How This +$80M Founder Launches A Startup In A Weekend | ft. Noah Kagain (#546)

Noah Kagan

I was in the sauna this morning thinking about you guys. I thought we liked it, and I was just thinking of how grateful I am. There are so many cool people that have crossed our paths throughout our whole lives. It just made me kind of a little emotional, but also just happy.

Shaan Puri

We're supposed to get touchy-feely at the end, not at the beginning. YouTube stats show that touchy-feely at the end works, but at the beginning, people just bounce.

Sam Parr

Alright, Noah, we're live! We've got Noah Kagan, one of my dearest friends and one of the OGs of internet marketing and entrepreneurship on the internet. He is one of my inspirations. You run this company called AppSumo, which does about $80,000,000 in revenue now. You're also a YouTuber with what, 1. something million subscribers? And you're here to promote a book, which you've clearly placed right in front of you. I didn't even see that there!

Shaan Puri

Give us some of the wisdom bombs or insight bombs from the book. What are some of the key ideas or highlights that you think people should take away when they read the book?

Noah Kagan

alright sean I have a quote of you in the book I don't know if you actually said this though

Sam Parr

oh shit it's great

Shaan Puri

gonna ask

Sam Parr

you a while back alright

Noah Kagan

But, so, we kind of read this book like a tech startup. We did surveys, beta testing, and all this stuff. So, one of Sean's quotes... Sean, I hope you said this.

Shaan Puri

yeah I'm saying yes either don't worry I got your back

Noah Kagan

show me an experimenter and over the long run I'll show you a future winner

Shaan Puri

that's true I did say that

Noah Kagan

yes thank god

Sam Parr

I was

Noah Kagan

Gonna have to reprint and type tens of thousands of books. From the surveys that we've done and what people said, the number one thing is this: **just start right away**. But people get so... especially with you guys. I see so many people listen to your show and they're like, "I don't know. I want to listen to more shows. I need to go listen to these fake YouTube gurus that are out there that don't even run real businesses." But realizing they can actually do things right now. Like, how do I get a buck right now? Just go get a dollar. Venmo Noah at @NoahKagan. Go get it from a friend, go get it from your uncle. I think people are waiting to be ready, and they're just never ready. People like yourselves and me, who ultimately have gotten to somewhere of wealth, we're just doing shit.

Sam Parr

You used to have this course called the Monthly One K. I tell people there are two courses that I paid for that changed my life: Neville's Copywriting Course and then your Monthly One K course. I remember I bought this when I was 23 years old. I think it was $300, and it was a really big deal for me to buy that. I started a business based off of it that was making $1,000 a month, and then I shut it down. One of the first lessons in the book was to go to a coffee shop and ask for a discount. I was petrified to do that. I remember I was so afraid, but I did it. Then you talked about emailing people or calling people to get customers before you even build the thing. At the time, now everyone talks about that, but back then, it kind of blew my mind. During that period of my life, it was all about action. I don't know if I could show my feet here because I don't know if I can move... I won't even try it, but I went and bought basically a sewing needle. Do you guys know what a stick and poke is? Do you know what a stick and poke is, Sean?

Noah Kagan

sounds like a jail cell tattoo

Sam Parr

It is... listen, you get a sewing needle and you get the thread. You wrap it around the edge of a pencil so just the needle is sticking out. Then you go and buy India ink for $5. You dip the needle in the ink and you just put all these little dots. I've got the word "act" on my left foot and the word "now" on my right foot. This was when I was still partying and drinking a lot, so I was a little inebriated when I did this. But every day, I was like, "This course is so good." Every day when I wake up in bed and I could see my feet, I put my feet down at the edge of the bed when I get up in the morning. I'm going to see "act now," and that's my whole life, you know? At least my mantra for business. I remember taking your course, and I was like, "It's all about action. Forget planning! Business plans are stupid, business cards are stupid, LLCs are stupid. It's all about action."

Noah Kagan

and social media yeah

Shaan Puri

that's the roi sam that's the roi right there he made you get tatted up that's the roi

Noah Kagan

Dude, I thought he was gonna say his tattoo was "Act Noah." I thought he was gonna say "Noah, not now." Dude, those are some feet!

Sam Parr

Yeah, dude. Some people would look at it and they're like, "What's that?" And I was like, "Yeah, I got sat on the other foot." I just love testing.

Noah Kagan

He made an ass of himself. Yeah, no, I mean, so number one for the book: not how, just what. What can you do today? I don't think people realize how much more they can do in a day. The second thing is what you just said, which is the power of asking. The upside of asking is like, "I got it on a private jet." The upside of asking, and we teach it through the coffee challenge and other examples. The coffee challenge is what you did, which is you asked for a discount. So I did it. I did the coffee challenge last week. I made a YouTube video where I tried to do the coffee challenge. I got rejected a ton. And then, you know what? You get rejected, and you're like, "Oh shit, guess what? That's okay. Let's go forward."

Sam Parr

Dude, this is such an immigrant mentality, and this is why I love children of immigrants. Noah, you've got immigrants in your family; your father is one. Then Sean has an immigrant family too. Most of my best friends do. They all have this energy where they ask for things that I was so embarrassed to do. Then I hang out with Sean for a little while, and I see how he negotiates. I hang out with Neville for a little while, and it's just this shameless ability to go and ask for stuff. It totally changed my perspective. I used to be so embarrassed. I would go out to eat, and if I ordered a pizza and you brought me chicken parmesan, I'd be like, "Forget it, whatever, just give it to me." I'm not going to say anything to this person. I'm not going to complain at all. Then I started hanging out with these guys, and it totally changed my perspective on just being ruthless about asking for things. And it 100% worked.

Noah Kagan

I mean, that's all business is, right? Business is like, "Hey, will you be my sponsor for your guys' show?" or "Will you be my customer? Will you be my partner? Will you be my employee?" It's an ask.

Shaan Puri

So, at Camp MFM, this is a slide. I don't know if you can see it. This is Joe Gebbia, the founder of Airbnb, and he gave us an impromptu presentation off his phone. He basically had some old presentation he had given, and he kind of found slides on his phone. He started screen sharing from his phone onto the TV. He goes, "Oh, this was our sales formula." So, this is the Airbnb founder's sales formula: **SW² + WC = MO**. I don't know if you've ever heard that. He asked, "Has everybody heard this before?" and when no one responded, he explained, "So here's what it stands for: Some will, some won't, who cares? Move on."

Sam Parr

and he's like this is a sales formula

Shaan Puri

Once you realize that some will say yes and some won't, who cares? Move on. He's like, "Now you have the entrepreneurial sales formula, the ultimate formula that will serve you forever."

Sam Parr

did he tattoo that on his ass no

Noah Kagan

Do you know that Airbnb is featured in the book? It's also a great example of how to get started super quickly. Do you guys know how they started?

Sam Parr

on craigslist right they they they they they they had like a designers conference was in town

Noah Kagan

So, they had a designers' conference and they sent an email to the designers' conference saying, "Hey, does anyone want to stay on our couch?" That was how they tested the business that's now worth $100 billion. I think that when you start realizing there are other ways of doing this, you don't have to do it in some Silicon Valley funded way. You start realizing, "Oh," and Facebook started that way in a weekend. Airbnb did too, and a lot of other companies can as well.

Sam Parr

alright everyone a quick break to tell you about hubspot and this one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm a show you a real life example so I've got this company called hampton joinhampton.com it's a community for founders doing between 2,000,000 all the way up to like $250,000,000 a year in revenue and one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these cool surveys and so we have a lot of founders who have high net worth and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but provide a lot of value so things like how much the founders pay themselves each month how much money they're spending each month what their payroll looks like if they're optimistic about the next year in their business all these questions that people are afraid to ask but well we ask them anyway and they tell us in this anonymous survey and so what we do is we've created a landing page using hubspot's landing page tool and it basically has a landing page that says here's all the questions we asked give us your email if you wanna access it and then I shared this page on twitter and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey and I could see did they come from social media I can see did they come from twitter from linkedin basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from I'm able to track all of that and then I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of hampton in other words I can see how much revenue came from this survey how much revenue came from each traffic source things like that but the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it and a lot of times it takes a ton of work to make that happen hubspot made that super super easy if you're interested in doing this you could check it out hubspot.com the link's in the description and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can see the landing page and how it works and everything like that I'm just gonna do that call to action then and it's free check it out in the description alright now back to mfm so sean and I lived in san francisco for a long time he's still there we've had I probably have had 10 silicon valley friends and I imagine sean has had more and they message us and they're like hey you know I used to invest in vc stuff you know I I invest in startups and they'll see what sean's doing a little bit about investing in cash flowing businesses and they're like can you teach me how to do that that is so much better or like they they wanna just make profits now as opposed to you know waiting 12 years to sell business and there there is definitely the shift it seems like that's happening have you had that sean where a bunch of your friends are hollering at you about that

Shaan Puri

No, they're not asking how to do it. It's pretty straightforward. I don't think that's the question. But you are right that a bunch of... basically, it's the losers of the Silicon Valley lottery, right? The winners are like...

Noah Kagan

you know

Shaan Puri

You hang out with Joe Gebbia. He's not asking me about how to invest in cash-flowing businesses, right? He's not trying to find the next 10% compounding or whatever. But it's the rest of us—it's the 99% of the population—who played the Silicon Valley lottery for 10, 12, 15 years. Then we're like, "Alright, I am smart, but can I play a game with a little bit higher odds of success?" Because guess what? I don't actually need $3,000,000,000,000 to be happy. You know, I'd actually just like to be financially free. I'd like to use all this business knowledge I have, but in a way that's not 95% based on luck and variance, which is what I would call most Silicon Valley startups. So yeah, there's definitely a shift to doing things that just work—maybe buying companies that already work and making them work better. Also, people are realizing that it's a lot more fun to have money now than it is to maybe have money at an IPO 10 years from now. So sure, all those are definitely on trend as far as I can tell.

Noah Kagan

you said most of these companies succeed by luck and variance

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think if I put 100 of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room and I said, "You know, what ended up happening is that let's say 5 to 7 of them ended up doing the thing we were all trying to do." We're all trying to build a $1,000,000,000 company, and maybe 5 to 7 of them did it. I don't think it's because those 5 to 7 were smarter, more talented, or harder working than the other 100. What the two things that I think they did do are **project selection** and **market selection**. So, I think they picked the right idea in the right market. But it's not that they're better at doing that necessarily. It's not that those guys had a different insight or a higher skill at picking. You know, they happened to pick, or the thing that they were curious about happened to be on trend or happened to be the thing where the bigger opportunity was. So, I think that's one. The second is, you know, there are still like 12 plinko bounces of the puck as they go, right? Like, I'm talking to the Airbnb guy, and my biggest takeaway was this company should have died like 7 times. I actually give them credit because I think they are in the top...

Shaan Puri

O... one percent of grit and resilience. They actually had a different thing that pushed them through. But most of the people I know that made it, they didn't have the same number of times it could have failed once they got going, if that makes sense. So anyways, I guess I don't think out of the batch of 100 people that the difference between the winners and losers was intelligence, talent, or hard work. I don't believe that was the difference.

Noah Kagan

I would agree with that. I think these people figure things out, but it is interesting because right now we glorify this person that, like, it's not working for 100 years and then finally, like, the light bulb works. You know, it's interesting. We glorify that, but a lot of it is like, for you guys and myself, how many things have you guys done that did not work?

Shaan Puri

I mean, at least 15 to 20 projects that I've tried did not work, right? Some were a day project, and some were 2-year projects or 3-year projects.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I mean, I've done many, many, many things and like 3 have taken off, this podcast being one of them. So, like, 30 percent, or 10 percent, have worked.

Noah Kagan

I think we believe that people are smarter, though, Sean. We're like, "Oh, these people must know something I don't." I talked to a bunch of CEOs when I came back to AppSumo because I left for a few years. I remember I interviewed the founder and CEO of Udemy at the time, along with all these other famous CEO types. I was like, "These people aren't that much better than us." I think it takes some time to recognize that. Maybe they have more experience, which is something we can learn over time.

Sam Parr

You're fascinating right now, I think, because you run one of these companies that was talked about a ton when you first launched it. You were one of the early guys in this world with Tim Ferriss and Ramit. So, you're part of that kind of zeitgeist from 2008 to 2014, maybe. Then you started this company, AppSumo, which is like Groupon for software discounts. You've kind of been quiet, or at least the company has been quiet. AppSumo is one of those stories where you're like, "What's going on with AppSumo?" Then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it. Wherever you are, I don't know what you did in year one, but it's probably 10 years old now, and you're at $80 million in revenue. What I admire about AppSumo and what you've built there is that you've just done the same thing for about a decade or even more, and it's just been quietly crushing it. How long... how old is it?

Noah Kagan

so it's 14 year almost 14 years old it's going through puberty so we've got some growing pains here

Sam Parr

But it's been cool, though, to see that you're just like... I think that there are a few companies like this. One example, and I have no idea if this is true, is you know, you guys know **Hey.com** and **Superhuman**, the email software companies?

Noah Kagan

yeah they do

Sam Parr

I think there's a bunch of companies that get a lot of hype, and then they just get quiet for 5, 10, or however long it takes. They are quietly killing it and building.

Shaan Puri

the business I'll give you an

Noah Kagan

example of 1 card

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, about 7 to 10 years ago, it was really popular to create your personal website. There was "yourabout.me," and then there were platforms like Wix and Weebly. Those were hot YC startups that were doing their thing. Squarespace was on every podcast, advertising everywhere. Then Card came out, and it was just simple single-page websites. I still use Card today. I love this app!

Sam Parr

for what

Shaan Puri

Anytime I need to make a site, it is still the fastest way for me to create a website. I think Webflow is more popular, but Card is easier to use.

Sam Parr

it's what it's really hard though

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like I need to find... there should just be a blog for low IQ people. It's like, "Hey, if you're just... you know, let's be honest about where you're at, capabilities and talent-wise, this is the software you should be using." It's like Card is in that bucket of really, really, like, stupidly easy to use. They came out and they were kind of hot on Product Hunt and stuff like that, like in the kind of when indie hacking had a little moment. Then it kind of disappeared; nobody really talked about them for a while. I met the founder one time, and he told me the numbers, and they were just crushing it. I was like, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah, I know." He goes, "Actually, a really random thing happened. Every political movement started using Card." So, like during the campaign, like 2016 and 2020, thousands of websites got created using Card to promote election stuff or any cause. It became like a thing for causes. He's like, "Yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that." And now, yeah, I think they just raised like a venture round 10 years later. They bootstrapped for 10 years and then raised like a single round from investors because they kind of couldn't deny, like, "Hey, this is now much bigger than a two-person project. We should probably, like, I don't know, hire an employee and see what we can do."

Sam Parr

can do with this 2 people for 10 years right

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's this guy, AJ, and I think one other guy. Then that was it. Now they raised a little money and they're trying to go for it. But it was this company that you heard about, and then you just didn't hear about it for 7 years. That didn't mean it went away; it just meant it was out of, you know, TechCrunch or whatever.

Noah Kagan

I think there's something not talked about regarding longevity. It's about doing it over and over and over for a very long time. I think the second thing is really market selection. We've stuck with it for almost 15 years, but really, we also chose a good market. Software went from about 10 deals in our first year to now, there are over 100,000 software products out there, with more coming. So, when people are starting businesses, it's like, "Okay, well, is this something that's going to be bigger in the future?" And then, how do you at least be mindful of that as you start?

Shaan Puri

did you bootstrap

Noah Kagan

it or

Shaan Puri

Did you raise money? I bootstrapped. So you bootstrapped it for 14 years and $80,000,000. So it's profitable? I don't know how wildly profitable or just sort of profitable.

Noah Kagan

I can share the numbers I'm happy to to talk about it

Shaan Puri

okay great let's do it

Noah Kagan

In terms of net revenue, I think we ended with $76 something. That was the actual final amount at the end of the year.

Sam Parr

and that's like gross revenue meaning you give

Noah Kagan

a everything

Sam Parr

you give a percentage to the software companies

Shaan Puri

no no but you said net so that's after you paid out the software company right

Noah Kagan

Gross sales is $76.7 million. Net revenue was $56 million. Wow, pretty good! And then profit was $7.5 million.

Shaan Puri

and what do you do with that profit that's like noah's piggy bank or where where does it go

Noah Kagan

Yeah, no, no, it doesn't go there. So what we do is, it's been the same approach we've had. We copy Amazon. If you actually look at our net profit over the past literally 14 years, it's like a 0.5% net income margin. So what we do is, in Q4, we try to spend all the profit we have so that every year gets bigger and bigger. We take everyone on the team to Mexico, invest in ads, servers, sponsorships, if we can, hiring investors, prepaying for things—whatever we can within tax rules. We also pay the team distribution, and then whatever's left after that, my partner and I get some distribution.

Sam Parr

what so what what's what's confusing about that

Shaan Puri

What's confusing about that is, what's the... Wait, so you're including... you're paying yourself out of me, right? Like, what's the point of running this business for 48 years without the profits? That's my question.

Sam Parr

He included his dish distribution, and then you prepay ads for the next year.

Noah Kagan

Yeah, you try to invest everything as much as you can. Theoretically, if you think it's a positive investment, then the next year is bigger.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but it's pretty hard to do that. We do that for our e-commerce business. It's pretty hard to pay $7,000,000 ahead of time. So, what's the big chunk there?

Noah Kagan

No, we spent like, I think, almost $2,000,000 distributed back to the team just so that they have bonuses. What was interesting, though, is that for the first five years, I didn't pay myself anything. It was like, how do I put everything back in? Even though we were doing pretty good in terms of the business, the business hit right away, which most businesses don't. You guys know that, right? You try a lot of things, and not all of them work. But after, I think, year six, I was like, "I got nothing to show." I don't think I'm going to go public. No one's trying to buy us. I'd like to have some money in the bank, so I think...

Sam Parr

Were you broke? I mean, because like before this, you'd ran what was it called, Gamekick or Kickclip?

Noah Kagan

kickclip was one of them and then gambit

Sam Parr

And then you were with Mint, and then you were famously with Facebook. Were you cash poor for a long time?

Noah Kagan

No, I've never been broke. I had $1,000,000 at 30 from day jobs. I think that's kind of not recognized by most people. Meaning, one, I was super cheap. I lived on floors for a year; that's a good way to save money. I lived at my mom's house and at my aunt's house, just as cheap as possible. I did get two paydays. One payday was from the Gambit Payments Company, so I think I made around $350,000. That was payments for Farmville and all those annoying games, and then the conferences. So those, plus just being really conservative with the cash, meant I had about $1,000,000 liquid around 30.

Shaan Puri

Could you tell the Facebook story? I know you've told this before, but like I said, I think a lot of this is buried in your blog. Nobody's reading blogs anymore, and so I don't want this to be lost.

Noah Kagan

mean blogs

Shaan Puri

I don't want the story to go untold. What happened with Facebook? How did you kind of blow like a $100,000,000 payday? It was more of a few $100,000,000 paydays. Every year it gets worse.

Noah Kagan

also it was a good it was thanks for rubbing it do you know this word schadenfreude

Shaan Puri

yes yeah pleasure in other people's pain right

Noah Kagan

It's like one of my favorite words. They have a word for that. I think it's just kind of the wild thing about it. I mean, you know, it's funny. I posted on Twitter some of these old Facebook memories with me and Zuck, Moskovitz, and Bosworth, who's now the CTO, or Chris Cox, Charlie Cheever, Adam D'Angelo. It was, you know, Arrington from TechCrunch. It was a special time, man. It was a really special time.

Shaan Puri

so how did you get there what were you doing what was it like and what happened

Noah Kagan

I worked at Intel. I had a day job, but I was always building stuff on the side. I was always kind of just doing things. For example, I built CollegeUp.org, which was like Craigslist for college students, but no one used that. Then there was NinjaCard.com, which offered discount cards for college students, and that did really well. I was also putting on conferences. At 27, I was basically just really wanting to get the hell out of a day job and have my own business. So, I sent in my resume cold, but the differentiator was that I sent in mock-ups. I took Facebook and created a concept for a Facebook Maps feature. I showed how it would look if you wanted to go see your friend. They were impressed and said, "Wow, you have a bunch of businesses for college students, and you're showing us what you would do here."

Shaan Puri

And you're not a designer, right? So you're scrapping these mock-ups together. You paid somebody... what'd you do?

Noah Kagan

No, that was myself. I think I was either using Google Slides—I don't even know if that was around—or probably Microsoft Paint. I'm talking super basic. It doesn't have to be fancy. Google Slides and Canva are probably the best free tools you could use today. Did you?

Shaan Puri

just cold email zuck or who how how who'd you send it

Noah Kagan

No, no, no. I was going to quit Intel in December because I was waiting for my health insurance to kick in. I wanted to get my HSA payment, and then I just saw the job listing there. I didn't know anyone there.

Shaan Puri

And so, you send that in. They're like, "Cool." What was your first impression walking into the office? I guess, what was it like back then? Because what year was this for Facebook?

Noah Kagan

This is 2005. I think one of the things for people out there, if you want to get a job, which I think could be cool, is just to go look at what you're using all the time. You know, if you listen to a podcast or if you're working on a product. To be clear though, it is work. People think that at AppSumo they're like, "I'm gonna come party with you guys." You don't realize that 90% of our day is sitting on a computer working. Yes, we do a lot of cool stuff, but when I came in there, it was chaotic. I mean, I posted one of these photos; it was a good memory where there were cables everywhere, the desks were kind of all over the place, but it felt like there was something special happening. It felt like, "Holy shit, we're on a mission that no one else is a part of, and we know where this is going." Then we have this truly fearless leader who seemed like a savant. He's definitely awkward as hell, but I was really impressed by what he was able to do and how big he was thinking about what this company could be.

Sam Parr

what numbers were was he throwing around

Noah Kagan

Yeah, so a few crazy things that people forget. He copied ConnectU. I don't know if anyone remembers this, but in a weekend, he copied someone else and then emailed it out to his dorm. That's how it got going. So, I think people think these big companies start very complicated. No, he copied someone else, launched it, it worked, then he kept going and changed his vision. Some of the crazier things that I recall was at a very early time, he rejected a $1,000,000,000 sale. Now, maybe that sounds like a lot or a little, but imagine, like, Sean, you're what, 30-something? 31? 35? Yeah, 35. You're 24 years old, and there's someone saying, "Hey, I'm going to give you $1,000,000,000." This is Yahoo. I think all of us would take that in a heartbeat.

Shaan Puri

I I took a $100,000 job so I think I was gonna take the $1,000,000,000 to offer to

Sam Parr

I heard this crazy story where, I think it was Yahoo, that was offering to buy them. Zach is sitting there, and all the Yahoo executives are talking to him. They make the offer, and he says, "Hey, can you guys leave the room so we can discuss this?" Peter Thiel is in there, and the executives leave the room. Everyone's looking at Zuck like, "Alright, so let's take this." He goes, "So I just wanted to sit in here and pretend like we're talking about this because obviously we're not going to take this deal."

Shaan Puri

by the way you're totally making this up

Sam Parr

that's not what happened I and that's what I heard I I read a blog post

Shaan Puri

On it, the story is they got the offer. Then there was the next board meeting. At the next board meeting, he was like, which is where Peter Thiel and others were, "Okay, but housekeeping, we gotta discuss... you know, we're supposed to talk about this. Got this offer, obviously not gonna take it." And they were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe we should. Mark, that's a lot of money. We should talk about this." That's what they said. But even that, I think, is Sean.

Sam Parr

don't let facts get in the way of a good story

Shaan Puri

Well, I think there's even more revisionist history, which is interesting here. Because then later, there's another story that Zuck actually accepted an offer from, I think it was Yahoo... or Microsoft? I don't remember. Then they reneged. They came back and tried to negotiate down. So, like, you know, he took $1.2 billion, and then they came back and said, "No, it's going to be like $900 million" or something. There's another story like that. None of these are congruent because Peter Thiel tells the story, right? That's where that was the source of that story. He was just trying to say how Zuck is this, you know, visionary... you know, balls of steel, turned down the $1 billion offer. But then there's this other story where he kind of took it. I'm like, well, did he want revenge because they negotiated him down? I was like, but wait, he said yes. So, I don't really know what the truth is, but I know there's a lot of this BS in startup lore where people make up stories that make somebody sound more brave or a hundred percent...

Noah Kagan

I would... you know, someone asked me a few days ago, "Is that good or bad?" I think it's good. I think people might have a negative impression, but he was ambitious. At least when I was there, he had good intentions of being ambitious. It wasn't like, "I need to manipulate the media." He's probably like, "What are you talking about? It's just an algorithm. I don't know, like change it up again, we'll fix it."

Shaan Puri

No, can I ask about the environment? Because I remember once, when I lived in San Francisco, I was doing a startup. I thought I was doing it; I thought, "This is it! We're just like every other startup. We're in the race, we're in the hunt, we're gonna make the next big thing." Then, I went to a friend's office who was also doing a startup. They actually had product-market fit, and the market was pulling their product. They were growing faster than they could handle. Yes, I walked into that office, which was smaller and way less nice. It wasn't super organized. They had people sitting on the floor, and there were just people everywhere. There were cables everywhere. It was like a different vibe.

Sam Parr

is the company still around

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it actually sold for a few hundred million dollars. So, I walked home and I remember thinking on my way home, "Oh, fuck, we're just playing house." That's what it's supposed to feel like when it's working. I didn't even actually realize it until I stepped foot in there, but that's a totally different energy. They have it, and we don't. Did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office?

Noah Kagan

I felt it 100%. I've been lucky to feel it a few times. At Mint, I felt it. AppSumo feels it, and I think inside Facebook, one of my bosses got fired the day I started. So, I walked in and my boss was walking out, which was really strange. You know, I just left Intel, where I had 8 meetings a day and all this training. It was horrible. I go into a room and Zuck's like, "Your boss Doug, who ended up founding GoodRx." You guys know GoodRx?

Sam Parr

yep oh wow

Noah Kagan

It's pretty, pretty impressive. I just fired him because he wanted... a lot of guys from Facebook came from Yahoo, and he tried to sell the company. It's my company; I fired him. Welcome to Facebook! Then I just grabbed literally a corner of a desk and thought, "Alright, what should I work on?" It was literally a stark contrast from Intel, where everything is regimented. I think the thing that was interesting that others didn't know is that we saw the internal metrics about the growth. We knew there was something happening that others didn't see. In terms of numbers, I think we were at 10 million the day I started, and by the day I got fired, it was about 50 million. So we just saw that, like, "Wow, this growth!" But the threats were serious. Google was a threat, which people, you know, kind of forget today. MySpace was a huge threat, and obviously now those things aren't even really talked about.

Sam Parr

What were you doing with the math when you were thinking about how much your stock's eventually going to be worth? Were you like, "Man, this might make $10,000,000"?

Noah Kagan

My whole thing was that I just thought the equity was going to be insanely valuable. I didn't know at mint; I had a very specific number I thought it would sell for, which I was accurate about. There, Facebook, I was like, "I don't know the limit," because Zuck's vision was to connect the entire world. His whole quote was, "We want to be a tollbooth for the internet." I remember that, and it was inspiring. Even at AppSumo now, I'm like, "Okay, what are we excited about?" We're excited to promote software. We love promoting software. It's like his was, "I want to connect the entire world." Can you imagine showing up to work and he's connecting the entire world? What he did was a lot of really clever things, such as how to reduce all distractions. He paid for all of our parking tickets, he paid for all of our cleaning, he paid for us to live close, he paid for like everything. So all we had to do was focus on work.

Shaan Puri

And that wasn't so... it was normal back then, right? Like, it was super abnormal. Parking tickets and being like, "Hey, just bring your laundry here." Shit, like, shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just work. Because when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast, Jack Smith said this the other day. We were hanging out and he goes, "I like how he just has no disregard for social norms." We were like, "How'd you hire this guy?" or "How do you train people?" And he's like, "They move in with me, basically. I attach them to my hip. They follow me everywhere. We work seven days a week." And then after six months, like, "Now you could start to give your ideas because you have now fully absorbed me." And they're like, "Alright, well, I don't think I could do something like California labor laws. How does this work?" And I think it was right. The absolute disregard for social norms I've now learned is a very, very positive attribute or signal.

Noah Kagan

in highly highly successful people sounds like zuck was kinda like that too I don't know

Shaan Puri

if that I think asking you know is like zech was kinda like that too I don't know if

Noah Kagan

That I think asking and doing things that you believe in. I think you guys are very good at that. But there's also, I think, negatives. Like, I remember this guy, Dan, who died in a bike accident. A tree fell on him during one of the workdays while he was biking, and a tree killed him. I’m like, okay, are we going to put a bike rack outside? Are we going to have a moment? There was not even any acknowledgment. It was like, "Let's just work." I just thought that was insane.

Sam Parr

yeah I mean there's a price to pay for being crazy like that right like there's pros and cons

Noah Kagan

Yeah, I mean, it's special to be a part of it. You have to think, like, we had Harvard PhDs in customer support. Imagine that! People who wanted to be there so badly. It doesn't matter your degree; you just come work there. So, being in that environment was really special. I got to learn and see all this amazing talent that was there and that has left to go do really cool things.

Shaan Puri

and so why did they fire you

Noah Kagan

it's funny I was actually looking at the pictures I was fired at basically because of coachella

Shaan Puri

like you you dipped out

Noah Kagan

I was drunk and high at Coachella, and for me, I was blogging about Facebook because I was so excited about it. I think you should go find things you're excited about and tell the world about them if you think they're good things. That's how I've always felt about the stuff I do. I let Arrington at TechCrunch know, "Hey, Facebook's opening up to Microsoft and corporate emails in the morning. I think you should write about it and talk about it," because Facebook wasn't going to do any press. He wrote about it that night. Then, I emailed Zuck and somebody from their team, letting them know what I did. I think it was that, and then I also felt frustrated. You guys have seen these people where, for me at 30, it was like, "No, just figure things out." So I was like, "Alright, I'm going to help build mobile with Slee, or I'm going to help build ads, or I'm going to help do the status update thing," which they didn't even want to do. It was just fun. There was a lot to do there. I was also probably more immature, and as I got older and it grew, I didn't want to be in meetings. I didn't want to do Excel project management. I didn't want to have long discussions with 30 people about basic ideas.

Sam Parr

when did it become corporate

Noah Kagan

I mean, at that? It was 150 people. It felt very corporate to me. It felt very... you know. And if you look at Facebook, what's the last great thing Zuck has done since 2005 besides acquiring other people? What has he come up with? Portal? That was a flop. Like, name one thing he's actually done besides making good decisions in acquiring people. I'd say that.

Sam Parr

He had just gotten bigger. I mean, that's why Facebook's great. It's because everyone uses it; I mean, it's so big. I remember when Sarah, my wife, worked there. They were like, "We're doing this thing in India where we put blimps or drones up in the sky." I was like, "Why are they doing that?" They said, "Well, because the only people who aren't on Facebook are the people in India who don't have internet. So we're just gonna go give them free internet so they can use Facebook." I mean, his relentless drive towards growing to everyone is what he's done.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and stuff like, you know, the part thing is the bigger you get, the harder it is to move the needle. So it's like, the marketplace is super successful, but kind of like, who cares? It's like, yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook. It's fine, you know? They need us. They need to do something so big, right? That's why it's like the metaverse or AI. They have to go on these huge waves just to kind of move the needle for how big Facebook is.

Noah Kagan

I think what was really interesting for people to consider in their own businesses is the core. It's really great because, like Facebook Marketplace or Facebook Events, I was really excited to grow, improve, and monetize early on. However, he was just against it completely. I noticed that with AppSumo, where our core business is to find cool products, get a deal on them, and promote them. That's it, right? But it gets very exciting to think, "Alright, could we do MRR? Could we explore all these other options?" But really, it's about can you do the core excellently and then start adding new things later.

Sam Parr

So, you've had this video where you went on a plane with this guy who I think was a commodities trader. I believe that's what he said. I assume he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I know that you have a bunch of friends who are billionaires. You told me ahead of time that most billionaires you know are unhappy. What can you tell me more about what you've noticed while hanging out with some of these uber-successful people?

Noah Kagan

most of them didn't set out to be billionaires like you hear people online like

Sam Parr

I wanna be a billionaire

Noah Kagan

It's like almost every billionaire I know, and I've worked for them, or multi-multimillionaires, was just like, "Here's something I'm curious about or excited about." Yes, maybe in private equity or finance, but a lot of the entrepreneur ones were just about stuff they're curious about. All of them got rich in one way or another. Like, I was just at FedEx this morning because I interviewed the guy from Kinko's. He just focused on copiers, that's it. But a lot of newer entrepreneurs I've seen are ones that haven't had as much success. They're like, "I'm gonna do 5 different solopreneur startups this weekend." It's like, okay, you can test 5, but which one's working? Let's just do 1. These billionaires just did 1, but they tell us to diversify. I think that's always fascinating for me because they do one thing. And this is, again, we kind of come back to the AppSumo story: they stuck with it for a very long period of time. Think about any billionaires you know. How long did it take?

Sam Parr

yeah I mean 20 years 30 years a lifetime a life a a career

Noah Kagan

A lifetime... A lifetime! And we're trying to get rich in a weekend or, you know, crypto-rich in a month. I think the slow, compounded growth over long periods of time is what doesn't get recognized.

Sam Parr

sean didn't you say that was like your major takeaway from your camp mfm

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I wouldn't say it exactly like that, but when I was talking to Jimmy, I was like, "Yeah, I think the thing I'm, you know, most... the thing that's standing out to me the most as I get out of my bubble, I reassess, I reflect—it's the start of the new year—is I think I'm spending so much energy, but I'm spreading it out. I'm spreading it too thin, and that's a mistake. Like, I'm doing more and getting less." I put it differently. I said, "I think you have a thousand times more opportunities coming to you every day, and you've said yes to half the things I have. So something's wrong here." I think, in general, the more successful you get, the more opportunities you get, but the more things you should—and you should be saying no to. I think Hormozi said a nice thing about this that I thought resonated. He goes, "Let's say you're making $10,000 a month, and now somebody comes and offers you something that's going to make you $1,000. It's pretty easy to say no; you have a going rate. If you're making $100,000 a month and somebody comes to you and says, 'Here's something that'll make you $10,' it's easy to say no. The hard thing is when you're making $100, and somebody comes to you and says, 'Here's the thing that can make you $100,' and you're like, 'That's my rate.' But what happens is you've now split your focus, and you're basically losing life balance. You're also doubling down on the amount of work that you have to do, only to get, you know, one more unit compared to where you were. He's like, 'The best people, the smartest people, they basically, when they're at the $100, they don't say yes to the next thing that can get them $100 or $200. They will only say yes to something that might get them, you know, 10x more than that.' So the right way to do it is to basically say, 'Alright, this gave me the right to say no to certain things.' The hardest one to say no to is the one that's at the current level where you're currently at. The people who really break out and get to the next level are the ones who are able to say no, stay focused, until they see something that is truly a 10x better opportunity than what they have.

Noah Kagan

so how are how are you changing this year

Shaan Puri

Well, I just said "no" to a bunch of things. I shut down two of the projects I was working on that were working, but they were more in that "one x one x" type of category. Every day, I basically start my day with the first three hours because I was like, you know, the main thing I want to focus on is making great content. It's the thing I love doing the most; it's the thing I think I'm best at. But the hard part is, a deal comes on the table, and now I'm spending the first eight hours of that day working on that deal, or that investment, or that opportunity, or that new idea. So, I just carved out that the first three hours of the day, I'm only doing content. I was like, "Cool, I want this to eventually be eight hours, ten hours a day." But the thing I can control is that for the first three hours, I'm not going to say yes to anything else. I'm only going to say yes to this. The cool part is, as soon as you do the first three hours, you have so much momentum. The natural thing to do is just to keep going. So, that's been very effective so far.

Sam Parr

Where are you, Sean? When are you going to start making content? Like, when you keep saying "content creation," are you talking specifically about text? Are you talking about text-based content?

Noah Kagan

blogging is coming back

Shaan Puri

SeanBlogger.com. Come back! All ideas are on the table. Right now, I'm just prototyping. I'm basically trying to figure out which one I enjoy the most. I knew I would enjoy podcasting because I listened to a ton of podcasts. I had prototyped it before this podcast; I recorded two other podcasts. One was with my roommate and brother-in-law at home, where we talked about sports, but I never released it. There have only been three listeners ever: it's me and the two guys I did it with. Then, I did another podcast at my office when I was doing a startup. It was me, Furkan, and a couple of other guys. I think there are three episodes up on YouTube somewhere, but nobody ever watched them. However, doing that, even though those podcasts went nowhere, showed me, "Oh man, I really like doing this." How cool would it be if I could actually do this all the time? Or if people actually listened to it? Man, that would be amazing! So, I had prototyped it and felt it out before I knew that it was something I wanted to do. When I say new content, I'll dabble with, let's say, short form or I'll write a brief to a book, like an outline to a book and the first two chapters. I'm trying to understand, "Do I want to write a book or not?" I don't need to commit to that because I can prototype it and feel it out first.

Sam Parr

You definitely should go the book route. The problem with the book route, Noah, is that you've seen it seems so **fucking hard**. It seems so hard! Everyone I know who writes a book describes it exactly how my friends who run marathons do. They complain constantly while they're in training. They say the race is miserable, and then about two weeks after the race happens or the book goes live, they go, "Alright, I think I want to do this next book on this topic." I'm like, man, I just heard you complain for two years! You've been talking about this freaking book for years. I think it's been way longer than four years, actually. I remember you talking about how you wanted to write a book forever, and it took four freaking years to do this thing. Do you think it's going to be worth it? What's the ROI going to be?

Noah Kagan

I like it. I'm proud of it. I think it's, first off, and you know, coming back to... well, the ROI on that, I think it's going to impact people. I think one person at a time. I've already seen it, right? I've seen people read it and I'm like, "Holy shit, really?" You know, even I think with these things, like what you guys have done with your show and Sean's, like what you're exploring with your content, it's like... what's something you're excited to do? And that's kind of hard, right? Like, no one's ever proud of themselves like, "Yeah, I wrote... I walked 5 feet." But if you run a mile or if you run a marathon, you're like, "Damn, that was hard, but I can actually do this." And I think that, to me, was really the ultimate ROI in this book. Thinking, "Can I actually face myself and work on a book and help other people?" And then, "Can people do it for themselves?"

Sam Parr

dude why did you become so political

Shaan Puri

what do you

Noah Kagan

mean we're like I'm it's called

Sam Parr

You're like a politician, my friend. Let me tell you a story about old Noah. I remember one time, there was a coworker I worked with, who Sean, you are friends with. We went to this meeting, and Noah shows up shirtless. He's got no shirt on; he's in his house, I think he's on his couch. I'm like, "Noah, what the fuck are you doing, dude?" He was just like a crazy madman. That's actually what made him brilliant. He would do all this crazy stuff and executed it really, really well. But now, when I ask what the ROI is of this, you're showing so much evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this stuff.

Noah Kagan

well one thank you I think we should all

Shaan Puri

change people's lives back then too just in a different way one nip at

Sam Parr

a time yeah

Noah Kagan

One nip at a time. I've also... I was going to talk about my inverted nipples, which I'm very self-conscious about. Okay, no, I mean look, I'm maturing. Do I want to show up shirtless? Maybe, if we're hanging out in our sauna, like, come over. But I think as you get older, you also realize what kind of behavior you want to exhibit, and I think that's fine. Regarding the book, I think people have these like **bullshit ROI** things, like "I want to help a million people." I don't give a shit about that. I don't. But I am happy if like 1, 2, 5, 1,000, or 10,000 people read the book and do something for themselves.

Sam Parr

Noah, we appreciate you doing this, man. I forgot to... I should have plugged this earlier on, but I'm buying... how many books am I buying? 30? 50 books?

Noah Kagan

something like

Sam Parr

That’s so I bought a bunch of books. I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up in the list. So, if you go to **antiamba.com** between now and February 15th, anyone who gives me their email, I'll randomly pick 50 of you guys and send you a link to buy the book for free or to enter your address in, and we'll send you the book. I'm excited to see you do this! I hope you impact some people, which I know you will. But also, the ego side of me is like, hopefully, you rank on some type of bestseller list, which I know is also pretty cool. We appreciate you doing this! What do you want to plug? It's called **$1,000,000 Weekend**. You're Noah Kagan on Twitter, **AppSumo.com**, Noah Kagan on YouTube. Am I missing any other plug?

Noah Kagan

no man it's book

Shaan Puri

By the way, Noah, I had an experience like this that shifted my life. I'm a testimonial for this. Even before your book came out, I was working on my very first startup. We were working on it for like 9 months, trying to get everything right. We literally had a 300-page business plan. It was embarrassing! But now that I look back, we thought that meant we were doing everything. We were dotting every "t" and crossing every "i." At a certain point, I looked at my co-founder, who is my roommate and friend, and I said, "Dude, I feel like we just keep telling everyone we're doing a business, but we don't actually do any business." He was like, "What?" And I said, "How long have we been sitting here with this whiteboard and this plan? We have no revenue. We've never made a dollar! I can't believe this." We just kept tricking ourselves into thinking that this was legit. I had just read *The 4-Hour Workweek*, and I said, "Alright, this weekend we are gonna make money. I don't care how." We set a goal for $1,000. I said, "We're gonna try to make $1,000 in the next... basically, it was Friday, and we were gonna make it by Sunday night. I don't care how. Let's go!" Instantly, just by having that intention, things started to fall together. We made a website, found a product on Alibaba, and got it drop-shipped. We made our first sale. We sold basically a few hundred of these customized wristbands, like those fat Livestrong bands, to someone whose parents were having an anniversary. We charged them about $4 or $5 each, and we made $1,000 in one weekend. I felt like the champion of the universe! I was like, "This is what business is supposed to feel like: taking action, actually going out there, trying to sell a product, moving fast. You don't need to try to perfect everything. You don't need a 300-page plan." After that, my whole game shifted just from that one experience. I haven't read your book yet, but I sense it. I'm gonna read it, but I already, like, in my soul, am on board with what you're all about.

Noah Kagan

dude I did that wristband business too that's so crazy

Shaan Puri

they they were hot at the time right like every kid was wearing them my every college kid was wearing them

Noah Kagan

But I think the thing you called out, which is interesting and awesome, is that you said, "Hey, I'm gonna do something," and I have this limited time. You have 52 of them, right? So especially if you guys have kids and all this stuff, you don't have a lot of time. But you can make an hour or two in a weekend to do something. Then look at what you did in a weekend, which you didn't do in months.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, exactly. Look at what you did on the weekend that you didn't do in months. That's exactly how it felt. Then I was like, I either can go back to the old way or I can go this new way, this action way. The action way became the way. And that, you know, basically became... I don't know, like Sam, it's so funny you have that tatted on your feet. It's been tatted in my brain. That's like the only thing, you know? I remember literally looking around. I was at Duke, and there were a bunch of smart kids at Duke. I thought when I was in high school I was the smart kid. Then you go to a college with all the smart kids from those high schools, and you realize, "Oh, you ain't shit." And I was like, "Alright."

Noah Kagan

yeah

Shaan Puri

Am I just going to be like forgettable average? Because that's where this is going. I was like, am I really going to get smarter than these people? I don't have any special talents that nobody else has. But I realized that a lot of smart people are overthinkers. They hesitate, they doubt, they overanalyze. I was like, that's my thing. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to immediately take action, and that will be the difference. That will be my thing, and I could just... that will be the bedrock that I can build any kind of success on, rather than trying to be like a special snowflake that was, you know, predestined to do great things. And that just became my motto.

Sam Parr

I've still got the needle bro we can change that we can we can do that

Noah Kagan

Let's talk about it. Well, Sean, most people who've listened to the show want to make a million, but they don't ever make a buck. They never even make that $1. That's where they have to get off the grass.

Sam Parr

that's that

Shaan Puri

That was bars, dude! That was great. So, like, good lyrics, nice words. Thank you, like, bro.

Sam Parr

you're a 40 year old youtuber how do you not know these things

Noah Kagan

I'm learning the vocabulary, but dude, I read this good book last night. Sam, you inspired me with it. It's called *The Art Thief*, and it's about a guy who steals art. One of the things he said that stuck with me is, "What's the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning?" I do respect that. I love that you're like, "Well, this is the area I want to improve," which you saw on your feed. I don't see my feet first thing in the morning, but it's like, put something on your bedside. Put something out where you're like, "This is the first thing I see in the morning." Maybe it's Sean's face, maybe it's a million dollars, or maybe it's something else. But I love that idea.

Sam Parr

I'm getting my whole legs done. You know, I've got a kid now, so maybe I'll do her name. But I've got "Bold, Fast, Fun" tattooed on my thighs because BFF—that's kind of what I live for when it comes to business. I've got a pirate ship. Is that...?

Shaan Puri

bro live laugh love is bullshit

Sam Parr

yeah I mean that's true

Shaan Puri

moved to austin and I found myself yeah

Noah Kagan

I did the work sean it's self love

Sam Parr

Yes, I did. You did the work, dude! Congratulations! Well, you know the reason I like homemade tattoos is that you do what you want. When I found out that when you go to tattoo shops, you basically find an artist that you like and you're like, "Here's kind of what I want." And they're like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want." You're too embarrassed to tell them exactly what you want because you want to impress them. So, I basically have a whole bunch of tattoos on my legs and all throughout my body that I was just trying to impress Hector, my tattoo artist. So, that's pretty much how it works when it comes to tattoos. No, we appreciate you coming. We'll wrap here. That's the pod.