Build your tech startup with 50,000 skilled volunteers
Building a tech startup is damn hard. If you are self-funded, odds are very much working against you, especially as your savings start running out quickly. Not any more, thanks to SkilledUp Life.
Building Teams
Under the Advanced Plan, tech startups can start to assemble multiple teams to accelerate the growth of your tech startup and start de-risking the business faster for equity and debt financiers, or start financing the business from revenue, the best form of finance.
Entry level
Entry level does not mean inexperienced SkilledUp Lifers. It means a SkilledUp Lifer joining a Sub Team, as part of a larger Team. Examples of Entry Level Volunteers: Recruiters and LinkedIn Administrators.
Management
Management Volunteers usually lead a Sub Team. They might either come through the ranks having joined at Entry Level or recruited as a result of proven work experience and skills.
Leadership
Management Volunteers climb up to Leadership roles such as Head of Marketing. They would manage a team of Sub Team Leaders. Many seeking career transition are ideal for Leadership roles.
Sub Teams
Keep sub-team sizes to 5 SkilledUp Lifers comprising of a Sub Team Leader and 4 entry level Volunteers. Content Creation Sub Team may include Copy Writers, Graphics Designers and Video Creators.
Team 1
Concept Validation
Everything starts with an idea. Building a tech startup is no different. Idea needs to develop over time into a concept which then requires validation before you decide to invest time and money.
You can easily build a concept validation team using SkilledUp Lifers.
Team 2
Product Development
Once your concept has been validated, you need to assemble a team to build the first version of your product, which is usually referred to as Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Once gone live, your product team needs to continually iterate and maintain the product to ensure success for your tech startup.
You can build a full product team using SkilledUp Lifers.
Team 3
User Acquisition & Conversion
Prior to MVP or version 1 of the product goes live, you need to start acquiring users. You can easily build a user acquisition and conversion team using SkilledUp Lifers.
Initially, you would drive traffic to a landing page that would help to build the waiting list. As the product goes live, you can deploy multiple tactics including campaigns to acquire users and start converting them to customers.
Team 4
Marketing and demand generation
Demand generation is one of the best strategies to grow inbounds. Before you can generate the demand, first you need to establish your brand and build trust.
You can start by building a marketing team that includes content creators, social media and engagement specialists, event organisers, website and SEO specialists and of course if you have the budget, an advertising team.
Using SkilledUp Lifers, it’s easier to plan and execute your marketing strategy for growth.
Team 5
Customer Support and Churn Management
Whilst the world is driving towards efficiency using chatbots for customer support, thanks to SkilledUp Lifers, you can have a blended customer support team with humans and machines.
Gaining customers is one thing, keeping them is another. This is where SkilledUp Lifers can make a real difference and stop customer churn getting out of control.
Team 6
Recruitment and Human Resources (HR)
We recommend you start your SkilledUp Life journey by first taking on a HR Volunteer and an Executive Assistant (EA) Volunteer.
Then grow the HR functionality into three sub-teams which focus on recruitment, on-boarding and off-boarding, and performance.
HR SkilledUp Lifers can trully make a difference by helping you find the best talent for your tech startup, and then ensure they perform at the highest level.
Team 7
Operations Management
SkilledUp Lifers can be assemble to help your run your tech startup organisation efficiently. Starting with EAs, you can deploy finance and legal volunteers, in addition to operations volunteers including country and regional team leaders.
There is simply no limit to the expertise you can have in your Operations team, thanks to our growing skilled volunteer talent pool.
Start slow, learn and accelerate
You cannot run without first learning to walk. SkilledUp Life is no different. You have to learn how to recruit, motivate and get the best out of SkilledUp Lifers before acceleration.
Structure
How would you structure your teams? Would you start building one team at a time or start with multiple teams? Why not learn how we built teams and avoid making mistakes?
System
Consider Slack or similar and not WhatsApp groups. Mix SkilledUp Lifers with rest of your team, so they feel part of the organisation and not feel like second class citizens.
Processes
Start building your Quality Management System (QMS). Make sure role descriptions and 13 week programmes are written down for each of the Volunteer roles
Tools
Use free software tools to keep the operational costs low from Webmail to Google Workspace Essential, Trello, Zoom, PandaDoc, HubSpot, BitBucket, Jira and others.
Giving a leg up to tech founders and reduce premature founder equity dilution
By leveraging our 50,000 skilled volunteers and building multiple teams to push your strategy and vision forward, you can avoid premature founder equity dilution, grow the business, de-risk for external investors and be in a position to negotiate favourable terms for growth capital.
