The Ledger
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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.”
Andrew Warner reveals Latka made under $100,000 from the Heyo acquisition
“And you got less than a 100,000 dollars from it.”
Latka: Heyo returned seven figures to investors upon acquisition
“And quite frankly, we gave seven figures back to investors.”
Latka admits Heyo's $5M revenue figure was cumulative over five years
“That was our cumulative revenue. ... Over five years.”
Latka made recording acquisition calls with Votigo a condition of sale
“I recorded the negotiations, I mean, with my team when I sold the business... And the buyer... I made it contingent. I mean, part of the deal, we had many, many offers on the table.”
Building a Facebook app will not yield a billion-dollar outcome
“My fear is we're so comfortable that there's probably other opportunities out there where our team could hit a massive billion dollar home run, and that's not going to be a Facebook app.”
Latka regrets not selling Heyo before a failed pivot in 2012
“One, the mark, we missed the maximum. We missed twenty-twelve selling. We should have sold in twenty-twelve. We raised capital, additional capital to try a new concept, which was social selling, which failed, right?”
Votigo Nearly Abandoned Heyo Acquisition During Due Diligence Phase
“I mean, we had those kind of moments that, you know, kind of we almost wanted to walk, you know, and in the end, I think it all turned out for the best.”
Nathan Latka Finalizes Sale of Software Company Heyo to Votigo
“Folks, the deal is done. We have sold heyo.”
Latka shared all buyout offers and negotiation bids with entire team
“I decided very early on in the process to have the whole team see the offers come in, See kind of how I bid up each offer on Hale, and they all got to learn from the process, and people that, where it was clear that they had moved away, and that they weren't g…”
Heyo received an acquisition offer from its top competitor
“Our number one competitor offered to buy the business.”
Latka: Heyo peaked at $90K monthly before selling due to 7% churn
“My first company, Heyo, it was a drag and drop for Facebook apps. Every Tuesday morning, we knew that we were going to have something broken because that night Facebook release, that's when they did the release. And eventually we topped out about 80, 90 grand …”
Latka: Rejecting iContact's $6.5M buyout for Heyo was a massive mistake
“Now, passing on this was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
Latka: Tying Heyo's pricing to captured leads immediately spiked revenue
“In Halo's case, the customers who kept paying the longest were those who captured the most leads through our Facebook contests. So we started to tie pricing to the number of leads collected and immediately saw a revenue spike.”
Latka: Heyo's February 2014 cohort saw 84.7% churn after two years
“Out of the 443 customers who signed up in February, 2014, 84.7% had churned by February, 2016, two years later.”
Latka: Walking away from early Heyo buyout offer was a major mistake
“One of the biggest mistakes I made at my first company, Heyo, is when everyone else was raising huge rounds, and I thought it was very frothy. I had a large acquisition offer on the table, and I walked away from it, and then sold for way less than that four ye…”
Latka: Heyo raised $2.5M in VC and reached $5M in sales
“As we built Heyo, raised two and a half million bucks in venture capital, hit five million in sales”
Reisner: Votigo Plans No Changes for Heyo Customers Post-Acquisition
“So we see we see no change happening to Hayo customers. We want to, you know, we kind of look at Hayo and what you guys have built as a well-oiled machine and we don't want to mess with that.”
Heyo Received Multiple LOIs Including One From a Public Company
“We had multiple LOIs from, you know, one of them was a publicly traded company.”
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.”
Latka: Plans to secure LOI and trigger bidding war for Heyo
“So, I've got to get to an LOI or a letter of intent and then see if I can create a bidding war between all the folks or the companies that put in the letter of intent to potentially buy HAYO.”
Latka: Major competitor emailed an acquisition offer for Heyo
“And the email was one of our big competitors emailing me to acquire Hayo.”
Risner: Votigo Decided to Expand into SMB Market by Acquiring Heyo
“So we've actually been you know, kind of been thinking about entering the space for a while and just recently kind of, you know, really, you know, made the decision and, you know, from a strategic standpoint to kind of open the floodgates, if you will to the S…”
Nathan Latka secured four written LOIs to acquire Heyo
“In the end, many, many big companies were interested in buying Heyo, but I got four of them to actually submit a written redlined letter of intent.”
Heyo's investors included Techstars' David Cohen and a Forbes billionaire
“We have David Cohen from Techstars in the business. We have, you know, our, you know, a Forbes billionaire involved in the business.”
Heyo had a 20-month cash runway during acquisition talks
“We technically could keep building campaign builder on Facebook apps for the next 20 months and not worry about payroll.”
Heyo reached 10,000 paying customers and $5 million in sales
“Many of our competitors were left crushed, while we rapidly grew to over 10,000 paying customers, over five million in sales, and as you guys know, we raised over 2.5 million dollars from some of the world's top venture capitalists.”
Heyo's main competitor appeared to be executing a roll-up strategy
“They also just acquired somebody else in our space. So I think they might be doing a roll up strategy.”
Seed investor Pat Matthews urged Nathan Latka to sell Heyo
“Pat Matthews, one of our early, early seed investors in the business, and one of my, I've learned a ton from him. He, you know, his advice to me was, Nathan, you need to look at this as an opportunity to, you know, declare victory, close this chapter of your l…”