The Startup Genius of Nathan Latka
One of the most interesting entrepreneurs I’ve discovered recently is Nathan Latka of GetLatka, FounderPath, and the now-defunct venture-backed Heyo.com. He is also the best-selling author of How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital.
Courtland Allen interviewed him on IndieHackers recently. Nathan’s interview on the Pomp Podcast is also worth listening to.
Any one of those accomplishments would be interesting in itself, but how they are all connected is where Nathan’s genius really lies.
Nathan Latka’s Business History
In high school, Nathan Latka started selling Facebook pages and later turned this into Heyo.com. He raised $2.5million for the company when he was 20 years old. The business was eventually sold at a loss but Nathan found even bigger opportunities.
After realizing how hard it was to get backlinks and mentions by bloggers and the press, Nathan realized the importance of building his own distribution channel.
Some of the genius business decisions Nathan has made:
Boldness is powerful.
He started a podcast interviewing SaaS founders where he really digs in to get comprehensive financial details in short 15-minute episodes. He got early interviews because he promised he was going to have 1 million downloads in the first year.
Quantity matters.
He publishes a daily podcast but batches these interviews into 2 or 3 days a month. 30 podcasts a month = thousands of podcasts over the years. And, they only take a couple of days a month to do.
Different is good.
Nathan compiles these SaaS metrics into a monthly print magazine that he sells for $30 per month.
The product is the promotion.
CEOs that agree to purchase large numbers of copies of the magazine to get their picture on the cover that month. Playing on their egos is a brilliant marketing and sales tactic.
Leverage other people’s audiences.
To launch the podcast, he offered to start with the first 10 CEOs to agree to promote the new podcast to their lists.
Again, the product is the promotion.
He leveraged his audience and connections with businesses to write a book. He offered companies a mention in the book if they’d pre-buy copies. This lead to $30k in pre-sales before he even had a title.
Thought leaders get opportunities.
The connections he’s built with the CEOs he interviews has lead to numerous other opportunities like his new financing company, FounderPath, that will loan SaaS companies cash at reasonable interest rates.
Data is a competitive advantage.
His company has built a custom dashboard where companies can log key business metrics. Companies that are doing well get cheaper interest rate loans.
Your Brand Matters
Most of his sites are branded under his own name, which helps to make him a top thought leader in the SaaS space.
Success = Good Ideas with Great Execution
Nathan Latka has made some brilliant business decisions and backed them up with unrelenting execution. Very impressive.
From the IdeaEconomy bootstrapped startup newsletter.
