Latka logo

Founder Interview

How Careerist Hit $12M Revenue and 6,000 Customers While Turning Profitable (Interview with CEO Ivan Tsybaev)

Interview Date
April 27, 2023
Interviewee
Ivan TsybaevCEO
Watch
Watch the full interview on YouTube

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Revenue (2022)

$12M

Total Customers (2023)

6,000

Monthly Profit (March 2023)

$300K

Team Size (2023)

300

Total Funding Raised

$9.25M

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Ivan Tsybaev during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in April 2023 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Careerist’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Careerist generated $12M in cash revenue in 2022, up from $5M in 2021 and $1.7M in 2020
  • 02The company has enrolled approximately 6,000 paying customers since launching in 2019
  • 03500 new paying customers sign up every month as of early 2023
  • 04The standard course price is $4,000, with a deferred payment option costing roughly $1,500 more over two years
  • 05Careerist turned profitable in August 2022 and generated $300K in profit in the most recent month
  • 06The company spends approximately $500K per month on paid marketing across Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other channels
  • 07Over 300 full-time employees work for Careerist, with about 20 based in the United States
  • 08Careerist raised a total of $9.25M across three rounds, including an $8M Series A in 2022, backed by Y Combinator
  • 09Affiliates, including graduates who became influencers, are described as one of the biggest marketing channels
  • 10Ivan Tsybaev personally invested $50K in the pre-seed round and provided an additional $200K loan to the company

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Revenue (2022)$12MFounder interview, April 2023
Revenue (2021)$5MFounder interview, April 2023
Revenue (2020)$1.7MFounder interview, April 2023
Revenue (2019)$400KFounder interview, April 2023
Total Customers (2023)6,000Founder interview, April 2023
New Customers per Month (2023)500Founder interview, April 2023
Course Price (2023)$4,000Founder interview, April 2023
Monthly Profit (March 2023)$300KFounder interview, April 2023
Monthly Paid Marketing Spend (2023)$500KFounder interview, April 2023
Team Size (2023)300Founder interview, April 2023
Engineers (2023)50Founder interview, April 2023
US-Based Employees (2023)20Founder interview, April 2023
Seed Round (2020)$1.2MFounder interview, April 2023
Seed Round Valuation (Post-Money) (2020)$20MFounder interview, April 2023
Series A Round (2022)$8MFounder interview, April 2023
Pre-Seed Personal Investment$50KFounder interview, April 2023
Personal Loan to Company (2019)$200KFounder interview, April 2023
Referral Fee per Customer (2023)$350Founder interview, April 2023
Average Affiliate Referrals (2023)5Founder interview, April 2023
Deferred Payment Premium (2023)$1,500Founder interview, April 2023
Deferred Payment Term (2023)2 yearsFounder interview, April 2023

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Careerist grew from $400K in its first year (2019) to $1.7M in 2020, $5M in 2021, and $12M in 2022. Ivan Tsybaev described all reported figures as cash revenue only, excluding future deferred payments still owed by students on installment plans.

Customers

The company has accumulated approximately 6,000 paying customers since launching in 2019, adding 500 new paying customers every month as of early 2023. There is no free tier; every enrolled student pays either upfront or through a deferred plan.

Team

Careerist employs over 300 full-time staff, including 50 engineers. Roughly 20 employees are based in the United States, with the remainder distributed across Latin America, India, Turkey, Armenia, and the Philippines, a structure Ivan credited with both cost savings and access to strong talent.

Profitability and Funding

The company turned profitable in August 2022 and generated $300K in profit in the most recent month at the time of the interview. Careerist raised a total of $9.25M across three rounds: a $50K pre-seed funded personally by Ivan, a $1.2M seed round in 2020 at a $20M post-money valuation, and an $8M Series A in 2022, with Y Combinator among the investors.

Growth Strategy

Facebook Groups as Early Customer Acquisition

Ivan Tsybaev acquired Careerist's first customers in 2019 by posting in Facebook groups, including women-focused communities such as Women in the Bay Area and Mamas in the United States. He posted from his wife's account and paid as little as $20 for sponsored posts in groups that allowed them.

Affiliate and Referral Program

Graduates who refer new paying customers receive a $350 referral fee, paid within a week of the new customer's payment clearing. Ivan described this as one of the company's biggest marketing channels, with some high-performing affiliates bringing in large numbers of new students after building their own audiences online.

Paid Advertising at Scale

Careerist spends approximately $500K per month on paid marketing, including Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Ivan noted that paid channels remain aggressive but that organic traffic and affiliates are the largest overall sources of new customers.

Deferred Payment to Expand Addressable Market

By offering a deferred payment option alongside the $4,000 upfront price, Careerist targets underserved job seekers who cannot pay cash immediately. At the time of the interview, roughly half of new enrollments chose the deferred plan, and Ivan said the company was becoming more aggressive in promoting this option.

Job Placement Automation and Alumni Re-engagement

Careerist built a job application automation tool that graduates return to use when switching jobs, typically every two to three years. This creates repeat engagement and reinforces the referral loop, as satisfied alumni also bring in new students.

Best Quotes

Careerist is an online education and a fintech company. Finances the enrollment of underserved job seekers in The United States, then trains them for tech jobs with software and freelance instructors, and then automates their job search.
Since 2019, I think it's around 6,000 customers right now. Yep. So we have 500 new paid customers every month now.
Yeah. It was funny. I'm a fan of Tony Robbins, and I couldn't figure out the company, and then I went to the Tony Robbins event. So I changed my state and got understanding of how to do things.
Yeah. That's another interesting story. So while marketing was for free, we used the Facebook groups. Especially, I like the women groups. 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, and, yeah, I I think the first customer was from the women's group.
No. We spent every month, spent around 500,000 on marketing. So we're still aggressive on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other sources of paid marketing. However, our biggest channels are organic and those affiliates.
And one more thing to mention that we're actually profitable. So we turned profitable in August of last year.
So we make around $300K, $400K, $500,000 per month. Last month was $300,000.
Over 300 people.
50 engineers and what's good that most people are outside of The United States. So we have only about like 20 people in The States and everybody else is remote. That helps us not only to save money, but also to hire best talent in those other areas.
I put my own money initially, and then a year after that, we raised some money. So totally, we raised around 10,000,000 from y combinator and few other investors.

What Happened Next

This interview captured Careerist at a moment of strong momentum in early 2023, with $12M in 2022 revenue, 6,000 cumulative customers, and a freshly profitable business generating $300K per month. The figures here are a point-in-time snapshot reported by Ivan Tsybaev and do not reflect the company's current performance. Visit the Careerist company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data.

View Careerist’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Intro and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Careerist.com launched in 2019 after he sold his first company, Truckerpath, which hit 800,000 truckers using it and 5,000,000 revenue in 2017. Careerist today, he put in $50,000 of his own money in a pre seed round to raise 1,200,000 seed at a 20,000,000 post money valuation, and then closed it as series a in 2022, raising 8,000,000 on a 80,000,000 post money valuation for a 6.6 x multiple. Today, 500 folks that wanna learn technology and transition into tech

00:26sign up for Ivan's platform every month and pay $4,000. They'll do 12 they'll do $25,000,000 in revenue this year. They did 12,000,000 last year and 5,000,000 in 2021. Hey, folks. My guest today is Ivan Tsybaev. He was born in Russia and lived most of his childhood in an 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

00:50get a professional programming education and got a financial management degree. Instead, way more boring. Okay? His first job finance was in ExxonMobil, but after a year, decided to start his own company. He started many companies, but ultimately wanted to get into tech. In 2009, he moved to New York. Then 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

01:13Path, which they monetize through financial services. He sold it in late twenty seventeen and in March, cofounded the ed fintech startup careerist, where they finance, train, and place talent in tech. Ivan, you ready to take us to the top?

Ivan Tsybaev

01:26>> Yeah. Sure.

Trucker Path: Building the App

Nathan Latka

01:28Alright. Tell me about Trucker app first. What was the website URL for that?

Ivan Tsybaev

01:33>> It's truckerpath.com.

Nathan Latka

01:35Interesting. And how many how many truckers, I guess, would use it in your best month?

Ivan Tsybaev

01:44>> I would say if you ask, like, 10 long call truck drivers what app they use in The United States, probably seven or around that will tell you they use the Tracker Path app. So and we served only a long call truck drivers. So there are around like 1,200,000 of them and around 800,000 were our active users.

Nathan Latka

02:11Did you say coal? Like the black stuff coal truck drivers? Long haul. Long haul. Oh, long haul. Long haul drivers.

Ivan Tsybaev

02:19>> Long haul. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

02:20Okay. And 800,000 were your users now. Did you make money from them directly? Did they pay a fee?

Ivan Tsybaev

02:26>> Yes. They either paid directly or their companies paid for them.

Nathan Latka

02:32Okay. So how much revenue was Trucker Path doing?

Trucker Path: Revenue and Factoring Model

Ivan Tsybaev

02:37>> On the top, it was around, like, 5,000,000 per year.

Nathan Latka

02:40Okay. And what year was that?

Ivan Tsybaev

02:44>> That was

02:47>> 2017.

Nathan Latka

02:492017. Okay. Yeah. And why do you say on the top? Were your margins really bad?

Ivan Tsybaev

02:55>> Yeah. So the industry is very tough. So it's kinda hard to grow, and we actually wanted to build kind of transportation marketplace connecting truckers with brokers or with shippers. And, you know, ultimately, I'll figure out that's like too too too difficult to do because the industry is very conservative and we try to attack the chicken and egg problem by serving truckers first. So we were very successful in that. But unfortunately, we're not very successful in serving

03:35>> like the other side of the marketplace and that was like an issue. So we build it into monetizing mostly from financing products like factoring. Factoring is very super challenging in the industry. Transactions are slow. People are still using faxes to send invoices and stuff.

Nathan Latka

03:59So what specifically were you doing if if a long haul trucker got a $10,000 job with a net 60 payday, they could give you that invoice, you'd pay them immediately, and then they'd go collect the sick net 60 later?

Ivan Tsybaev

04:10>> Yeah. So we paid them right away. The issue was to collect from the company. So we tried to collect within, like, thirty days usually, but it took, like, much longer because of that document turnover. There 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.

Nathan Latka

04:36What was your margin? Let's say you factor a $10,000 contract. How much would you wire the trucker on day one?

Ivan Tsybaev

04:42>> Yeah. We usually wire 90% of the invoice.

Nathan Latka

04:46Okay. So 9 k there, and then you've got, what, thirty days to go, sixty days to get it back from the the company. And how successful were you in in actually getting that money back on a percent basis?

Ivan Tsybaev

04:59>> I I don't remember really. That was long time ago, but I would say that we usually made around like 2% of the invoice net, like, after like all the costs.

Nathan Latka

05:15Okay. And how much money did you put out on your financing product in 2017?

Ivan Tsybaev

05:20>> We got the credit line for around, like, 30,000,000. And so we use, like, roughly around 15,000,000 of that.

Nathan Latka

05:29Okay. And what was your cost of capital on a 30,000,000 credit line?

Ivan Tsybaev

05:34>> Who? Don't remember. I was quite expensive.

Nathan Latka

05:37Like, fifteen, sixteen, 17%?

Ivan Tsybaev

05:39>> Yeah. Yeah. Around that.

Nathan Latka

05:40Interesting. Okay. So you didn't like that model. It is a high by the way, we're doing this at Founderpath. It is a hard model. It is not easy. It's tough model. Yeah. So anyways, you built this company. You're doing 5,000,000 a year in revenue. Then what? You sold it?

Ivan Tsybaev

05:52>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

05:54How much?

Ivan Tsybaev

05:56>> We don't disclose this, but the deal wasn't very good. So basically, the deal was mostly to return money to investors.

Nathan Latka

06:06Oh, 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

Selling Trucker Path to Ranran

Nathan Latka

06:29your 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

06:53get 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

07:15not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna 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

07:41going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll 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 dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. 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

08:03if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. 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. Alright. Let's jump back into

08:29the interview. Who bought it?

Ivan Tsybaev

08:33>> We got several offers, and actually, it was like another issue for this industry. If it was another industry, we we would be able to get much higher offers just because of large user base. But companies in this industry, they valid us for their revenue, like, specifically revenue and margin specifically. So that's why offers were, like, not that good. And we got several offers from the companies in the industry. And then ultimately, one of our investors is

09:06>> a publicly traded company who made the best offer, and they decided to take over the company and

Nathan Latka

09:13to continue to Alpine Investors?

Ivan Tsybaev

09:16>> No. It was a public company called Ranran.

Nathan Latka

09:21Say it again. Ranran?

Ivan Tsybaev

09:23>> Ranran. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

09:25Oh, interesting. Okay. And again, that website was truckerapp.com. Right?

Ivan Tsybaev

09:30>> Truckerpath.com.

Nathan Latka

09:32Oh, truckerpath.com. Okay. Interesting. Alright. So you sell that company. Now take us into careerist. What does careerist do and how do you make money?

What Careerist Does and How It Makes Money

Nathan Latka

09:40Do you want short answer or long or very long explaining the problem.

Ivan Tsybaev

09:44>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

09:45Simple as simple as the hardest. So simple as is is the challenging one.

Ivan Tsybaev

09:50>> Yeah. Careerist is an online education and a fintech company. Finances the enrollment of underserved job seekers in The United States, then trains them for tech jobs with software and freelance instructors, and then automates their job search.

Nathan Latka

10:08Okay. So who I guess name a customer that might come to you. Is this someone who just graduated school that's looking for a job?

Ivan Tsybaev

10:15>> Actually, our sweet spot are people 25 to 35 year old with some career in the past until we can switch careers and get into the tech industry. FreshGradius, our second biggest audience.

Nathan Latka

10:31Who?

Ivan Tsybaev

10:33>> FreshGradius. The graduates.

Nathan Latka

10:35Oh, fresh graduates

Ivan Tsybaev

10:36>> That at you mentioned. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:38Yeah. 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?

Ivan Tsybaev

10:47>> Since we're a fin

10:51>> fintech company as well, we offer deferred payment options. So you either can pay cash upfront or you can, like, sign up for the deferment deferred payment plan.

Nathan Latka

11:05How much cash up front on average?

Customer Profile and Pricing

Ivan Tsybaev

11:08>> No. Average $4,000.

Nathan Latka

11:104,000. Okay. And how many people when they sign up choose the four k upfront versus the finance version?

Ivan Tsybaev

11:16>> Yeah. Right now, it's around $50.50. So we're becoming more aggressive on the deferred payment options. So by balancing, like, the prices and making the terms better, But right now, it's, like, roughly the same.

Nathan Latka

11:32If if I go the deferred route, obviously, I'm gonna pay more than 4 k. What's the total deferred?

Ivan Tsybaev

11:38>> The total deferred will depend on your credit score because we have tiers. So, like, roughly, I would say pay, like, around, like, 1,500 more.

Nathan Latka

11:52Okay. Over what period of time?

Ivan Tsybaev

11:55>> Two years.

Nathan Latka

11:56Okay. Got it. So for I'm I'm paying 1,500 for the right to pay this 4,000 over a three year period instead of all upfront?

Ivan Tsybaev

12:03>> Mhmm. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:05Okay. Very interesting. Let's get into the sort of more of the the building of this application. When did you write the first line of code? What year?

Ivan Tsybaev

12:13>> 2019.

Nathan Latka

12:142019. Okay. And when did you sign up your first dollar revenue, your first customer?

Ivan Tsybaev

12:21>> Actually, same month we started. We started in April, and we got first paid customers in April.

Nathan Latka

12:28Oh, wow. How'd you get tell me how you did that.

Finding the First Customers via Facebook Groups

Ivan Tsybaev

12:31>> Yeah. It was funny. I'm a fan of Tony Robbins, and I couldn't figure out the company, and then I went to the Tony Robbins event. So I changed my state and got understanding of how to do things. So I might

Nathan Latka

12:48You walked on the coals, you burnt the hell out of your feet, and now you know how to get Yeah.

Ivan Tsybaev

12:51>> Exactly. And and then and then I motivated the team to work, like, really hard on building the code.

13:11>> He wrote, like, the the first version of the quote enough to get the first customers, and we start selling a week after that Tony Robbins event.

Nathan Latka

13:21Did you guys split equity fifty fifty?

Ivan Tsybaev

13:24>> We have three co founders. I I'm a majority shareholder, and then I have two other co founders that have equity stock between them.

Nathan Latka

13:36Okay. So you you own more than 50, and they split the other 50%? 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?

Ivan Tsybaev

13:47>> Yeah. That's another interesting story. So while marketing was for free, we used the Facebook groups. Especially, I like the women groups. 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, and, yeah, I I think the first customer was from the women's group.

Nathan Latka

14:15Name name two of the groups that got you a lot of customers.

Ivan Tsybaev

14:19>> Women in the Bay Area and Mama's in The United States.

Nathan Latka

14:25Mama's in The United Mama's in The United States. Interesting. Yeah. Now did you work with the group owners to make an affiliate agreement or you did did you just post and hope they didn't ban you?

Ivan Tsybaev

14:35>> Yeah. One group, they allowed the paid post, so I paid them, like, very small money for the paid post. Think I think it was, like, $20 or or yeah. Something like The second group didn't allow the paid post. So I just, had to tweak a language. So it was kinda question slash advice, and I posted from my wife's account.

Customer Count and Growth

Nathan Latka

15:00Since 2019, how many customers have signed up?

Ivan Tsybaev

15:05>> Since 2019, I think it's around 6,000 customers right now. Yep. So we have 500 new paid customers every month now.

Nathan Latka

15:20But and how many how many new free sign ups do you need to get 500 new paid?

Ivan Tsybaev

15:24>> No. Everybody pays. Everybody pays. So you don't

Nathan Latka

15:28have it's not a premium go to market model.

Ivan Tsybaev

15:30>> Yeah. Yeah. It's not freemium. We give you, like, one class for free. We have some free webinars, but that's only for client acquisition.

Nathan Latka

15:39Yep. So how many this isn't really a recurring model because they pay and then they're done. Is that right?

Ivan Tsybaev

15:45>> Actually, no. They can come back to the platform in these scenarios. First, you start with some simple tech job. So we help you to get into, you know, kind of 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 to grow. So it can become like test

16:18>> automation engineer and that's how you come back. Second scenario is that we have job application automation tool. So we build the software that automates your job hunting. 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

16:53>> referral fee. And that's one of our biggest marketing channel when our old customers bring new customers.

Nathan Latka

17:01What referral fee do you pay?

Ivan Tsybaev

17:03>> $3.50.

Nathan Latka

17:05Okay. So if someone brings you a new customer that pays $4,000 to sign up, you'll pay the referral partner $350 immediately on day one?

Ivan Tsybaev

17:12>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

17:13Oh, interesting. How much how many people When

Ivan Tsybaev

17:16>> they when they pay us, so as soon as we get the payment, there are a few days where we can get issue the money back if the person that doesn't like the program, and then we pay the referral fee within

17:32>> a week. So, yep.

Nathan Latka

17:33I see. Within within a week.

Ivan Tsybaev

17:34>> Just to be clear. How

Nathan Latka

17:36many how many how many affiliates have driven you at least one sale that you've paid them at least a dollar?

Ivan Tsybaev

17:42>> Come again?

Nathan Latka

17:44How many affiliates have driven you at least one new paid customer?

Ivan Tsybaev

17:49>> Yeah. So I would actually reverse the question how many people bring those affiliates. So an average number is five, but we have some people who bring us like, probably 100 people.

Nathan Latka

18:10Mhmm. So each affiliate brings you five on average, but that's why I asked. Right? Who so Yeah. You have big affiliates that bring in, like, what, a 100 new customers a month or something?

Ivan Tsybaev

18:20>> Yeah. Because 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.

Nathan Latka

18:32What's the name or the website of the blog that drives you the most customers?

Ivan Tsybaev

18:36>> Yeah. It's the guy called Cyrus. He built a community called Black Intech, and he graduated from our sales engineering course. So he learned how to become a salesperson in tech. And then he started blogging, and he's very successful in kinda giving advice to diverse customers, specifically African Americans.

Nathan Latka

19:04What's the website of the Black and Tech community?

Ivan Tsybaev

19:07>> I forgot. You can Google it, and you'll you'll find it out.

Nathan Latka

19:11I can't find it. How do you what's Sirius'last name?

Ivan Tsybaev

19:15>> Cyrus. I forgot his name, but if you Google Cyrus and Black and Tech, yeah, you can find out. Okay.

Nathan Latka

19:25Cool. Yeah. I I can't find it. I'm typing those in. I can't find it. But but

Ivan Tsybaev

19:28>> it would be interesting to study.

Revenue History: 2019 to 2022

Nathan Latka

19:30It'd be interesting to study, Isman. Is it c y r u s? Yes. C y r u s. Okay. Cool. Great. Let's move on. Take me back to sort of like revenue. Right? So last year 2022, what was total revenue?

Ivan Tsybaev

19:47>> Last year was 12,000,000.

Nathan Latka

19:49Okay. And that's actually collected revenue. That doesn't include people on the 4,000 with deferred future payments.

Ivan Tsybaev

19:55>> Yeah. It's only cash revenue.

Nathan Latka

19:57And then how much the year before that in 2021?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:01>> Five.

Nathan Latka

20:02And the year before that?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:05>> One point 7.

Nathan Latka

20:06$1.07. Okay. So your first year in business then in 2019, you did what? 500,000?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:12>> Think around 400,000.

Nathan Latka

20:15400,000. And have you done all this? Ivan bootstrapped?

Funding History and Y Combinator

Ivan Tsybaev

20:19>> I put my own money initially, and then a year after that, we raised some money. So totally, we raised around 10,000,000 from y combinator and few other investors.

Nathan Latka

20:31Give me the full history. So in 2020, how much did you raise?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:37>> We raised 1,200,000 initially.

Nathan Latka

20:40Okay. And that was, like, your pre seed?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:43>> Actually, I was seed. So I financed the the pre seed. So and the the valuation on that round was around 20,000,000.

Nathan Latka

20:5220,000,000? Mhmm. Post money. And when you put money in before the pre seed round, how much did you personally put in?

Ivan Tsybaev

20:59>> $50,000. And then also I gave some loan to the company. It was additional, like, $200,000.

Nathan Latka

21:07Why structured as a loan instead of all equity?

Ivan Tsybaev

21:11>> We had some deferred payments. So at that time, we experimented with the model called income share agreements. So basically, we allowed a lot of people to learn for free, and then they paid us back when they get the job.

Nathan Latka

21:28Yep. Are you still doing this is a very popular sort of factoring thing right now. Are you still doing sharing income share agreements?

Ivan Tsybaev

21:35>> Yeah. Unfortunately, regulators are not big on this model. And right now, there are, like, issues. It's hard to collect on them, so we have to stop that. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

21:46Yep. Lambda School is is there too. Okay. So 1.2 seed round in 2020, then what?

Ivan Tsybaev

21:54>> And then after that, from the end twenty twenty twenty one to the end 2022, we raised, like, another 8,000,000.

Nathan Latka

22:08And what was the last money that came into that 8,000,000 round? What was the valuation at?

Ivan Tsybaev

22:14>> It was 80.

Nathan Latka

22:15$8.00. Did that feel fair to you? 80,000,000 valuation?

Ivan Tsybaev

22:20>> Yes.

22:23>> For the market conditions, you know, like, the market is not good these days. Yeah. Otherwise, it would be bigger.

Nathan Latka

22:30Yeah. It's a six x multiple on your 12,000,000 in ARR. So I would say that's that's not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing.

Ivan Tsybaev

22:35>> That's fair. Yeah. That's fair.

Nathan Latka

22:37What do you think you do this year in revenue?

Ivan Tsybaev

22:41>> This year, we target 25.

Nathan Latka

22:4625. Interesting. Well, it'd 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?

Profitability and Monthly Profits

Ivan Tsybaev

22:53>> Yeah. And one more thing to mention that we're actually profitable. So we turned profitable in August of last year. So we

Nathan Latka

23:00need to

Ivan Tsybaev

23:02>> our profitable.

23:02>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

23:03How much profits last month?

Ivan Tsybaev

23:06>> So we make around $300K, $400K, $500,000 per month. Last month was $300,000.

Nathan Latka

23:15What do you do with that money?

Ivan Tsybaev

23:16>> Profit. We just

23:21>> use it as a reserve, and then we're going to use it to push more our deferred payment options.

Nathan Latka

23:29Yeah. Your own debt your own debt fund. Right? Yeah. Alright. 300,000 there. And then okay. So that's profits. 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?

Ivan Tsybaev

23:44>> Everybody pays. So we have 500 new customers every month. So, like, this year, we estimate, like, 6,000 customers.

Nathan Latka

23:54Yep. Yep. Yep. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Take me into the team a little bit. How many folks are full time?

Team Size and Global Distribution

Ivan Tsybaev

24:01>> Over 300 people.

Nathan Latka

24:04Oh, you have 300 people full time. Holy cow. Yeah. Yeah. How many are engineers?

Ivan Tsybaev

24:09>> 50 engineers and what's good that most people are outside of The United States. So we have only about like 20 people in The States and everybody else is remote. That helps us not only to save money, but also to hire best talent in those other areas. You know?

Nathan Latka

24:29It's really

Ivan Tsybaev

24:30>> hard to compete for the talent.

Nathan Latka

24:32Here. Yeah. 12,000,000 in revenue, 300 full time. You're paying an average of $40,000 salary. So 20 in The US. Tell me the other regions where you have concentrations of employees.

Ivan Tsybaev

24:41>> We have salespeople in Latin America and India. We used to have developers in Russia and Ukraine, but because of war, we had to move most of them. So right now, most of people are in Turkey and Armenia. And those are engineers, some people in marketing as well. And, yeah, we have some tech support on Philippines too.

Nathan Latka

25:07That'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?

Marketing Spend and Affiliate Channels

Ivan Tsybaev

25:18>> No. We spent every month, spent around 500,000 on marketing. So we're still aggressive on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other sources of paid marketing. However, our biggest channels are organic and those affiliates.

Nathan Latka

25:37That's crazy. So if you have 500 k of of paid spend plus 300 k of profits, right, so that's 8,000,000 or 800 k 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 per month per person on average.

Ivan Tsybaev

25:54>> Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

25:56Very cool. Alright. Let's wrap up here, Ivan, with the famous five. I I guess I should wrap up. And before I wrap up, is there anything I missed that you wanna make sure you chat about?

Ivan Tsybaev

26:05>> No. Not really. Everything you need to ask, feel free. But yep.

Nathan Latka

26:12Alright. Famous five. Number one, favorite business book?

Ivan Tsybaev

26:17>> Hard Think About Hard Things.

Nathan Latka

26:20Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Ivan Tsybaev

26:25>> As for the CEOs,

26:29>> I would say, Tanya Robbins. That would be the funny. Though he's not a good example, but, yeah, I I I started other SEOs, but still, like, more more more most most of advice I get from, like, Tony Robbins seminars and his coaching. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

26:49Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building careerist?

Ivan Tsybaev

26:56>> ChatGPT, let's say.

Nathan Latka

26:59Alright. Number four, how many hours of sleep How many hours of sleep do

27:02have a night?

Ivan Tsybaev

27:03>> Seven, eight.

Nathan Latka

27:04That's good.

Ivan Tsybaev

27:05>> And situation, married, single kids?

27:08>> I'm married with two kids. Two kids. That's my wife.

Nathan Latka

27:11That's great. And how old are you?

Ivan Tsybaev

27:14>> I'm 36.

Nathan Latka

27:16Okay. Last question, Ivan. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Ivan Tsybaev

27:20>> I wish I went for the Tony Robbins seminar earlier.

Nathan Latka

27:28Guys, there we have it. Careerist.com launched in 2019 after he sold his first company, Truckerpath, which hit 800,000 truckers using it and 5,000,000 revenue in 2017. Careerist today, he put in $50,000 of his own money in a pre seed round to raise 1,200,000 seed at a 20,000,000 post money valuation, and then closed it as series a in 2022, raising 8,000,000 on a 80,000,000 post money valuation for a 6.6 x multiple. Today, 500 folks that wanna learn

Closing and Outro

Nathan Latka

27:54technology and transition into tech sign up for Ivan's platform every month and pay $4,000. They'll do 12 they'll do $25,000,000 in revenue this year. They did 12,000,000 last year and 5,000,000 in 2021. Ivan, thanks for taking us to the top.

Ivan Tsybaev

28:08>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

28:10One 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

28:35Central. 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 SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

28:57fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS 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

29:19for 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

29:39got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. All right. I'll be in the comments. See you.