me number three what's your favorite online tool for building skilled up poof well sadly other thing is probably slack number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night sorry how many hours of sleep do you get every night I'm trying to get about seven hours sleep now and situation married single kids married two kids you know congrats and how old are you manage um 50 I'll be 55 this yeah that's great and last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. but um I was no exports to business uh perhaps um obviously my twenties were a long time ago not like the 20s up now so perhaps I think sorry I wish I I had sales training guys there you have it skilled up dot live launch in 2020 doing a thousand dollars a month in Revenue today helping volunteers connect with tech companies to get experience again a two-sided Marketplace model is tough but they do have 30 customers today building a V2 their bootstrapped with a team of five Manoj thanks for taking us to the top thank you very much Nathan take care 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 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