How SkilledUp Life Reached £12K Revenue and 27,000 Volunteers with 30 Paying Customers (Interview with CEO Manoj Ranaweera)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Skilledup. Life 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 Ranaweera. He is building he's been building tech startups since 2004, has plenty of failures, but also two exits so far. Currently building three different

00:25ventures. His main focus though is skilledup. Life, giving a leg up to tech founders. Manoj, you ready to take us to the top?

Three Ventures: TechCelerate, DLight, and SkilledUp Life

Manoj Ranaweera

00:33>> Sounds good. Yeah. Alright. So let's just to

Nathan Latka

00:35be clear, you're you're building TechCelerate, Deal Light, and Skilled Up Life. Skilled Up Life is the largest in terms of revenue?

Manoj Ranaweera

00:43>> No, it's not in terms of the revenue, but in terms of the global opportunity. It's probably the biggest one.

Nathan Latka

00:50Which of the three does the most revenue today?

Manoj Ranaweera

00:53>> So we are small in terms of so Techcerate is a community of tech founders. DLight is tracking what happened in The UK tech investment market. So probably Textarate is probably the biggest, but it's a local opportunity, whereas skilleduplife is a global opportunity.

Nathan Latka

01:12Tell us more about skilleduplife. Is this a SaaS player? How do you make money?

How SkilledUp Life Makes Money

Manoj Ranaweera

01:16>> So we are a two sided marketplace, and we are only monetizing one side through subscription plans. What we're trying to do is to help the early stage tech founders. As you very well know, probably about 1% of tech companies get investment. Quite a number of the rest of the 99%, know, quite a large number of them die over time. And the main reason for that is, you know, it's hard to build a tech company by yourself.

01:46>> 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've suffered from the same problem I saw.

Nathan Latka

01:59Someone else, just to be clear, you launched the company in 2004?

Manoj Ranaweera

02:02>> No. No. This company was launched in August 2020. 2020.

Nathan Latka

02:072020. And again, you've got a two sided marketplace demand supply. There's tech company, then you're connecting them with free talent volunteers. Which side

02:15are you monetizing today?

Customer Count and Monthly Recurring Revenue

Manoj Ranaweera

02:16>> Tech companies.

Nathan Latka

02:17And what do they pay on average per month?

Manoj Ranaweera

02:21>> So they're paid from £30 a month to about £200 plus, but we are at the very early stages. So we are monetizing, you know, we are on tier one and tier two customers.

Nathan Latka

02:32Mhmm.

02:33So when you say early stages, how many customers today?

Volunteer Numbers and Placement Tracking Gap

Manoj Ranaweera

02:36>> So we have roughly about thousand sorry. Roughly about 30 customers. We are we are still that revenue wise, we are still very early. We are hovering around thousand pounds monthly recurring revenue, so very early in our journey.

Nathan Latka

02:50We 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.

Manoj Ranaweera

02:58>> So we don't have a figure at the moment, but we have 27,000 volunteers on our platform now. And our

Nathan Latka

03:05top What end good is it that I have

Manoj Ranaweera

03:07>> on your platform if you're not helping deliver and connect them with the companies? And and why do you not know that number? 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.

03:29>> So we have no real visibility of the real numbers at the moment.

Nathan Latka

03:33Well, how many though? And 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?

Manoj Ranaweera

03:41>> That's what I'm saying. So we have companies sometimes have about 30 individuals and sometimes have about five. And the volunteers come in at three months'batches. So, it's very hard because the actual 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 our workflow in, then we can actually share the numbers. So, I don't want to give you a false number. Just a

04:05>> No. No. It's fine.

Nathan Latka

04:06I mean, but isn't that a major problem? You're telling me the number one thing you care about is connecting these.

Manoj Ranaweera

04:10>> But then when I say how many of you connected, you don't know. We don't know. Yeah. Sounds stupid, but we can't actually tell you that figure. So that's

Nathan Latka

04:18why So how do you know if it's working?

Manoj Ranaweera

04:20>> We know we are working with the companies. We understand that, you know, they are taking on, you know, the volunteers from our side. But in terms of how they are, you know, in in terms of numbers, we we don't have oversight. That's what I'm saying.

Nathan Latka

04:35Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

04:59your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

05:23get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna 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. 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

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How 27,000 Volunteers Were Acquired

Nathan Latka

06:58back into the interview. How did you get 27,000 volunteers signed up? 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.

Manoj Ranaweera

07:10>> Yes. So what we try to do is we try to build the supply side first, and then we are building the demand side second. So, as you know, building a two sided marketplace is always tricky. You have to focus on one side first. So, we have a team dedicated to building the volunteer side. And then we haven't actually, you know, we are starting to build the team for acquiring customers right now. We, you know, we ourselves

07:39>> have about five employees and about 80 volunteers helping ourselves.

Nathan Latka

07:42Well, Manoj, sorry.

07:43>> The the

07:43the 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 how are you convincing to sign up on the platform when

Manoj Ranaweera

07:55>> you only have 30 companies on the demand side? Yes. So we have a whole team dedicated to acquire volunteers. So, we use a number of different strategies. We use social media. We are continually building our brand. We are running events. And we have partnerships with education providers. So, through all these different channels, we acquire volunteers.

Nathan Latka

08:19How do you define a volunteer as being acquired? Is it a very simple email sign up or something else?

Manoj Ranaweera

08:26>> Sign up.

Scaling from £1,000 to £30,000 a Month

Manoj Ranaweera

08:27>> And then we have the next process where they had to come and build their profile because without building a profile, it is very hard for companies to assess their suitability. So since 2020, you've gotten 27,000 potential volunteers to give you their email and you consider that a sign up?

08:47>> Yes. They have created account on our platform. Yes.

Nathan Latka

08:49Well, what does my audience doesn't know what your platform does, 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.

Manoj Ranaweera

08:59>> No. They have come on on the website. They have created a profile. You know, they have signed up as a volunteer and then they will go on to create their profile.

Nathan Latka

09:08What are fields they have to upload when you say create a profile? Is it a headshot? No.

Manoj Ranaweera

09:14>> I mean, there's a headshot. There's a full profile. Am I allowed to show the screens or is that not?

Nathan Latka

09:20No, no screen.

Manoj Ranaweera

09:21>> There's no screen sharing. Okay. Okay. So, so it's been like the building the profile on LinkedIn similar, way. You had to build the profile, you had our introduction, you got to build if you have previous work experience, previous education. So, just, you know, so when a company comes and they have enough information to assess the suitability.

Nathan Latka

09:41Yeah. So I guess the reason I'm asking is if someone came to me and said, Nathan, want you to send us a volunteer on our platform because we're gonna 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 gonna take ten, twenty, thirty minutes of my time. And I'm gonna say, Manoj, why should I make time to do this? I

09:56don'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?

Manoj Ranaweera

10:06>> So you could see the current opportunities on the website. You could see companies on the website. That's sufficient enough to make They're trying to get experience to improve their career prospects.

Nathan Latka

10:21Like I see Simplify, Compi, Blue Qazi, 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?

Manoj Ranaweera

10:37>> So, first of all, we marketplace, are right? So, what we are doing is we're building a brand so they know that when you come to skilledup life, you can apply for opportunity and there's a process to process we have established so that it's almost like a safe environment. So, if you go to somebody else's website, you might not see volunteer opportunities, right? Companies don't have a section called volunteer opportunities. We are just a site where you

11:06>> have warranty opportunities. So, if anyone wants to get an experience, let's say you do a course, data analytics course, and you want get some real experience, that's where we come in. So we have both inexperienced individuals as well as experienced.

Nathan Latka

11:23Understood. Okay, very cool. So what's

11:26the next step? I mean, how do you scale from $1,000 a month to 30,000 a month?

Team Size and Bootstrapped Status

Manoj Ranaweera

11:32>> Yes. So we have to improve our product. We've got to build version two. Have to continue Wait.

Nathan Latka

11:39Why do you need a version two when your version one doesn't have I mean, shouldn't you get version one up more revenue first?

Manoj Ranaweera

11:47>> I think it's a couple of tweaks, right? Because the question that I couldn't answer, for example, workflow is not there. So we can't actually prove that this company moved from when they joined to the next stage as a result of the volunteers coming through us. So, we don't have that essential data. So, that's not holding us from gaining more revenues. What we're trying to do now is to try to build our sales team first.

Nathan Latka

12:17So how many folks are full time on the team

Manoj Ranaweera

12:19>> today? Five.

Nathan Latka

12:22And how many are our own equity? Are you the only co founder?

Manoj Ranaweera

12:25>> I'm the only founder.

Nathan Latka

12:26And you bootstrapped?

Manoj Ranaweera

12:27>> Yeah. Definitely.

Nathan Latka

12:29That's awesome. That's great.

12:31Okay. Very

Mission: Helping Capital-Constrained Founders

Manoj Ranaweera

12:32>> So the whole idea behind skilledup life is that we wanna help bootstrappers, you know, people who are who doesn't have the capital and is really struggling. That that's how you're trying to focus on.

Nathan Latka

12:42Yeah. No. I think it's great. Look. 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 is in Manoj, 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

12:57in three months. So I'm not interested. That would be my reply.

Manoj Ranaweera

13:01>> Yes. So we understand that challenge and we are trying to overcome that. And I think probably one way we've done that is that we suggest you take on two people straight away. One is a HR volunteer who can then find all the talent that's needed. Second is that maybe you could take on a virtual assistant who could help you with your own productivity. And I think the issue is that, you know, if you don't have capital,

Overcoming the Volunteer Onboarding Challenge

Manoj Ranaweera

13:31>> you know, your options are limited. Right? So, how do you actually build this team to take your proposition forward? And that's why we're trying to come in and trying to help. But the second 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 a team in Africa in multiple countries. We are

13:58>> building a team in Indonesia. We're building a team in South America to help the Americas, Northern And South America. So you could start to build this regional teams that could actually start to help you. Awesome.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits

Nathan Latka

14:12Well, listen, we're rooting for you. We're out of time now for today, Manoj. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Manoj Ranaweera

14:20>> Favorite book? Well,

14:24>> I'm reading a hard thing. Well, what's it called? The Ben Horowitz books, things are hard things. Right? Or Hard thing about hard things.

Nathan Latka

14:31Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Manoj Ranaweera

14:36>> Not at the moment. No. I think what I'm doing is I have a community of people who are above me and below me. So, you know, I'm not trying to follow Elon Musk's price. I can't be Elon Musk. There's no point. So I'm trying to follow people who will help me to get to the next stage where they have done it before me.

Nathan Latka

14:52Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building skilledup?

Manoj Ranaweera

14:57>> Well, sadly, I think it's probably Slack.

Nathan Latka

15:00Number four,

15:02how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Manoj Ranaweera

15:04>> Sorry?

Nathan Latka

15:05How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Manoj Ranaweera

15:07>> I'm trying to get about seven hours sleep now.

Nathan Latka

15:11And situation, married, single kids?

Manoj Ranaweera

15:14>> Married, two kids.

Nathan Latka

15:15Oh, congrats.

15:16And how old are you, Manoj?

Manoj Ranaweera

15:18>> I'm 50. I'll be 55 this year.

Nathan Latka

15:20That's great.

15:22And last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Manoj Ranaweera

15:27>> I was never exposed to business, perhaps, obviously, my twenties were a long time ago, not like the twenties of now. So perhaps I think sorry. I wish I had sales training. Guys, there

Nathan Latka

15:43you have it. SkilledUp. Life 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 v two. They're bootstrapped with a team of five. Manoj, thanks for taking us to the top.

Closing Recap

Manoj Ranaweera

15:59>> Thank you very much, Nathan. Take care.

Nathan Latka

16:02One 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 1PM

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17:11for 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 those people. We

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