Nathan Latka
Founder and CEO, Founderpath. On 1 show, 2,516 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderhostexecutiveinvestorauthor@NathanLatka ↗LinkedIn ↗founderpath.com ↗
Nathan Latka founded Founderpath, a financing platform providing non-dilutive capital to bootstrapped SaaS companies, and built the GetLatka database. He hosts the Top Founders podcast, interviewing software CEOs on metrics and revenue, and authored How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital.
1shows
2,516appearances
674statements
148resolved
78supported
33contradicted
53%fully supported
58said about them ↓ Everything Nathan Latka said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Latka claims 99 percent of people on Earth are totally useless
“I think 99% of people on earth, they're totally useless. They don't think much, and they rely on other people.”
Latka deceptively lists unconfirmed speakers to sell conference tickets
“What it said, if you go look at that particular part, it said confirmed and invited. They have been either confirmed or invited. And what I will tell you, as sales come in and I have more money to play with, the likelihood that I actually confirm all of them i…”
Latka: Upfront service fees prevent SaaS churn and boost retention
“This is the counterpoint guys, the VC argument that you shouldn't sell services inside of your SAS. I would always argue the opposite, which is if you touch a SAS sale with a big upfront fee, like five K, they're just not going to turn your net dollar retentio…”
Latka: Bootstrappers will outlast and probably beat VC-backed competitors
“A bootstrapper who only spends what his customers pay him or her is sustainable. They will outlast the VC back competitor every time, and they will probably win every time.”
Latka: Raising capital validates salesmanship, not the business idea
“Raising capital does not validate an idea. It means you're a good salesperson.”
Latka: Selling SaaS lifetime plans is disingenuous and harms personal brand
“I have a big issue when people sell lifetime plans. I think it's cheap. I think it's a marketing tactic, and I think it's totally disingenuous and hurts your personal brand if and when you have to shut the company down or sell it.”
Latka: YC startups artificially inflate revenue by selling to each other
“The problem is when you go into due diligence with a YC company, their customer list is a bunch of other YC companies. So it's almost like a network marketing scheme where like they all buy each other's products to inflate the thing, but it doesn't make any se…”
Latka confirms some Heyo investors lost money in the exit
“So it is a 100% true that there were investors that got back less money than what they put in.”
Latka predicts he will run for US President and win in 2036
“I plan to run for president and win in 2036.”
Latka predicts he will run a $100B hedge fund
“I will run the world's largest hedge fund with a hundred billion dollars in assets under management.”
Latka avoids romantic relationships because they give others leverage over him
“This is one of the reasons, by the way, I don't have a relationship. It becomes very, if I have a relationship, it becomes obviously clear what I care about, whoever I'm with, right? And if people then know how to cater to whoever I'm with, it's actually a wea…”
Latka: Teachable raising at $30M valuation is the 'stupidest thing'
“And he's right now negotiating an equity round with a pre-money valuation at thirty million dollars, which is like the stupidest. In my opinion, I told him this on the show. I said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”
Latka says B2B buyer allegiance is dropping and AI churn is rising
“We are seeing less and less allegiance from B to B buyers to any software product. Churn is just generally higher with these AI tools.”
Latka: The most bankable software companies usually start as agencies
“The most successful software companies we see that are most underwritable, bankable, they usually launch an agency.”
Latka: Companies die once acquired by private equity firms
“Once the, once a private equity firm buys a company, it's, it dies.”
Latka: Founders leak their metrics on my podcast to induce acquisition bids
“I full disclosure have, I won't name them, but I have founders who call on my show specifically because they want a reason to share their numbers live where it looks like I'm beating it out of them, but really they want to share it because they want the market…”
Latka: An employer review site for rating employees is a billion-dollar business
“There's a billion dollar business in here. Someone's gotta just build that and go to town.”
Latka: A founder will build a billion-dollar business with one FTE
“Someone's going to build a billion dollar business and have one FTE as the founder and then a network of contractors.”
Latka: Modest early revenue hurts VC-backed startups more than zero revenue
“It's almost a problem that you have revenue because then people want to harp on you about how low the revenue is when really you should just eliminate the revenue and just focus on user and engagement growth”
Latka predicts a SaaS company will soon IPO with under 10 employees
“Greg, I say one day, I think very soon there's going to be someone that takes a company public with less than 10 FTEs, a SaaS company.”
Latka: Raising VC traps founders by blocking smaller lucrative acquisitions
“You're going to raise two million out of 10 pre. Whatever your buddies that you, but you take your buddy, your old boss's money, whatever. Great. Great for you. Then you're going to keep growing revenue and you're going to get a six million dollar acquisition …”
Latka: Raising capital turns founders into VC employees
“Raising capital is, in my opinion, is not something to be celebrated. You're diluting yourself and you're becoming more of essentially an employee, right? For your VCs and the board that you're building.”
Latka: First sales hires almost never outsell the founder
“A lot of founders make the first sales hire, they make the assumption that that first sales hire should sell more than the founder, and it's almost never the case, because the founder knows the product, the founder has an unfair advantage, because customers al…”
The other half of the tape: Nathan Latka's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. 56 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Lackey 1Kevin Moenne-Loccoz 1
Statements about Nathan Latka, by other people (56)
Ranjan: Cerebrum X charges $6 to $10 per vehicle monthly
“So, so typically you get an average revenue per, per vehicle. It goes somewhere between 72 dollars, which is six bucks per month to up to 10 bucks, right? Which can go up to around one 20 dollars per month, right? So it depends upon What data they're getting.”
Penny Raised $5M Seed Round at $20M to $25M Valuation
“That's right. So, I mean, it was something around this value. I mean, you basically could estimate it, right?”
Penny Split Founder Equity Unevenly Based on Initial Risk and Time
“Basically some people took more risk at the beginning. So those people basically deserve more shares to start with than those who took lower risks to start with.”
Pipelyne plans to monetize via GMV take rate and embedded financing
“On the Swift energy side, we're working with a third party. But that is a big part of the market opportunity that we see is one percentage of GMV when we launched the e-commerce store and to the actual financing piece as well.”
ARTA passed $30,000 MRR in its second quarter after API pivot
“We passed that in our second quarter of existence. So it took us Very substantially less time to get there with this new model.”
Steer: Mode has over 10,000 editor users across its customers
“It's above 10,000. It's not in the huge millions.”
Almabase averages $3,500 to $4,000 total CAC per new customer
“I think our CAC from a lead gen perspective is obviously different for different channels, but I think it averages out to about 1500 to 2000 dollars per customer in terms of lead gen. And then if I add the cost of the account executive as well, including salar…”
Orgzit acquires $250-a-month customers for $1,000 to $1,250 without paid marketing
“It's anywhere about a thousand dollars to about 12 50 dollars, including so we don't do any paid marketing right now. So primarily the cost of customer acquisition is through lead gen.”
Orgzit burns zero capital and funds all salaries from company revenue
“We don't burn anything right now. So all our salaries, so that's the benefit of being in India. So all the salaries that we're paying right now are taken care of by the revenue that we are making.”
AdSwerve's average customer contract exceeds six figures excluding media spend
“So if we were to extract media out of it, I would say in excess of six figures.”
Bendov: Gong contract values range from $10k to hundreds of thousands
“It's anywhere from 10,000, and for larger customers, it could be hundreds of thousands.”
Hexton: Vero generates over $150,000 in monthly recurring revenue
“Yeah, and, well, more than that, yeah.”
Dolan: Newton can make $50 to $100 per patient yearly
“You could be making between 50 and a hundred bucks off a person every single year.”
CaliberMind Hits $36,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue
“That's on the MRR, yes. We also have bundled packages of services where we actually go in and optimize marketing automation. So for software revenue, yes, you're right.”
Vainu Reached $5 Million Annual Recurring Revenue in 2016
“Total total revenue, or I, I'll, sorry, our ARR was 4.5 million or five million USD, 4.5 million in euros.”
Hurdlr only prompts upgrades after users hit verified dollar savings thresholds
“So what we're looking at is tying into, so our system tracks your savings through deductions, right? So we want to hit a certain mark that you save X amount of dollars. And once you hit that, then we'll ask you if you feel like you got value to upgrade.”
Armijo: Wait for a contract before telling your team about buyout interest
“I would say that wait till they show you a contract, because right now they might just be fishing, and, you know, dangling a carrot in front of you, and it would be harder for you to tell your team Oh, the deal fell through.”
Every mention by year
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Top Founders 2
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Nathan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Founderpathhost | 2516 | 674 | 53% 78/148 | full record on Top Founders → |