At the start of the 2nd year (1st Aug 2021), we set a target of achieving 10x growth on the supply side of https://skilledup.life - free talent for tech startups.
In the first 12 months, we achieved our target of signing up 1,000 Volunteers with 24 hours to go. To 10x in the next 12 months, we had to continually up our game.
Now that we have reached the last week of the second year, we have a mammoth task of adding 2,000 new Volunteers to SkilledUp Life.
From where we are standing and based on our past performance, this seems like an impossible task to achieve. But we are going to give our best shot.
What we achieved this past week, which so far has been the best week, we need to achieve the same result almost every day if we are to reach this target.
To give us a chance of achieving, all our team members are being called to help.
When was the last time you chased a result like this? What tactics did you deploy? What was the result? Love to hear.
I have a very large network, so I thought I could acquire the first 100 within days. But the truth was different. No one wanted to be a Volunteer. They didn't understand it. I had lot of critics. But slowly we gained. Then we started tapping into our Volunteers, once we worked out the details.
It took me 176 days to sign up 100 people to https://skilledup.life as Volunteers, which will help them to gain real Experience to improve their career prospects.
I started SkilledUp Life all by myself and went live on 1st Aug 2020. Then hired Mithun in Nov, when I really struggled to get traction.
I was only spending few hours per day on SkilledUp Life back then. Even with a full time employee, we could not get the numbers. Then we started to use our own Volunteers and started to build a team.
We had a simple goal of convincing 1000 people to sign up in the first 12 months. We achieved this task with great difficulty with 24 hours to go. We could not have achieved this without our volunteers. From month 10 to 12, we had a team of about 7 to 8 Volunteers if I recall, from Brazil to Philippines.
Today, we have 7,555 Volunteers from 85 countries. You can subscribe to https://skilledup.life for £30/month. Once subscribed, all talent is free.
You can then build a user acquisition team that could approach your target customers/users one to one to get the 100. Whilst they are working on this, you can add more volunteers to improve your website, write content, SEO, social media marketing, etc.
Your founder journey no longer needs to be as hard as mine was. All the best.
Whilst I have not kept a list myself, I've seen SaaS products drastically change after acquisitions. Some SaaS products under new ownership stop serving small customers all together and focus on large enterprises. This is as a much risk as shut downs.
In terms of Bootstrapped SaaS, what I have noticed since 2004 is that bootstrapped does not mean the companies are operated by a single person.
As a bootstrapped SaaS founder, you can start building a team with revenues by hiring team mates. By doing this, you reduce the risk rate for your customers.
Until you have revenues to hire talent, you can also bring on free talent from companies like https://skilledup.life. This is my latest tech startup.
I have also been building subscription based tech products since 2004 with many failures and two Exits. I bootstrapped them all and continue to do so. The biggest issue I have during all these years is lack of capital to build teams.
I'm solving my own problem through SkilledUp Life. My team now includes 2 salaried staff and about 20+ Volunteers.
We are one solution. But there are many ways to de-risk a bootstrapped SaaS business.
In the first 12 months, we achieved our target of signing up 1,000 Volunteers with 24 hours to go. To 10x in the next 12 months, we had to continually up our game.
Now that we have reached the last week of the second year, we have a mammoth task of adding 2,000 new Volunteers to SkilledUp Life.
From where we are standing and based on our past performance, this seems like an impossible task to achieve. But we are going to give our best shot.
What we achieved this past week, which so far has been the best week, we need to achieve the same result almost every day if we are to reach this target.
To give us a chance of achieving, all our team members are being called to help.
When was the last time you chased a result like this? What tactics did you deploy? What was the result? Love to hear.
Do wish us all the best, please. Thank you.