Getting People To Hate You with Nathan Latka (Creator of The Top Podcast) - Escape Velocity Show #29

About this video

In this Escape Velocity interview, Nathan Latka explains his polarizing media and finance playbook. He says The Top podcast was named purely for SEO (‘what is the top podcast?’), passed 10 million downloads after four years of daily 15-20 minute episodes, and argues you must be willing to create for years with no views. His magazine sells for $29 with a $79 Excel raw-data upsell — about 1,000 sold a month at about a $60 average cart and 43% upsell conversion as he states it, subsidizing about 9,000 free copies sent to CEOs. His book ‘How To Be A Capitalist Without Any Capital’ passed 25,000 copies and a Wall Street Journal bestseller list as he states it, and was engineered for airport browsing with bold headlines and screenshots. Latka deliberately polarizes — moving people from a neutral 50% view to 1% or 100% — saying it is cheaper to make people hate you than love you and haters lower acquisition cost, illustrated by asking Mixergy for an aggressive headline questioning if he is a bull artist. He recounts a Facebook food-truck deal ($6,000 check to Ming, repaid per meal, with sponsors covering more than the deal), using it as leverage for his book deal, and a TV pilot ‘Latka’s Million Dollar Road Trip’ shot by Cineflix for CNBC at $1.5 million for two episodes in Denver, which stalled after its internal champion left. The second half ranks SaaS capital from most to least expensive — equity, SEAL shared-earnings agreements, revenue-based financing, mezzanine debt, and senior debt — with terms and market sizes as he presents them, and outlines his plan to use data from about 3,000 connected SaaS companies to lend more cheaply and build toward a $1 billion loan book. He says he would buy, not start, an unsexy SaaS business away from San Francisco and New York.

Key takeaways

• Polarize on purpose: Latka says move audiences out of the middle to love or hate, because attention from haters is cheaper than advertising to make people love you — but only state things you genuinely believe.
• Design distribution before product: the podcast name was an SEO play, the magazine upsells the raw Excel data VCs were paying assistants to type, and the book was formatted for airport flip-through.
• Stack assets so each raises the others: podcast audience helped get a book advance, a viral food-truck video (1.2 million live viewers as stated) was used as negotiation leverage, and book/magazine placement drives fund LPs and deal flow.
• Know the true cost of SaaS capital: Latka ranks equity most expensive, then SEALs (e.g., $100k for 10% with a 3x buyback right over 10 years in his example), then revenue-based financing (up to 6x MRR, 1.3-1.6x repayment cap in his example), then mezzanine and senior debt — each has fees and revenue-share terms founders rarely model.
• Buy unsexy, recurring-revenue businesses instead of starting in crowded markets: look far from tech hubs at everyday industries (waste, food, locks, driving) where operators fell into subscriptions without running them well; in SaaS, you make money when you buy.

Episode details: published June 4, 2020 · 49:56 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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