SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

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

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

How do you build a $100M SaaS company by charging apartment residents $5 a month to keep rats out of their bedroom? Justin Clements is the co-founder and CEO of PestShare, an on-demand pest control platform embedded inside property management software. He bootstrapped from 2019 to 2020, raised just $5M over two rounds, then closed a $28M Series A at a $100M valuation in 2025, the same year he crossed $10M ARR. You'll learn: — Why PestShare's revenue model is structured like a warranty, and why that makes it nearly impossible to churn — The difference between contracted ARR and live ARR, and how that gap almost killed their valuation story — How embedding into the lease instead of selling direct to residents creates structural GRR that VC-backed competitors can't replicate — What it actually took to raise at 10x ARR from an investor that only backs 9 companies at a time — Why Justin's Series A investor pushed him to take $3M in personal secondary and why he says it made him take bigger swings — How IGP's PE background forced a full COGS and gross margin rebuild right after closing the round — Why "if you don't see pests it means the product isn't working" is the exact wrong way to think about pest control retention — How PestShare went from $1M (2022) to $5M (2024) to $10M (2025), doubling every year with under 1x ARR in prior capital raised — What property managers actually pay vs. what residents pay and how PestShare navigates that split without losing either side — Why Justin chose a hyper-concentrated, low-profile fund over a brand-name VC, and what they got in return Connect: YouTube: youtube.com/@NathanLatkawatch PestShare: pestshare.com Founderpath: founderpath.com

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

How do you go from 0 to $30 million in ARR in just 3 years while purposely losing money on every single free user? Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom, a free AI meeting assistant used by hundreds of thousands of professionals daily. After running UserVoice for nearly two decades, Richard entered the hyper-competitive AI transcription war against giants like Zoom, Otter, and Firefly. Instead of playing the traditional VC game, he gave the product away, lost $50 per user, and built an absolute rocket ship that dominates through bottom-up distribution. You'll learn: — Why purposely losing $50 per user per month was the ultimate growth hack. — The 5-step framework to sequence risk (Retention -> Onboarding -> Acquisition -> Referral -> Monetization). — How to hit $100k MRR in your first 30 days of monetization. — Why Richard hired three enterprise salespeople before writing a single line of code for the premium product. — The exact strategy to gamify fundraising by reserving 15% of your Series A for your users. — Why open data, MCP servers, and local agents are replacing walled-garden SaaS models. — How to scale to $30M ARR by pricing bottom-up teams at $25 per seat. — The reality of stepping down as CEO from a $10M ARR company after 18 years. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UavacWr2jbQ [https://youtu.be/UavacWr2jbQ] Connect with Richard: https://fathom.ai/ [https://fathom.ai/] Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/ [https://founderpath.com/]

How 1Mind Hit $1M in 3 Months Selling $100k AI Sales Agents

How do you hit $1 million in contracted revenue in three months and achieve 211% net dollar retention in your first year? Amanda Kahlow is the founder and CEO of 1Mind, an AI platform building go-to-market superhumans that replace SDRs, AEs, and sales engineers. You'll learn: - How to sell AI software for $100,000 to $400,000 using flat subscription pricing instead of metered models. - The unit economics of replacing 89 SDRs and 19 sales engineers with a single custom agent. - How they maintain 80 to 90 percent SaaS margins while running heavy LLM operations. - The strategy behind 1Mind's 600 percent year-over-year growth rate. - Why most enterprise customers purchase a second AI agent within 90 days of going live. - How 1Mind uses their own AI agent to source 78 percent of their eight-figure pipeline. - The reality of managing founder dilution and secondary sales after building a $380 million business. - Why AI agents are expanding past chat interfaces and joining live Zoom calls to run product demos. Amanda is a three-time entrepreneur who previously founded and served as CEO of 6sense, scaling the company through multiple funding rounds and a $380 million valuation before stepping down. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lFX0n3uYTkw [https://youtu.be/lFX0n3uYTkw] Connect with Amanda: https://www.1mind.com/ [https://www.1mind.com/] Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/ [https://founderpath.com/]

Selling Check for $400M, Now Building a $1.5M ARR AI Startup

How do you build a $1.5 million ARR enterprise AI platform after previously selling a fintech startup for nearly $400 million? Ahikam Kaufman is the CEO of SafeBooks AI, an agentic data automation platform for the office of the CFO. You'll learn: - How to charge $125,000 ACVs by pricing against the cost of an accounting headcount. - Why the company raised a $15 million seed round just to build their initial data architecture. - How they landed a $300,000 engagement in their first year of going to market. - The exact strategy Ahikam used to distribute $25 million in retention bonuses during a past acquisition. - Why building a proprietary graph database is the only way to prevent AI hallucinations in finance. - How SafeBooks scaled to 15 paying enterprise customers. - The economics of automating the quote-to-cash process across disparate CRMs and ERPs. - How to manage founder dilution while building a venture-backed tech company. Ahikam is a veteran fintech executive who previously co-founded Check, which he scaled and sold to Intuit in 2014 for nearly $400 million, creating over 10 millionaires in the process. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JQA3RX9PsHw [https://youtu.be/JQA3RX9PsHw] Connect with Ahikam: https://safebooks.ai/ [https://safebooks.ai/] Connect with Nathan: https://founderpath.com/ [https://founderpath.com/]