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Top Founders

Nathan Latka

What if you knew data behind the fastest growing SaaS companies today? Each morning join Nathan Latka as he spends 15 minutes interviewing SaaS founders. You'll learn how SaaS CEO's launched their startup and grew it into a real SaaS business. SaaS Founders range from bootstrapped to funded, MVP to 10,000 customers, pre revenue to pre IPO.

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#2968
Tuesday · 18 min
He Makes $50m/yr on Cookie Popups, Controls 2% of all Web Traffic
Raphaël Boukris is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Didomi (didomi.io), the Paris-based consent management platform that helps enterprises comply with GDPR, CCPA, and privacy laws worldwide. Roughly 2% of all global web traffic passes through Didomi's SDK, and the company processes billions of consent decisions every month for customers including Bloomberg, Sky, and Adyen. In this interview, Raphaël breaks down the full financial history on the record: three funding rounds, two acquisitions, and a majority sale to private equity. He raised under €300k from angels, then €5m from Breega in late 2019, then a €34m ($40m) Series B led by Elephant and Breega in summer 2021 — priced, he says, at above a 10x ARR multiple. Eight months later the market collapsed. He never burned through the money. In April 2025, Marlin Equity Partners took majority control, and Didomi immediately acquired Addingwell and Sourcepoint. Today the group does $40–60m ARR across 3,500 customers with fewer than 200 employees, and has at least one customer paying over $1m per year. What we cover: (01:02) What Didomi actually sells, and why every cookie banner in Europe is a business (01:51) Why roughly 2% of global web traffic runs through their SDK (02:12) Processing billions of consents per month — and who is not the customer (03:00) Pricing on monthly unique visitors, and why AI agents and bots are breaking that model (04:32) The Addingwell acquisition: a few million in ARR, a few thousand euros ACV, profitable enough to pay dividends (05:10) Why he bought a second product instead of building one (06:56) Every round, in order: sub-€300k angel, €5m Breega, €34m Series B (07:50) Above a 10x multiple in 2021 — and how he ran Elephant through a roadshow to get it (09:44) Secondaries in the Series B, and managing a team whose options went underwater (10:06) The year he crossed $1m ARR, and the year he crossed $10m (12:18) The question he answers "absolutely not" — was he ever close to shutting it down (13:09) What growth equity actually pays in 2025, and the range he'd give (14:22) Buying Sourcepoint, a company that had raised $48m, for its ACV and its US enterprise base (15:07) 3,500 customers, one paying over $1m/year, under 200 people (16:44) The combined group revenue number: $40–60m ARR Full metrics, funding history, and revenue timeline: https://getlatka.com/companies/didomi.io
#2967
August 18 · 17 min
Why Does Google Pay Him $2M A Year?
Stéphane Donzé has bootstrapped AODocs and Talarian to a combined $60m in 2026 revenue without raising capital. His top three customers each pay more than $2m per year, including Google, which pays him millions annually to control the documents behind its data center builds. He funded fourteen years of R&D off a cloud consulting business, never burned more than $200k in a month, and has fielded private equity calls four times a week declining $600m offers.
#2966
August 11 · 20 min
How He Bootstrapped Dental Software to $16m
He bootstrapped to $16.5m ARR selling software to 2,000 dental offices. Zero dollars raised, 24% EBITDA, and $1.5m in free cash flow last year. COVID cut him back to $2m in 2021; he's added $14.5m since, charging $13k per dental office per year. When I asked what happens if Henry Schein shows up with $180m cash, he gave a surprising answer.
#2965
July 23 · 24 min
How David Chevalier Hit $15M ARR With a Chrome Extension and No Sales Team - Surfe
How do you go from a Chrome extension with no sales team to $15M in revenue in five years, while raising less money than most startups spend in their first year? David Chevalier is the co-founder and CEO of Surfe, the leading CRM enrichment and waterfall data platform for B2B sales teams. He bootstrapped for two years, grew to $1.5M purely through HubSpot and Pipedrive marketplace rankings, and has never taken a dollar of personal secondary despite being six years into the company. Today Surfe processes 50 million data points per year and is the third partner inside HubSpot's AI prospecting agent next to ZoomInfo and Apollo. You'll learn: How Surfe got to $1.5M in revenue with zero salespeople by becoming the number one app in HubSpot and Pipedrive marketplaces The waterfall enrichment model that aggregates 15 data providers and why building it at scale is much harder than it looks Why a third of their $15M revenue now comes from API usage and credits rather than seat licenses How David revealed his company revenue publicly for the first time ever on this show The Google partnership that started three and a half years ago and helped Surfe build the waterfall before the market even knew what it was Why their largest customer now pays over $1 million per year and how many more are approaching that threshold What happened when David tried to hire salespeople before the product was ready, and how many failed hires it took to find their CCO Eric How Surfe doubled from $9M to $15M in one year with 20 AEs each carrying $700 to $800K in quota Why 40% of their revenue comes from the US despite being founded in Paris and what it took to make that happen What David would do differently if he could go back and negotiate secondary at his pre-Series A round Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Surfe: surfe.com Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2964
July 16 · 20 min
Practice by Numbers: $16.5M Dental SaaS, 24% EBITDA, Zero VC - Rohit Garg
How do you build a $16.5M vertical SaaS company with 24% EBITDA margins with zero paid acquisition, zero outside funding, and your wife as co-founder? Rohit Garg is the co-founder and CEO of Practice by Numbers, an all-in-one dental practice management platform serving 1,300 customers across 2,000 locations. He started building it in 2015 because his wife is a dentist and he was the one running SQL queries to answer her business questions. Today they are bootstrapped, profitable, and sitting on $2 billion in untouched payment GMV from their existing customer base. You'll learn: Why Rohit built the entire platform by sweat equity while working a full-time job at Philips Healthcare How Practice by Numbers went from $2M in 2021 to $16.5M in 2026 without spending a dollar on paid ads Why their customers generate almost 2x the national average in dental practice revenue — and why that drives retention without any loyalty program The $2 billion in payment GMV sitting in their system right now that they have not started converting yet Why Henry Schein and Patterson, who own the biggest competitors, simply cannot move fast enough to build what Practice by Numbers has built How 100% inbound word of mouth growth leads to 22 to 24% EBITDA margins at $12.5M in revenue The AI receptionist and agentic workflow roadmap that will let dental office managers run the entire practice without touching a screen What Rohit actually said when Nathan asked if he would sell for $180M all cash to the company that owns Dentrix Why COVID cut the company at its knees in 2020 and what it took to relaunch and 8x revenue in five years The vision for $100M in revenue within 10 years and why Rohit thinks it will happen faster than expected Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Practice by Numbers: practicenumbers.com Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2963
July 10 · 21 min
Handwrytten Sends 6 Million Fake Handwritten Notes a Year and Makes $10M
How do you build a $10M business by teaching robots to write handwritten notes with real pens, and do it with zero outside investment for 12 straight years? David Wachs sold his text message marketing company for eight figures in 2012, started Handwrytten the next day, and has bootstrapped it to 200 custom-built robots in a Phoenix facility sending 350,000 notes per month. He owns 100% of the company, took $350K in profit last year, and is targeting $10 to $11M in revenue this year. You'll learn: Why David thinks physical CapEx is now a competitive moat in the AI era, and why he is glad he can't be vibe coded away in a weekend How Handwrytten went from $1M in 2018 to $9.4M in 2024 without raising a single dollar The veterinarian euthanasia franchise that has been sending 80,000 robot-written notes per quarter for 8 straight years Why a $5 Google ad click from a realtor generates only 20 cents in contribution margin and what that forced them to do instead How they built a paper feed system that can write on a stuffed envelope without mismatching a single card across hundreds of thousands of sends The robot leasing model: 30 units in the field at $1,000 to $1,250 per robot per month going to 3PL facilities and swag companies How integrations with HubSpot, Shopify, Claude MCP, Zapier, and Salesforce turned Handwrytten into a fully automated marketing channel Why David would sell for $100M today and what roll-up strategy Nathan pitched him live on camera The SEO playbook that drives 40,000 organic clicks per month with zero agency spend and one in-house writer What it actually costs to build a robot when you manufacture them yourself in Tempe, Arizona Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Handwrytten: handwrytten.com Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2962
July 1 · 19 min
Featherless: $3.6M Revenue Running 6,700 Open Source AI Models — Eugene Cheah
How do you go from a pricing experiment inside a failing product to $3.6 million in annual revenue with 10,000 customers — in under two years and with zero paid marketing? Eugene Cheah is the co-founder and CEO of Featherless.ai, the largest open source LLM inference provider on Hugging Face. He co-created RWKV, the first attention-free AI architecture under the Linux Foundation, and today runs a 27-person team serving customers that pay anywhere from $25 a month to $2 million a year. You'll learn: Why Featherless started as an accident — a pricing experiment that outperformed the original company within days How they grew to 10,000 customers with zero paid marketing using only Reddit posts to AI communities The enterprise sales motion that closes $1 to $2 million per year contracts by showing startups how to cut their OpenAI or Anthropic bills in half Why supporting 6,700 models versus competitors' 100 is the moat — and why no one else is doing it How the RWKV architecture has the potential to reduce AI inference costs by over 1,000x compared to today's transformer models Why the bottom 50% of AI model usage — the fine-tuned, niche, non-English models — is where the real money is hiding What happened when servers caught fire from user growth and the team had to add capacity faster than they could hire How a $20 million Series A in December 2025 finally gave them enough server capacity to breathe Why Eugene believes AI models today are massively over-parameterized — and what a human brain tells us about where efficiency is actually going The refund guarantee Eugene made live on camera and what it says about their confidence in the product Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Featherless: featherless.ai Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2961
June 17 · 20 min
Gather AI: $15M Revenue With Drones and 170% Net Retention - Sankalp Arora
How do you build a $15M revenue business by teaching autonomous drones to find missing sneakers in warehouses, and get customers to more than double their spend every single year? Sankalp Arora is the founder and CEO of Gather AI, a physical AI company that uses autonomous drones and computer vision to track inventory in real time across warehouses. He holds a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, built the world's first safe autonomous helicopter for DARPA, and today has 30 to 40 customers paying an average of $500K per year with net revenue retention of 170%. You'll learn: Why Sankalp spent three years writing code with zero revenue before getting his first customer in 2021 How a $2 warehouse pick turns into a $15 pick because of one inventory location error, and how Gather cut that by 70% for Barrett The land and expand math: customers start with 5 facilities and expand to 100 within three years at $500K per facility network Why 170% net revenue retention is possible when your product is embedded in daily warehouse operations How Gather AI built neural nets that can read barcodes a standard grocery store scanner cannot, with no human annotation required Why Sankalp passed on big-name VCs and chose Smith Point Capital, founded by Keith Block, former CEO of Salesforce The forklift vision product that turns any warehouse into an Amazon Go store using off-the-shelf hardware from Best Buy How Sankalp was carrying suicidal thoughts since his teenage years and only discovered life without them a year and a half ago, while building a company past $9M in revenue The Series B math: $40M raised at roughly $270M to $400M valuation selling 10 to 15% of the business at $15M in revenue Why Gather AI is touching just 0.1% of its addressable market today, and what 1% would actually mean in dollar terms Connect: YouTube: Nathan Latka Gather.ai: gather.ai Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2960
June 11 · 23 min
Tive Hit $100M Revenue After a Down Round and $10K in the Bank
How do you go from $10,000 left in the bank and a down round to $100 million in annual revenue — without ever seriously considering quitting? Krenar Komoni is the founder and CEO of Tive, a hardware-plus-SaaS company that tracks shipments in real time across trucks, ships, and planes worldwide. He started in his basement in 2015, charging his father-in-law $19.99 a month, and today has 1,300 customers — nine of which pay over $1 million per year — at a $545 million valuation. You'll learn: Why Krenar almost went bankrupt twice and laid off 75% of his team — and what kept him going The pricing mistake that nearly killed the company: manufacturing a tracker for $150 and selling it for the same price How hiring two college kids to cold call strangers became the GTM playbook that took Tive from $2.5M to $10M in revenue Why 60% of new revenue at Tive comes from existing customers expanding, not new logos The patent that creates a physical switching cost competitors can't replicate: ping-rate configuration based on shipment events How Krenar negotiated a down round from $21M to $11M valuation with $10K in the bank — and why he doesn't regret it What it actually takes to land a million-dollar-per-year customer when you sell physical hardware on monthly contracts Why Krenar thinks AI agents will fully automate the supply chain in 24 to 36 months — and how Tive is already building toward that The secondary liquidity story: why his Series A1 investor had to push him to take money off the table before he had the courage to ask How Tive went from $250K revenue in 2019 to $100M run rate in 2026 — the full year-by-year breakdown Connect: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Tive: https://www.tive.com/ Founderpath: https://founderpath.com/
#2959
June 3 · 18 min
Golf Genius: $53M ARR, $10M Self-Funded, Zero VC — Mike Zisman
How do you build a $53M ARR software company, stay profitable for eight straight years, and give 60% of the cap table to your employees — without ever taking a venture check? Mike Zisman is the founder and CEO of Golf Genius, the dominant tournament management and handicapping platform for golf clubs worldwide. He self-funded $10M of his own money as interest-free debt, did 10 acquisitions before hitting $60M in revenue, and today sits on $14M cash while printing 20% EBITDA margins with 300 employees across the US and Cluj, Romania. You'll learn: Why Mike structured his entire $10M founder investment as debt instead of equity — and how it created a tax shield that paid him back on the way out How the USGA handicapping contract in 2019 transformed Golf Genius from a niche club tool into the infrastructure layer of global golf How Golf Genius went from $0 to $1M ARR in 8 years, then from $1M to $53M in the next 8 — and what the USGA relationship had to do with the inflection point Why 50% of his 300-person team are engineers based in Cluj, Romania — and how that structural cost advantage funds 20% EBITDA while competitors burn cash The exact three-phase acquisition strategy: legacy desktop customer rollups, league expansion, then B2C mobile apps with 8M+ users How Mike negotiated the GolfShot acquisition — and why he forced their entire cap table behind a single LLC before closing Why employees own 60% of the cap table at $53M ARR and how that drives 6-7% annual attrition across the entire company including Romania What Mike would say if a PE firm offered $400M all cash today — and why he says he's more excited about what's next than he's been in years Why he thinks AI will make SaaS companies radically more productive, not obsolete — from a founder whose doctoral thesis in 1977 was already on artificial intelligence The rule of 40 reality at $53M ARR: why growth slows as companies scale and what Mike does to stay above the 10% industry average Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch Golf Genius: golfgenius.com Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2958
May 27 · 21 min
$28M Series A at $100M Val: The Pest Control SaaS Nobody Saw Coming
How do you build a $100M SaaS company by charging apartment residents $5 a month to keep rats out of their bedroom? Justin Clements is the co-founder and CEO of PestShare, an on-demand pest control platform embedded inside property management software. He bootstrapped from 2019 to 2020, raised just $5M over two rounds, then closed a $28M Series A at a $100M valuation in 2025, the same year he crossed $10M ARR. You'll learn: — Why PestShare's revenue model is structured like a warranty, and why that makes it nearly impossible to churn — The difference between contracted ARR and live ARR, and how that gap almost killed their valuation story — How embedding into the lease instead of selling direct to residents creates structural GRR that VC-backed competitors can't replicate — What it actually took to raise at 10x ARR from an investor that only backs 9 companies at a time — Why Justin's Series A investor pushed him to take $3M in personal secondary and why he says it made him take bigger swings — How IGP's PE background forced a full COGS and gross margin rebuild right after closing the round — Why "if you don't see pests it means the product isn't working" is the exact wrong way to think about pest control retention — How PestShare went from $1M (2022) to $5M (2024) to $10M (2025), doubling every year with under 1x ARR in prior capital raised — What property managers actually pay vs. what residents pay and how PestShare navigates that split without losing either side — Why Justin chose a hyper-concentrated, low-profile fund over a brand-name VC, and what they got in return Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch PestShare: pestshare.com Founderpath: founderpath.com
#2957
May 21 · 24 min
He Lost $50/User to Build a $30M ARR AI Empire (Fathom)
How do you go from 0 to $30 million in ARR in just 3 years while purposely losing money on every single free user? Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom, a free AI meeting assistant used by hundreds of thousands of professionals daily. After running UserVoice for nearly two decades, Richard entered the hyper-competitive AI transcription war against giants like Zoom, Otter, and Firefly. Instead of playing the traditional VC game, he gave the product away, lost $50 per user, and built an absolute rocket ship that dominates through bottom-up distribution. You'll learn: — Why purposely losing $50 per user per month was the ultimate growth hack. — The 5-step framework to sequence risk (Retention -> Onboarding -> Acquisition -> Referral -> Monetization). — How to hit $100k MRR in your first 30 days of monetization. — Why Richard hired three enterprise salespeople before writing a single line of code for the premium product. — The exact strategy to gamify fundraising by reserving 15% of your Series A for your users. — Why open data, MCP servers, and local agents are replacing walled-garden SaaS models. — How to scale to $30M ARR by pricing bottom-up teams at $25 per seat. — The reality of stepping down as CEO from a $10M ARR company after 18 years. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UavacWr2jbQ Connect with Richard: https://fathom.ai/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2956
May 13 · 25 min
How 1Mind Hit $1M in 3 Months Selling $100k AI Sales Agents
How do you hit $1 million in contracted revenue in three months and achieve 211% net dollar retention in your first year? Amanda Kahlow is the founder and CEO of 1Mind, an AI platform building go-to-market superhumans that replace SDRs, AEs, and sales engineers. You'll learn: - How to sell AI software for $100,000 to $400,000 using flat subscription pricing instead of metered models. - The unit economics of replacing 89 SDRs and 19 sales engineers with a single custom agent. - How they maintain 80 to 90 percent SaaS margins while running heavy LLM operations. - The strategy behind 1Mind's 600 percent year-over-year growth rate. - Why most enterprise customers purchase a second AI agent within 90 days of going live. - How 1Mind uses their own AI agent to source 78 percent of their eight-figure pipeline. - The reality of managing founder dilution and secondary sales after building a $380 million business. - Why AI agents are expanding past chat interfaces and joining live Zoom calls to run product demos. Amanda is a three-time entrepreneur who previously founded and served as CEO of 6sense, scaling the company through multiple funding rounds and a $380 million valuation before stepping down. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lFX0n3uYTkw Connect with Amanda: https://www.1mind.com/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2955
May 6 · 24 min
Selling Check for $400M, Now Building a $1.5M ARR AI Startup
How do you build a $1.5 million ARR enterprise AI platform after previously selling a fintech startup for nearly $400 million? Ahikam Kaufman is the CEO of SafeBooks AI, an agentic data automation platform for the office of the CFO. You'll learn: - How to charge $125,000 ACVs by pricing against the cost of an accounting headcount. - Why the company raised a $15 million seed round just to build their initial data architecture. - How they landed a $300,000 engagement in their first year of going to market. - The exact strategy Ahikam used to distribute $25 million in retention bonuses during a past acquisition. - Why building a proprietary graph database is the only way to prevent AI hallucinations in finance. - How SafeBooks scaled to 15 paying enterprise customers. - The economics of automating the quote-to-cash process across disparate CRMs and ERPs. - How to manage founder dilution while building a venture-backed tech company. Ahikam is a veteran fintech executive who previously co-founded Check, which he scaled and sold to Intuit in 2014 for nearly $400 million, creating over 10 millionaires in the process. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JQA3RX9PsHw Connect with Ahikam: https://safebooks.ai/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2954
April 29 · 17 min
How Flossy Reached $4M ARR With AI Dental Receptionists
How do you survive shutting down during the pandemic, pivot a heavily funded business model, and rebuild a team of 8 into a $4M ARR AI powerhouse? Miles Beckett is the CEO of Flossy, a verticalized AI receptionist that automates patient booking and engagement for dental practices. After successfully building and exiting two previous startups for tens of millions, Miles raised a $15M Series A for a dental discount plan. When the market shifted, he pivoted the company entirely to voice AI, made hard cuts to the team, and found explosive product-market fit. Today, Flossy is growing 60 to 70 percent month over month. You'll learn: Why vertical AI agents beat general tools like Intercom How to sell $500/month software to PE-backed roll-ups The reality of firing 30 people to save a company's burn rate How a $1 million breakup fee saved a past acquisition deal Why they rejected a theoretical $40 million buyout The math behind adding $100,000 in new ARR each month How they used a $3M seed round to survive 2020 lockdowns The mechanics of multi-location enterprise SaaS deals Miles is a seasoned operator who previously built and sold Equal to Everyday Health for $30M, and Silver Sheet to AMN Healthcare, before diving into the dental tech space. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2RAjHVdHZM Connect with Miles: https://www.flossy.com/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2953
April 22 · 24 min
Flip Reaches $12M ARR with AI Voice Support for 250 Brands
How do you pivot a banned college ridesharing app into a voice AI company handling 300 million customer service calls? Brian Schiff is the co-founder and CEO of Flip, a verticalized AI voice assistant that automates customer service calls for transportation, retail, and healthcare brands. After realizing their Cornell ridesharing app was a dead end, Brian and his co-founder Sam pivoted into voice AI. Today, Flip automates up to 90 percent of routine support calls for over 250 enterprise companies and recently raised a $20M Series A at a $100M valuation. You'll learn: How to successfully pivot a failing startup model Why verticalized AI beats horizontal platforms How to implement usage-based pricing at $1.50 per call Why "listen mode" is their best sales tactic How to maintain 75 percent gross margins with AI Why they rejected a theoretical $150 million acquisition offer How to select the right industries for expansion Why competitive B2C markets are best for AI tools Brian started his entrepreneurial journey at Cornell's eLab accelerator. He navigated the near-total collapse of transportation revenue during the pandemic to build a highly efficient business growing 3X year over year. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gtFt5exyCaI Connect with Brian: https://flipcx.com/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2952
April 15 · 20 min
Kadence Reaches $15M ARR Managing Hybrid Work for Revolut & Boeing
How do you completely reboot a dying hardware startup, restructure a heavy cap table, and pivot into a SaaS product doing $15M ARR? Dan Bladen is the co-founder and CEO of Kadence, a workplace operations system coordinating people and spaces for hybrid work. After realizing his wireless charging startup was a "vitamin, not a painkiller," Dan pivoted during the pandemic to help companies like Nasdaq, Revolut, and Boeing manage their office space. Today, Kadence serves over 600 enterprise customers. You'll learn: How to manage board expectations during a hard pivot The exact mechanics of resetting a cap table for new investors Why shifting from SMB to enterprise accelerated revenue How they achieved over 130 percent net dollar retention Why seat-based pricing still works in the enterprise The math behind saving half a billion dollars in leasing costs How launching SpaceOps AI drives multi-product expansion Why high-ticket dinners replaced SEO for customer acquisition Dan started his career managing technology for a church before founding his first IoT business. He moved his family to the Bay Area just before the pandemic forced him to rethink his entire company operations. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2ySF3YMDcnY Connect with Dan: https://kadence.co/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2951
April 8 · 18 min
How Buildern Reached $2M Revenue With 300 Customers | Hmayak Tigranyan
How do you build a construction SaaS to $2M in revenue with just $500K raised and get 95% of growth from SEO? Hmayak Tigranyan is the founder and CEO of Buildern, a construction management software platform serving around 300 customers and generating roughly $2M in revenue today. The company helps residential and commercial builders manage finances and workflows, and it is doing about $160K in monthly revenue with roughly $40K in monthly profit. What makes this business interesting is that it scaled in a legacy industry without paid acquisition or outbound. Buildern built an inbound engine around high-intent SEO, stayed profitable, and is only now adding a sales team as ACV moves closer to the range that can support quota-carrying reps. You'll learn: How Buildern found an underserved construction software niche. Why Hmayak shut down a $3M dev shop to go all in on SaaS. How the company raised just $500K and sold only 10%. What $160K in monthly revenue looks like at a $40K profit level. Why 95% of revenue came from SEO-driven inbound. How Buildern chooses long-tail keywords in construction. Why transparent competitor comparison pages rank well. How internal SEO execution beat the need for an agency. What changed once the company started hiring sales reps. How pricing moved from roughly $6K ACV toward $7.5K to $8K. What AE quotas and compensation look like at this stage. How a profitable vertical SaaS company scales with a global team. Hmayak came into Buildern after years in SaaS development, travel software, and running a dev shop that peaked at about $3M in annual revenue. He launched Buildern in 2021, spent the first two years without paying customers, then used industry-informed angels and product iteration to find the right shape of the product. This episode is for founders building in old industries, operators trying to scale efficiently, and investors who care about profitable SaaS growth. It is a useful masterclass in vertical SaaS positioning, SEO-led demand generation, and disciplined capital use. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/An0n18v4j8E Connect with Hmayak: https://buildern.com/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2950
April 1 · 22 min
How Allo Reached $10M Revenue With 5,000 Customers
How do you grow an AI phone system to 5,000 customers and roughly $3M ARR in under two years while still aiming for $10M in revenue this year? Jeremy Goillot is the founder and CEO of The Mobile First Company, which launched Allo as its first product. Allo is an AI phone system and dialer for small businesses, now serving around 5,000 customers with average revenue above $160 per month and a goal of reaching $10M in revenue in 2026. This business is interesting because Jeremy did not stop at a self-serve PLG motion. He started there, saw the churn and activation issues, then layered in demos, lead routing, CRM-based qualification, and expansion to raise ACV and improve retention. The result is a high-volume SMB SaaS business built on strong distribution, fast onboarding, and clear activation metrics. You'll learn: Why Jeremy moved from pure PLG to a sales-assisted motion. How Allo increased average revenue from $18 to over $160 per month. The exact activation metric that predicts churn. How the team uses demo routing based on CRM and team size. Why retargeting was one of the cheapest acquisition channels. How Allo won SEO with long-form content and original screenshots. The keyword prioritization system behind their content strategy. Why 50% of new revenue now comes from expansion. How the team thinks about CAC quality instead of lowest CAC. Why Jeremy raised early without waiting for a co-founder. How he kept about 50% ownership after raising around $20M. What it takes to sell into SMBs at high volume with only 17 people. Jeremy previously led growth at Spendesk before starting The Mobile First Company. He launched the company as a solo founder, raised a $5M pre-seed on his own, then built the team around him while keeping significant ownership. His long-term goal is not just one product, but a broader suite of vertical SaaS tools built under separate brands. If you care about SMB SaaS, PLG versus sales-assisted growth, SEO-led distribution, or building a multi-product software company, this episode is a masterclass for SaaS builders. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PUZMvjyS3xw Connect with Jeremy: https://www.withallo.com/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/
#2949
March 25 · 15 min
How TitanX Hit $9.7M ARR After Buying IP for $200K
How do you turn $200K into a $9.7M ARR SaaS company with a $100M valuation by buying IP instead of building from scratch? Joey Gilkey is the founder of TitanX, a sales intelligence platform generating $9.7M ARR after launching in 2024. The company serves enterprise sales teams with contracts ranging from $24K to $250K annually, with its largest deals exceeding seven figures. What makes TitanX interesting is its approach to building a moat. Instead of competing as another data provider, the company sits between data sources and execution layers, using proprietary signals and AI to improve outbound performance. The business scales through high ACV sales, expansion revenue, and strategic acquisitions. You'll learn: How Joey turned a $200K IP purchase into a $100M company Why buying IP can be faster than building SaaS products How TitanX structures pricing from $24K to $250K ACV The role of proprietary data in building defensibility How inbound, outbound, and referrals drive pipeline Why expansion revenue is core to growth strategy How acquisitions accelerate ARR growth The credit-based pricing model and consumption dynamics How TitanX uses AI to improve outbound performance The logic behind raising $27M and taking secondary cash Joey started in enterprise sales before launching multiple businesses and eventually betting his entire net worth on TitanX. After acquiring the IP in 2023, he shut down a profitable services business to focus fully on SaaS, scaling from zero to $9.7M ARR in under two years. This episode is for SaaS founders thinking about capital allocation, high-ACV sales, and building defensible data products. It's a practical breakdown of how to scale quickly using acquisition, pricing, and distribution strategy. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mxiCodnXo6U?si=zebVllHlOY7UlVqO Connect with Joey: https://titanx.io/ Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/

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