Top Founders

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Business
**Top Founders**

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.

Latest Episodes:

1436 How He Used Partnerships To Grow 10x YoY to $6m in ARR Jun 30, 2019

Show notes

Zee Aganovic is CEO of HiConversion (https://www.hiconversion.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:25 – How HiConversion helps improve the buying experience on eCommerce sites

1:30 – Why the average customer pays them $5k per month

2:30 – How they launched the current version of the company in 2014

3:15 – Why they self-funded before raising $10M from institutional investors

4:15 – How their last round of $3.5M came last year

5:15 – Why several hundred customers are using their platform right now

5:45 – How HiConversion has built numerous strategic partnerships

6:45 – Why 100 companies are paying to use their platform today

7:40 – How they've grown 10x in the last twelve months

9:05 – Why they've scaled to 27 full-time employees

11:10 – Why they are aiming for payback within one month

13:00 – How they've hit 10% gross revenue churn per year

13:45 – The Famous Five

1435 Live Chat For Business Passes $5m in ARR, 31,000 Customers, Bootstrapped Jun 29, 2019

Show notes

Tim Valishev is the CEO of JivoChat (https://www.jivochat.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:30 – How they help customers better convert using chatbots

1:00 – Why they are north of $5M in ARR right now

2:55 – How their growth has accelerated in emerging markets

2:00 – Why they have grown to serve 230k websites worldwide

2:30 – How the average customer pays JivoChat around $13 per month

3:00 – Why they are different from Drift and Intercom

4:00 – How they have incorporated the calling-in feature

5:20 – Why they launched the company in January 2012

6:50 – How he landed his first 10 customers through existing relationships

8:10 – Why they are exhibiting 45% logo churn annually

9:45 – How they've scaled to 32k paying customers

10:15 – Why they are landing 20k new sign-ups per month

11:15 – How JivoChat is growing via word of mouth

14:00 – Why they spent $300k to break into the Brazilian market

16:00 – How their team of 120 is remotely distributed

16:45 – Why he wants to remain bootstrapped

17:40 – The Famous Five

1434 She Saved a Pre Revenue $60m Raised Company, Then Launched Own Passing $6m in ARR for Team Alignment Tool Jun 28, 2019

Show notes

Deidre Paknad is the CEO and co-founder of Workboard (https://www.workboard.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show 0:25 – How Workboard has been built to help companies acheive their stragtegic priorities faster 1:20 – Why the average customer is around $125k annually 1:45 – How they launched the company in 2014 2:45 – Why they've raised $12M in total capital thus far 4:45 – How they've landed 50 enterprise customers 5:15 – How they are doing around $520k in MRR today 6:30 – Why they decided to upsell based on number of seats 7:30 – How they are aiming for a 6 month payback period going forward 8:45 – Why they are hitting 140% net revenue retention 11:0 – How they are professional services and coaching to drive stickiness 12:20 – Why they are landing deals for around $17k with payback right away 13:35 – How their team of 55 is based in the Bay Area 14:15 – Why they aren't looking to raised until April 2019 15:00 – How she would view a $100M acquisition right now 15:50 – Why they are looking for a four month ramp period on their sales team 16:50 – The Famous Five

1433 Can You Run 2 $1.5m ARR Companies At Same Time? Jun 27, 2019

Show notes

Michael Kamleitner is the CEO of Walls.io (https://walls.io/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:40 – How he runs two companies of roughly the same size

1:00 – Why they've built Walls.io as a social media marketing tool

1:45 – How the average customer pays around $225 today

2:20 – Why they launched the company in 2014 and bootstrapped thus far

2:40 – How 500 customers are using their product today

3:50 – Why they are doing around $110k in MRR

4:05 – How they've grown 70% from around $70k in MRR twelve months ago

4:45 – Why churn is naturally high

6:55 – How he made the decision to run two companies in parallel

8:55 – Why their other product is an enterprise social media scheduling tool

9:15 – "Would you sell for $3M today?"

9:45 – How he is interested in spliting the company and raising capital

10:25 – Why they are having success in content marketing and paid advertising

11:45 – How they are paying around 100 euros to land a new customer

12:20 – Why they aren't spending more money on paid acquisition

12:55 – How their team is headquartered in Vienna

13:30 – The Famous Five

1432 $100M/Day In AirBnB Bookings, He Makes $375k/mo Selling The Data Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

Scott Shatford is the CEO of AirDNA (https://www.airdna.co/) 🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show 0:30 – How Scott built AirDNA to fill his own need 1:10 – Why they are pulling in data from property managers and individual users 2:05 – How Scott used corporate leases to his advantage 3:15 – Why he launched AirDNA in 2014 3:50 – How he makes the decision to purchase or lease 5:20 – Why he factors in regulation risk and seasonality demand when making decisions 7:00 – How AirBnB is maximizing experiences for customers 8:00 – Why the average customer pays $50 per month 8:10 – How he founded the company with his dad 8:20 – Why their team of 34 is spread between Denver and Barcelona 9:00 – How they've bootstrapped the company to 5k active paid subscribers 9:30 – Why they are doing around $375k in MRR right now 10:00 – How they've more than doubled year over year 10:40 – Why they've struggled with retention to date 11:20 – How they are churning 20% of logos each month 12:45 – Why they don't spend anything on customer acquisition 14:10 – How to get smarter around pricing your property 15:10 – Why they are scraping 10M properties every single day 16:10 – How AirBnB is approaching $100M in transcation volume per day 16:30 – The Famous Five

1431 CRM for Speakers Passes $30k in MRR Jun 25, 2019

Show notes

JP Narowski is the CEO of KarmaCRM (https://www.karmacrm.com/) 🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show 0:25 – How KarmaCRM has been built as a niche CRM for professional speakers 0:45 – Why the average customer pays around $50 per month 1:20 – How he launched the company in 2011 1:30 – Why they are doing around $30k in MRR right now 1:45 – How they've grown 50% year over year 1:55 – Why they've grown with just $100k in outside funding 3:20 – How they've scaled to a team of 4 full-time employees 4:00 – Why they landed their first customers through organic channels 4:40 – How they target a CAC of $300 with payback in 6 months 5:30 – Why speakers love their pre-populated email templates and language within the product 6:15 – How they've gotten to 5% gross logo churn per month 7:10 – Why they assume an LTV of $1k over 20 months 7:35 – How they are looking to scale their business with partnerships 9:15 – Why they are looking to publish more content around the speaking niche 9:55 – How he views the future of the company 10:40 – Why he is using his free time to run a family eCommerce business 11:20 – How he would view a $500k acquisition offer 11:55 – The Famous 5

1430 Can You Do 50% Consulting, 50% SaaS On Top of Open Source CRM Framework? Jun 24, 2019

Show notes

Greg Soper is the CEO of SalesAgility (https://www.salesagility.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:30 – Why IT is heavily constrained with delivering value

2:00 – How competitive businesses leverage open source software

3:15 – Why some companies don't have enough capital to optimize out of the box software

3:55 – How they have built their business on top of an open source CRM

4:30 – Why they've had 1M downloads in the last 5 years

5:00 – How they make money doing consulting for their open source platform

5:45 – Why SalesAgility charges for hosting and usage

7:00 – How they are enabling businesses to own their data

7:30 – Why they are providing an alternative to cloud solutions

8:25 – How consulting is a large part of their business

9:50 – Why the average customer is paying them $10-15 per seat monthly

11:50 – How they are planning to launch a new SaaS product soon

12:30 – Why their SaaS product is subsidizing development

13:00 – How they've grown to serve 100 companies today

13:20 – Why they don't make their SaaS offering free

14:30 – How they are doing $5M in annual revenue overall

14:45 – Why their team of 40 full-time employees are based in Scotland

15:30 – How they've grown to scale by bootstrapping

16:00 – Why they are focusing on both SaaS and consulting

19:00 – The Famous 5

1429 Enterprise Collect Customer Data With This $11m ARR Tool Jun 23, 2019

Show notes

Richard Jones is the CEO of The Wayin Platform (https://www.wayin.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:25 – How Wayin helps 150+ enterprise customers create interactice experiences

1:20 – Why they collect explicitly shared data

2:40 – How they provide many different mechanisms for engagement

5:25 – Why they don't own or share the data they collect

5:45 – How the average customer pays them $65k annually

7:10 – Why they are doing $10M+ in ARR right now

7:30 – How he launched the company in 2011

8:20 – Why he still has meaningful equity after merging and becoming CEO

8:55 – How they've grown to 72 full-time employees internationally and in the U.S.

9:25 – Why they are growing 62% year over year

9:50 – How their growth is coming from both new customers and expansion

10:30 – Why they are driving 125% net revenue retention annually

12:45 – How they are spending 2% of their revenue on marketing

1428 Bootstrapped and $12m in ARR. My kinda CEO! Jun 22, 2019

Show notes

Max Israel is Founder & CEO of Customerville (https://www.customerville.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:30 – Why Max founded the company 15 years ago to scratch his own itch

1:30 – How he grew the business without venture capital

2:20 – Why they made the decision to pivot eight years ago

3:05 – How the average customer pays them $250k annually

4:05 – Why they decided to maintain bootstrapped

4:30 – How they funded the business with a small retail chain

5:30 – Why they serve more than 50 customers globally

6:00 – How they are doing around $1M in MRR right now

7:30 – Why they are growing 50%+ year over year

8:50 – How they've kept gross logo churn below 10% annually

10:00 – Why they are focusing on driving expansion revenue with new features going forward

10:15 – How their team has grown to around 40 full-time employees

10:45 – Why they spent up to $400k on Google AdWords in the past

12:10 – How they are evaluating new plans for growing their sales team

13:00 – Why they aren't in acquisition talks right now

14:00 – The Famous Five

1427 Tool Helps You Drive Expansion Revenue, Passes 30 Customers $700k in ARR Jun 21, 2019

Show notes

Alex Raymond is the co-founder and CEO of Kapta (https://kapta.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:25 – How Kapta helps account management teams get increase visibility

1:20 – Why companies pay them between $25k and $100k annually

2:05 – How they launched the company in 2016 as an employee engagement platform

3:35 – Why 30 customers are using Kapta right now

4:45 – How they are connecting directly into CRMs and financial systems

5:20 – Why they are doing north of $60k in MRR

6:10 – How they've more than doubled revenue year over year

7:20 – Why they've raised $1.5M in total capital

8:00 – How they've gotten to 110% net revenue retention annually

9:30 – Why they are starting to get annual payment upfront

10:00 – How they are spending less than $10k to land a new deal

10:50 – Why Kapta has scaled to three full-time employees in Boulder

11:45 – How they would look to raise $3-5M in a Series A in 2019

13:15 – The Famous Five

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected