Investing in ambitious founders.

Austin, NYC, SF
Joined March 2009
Today we raised $145m to fund bootstrappers here on Twitter! Get up to $3m in non-dilutive capital overnight from @FounderpathHQ Figured I'd prove it by wiring a bunch of you today. Tag the bootstrapped SaaS founder you admire most below... ❤️My favorites: 🧵A thread 👇
34
31
15
306
Anti-AI lol. $20,000/mo profit from tiny Donut truck
216
Revenue doesn't lie
He made $60k in rent last night. This is the new AirBNB. Avg stay 9 months. Longer than AirBnB Shorter than typical lease. New market: Mid term lease On the Top Founders Podcast, @padsplit CEO @atticusleblanc shares: It’s great for renters: (03:05) 34k rooms available (04:18) Under $30/night avg (03:46) Furnished, utilities incl It’s great for real estate owners: (07:11) Very low vacancy (06:25) 74% fill rate ...and it’s great for PadSplit: (08:43) $250M in rent annually (07:49) $20M PadSplit revenue (02:25) No balance sheet risk Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
2
691
He made $60k in rent last night. This is the new AirBNB. Avg stay 9 months. Longer than AirBnB Shorter than typical lease. New market: Mid term lease On the Top Founders Podcast, @padsplit CEO @atticusleblanc shares: It’s great for renters: (03:05) 34k rooms available (04:18) Under $30/night avg (03:46) Furnished, utilities incl It’s great for real estate owners: (07:11) Very low vacancy (06:25) 74% fill rate ...and it’s great for PadSplit: (08:43) $250M in rent annually (07:49) $20M PadSplit revenue (02:25) No balance sheet risk Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
1
1
7
1,628
Insane.
“ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit," $200m ARR CEO of @airSlate In Vadim's first ever public interview on Top Founders podcast, he shares: Financial data (03:40) DocHub $22M, pdfFiller $106M, signNow $35M (03:52) “This page does $106M of revenue” (03:57) 866,000 paying customers on one product (04:35) 85,000 forms hand-built by lawyers (07:16) 2x ARR but Valuation down $1b to $800m (07:35) $100M revenue at last round. Now $200M (08:19) 2015: GC money, bought signNow, hit $50M (08:42) $18M revenue in 2013–2014 (09:10) “pdfFiller was a cash machine” (10:51) 1.1M paying customers, 866,000 on pdfFiller (11:04) 1.1M customers ÷ $200M = $180/year each (18:30) $200M ARR on <$200M equity raised Growth tactics (01:23) No “AI” branding (01:53) Why acquired brands keep their own names (04:58) Unannounced AI product (05:35) 85,000 lawyer-built forms. Why he’s not Harvey (07:55) “Customers build their own software? Baloney.” (08:54) Bought signNow at $3M. Now $35M (11:26) 4.8 billion keywords managed (11:30) 35 million SEO pages built (12:33) Contextual relevance vs programmatic SEO (12:50) 4.8B keywords. “Very few are productive.” (13:07) Search influence drops from 80% to 30% (13:30) Keyword-volume SEO dead in 9–12 months (14:27) “ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit.” (14:55) “Our competition was not sophisticated” (15:05) Superior PPC bidding math. Now everyone has it (16:31) Vertical vs horizontal: the NDR fight Fundraising, M&A (06:43) $150M raised total, GE Capital, Morgan Stanley (07:03) June 2022: $52M at a $1.25B valuation (07:45) “My VC friends don’t understand” (08:35) Raised first money at $8.5M revenue (09:21) The no-board, no-VC golden years (09:37) “Get money as late as you possibly can” (17:26) Running the Bending Spoons playbook (17:37) M&A rule: $1M products “not interesting.” (17:56) How he handles a real board (18:40) “Some raised $20 for every $1 of ARR. Not us.” (18:46) “VC objectives and mine are slightly different” Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
2
1
1,459
Nathan Latka retweeted
Hang out with Poland's 🇵🇱 Top Founders next week Top Founder Summit
2
5
1,268
Nathan Latka retweeted
if you're a founder looking to tell your story to other founders, there is no better spot than the TOP Founders podcast! a VERY smart and sophisticated audience of founders/investors
2
1
2
835
if you're a founder looking to tell your story to other founders, there is no better spot than the TOP Founders podcast! a VERY smart and sophisticated audience of founders/investors
2
1
2
835
👀
“ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit," $200m ARR CEO of @airSlate In Vadim's first ever public interview on Top Founders podcast, he shares: Financial data (03:40) DocHub $22M, pdfFiller $106M, signNow $35M (03:52) “This page does $106M of revenue” (03:57) 866,000 paying customers on one product (04:35) 85,000 forms hand-built by lawyers (07:16) 2x ARR but Valuation down $1b to $800m (07:35) $100M revenue at last round. Now $200M (08:19) 2015: GC money, bought signNow, hit $50M (08:42) $18M revenue in 2013–2014 (09:10) “pdfFiller was a cash machine” (10:51) 1.1M paying customers, 866,000 on pdfFiller (11:04) 1.1M customers ÷ $200M = $180/year each (18:30) $200M ARR on <$200M equity raised Growth tactics (01:23) No “AI” branding (01:53) Why acquired brands keep their own names (04:58) Unannounced AI product (05:35) 85,000 lawyer-built forms. Why he’s not Harvey (07:55) “Customers build their own software? Baloney.” (08:54) Bought signNow at $3M. Now $35M (11:26) 4.8 billion keywords managed (11:30) 35 million SEO pages built (12:33) Contextual relevance vs programmatic SEO (12:50) 4.8B keywords. “Very few are productive.” (13:07) Search influence drops from 80% to 30% (13:30) Keyword-volume SEO dead in 9–12 months (14:27) “ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit.” (14:55) “Our competition was not sophisticated” (15:05) Superior PPC bidding math. Now everyone has it (16:31) Vertical vs horizontal: the NDR fight Fundraising, M&A (06:43) $150M raised total, GE Capital, Morgan Stanley (07:03) June 2022: $52M at a $1.25B valuation (07:45) “My VC friends don’t understand” (08:35) Raised first money at $8.5M revenue (09:21) The no-board, no-VC golden years (09:37) “Get money as late as you possibly can” (17:26) Running the Bending Spoons playbook (17:37) M&A rule: $1M products “not interesting.” (17:56) How he handles a real board (18:40) “Some raised $20 for every $1 of ARR. Not us.” (18:46) “VC objectives and mine are slightly different” Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
1
3
1,395
Nathan Latka retweeted
$200M ARR from SEO. The SEO-on-steroids playbook behind airSlate: 1/ They run one of the biggest SEO machines on the internet -> 4.8B keywords tracked and 35M pages built over the years: a page for every form, tool and city, even "compress PNG from 17MB to 15MB", in 7+ languages -> PDFfiller even ranks #1 on Google for "fake marriage certificate" 2/ They buy companies, put their SEO machine behind them and grow revenue 10x -> signNow made ~$3M a year when they bought it, paying only $2M in cash. Now it makes $35M -> Every company keeps its own name and team, and shares only marketing, payments and DevOps 3/ They sell to 31M tiny US businesses -> The plumber, the baker, the bookstore owner. 1.1M of them pay ~$180 a year each 4/ One simple page makes $106M a year -> PDFfiller, a site where you edit and sign PDFs, has ~860K paying customers on its own 5/ A free AI product built only to pull traffic -> bizdraft . com writes a legal agreement in 90 seconds with no sign-up, then sends people to their paid tools 6/ Even they think mass SEO is about to end -> The CEO gives keyword SEO 9-12 more months and expects search to drive 30% of new customers instead of 80%. On ChatGPT SEO gurus: "It's bullshit" 7/ They copy Google's search suggestions and make a page for each one -> Type "rental agreement" into Google and it suggests "rental agreement for a room in Texas" -> Their US Legal Forms site makes a page with that exact title, so it matches exactly what people search. They have ~120K of these pages 8/ 37,000 "DocHub vs X" comparison pages -> One for almost every competitor on earth, even tools nobody has heard of -> Plus 41 websites named after exact searches, like merge-pdf.dochub [.] com and chat-with-pdf.dochub [.] com 9/ They also run one of the most advanced Google Ads strategies out there -> 60M keywords, zero salespeople, and bidding math so good that a new customer's first payment already covered what the ad cost 10/ One product paid for everything -> PDFfiller was "a cash machine". They hit $18M revenue before raising, and reached $200M ARR on less than $200M raised Prepared by growth hackers at Ryze AI, the AI agent for paid ads
“ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit," $200m ARR CEO of @airSlate In Vadim's first ever public interview on Top Founders podcast, he shares: Financial data (03:40) DocHub $22M, pdfFiller $106M, signNow $35M (03:52) “This page does $106M of revenue” (03:57) 866,000 paying customers on one product (04:35) 85,000 forms hand-built by lawyers (07:16) 2x ARR but Valuation down $1b to $800m (07:35) $100M revenue at last round. Now $200M (08:19) 2015: GC money, bought signNow, hit $50M (08:42) $18M revenue in 2013–2014 (09:10) “pdfFiller was a cash machine” (10:51) 1.1M paying customers, 866,000 on pdfFiller (11:04) 1.1M customers ÷ $200M = $180/year each (18:30) $200M ARR on <$200M equity raised Growth tactics (01:23) No “AI” branding (01:53) Why acquired brands keep their own names (04:58) Unannounced AI product (05:35) 85,000 lawyer-built forms. Why he’s not Harvey (07:55) “Customers build their own software? Baloney.” (08:54) Bought signNow at $3M. Now $35M (11:26) 4.8 billion keywords managed (11:30) 35 million SEO pages built (12:33) Contextual relevance vs programmatic SEO (12:50) 4.8B keywords. “Very few are productive.” (13:07) Search influence drops from 80% to 30% (13:30) Keyword-volume SEO dead in 9–12 months (14:27) “ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit.” (14:55) “Our competition was not sophisticated” (15:05) Superior PPC bidding math. Now everyone has it (16:31) Vertical vs horizontal: the NDR fight Fundraising, M&A (06:43) $150M raised total, GE Capital, Morgan Stanley (07:03) June 2022: $52M at a $1.25B valuation (07:45) “My VC friends don’t understand” (08:35) Raised first money at $8.5M revenue (09:21) The no-board, no-VC golden years (09:37) “Get money as late as you possibly can” (17:26) Running the Bending Spoons playbook (17:37) M&A rule: $1M products “not interesting.” (17:56) How he handles a real board (18:40) “Some raised $20 for every $1 of ARR. Not us.” (18:46) “VC objectives and mine are slightly different” Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
13
15
3
273
28,995
Hang out with Poland's 🇵🇱 Top Founders next week Top Founder Summit
2
5
1,268
hard to grow 100% on such a huge base ($100m ARR)
“ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit," $200m ARR CEO of @airSlate In Vadim's first ever public interview on Top Founders podcast, he shares: Financial data (03:40) DocHub $22M, pdfFiller $106M, signNow $35M (03:52) “This page does $106M of revenue” (03:57) 866,000 paying customers on one product (04:35) 85,000 forms hand-built by lawyers (07:16) 2x ARR but Valuation down $1b to $800m (07:35) $100M revenue at last round. Now $200M (08:19) 2015: GC money, bought signNow, hit $50M (08:42) $18M revenue in 2013–2014 (09:10) “pdfFiller was a cash machine” (10:51) 1.1M paying customers, 866,000 on pdfFiller (11:04) 1.1M customers ÷ $200M = $180/year each (18:30) $200M ARR on <$200M equity raised Growth tactics (01:23) No “AI” branding (01:53) Why acquired brands keep their own names (04:58) Unannounced AI product (05:35) 85,000 lawyer-built forms. Why he’s not Harvey (07:55) “Customers build their own software? Baloney.” (08:54) Bought signNow at $3M. Now $35M (11:26) 4.8 billion keywords managed (11:30) 35 million SEO pages built (12:33) Contextual relevance vs programmatic SEO (12:50) 4.8B keywords. “Very few are productive.” (13:07) Search influence drops from 80% to 30% (13:30) Keyword-volume SEO dead in 9–12 months (14:27) “ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit.” (14:55) “Our competition was not sophisticated” (15:05) Superior PPC bidding math. Now everyone has it (16:31) Vertical vs horizontal: the NDR fight Fundraising, M&A (06:43) $150M raised total, GE Capital, Morgan Stanley (07:03) June 2022: $52M at a $1.25B valuation (07:45) “My VC friends don’t understand” (08:35) Raised first money at $8.5M revenue (09:21) The no-board, no-VC golden years (09:37) “Get money as late as you possibly can” (17:26) Running the Bending Spoons playbook (17:37) M&A rule: $1M products “not interesting.” (17:56) How he handles a real board (18:40) “Some raised $20 for every $1 of ARR. Not us.” (18:46) “VC objectives and mine are slightly different” Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
8
2,053
“ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit," $200m ARR CEO of @airSlate In Vadim's first ever public interview on Top Founders podcast, he shares: Financial data (03:40) DocHub $22M, pdfFiller $106M, signNow $35M (03:52) “This page does $106M of revenue” (03:57) 866,000 paying customers on one product (04:35) 85,000 forms hand-built by lawyers (07:16) 2x ARR but Valuation down $1b to $800m (07:35) $100M revenue at last round. Now $200M (08:19) 2015: GC money, bought signNow, hit $50M (08:42) $18M revenue in 2013–2014 (09:10) “pdfFiller was a cash machine” (10:51) 1.1M paying customers, 866,000 on pdfFiller (11:04) 1.1M customers ÷ $200M = $180/year each (18:30) $200M ARR on <$200M equity raised Growth tactics (01:23) No “AI” branding (01:53) Why acquired brands keep their own names (04:58) Unannounced AI product (05:35) 85,000 lawyer-built forms. Why he’s not Harvey (07:55) “Customers build their own software? Baloney.” (08:54) Bought signNow at $3M. Now $35M (11:26) 4.8 billion keywords managed (11:30) 35 million SEO pages built (12:33) Contextual relevance vs programmatic SEO (12:50) 4.8B keywords. “Very few are productive.” (13:07) Search influence drops from 80% to 30% (13:30) Keyword-volume SEO dead in 9–12 months (14:27) “ChatGPT SEO gurus? It’s bullshit.” (14:55) “Our competition was not sophisticated” (15:05) Superior PPC bidding math. Now everyone has it (16:31) Vertical vs horizontal: the NDR fight Fundraising, M&A (06:43) $150M raised total, GE Capital, Morgan Stanley (07:03) June 2022: $52M at a $1.25B valuation (07:45) “My VC friends don’t understand” (08:35) Raised first money at $8.5M revenue (09:21) The no-board, no-VC golden years (09:37) “Get money as late as you possibly can” (17:26) Running the Bending Spoons playbook (17:37) M&A rule: $1M products “not interesting.” (17:56) How he handles a real board (18:40) “Some raised $20 for every $1 of ARR. Not us.” (18:46) “VC objectives and mine are slightly different” Available today wherever you get your podcasts.
6
5
4
79
36,116
Nathan Latka retweeted
Founders - if you're considering building your own Model, this is a must listen. CEO @Jiajun3423 (Jeff) of @AkoolInc put on a masterclass: > Spends $1m/mo on training. > Broke $36m ARR in June this year. > Users producing 500k images/vids per day Proves you don't have to raise $1b (he's only raised about $10m!) My full Top Founders Podcast interview with Jeff: (04:38) $25m revenue in 2025, targeting $60m in 2026 (05:34) Over $3m revenue in a single month (08:28) First 100 customers: slow enterprise sales → self-serve payments (08:53) 210,000 organic clicks per month (10:46) Stuck at $100k revenue in both 2021 and 2022 (11:19) Breaking through to $2m–$3m revenue in 2023 (11:56) Landing Coca-Cola after 3 months of testing (12:34) Scaling to $12m–$13m revenue in 2024 (12:49) 60–70 employees, 40 engineers, $1m quotas for sales reps (13:21) 20,000–30,000 paying customers, including hundreds of businesses (13:55) One enterprise customer pays $4m per year (15:18) Users generate 500,000 images, videos and other assets daily (15:31) $10m raised across 4+ years (15:51) $100m valuation two years earlier; later SAFEs priced higher (16:29) Would he take a hypothetical $500m cash offer from Google?
5
2
1
7
2,005
Revenue doesnt lie 🤯
Founders - if you're considering building your own Model, this is a must listen. CEO @Jiajun3423 (Jeff) of @AkoolInc put on a masterclass: > Spends $1m/mo on training. > Broke $36m ARR in June this year. > Users producing 500k images/vids per day Proves you don't have to raise $1b (he's only raised about $10m!) My full Top Founders Podcast interview with Jeff: (04:38) $25m revenue in 2025, targeting $60m in 2026 (05:34) Over $3m revenue in a single month (08:28) First 100 customers: slow enterprise sales → self-serve payments (08:53) 210,000 organic clicks per month (10:46) Stuck at $100k revenue in both 2021 and 2022 (11:19) Breaking through to $2m–$3m revenue in 2023 (11:56) Landing Coca-Cola after 3 months of testing (12:34) Scaling to $12m–$13m revenue in 2024 (12:49) 60–70 employees, 40 engineers, $1m quotas for sales reps (13:21) 20,000–30,000 paying customers, including hundreds of businesses (13:55) One enterprise customer pays $4m per year (15:18) Users generate 500,000 images, videos and other assets daily (15:31) $10m raised across 4+ years (15:51) $100m valuation two years earlier; later SAFEs priced higher (16:29) Would he take a hypothetical $500m cash offer from Google?
1
2
788
Founders - if you're considering building your own Model, this is a must listen. CEO @Jiajun3423 (Jeff) of @AkoolInc put on a masterclass: > Spends $1m/mo on training. > Broke $36m ARR in June this year. > Users producing 500k images/vids per day Proves you don't have to raise $1b (he's only raised about $10m!) My full Top Founders Podcast interview with Jeff: (04:38) $25m revenue in 2025, targeting $60m in 2026 (05:34) Over $3m revenue in a single month (08:28) First 100 customers: slow enterprise sales → self-serve payments (08:53) 210,000 organic clicks per month (10:46) Stuck at $100k revenue in both 2021 and 2022 (11:19) Breaking through to $2m–$3m revenue in 2023 (11:56) Landing Coca-Cola after 3 months of testing (12:34) Scaling to $12m–$13m revenue in 2024 (12:49) 60–70 employees, 40 engineers, $1m quotas for sales reps (13:21) 20,000–30,000 paying customers, including hundreds of businesses (13:55) One enterprise customer pays $4m per year (15:18) Users generate 500,000 images, videos and other assets daily (15:31) $10m raised across 4+ years (15:51) $100m valuation two years earlier; later SAFEs priced higher (16:29) Would he take a hypothetical $500m cash offer from Google?
5
2
1
7
2,005
Nathan Latka retweeted
$9m ARR selling AI to dental insurance is actually INSANE 👀 🤯
7
1
12
2,102
HOME SWEET HOME WIN
200
2,179
298
8,038
549,476
W
468
3,961
490
54,657
3,938,330
$9m ARR selling AI to dental insurance is actually INSANE 👀 🤯
7
1
12
2,102