May 2, 2017 · 24m · top-founders
647: Tai Lopez Owns 50% of $89/mo MentorBox.com, 800 Units, $80k In Initial Test for Self Help Box with CEO Alex Mehr
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Top, host Nathan Latka interviews entrepreneur Alex Mehr about scaling Zoosk to $200 million in revenue, navigating its IPO withdrawal, and co-founding MentorBox with Tai Lopez to build a high-retention, recurring-revenue educational subscription powerhouse.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 45.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Alex resists Nathan's direct probe for landing page conversion metrics by claiming Nathan is asking for the proprietary 'secret sauce'.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 14:00 Refusing vague churn qualitative claimsNathan refuses to accept Alex's vague claim that retention 'blew his mind' and forces him to provide a concrete comparative percentage bracket.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:30 Explaining the four modalities of learningAlex educates Nathan on cognitive retention statistics across visual, auditory, reading, and kinesthetic learning styles to explain why traditional books fail most consumers.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 7:10 Directly quoting the Zoosk S-1 filingNathan counters Alex's fuzzy subscriber recollection by citing the exact paid subscriber numbers directly from Zoosk's official SEC S-1 filing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Guest Alex Mehr of Zoosk and MentorBox | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Nathan demonstrates solid preparation by quoting Zoosk's revenue and IPO filing history, though Alex gently corrects the revenue figure from $180M to $200M. The dynamic remains friendly and collaborative. | |
| Zoosk CEO Transition and Sustainable Growth | 7 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Nathan directly quotes Zoosk's S-1 registration document to challenge Alex's recollection of subscriber figures (650,000 vs 500,000). Alex clarifies that definitions of subscribers might vary, acknowledging the SEC filing data. | |
| The Educational Philosophy Behind MentorBox | 3 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Alex delivers an educational breakdown on learning modalities (kinesthetic, visual, auditory, reading) to justify MentorBox's product structure. Nathan listens attentively before steering the conversation back to business mechanics. | |
| Partnering with Tai Lopez and Prototyping MentorBox | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | Nathan probes into the partnership mechanics with Tai Lopez and the MVP testing process. Alex playfully deflects giving granular impression numbers as proprietary 'secret sauce'. | |
| Initial Launch Metrics, Pricing, and Low Churn Rates | 6 | 2 | 3 | 6 | Nathan repeatedly presses Alex for concrete retention metrics when Alex tries to dodge with vague superlatives. Nathan brackets the question with benchmark ranges until Alex provides industry baseline churn context. | |
| Unit Economics, CAC, and Gross Margin Optimization | 7 | 1 | 1 | 3 | Nathan demonstrates high financial acumen by modeling LTV from churn and price to back out an acceptable CAC, while drilling into per-box unit economics and gross margins. | |
| Publisher Deals, Author Partnerships, and Book Scaling | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Nathan brings up Alex's recent tweet about Ryan Holiday's book to drill into distributor discounts and minimum order quantities, pushing past Alex's initial reluctance to disclose exact unit order numbers. | |
| The Famous Five Questions and Guest Reflections | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Standard rapid-fire Famous Five wrap-up followed by Nathan providing a concise executive summary of the episode's key business takeaways. | |
| HostGator Sponsorship and Free AdWords Promotion | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Solo host outro covering sponsor promotions and personal travel stories; no guest interaction. |