Loading page…
Three thousand podcast interviews turned into a proprietary dataset, then resold as a book, a print magazine and an email list — $200,000 of sponsorships collected before the book had a title
30,000 copies sold · 15M podcast downloads across 3,000+ episodes, ~1M of them in month one · ~100,000 email subscribers · magazine ad slots sold by the month (all founder-reported)
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
After flash-selling his first company for $300,000 in 2015, Nathan Latka asked his investors a question most founders never ask: you have watched me operate for three years, where am I actually strong? Several said the same thing — the reason Heyo grew was that he was entertaining on webinars, so go into media.
The quick-reference card — acquisition channels, replication playbook, and risk map — is members-only.
Join the Unicorn Club — $5/moCancel anytime, in one clickPaste into Claude Code / Codex and get a working version of this product end-to-end.
Two production-grade prompts per idea — a full build spec and an SEO growth plan — plus 10 tailored build specs a week. Members only.
Join the Unicorn Club — $5/moCancel anytime, in one clickEvery claim traces back to a listed source — open any of them and check the number yourself.
The full captured transcripts behind these sources are in the Unicorn Club — search them, quote them, check every figure. Join the Unicorn Club
Data credibility: Podcast interview recorded November 2021; every figure is Nathan Latka's own statement on air, with no dashboards, analytics screenshots or publisher data shown. That covers 3,000+ episodes, 15 million downloads, roughly a million downloads in the first month, 2.4 million launch-day emails from 60 guests, $200,000 of pre-sold book sponsorships at $1,000–$10,000 a slot, 30,000 copies sold, and almost 100,000 email subscribers. Two claims are shakier than the rest. He describes the book as "the number one bestseller for a 21-year-old ever in the business category" in the same breath as the 30,000-copy figure, and the transcript does not reconcile that age with the book's publication; treat the copies number as the usable one. The magazine's sponsor pricing is never stated, only the mechanism. The Slack ad story is his own account of running a brand's advertisement without a relationship with that brand, and ProvenStartups has not attempted to verify whether Slack was aware. Austin, Texas comes from the host's introduction rather than from Latka.
The first listeners were borrowed from the guests. Before releasing anything, Latka recorded 60 interviews, then emailed all 60 with an artificial constraint: only the first ten who agreed to email their own lists would go live on launch day.
The first real money came from the book, and it arrived before the book did. Latka emailed the founders he had already interviewed and offered a one-page sponsored feature inside a business book that would sit in every airport.
Each product recruits the inputs for the next one.
He removed the need for feedback by committing in advance. "When I did the first episode of the podcast, I told myself: even if nobody listens, I'm recording 100 episodes."
This is a members-only idea. All 10 sections, the quick-reference card, and both build prompts are in the Unicorn Club — with every section of all 1,012 ideas.
Join the Unicorn Club — $5/moCancel anytime, in one click