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Welcome Noah Kagan from AppSumo/SumoMe

Ask me anything!

MJ DeMarco

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Guys, I'd like to welcome Noah Kagan @N.Kagan to the board who has agreed to grace the forum with his presence and do an AMA sometime this week. Woo hoo! Some of you may know Noah from his AppSumo and SumoMe businesses.

Here's his bio:

Noah Kagan keeps doing cool stuff (so he thinks) and eating tacos.

He started his career as a corporate drone at Intel for 14 months, then without any connections he became Facebook employee #30 and then Mint.com employee #4.

Since then he's started 2 businesses (payments for Facebook games and currently AppSumo.com) that have made a lot of money but personally he's made way less than you imagine.

The latest product of his company is SumoMe.com, which are tools to grow your web business. The help you get more traffic (hooray) or convert those people into potential customers (emails). Check it out now.

He's a fan of parenthesis and happy to share what's worked (or not) with his own businesses over the past 7+ years.


It's also his birthday this week as well -- still very much a young dude who's out in the trenches of entrepreneurship, doing great things, and definitely making a name for hiumself.

Ask away!

(PS: It might be 24 hours or so before they're answered as I totally screwed up the date/time on this-- I don't expect him to be dillying here on his Bday.)
 
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MoneyDoc

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Welcome to the forum Noah! Woohoo!!! (can't wait).
 

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Noah is the man. I've purchased a bunch of stuff from AppSumo (mostly software during deals) but I've always been happy with what I get. Looking forward to the AMA.
 

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@N.Kagan,

Welcome to the Forum!

What type of market confirmation metrics do you like to see that let you know you have a viable business opportunity?

Thanks, Noah.
 
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evlttwin

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First thing I ever saw of Noah a while ago was this interview. I'm a fan.

 

pro

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For Noah, how did you make most of your money?

How are you deriving most of your revenue now?

How are you investing your capital?
 

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Hi Noah,
How do you bounce back from setbacks? Please describe your process, i.e. what do you tell yourself, what you believe about getting smacked down, etc.
 
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eliquid

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Noah, hello.

I can't seem to escape you Noah. From being an early AppSumo customer, to being one of the first people to buy SumoJerky on LinkedIn from you, to personally working with J. Shaw & D. Yoo from UCellar who talked about you all the time.. now you're here too!

Glad to have you doing an AMA.
 
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Hey Noah! During one period of time I've watched hours of invterviews with you and talks in which you participated. I really liked that what you said actually made sense: validating the business instead of just doing something for 6 months hoping it works. One thing though - how do you come up with the validation ideas? I've watched your "How to Start a Business and insult engineers" video and I have no idea how did you come up with the validation plans so quickly. Teach me master? (please?)
 
G

GuestUser113

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Hey Noah! During one period of time I've watched hours of invterviews with you and talks in which you participated. I really liked that what you said actually made sense: validating the business instead of just doing something for 6 months hoping it works. One thing though - how do you come up with the validation ideas? I've watched your "How to Start a Business and insult engineers" video and I have no idea how did you come up with the validation plans so quickly. Teach me master? (please?)

http://okdork.com/2014/04/15/how-you-can-accidentally-start-your-own-company/?hvid=2VGN7z
 
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Welcome, Noah! Hey, I really enjoyed your podcast interview with James Altucher, and I plan to listen to your 2013 interview with Pat Flynn as well. You should be a guest on John Lee Dumas' excellent Entrepreneur on Fire!

What do you think of podcasting specifically and media creation in general as a business model? What are the pros and cons in your mind?

Why don't you have a podcast, and if you did, how would you monetize it?
 

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Noah, hello.

I can't seem to escape you Noah. From being an early AppSumo customer, to being one of the first people to buy SumpJerky on LinkedIn from you, to personally working with J. Shaw & D. Yoo from UCellar who talked about you all the time.. now you're here too!

Glad to have you doing an AMA.

Jason. Always sexy to see your face. Super appreciate having you with me on this journey too!
 
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csalvato

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Hey Noah, glad to see you on here. Haven't spoken to you since you gave some input on some FB campaigns I was running last year for my handstand book! :)

My question: How were you able to inspire your highly capable team to drop what they were doing at cool companies like Mint.com and join you on the path to Sumo awesomeness?

A good team is invaluable, and I would love your opinion on what it takes to build a great startup team.
 

bane

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Hell yeah!!! Noah is outstanding. I met him here in Australia at a meetup at Blue Chilli, Sydney and he is a great dude. He helped validate a business idea @codo3500 & I had called StuntFund, where Jared copped some slaps in the face for money haha.

After being enlightened by MJ's book and beginning the "entrepreneurial path", Noah is the guy who made the concept of Validation to me super clear and actionable. Thank you Noah!

Question for Noah:
Are you actively pursuing becoming a billionaire? (simply curious - no hidden agenda)
To expand: Do you make the bulk of your decisions based on reaching a quarterly, yearly, 5 year or 10 year (etc.) financial target?

Thanks
 

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should be fun to be in this one...
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Happy bday @N.Kagan - enjoy the hottub. ;)
 

noahkagan

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Hell yeah!!! Noah is outstanding. I met him here in Australia at a meetup at Blue Chilli, Sydney and he is a great dude. He helped validate a business idea @codo3500 & I had called StuntFund, where Jared copped some slaps in the face for money haha.

After being enlightened by MJ's book and beginning the "entrepreneurial path", Noah is the guy who made the concept of Validation to me super clear and actionable. Thank you Noah!

Question for Noah:
Are you actively pursuing becoming a billionaire? (simply curious - no hidden agenda)
To expand: Do you make the bulk of your decisions based on reaching a quarterly, yearly, 5 year or 10 year (etc.) financial target?

Thanks
I totally loved seeing that guy get slapped =)

No, I don't focus on becoming a billionaire. There's nothing I don't have already. I live in a small apartment and drive an unreliable Mini Cooper named Taco.

Generally, I make decisions on what will be most fun. What I'm doing with SumoMe now vs what we've done historically is thinking where I want it to be 3-5 years out where normally I target just 1 year.
 
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noahkagan

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Hey Noah, glad to see you on here. Haven't spoken to you since you gave some input on some FB campaigns I was running last year for my handstand book! :)

My question: How were you able to inspire your highly capable team to drop what they were doing at cool companies like Mint.com and join you on the path to Sumo awesomeness?

A good team is invaluable, and I would love your opinion on what it takes to build a great startup team.
Chris

I love your stuff too!

Hiring has been one of the HARDEST things about AppSumo. I've probably hired and fired 50+ people. It never gets easier.

That's one of the lessons I've learned the past 6 months is that in most things there is no "hack" or shortcut. It's just a grind and you try to figure out some ways to be smarter but most of the time it's just hard work.

With the team currently, the guys are awesome. I believe with SumoMe cause we are working on something significantly bigger than ourselves that really is changing the web, it's very inspiring to want to work on it everyday. The reach that the product has for the team is an amazing thing to be a part of.

For the most part I try to leave the guys (and girl) alone to do their things. They are extremely capable. I just spend my time getting them food and removing whatever is annoying them.

Once people have a clear goal which we always just have 1. I let them be to do their part of it. It's really great when they come up with ideas that I couldn't have even imagined. This happens a lot =)
 

noahkagan

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@N.Kagan

Awesome you joined the forum! I've always loved your conversational approach to everything.
Thanks brother!
Hey Noah! During one period of time I've watched hours of invterviews with you and talks in which you participated. I really liked that what you said actually made sense: validating the business instead of just doing something for 6 months hoping it works. One thing though - how do you come up with the validation ideas? I've watched your "How to Start a Business and insult engineers" video and I have no idea how did you come up with the validation plans so quickly. Teach me master? (please?)
Hey Mark Anthony Le

For validating any business, it's really simple but people WANT to believe its more complicated so they can avoid starting.

Here's the formulae: (yes, I'm using the British version to sound fancy)

1- What's the problem you are actually solving?
2- Who's the customer that has that?

You break down anything to those 2 elements and you have a business.

Feel free to run any idea and we can practice in the forum.
 

noahkagan

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Welcome, Noah! Hey, I really enjoyed your podcast interview with James Altucher, and I plan to listen to your 2013 interview with Pat Flynn as well. You should be a guest on John Lee Dumas' excellent Entrepreneur on Fire!

What do you think of podcasting specifically and media creation in general as a business model? What are the pros and cons in your mind?

Why don't you have a podcast, and if you did, how would you monetize it?
I love Pat.

I think podcasting is great and it's getting a lot of attention currently cause people put out their income reports. It's a different medium. I love about it that you have a captive audience for 30-60 minutes, the downside is taking action / tracking becomes harder cause most of the time the person is not at a computer or on a phone to be a consumer. The other downside to me is distribution around growing a podcast. There are a ton of articles.

I don't podcast cause there are a ton already. As well, I prefer to look for things that not everyone else is doing. For monetizing, I would look at the relevant sponsors of podcasts that'd be similar to mind and contact those people via LinkedIn or ask the podcaster for an introduction.
 
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Threenuc

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Thanks brother!

Hey Mark Anthony Le

For validating any business, it's really simple but people WANT to believe its more complicated so they can avoid starting.

Here's the formulae: (yes, I'm using the British version to sound fancy)

1- What's the problem you are actually solving?
2- Who's the customer that has that?

You break down anything to those 2 elements and you have a business.

Feel free to run any idea and we can practice in the forum.

Woah, the formulae (yep, fancy) are pretty nice! Makes it kind of a no-brainer. I'll use it in this post :)
So say I wanted to be a dog food wholesaler (picking something I think is kinda hard to validate, not passionate about dog food, ha)
1- What's the problem you are actually sloving?
Some store owners can't find the products they want in their wholesaler's catalogue (in theory)
2- Who has that?
Animal store owners, maybe supermarket managers

I'd ask animal-related store owners if they wanted to sell some product but couldn't find it anywhere and then ship it to them, what do you think Noah? The only problem here is that a manufacturer might not want to sell me only 10 of the same product (because MOQ and so on).

Thank you for your advice! Really nice to be able to speak with you :)
 
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MJ DeMarco

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I don't podcast cause there are a ton already. As well, I prefer to look for things that not everyone else is doing.

Bingo. I thought about Podcasting some years ago until I saw the huge influx of people doing it. I don't go where there are crowds. And it's also why I don't really use my blog anymore and stick to the forum. The forum isn't as widely used as a medium of dispersion, so I put my energy here. I'm not interested in being a "me too".

Great to cya here!
 

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Hey @N.Kagan,

It is really great to have you hear man :) Can the philosophy "look for 3 paying customers within 48 hours" work on ideas or prototypes? For example I don't have the product yet, but I can contact and ask the potential customers for feedback and directly ask if they would use the product.

Thanks,
 

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