Subscribe
Sign in
  1. Discussions
  2. Would you consider the following as transformative or...

Would you consider the following as transformative or just another meh?

Manoj Ranaweera
17 replies
You bring an idea for a tech startup. 2,885 volunteers (we are adding 100 every 3 to 6 days) at www.skilledup.life Validates it Help build the idea into a product Acquires users on your behalf Convert them to customers Provides customer support Build the team Pre-Seed Investors watching what's happening put some money into you, as SkilledUp Life has de-risked the opportunity for them. You end up hiring some of our volunteers after the volunteer term has ended. Is that too much to foresee? Is that just another meh!

Replies

Bogomil Shopov - Бого
Threat Modeling e-book
Threat Modeling e-book
Who will manage the risk on something get built, but never gets published or developed?
Share
Bogomil Shopov - Бого
Threat Modeling e-book
Threat Modeling e-book
@manojranaweera yes, but what will happen if the volunteers spend 3 months working hard on something and then the project idea fails?
Share
@bogomep Volunteers are there to gain Experience. They move on. Succession planning is there for the next cohort of volunteers to step in and continue.
Share
@bogomep Volunteers help the founder(s). Founder(s) owns all the IP.
Share
Matthew Johnson
Startup-Investor Fit
What investor is going to invest in founders that couldn't do all those things themselves and instead relied on unpaid interns to do it? Why not just invest in a company run by the unpaid interns who did all the work?
Share
Matthew Johnson
Startup-Investor Fit
@manojranaweera We took a break from Pioneer over the holidays. Things are going well - making lots of progress with the product and feel like we can go further into growth mode
Share
@mattcrail well time will tell. How could one person build a scalable tech company? As the company grow, it would have both paid and volunteer talent. That's how we see it works out. These are not interns. These are volunteers. Quite a difference between the two.
Share
@mattcrail How's Taskable by the way? Have you left Pioneer? You must killing it with MRR by now.
Share
Matthew Johnson
Startup-Investor Fit
@manojranaweera I don't think one person can build a scalable tech company, but what you are describing are things that founders should be able to do on their own imo
Share
@mattcrail Is your team still two? Impressive what you have achieved. My team now is 1 employee, me plus 19 volunteers. www.skilledup.life/about
Share
Reuben Carter
Grapevine
Never been a huge fan of the "work for free so you get experience" model. Seems a little exploitative when the volunteering is not for a charity but a start-up. It reminds me of unpaid internships, which cause many problems in society. For anyone starting out with coding I would recommend doing open source stuff. It will get you all the experience you need to be hireable.
Share
@reuben_carter I think you are misunderstanding what we offer. Volunteering through SkilledUp Life is non intrusive. We have many individuals who volunteer to gain Experience whilst being employed. Our volunteering is 1hr+ per day for three months. Where is the exploitation in here? They join us to gain Experience, nothing more. Here's a good example https://www.skilledup.life/how-i... Opensource is another option. But SkilledUp Life is not all about programming. It's in fact the least popular area. To be build a company you need to develop all areas, as you know very well know.
Share