Top Founders

I interview the worlds top founders. New episodes every wednesday.

This Ugly Website Does $106M/Year (866,000 Pay For It) 10/14/2026

"I Built My Own AI Video Model, Now Make $3M a Month," Akool CEO Jeff Lu 10/06/2026

You Make $8m/yr, Would You Sell for $100m Cash? | Antoine Fort, CEO Qobra 09/29/2026

How He Makes $40M/yr Renting Laptops for $50/Mo | Sevan Marian, CEO Fleet 09/24/2026

How Does Laundry Software Make $60M a Year? | Alex Jekowsky CEO TryCents 09/17/2026

FrodaEmbedded.com hits $80m Revenue by Lending to 150k SMB's | CEO Oliver Mohseni 09/08/2026

He Sells AI Door-to-Door. $3.5M ARR, 400% Growth, $0 Ads 09/01/2026

He Makes $50m/yr on Cookie Popups, Controls 2% of all Web Traffic 08/25/2026

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: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/42523070

Why Does Google Pay Him $2M A Year? 08/18/2026

How He Bootstrapped Dental Software to $16m 08/11/2026

How David Chevalier Hit $15M ARR With a Chrome Extension and No Sales Team - Surfe 07/23/2026

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 /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/42193350

Practice by Numbers: $16.5M Dental SaaS, 24% EBITDA, Zero VC - Rohit Garg 07/16/2026

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 /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/42116685

Handwrytten Sends 6 Million Fake Handwritten Notes a Year and Makes $10M 07/10/2026

Featherless: $3.6M Revenue Running 6,700 Open Source AI Models — Eugene Cheah 07/01/2026

Gather AI: $15M Revenue With Drones and 170% Net Retention - Sankalp Arora 06/17/2026

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: Gather.ai: Founderpath: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/41679690

Tive Hit $100M Revenue After a Down Round and $10K in the Bank 06/11/2026

Golf Genius: $53M ARR, $10M Self-Funded, Zero VC — Mike Zisman 06/03/2026

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 /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/41522385

$28M Series A at $100M Val: The Pest Control SaaS Nobody Saw Coming 05/27/2026

He Lost $50/User to Build a $30M ARR AI Empire (Fathom) 05/21/2026

How 1Mind Hit $1M in 3 Months Selling $100k AI Sales Agents 05/13/2026

Selling Check for $400M, Now Building a $1.5M ARR AI Startup 05/06/2026

How Flossy Reached $4M ARR With AI Dental Receptionists 04/29/2026

Flip Reaches $12M ARR with AI Voice Support for 250 Brands 04/22/2026

Kadence Reaches $15M ARR Managing Hybrid Work for Revolut & Boeing 04/15/2026

How Buildern Reached $2M Revenue With 300 Customers | Hmayak Tigranyan 04/08/2026

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: Connect with Hmayak: Connect with Nathan: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/40772115

How Allo Reached $10M Revenue With 5,000 Customers 04/01/2026

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: Connect with Jeremy: Connect with Nathan: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/40696950

How TitanX Hit $9.7M ARR After Buying IP for $200K 03/25/2026

How TeamSupport Reached $10M–$25M ARR With 1,000 Customers | Grant Stanis 03/18/2026

How TeamSupport Reached $10M–$25M ARR With 1,000 Customers | Grant Stanis How do you grow a customer support SaaS to over 1,000 customers and $10M–$25M in ARR in one of the most crowded software categories, without trying to outspend the giants on marketing? In this episode, Nathan sits down with Grant Stanis, CEO of TeamSupport. The company provides B2B customer support software used by more than 1,000 companies and generates between $10M and $25M in annual recurring revenue. Most customers start around $10,000 per year, but the best accounts expand significantly over time, including enterprise customers paying more than $1M annually. Customer support software is a brutally competitive market with players like Zendesk and Freshdesk dominating search and advertising. Instead of fighting that battle, TeamSupport focused on referrals, community, and expansion revenue. The core idea is simple: turn support conversations into signals that drive retention, product feedback, and upsells. You’ll learn: How TeamSupport grew to $10M–$25M ARR with over 1,000 customers. Why most customers start around $10K ACV and expand to $20K–$30K later. How one enterprise account grew into a $1M+ annual contract. Why they price the product per seat at $79–$99 per user. How expansion revenue became a core growth driver. Why the company relies heavily on referrals instead of SEO. How partnerships and webinars generate qualified pipeline. What it’s like to lose a top 10 customer and report it to the board. How private equity ownership changes the way CEOs run SaaS companies. What kind of acquisition offer would realistically trigger a sale. Grant joined TeamSupport as CEO in 2024 after leading growth at several private equity-backed software companies. The business was founded in 2008 and later acquired by Level Equity in 2018. Today the focus is simple: grow profitably, expand existing customers, and build a durable SaaS business without relying on massive marketing budgets. If you run a SaaS company selling to support teams, customer success leaders, or mid-market software companies, this episode offers a practical look at how to grow in a crowded category. Connect with Grant: Connect with Nathan: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/40525385

From $7M to $70M Revenue: How RealDefense Scaled Through Acquisitions | Gary Guseinov 03/14/2026

From $7M to $70M Revenue: How RealDefense Scaled Through Acquisitions | Gary Guseinov How do you rebuild a declining cybersecurity company into a $70M revenue platform with ~$25M EBITDA after buying it back for under $10M, while scaling primarily through acquisitions and debt instead of venture capital? Gary Guseinov is the CEO of Realdefense, a consumer cybersecurity and privacy platform that generates roughly $70M in annual revenue with $20–25M in EBITDA. Gary originally founded the business in 2003 as Cyber Defender, grew it to $70M in revenue, took it public, then later bought the company back in 2017 when it had declined to about $7M ARR. Today, Realdefense operates as a platform of security and privacy products that monetize partner user bases through software subscriptions, telemetry-driven product offers, and cross-sell expansion. The company has completed six acquisitions since the buyback and now scales growth through a capital-efficient M&A strategy instead of traditional venture capital. What makes this business interesting is its unconventional growth model. Instead of building new SaaS products from scratch, Realdefense acquires small or declining companies, integrates them into a shared technology and billing stack, and compounds revenue by increasing LTV through cross-product distribution. You’ll learn: How Gary bought back his own company for under 1x ARR and rebuilt it through acquisitions. The platform strategy Realdefense uses to monetize partner user bases in cybersecurity software. Why telemetry-based product triggers outperform traditional advertising monetization. The pricing ladder strategy that starts with $20 products and scales customers to hundreds per year. How cross-selling security tools like VPN, identity protection, and device optimization increases LTV. The debt financing strategy Gary uses instead of giving up equity to venture capital. How lenders evaluate SaaS acquisitions using EBITDA multiples. Why buying flat or declining software companies can be a scalable growth strategy. The operational advantages of integrating multiple software products into a single platform. How founder ownership and liquidity decisions change when companies go public. Gary started his career in direct marketing before launching his first cybersecurity company in 2003 with roughly $50K–$75K of his own capital and an initial $250K raise. After raising significant venture capital and eventually going public, he saw the risks of dilution firsthand. When the business declined under new leadership, he bought it back in 2017 and rebuilt it with a very different capital strategy focused on debt, acquisitions, and ownership preservation. If you’re a SaaS founder thinking about capital efficiency, acquisition-driven growth, or alternative scaling strategies outside of venture capital, this episode is a masterclass in operator-led capital allocation. Watch this episode on YouTube: Connect with Gary: Connect with Nathan: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/40381075

How Ledge Reached $1M ARR with 24 Customers Paying $3K/Month | Tal Kirschenbaum 03/05/2026

How Ledge Reached $1M ARR with 24 Customers Paying $3K/Month | Tal Kirschenbaum How do you build an AI SaaS company to $1M+ ARR with just a few dozen customers and raise a Series A at a 20x+ revenue multiple while competing against general-purpose AI tools? Tal Kirschenbaum is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ledge, an AI-native financial close platform helping finance teams automate the month-end close process. Just three years after writing the first line of code, Ledge has reached $1M+ ARR with ~24–36 customers paying roughly $3K per month, while targeting 300% year-over-year growth with a team of ~35 employees. What makes this story interesting is how narrowly the product is positioned. Instead of building a generic “AI for finance” tool, Ledge focuses on a painful operational workflow: the month-end close process for mid-market and enterprise finance teams. The pricing is not seat-based. Instead, revenue scales with operational complexity — entities, currencies, and integrations — creating a natural ACV expansion motion as customers grow. You’ll learn: - Why Ledge targets finance teams with 5+ people as the ideal entry point for workflow automation. - How pricing based on business complexity (entities, currencies, channels) replaces traditional seat-based SaaS pricing. - The math behind reaching $1M+ ARR with ~24 customers paying ~$3K per month. - Why focusing on one painful workflow can create a stronger product moat than building a broad AI platform. - How “glassbox AI” explainability matters for finance and accounting teams dealing with compliance and audits. - Why selling based on workflow value — not an “AI budget” — reduces churn risk in AI SaaS. - How enterprise credibility increases ACV over time as new customers pay higher prices than early adopters. - What raising a Series A at a 20x+ revenue multiple says about early-stage AI SaaS valuations in 2026. - The internal debate founders face when trading equity dilution for faster growth. - Why some SaaS companies avoid seat-based pricing when automation actually reduces headcount needs. Before starting Ledge, Tal led M&A transactions at Meta and worked on new products at Melio, the payments company that later sold to Xero for $2.5B. He left Melio in 2022 to build Ledge, giving up seven-figure unvested equity to pursue the opportunity he saw in financial close automation. If you’re building vertical SaaS, AI infrastructure for finance, or enterprise workflow software, this episode is a masterclass in product focus, pricing strategy, and early enterprise traction. It’s also a rare look at how AI SaaS founders think about moats when the platform risk from large models is real. • Watch this episode on YouTube: • Connect with Tal: • Connect with Nathan: /episode/index/show/nathanlatkathetop/id/40313780

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