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What if you could take $10m off the table without selling your company?
Joey Gilkey at TitanX did it.
$10m secondary inside a $27m Series A. Valuation went from $200k to $100m in 21 months.
He's one o 9 CEOs I sat down with who got the cash they wanted on their own terms.
On Thursday, I'm sharing 3 paths and 9 playbooks from founders with $140m in combined revenue.
>> Grab a free seat
(if the link does not work, it means we filled up. Last time we sent an invite like this, we had 1,157 founders registered in 3 days. Zoom limit is 250 seats.)
Here are the 9 founders sharing their playbook this week:
Path 1. Non dilutive capital. Grow without raising VC.
1. $11m revenue, 100% founder-owned. Scott Pielsticker at ContactMonkey took $1m from Founderpath. Got to $1m revenue before raising any equity.
2. $53m revenue, $10m self-funded, 10 acquisitions. Mike Zisman at Golf Genius put $10m of his own money in as interest-free debt, then used a $20m debt line to buy two companies in 2024. 20% profit margins, 80% owned by him and employees.
3. $3m debt bridge to a $32m round. Randy Frisch at UberFlip took $3m in revenue-based financing in 2016. Grew past $10m revenue. Closed a $32m round in 2018 with a secondary component baked in.
Path 2. Secondaries. Cash out without losing control.
4. $10m secondary inside a $27m Series A. Joey Gilkey at TitanX went from $200k to a $100m valuation in 21 months. $10m went straight into his pocket at close.
5. $37m secondary, then bought his investor out. Ross Paquette at Maropost sold 20% to a single investor in 2016, didn't like the board dynamics, bought them back. Now bootstrapped at $60m revenue, 52% profit margins, running a new secondary at a $1.7b valuation.
6. $30m secondary inside an $80m Series C. Antti Nivala at MFiles allocated $30m for liquidity to earlier investors and employees who had already left. Cash flow positive. Didn't need the capital.
Path 3. Full exit. Sell for maximum value.
7. Bootstrapped $5m exit, 50/50 cash and equity. Bridget Harris at YouCanBookMe turned down offers for years. Profitable, no board. David Karandish at Capacity cold emailed her on LinkedIn. She closed the deal on a train home from a Paul McCartney concert.
8. $3.5m in debt across 19 draws, 9 IOIs, 3 LOIs, 5th exit. Joel Ohman at Exercise.com took his first $15,470 draw from Founderpath in 2020 at $50k of monthly revenue. Rule of 40 positive every year since.
9. $1m peak revenue, sold to Votigo in 2015. My own story at Heyo: raising $2.5m in VC at 21. I didn't sell for maximum value, so I built Founderpath so other founders don't repeat the mistake.
>> RSVP and get all 9 playbooks free
Which path suits your growth targets?
If you can't answer right now, you should definitely join. Be sure to RSVP if you want the slide deck and replay.
Nathan Latka
CEO, Founderpath
PS: Register before noon CST today and I'll send you a preview of the slide deck (Google Slides link). First 50 RSVPs get the deck and recording for free.
>> Request an invite here
Zoom limits us to 250 so get there early.
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