Noah Kagan
Founder & CEO, AppSumo · 2 appearances on the record.
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Noah Kagan is the founder and CEO of AppSumo and was an early employee at Facebook and Mint. He is also the author of Million Dollar Weekend and produces business and marketing content across YouTube and podcasts.
22statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 3.86/5average certainty → 1.64/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 50said about them ↓
1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
4 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 11 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Noah argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Noah Kagan on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Noah Kagan said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Noah Kagan: Brex and Ramp are overvalued $10B branded credit card companies
“I think some of the stupidest companies that are big that I don't get is like Brex or Ramp. They're like credit card branded companies that are like ten billion dollars.”
Noah Kagan: Companies like Facebook and Airbnb started in a weekend
“Facebook started that way in a weekend. Airbnb did. A lot of other companies can too.”
Noah Kagan: Leaking email expansion to TechCrunch led to Facebook firing
“And I let Arrington at TechCrunch know like, Hey, Facebook's opening up to at Microsoft and at corporate emails in the morning. I think you should write about it and get and talk about it. Cause Facebook wasn't going to do any press. And he wrote about it that…”
Noah Kagan: Billionaires build extreme wealth focusing on one business over decades
“All of them got rich as well in one way. 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…”
Noah Kagan bought 5M WordPress plugin installs to launch Sumo.com
“So when we launched sumo.com, I actually bought probably about five million installs. I think give or take five million installs of WordPress plugins. So I bought like some of the most popular WordPress plugins around.”
Sponsoring creators under 10K subscribers is prime underpriced growth arbitrage
“Like if I was trying to grow a newsletter I probably would go try to sponsor like super micro people on Tik Tok and YouTube. Like these guys that are guys and girls that are like sub 10,000 subs. Like if your channel has like 966 subscribers, like you'd be a p…”
Noah Kagan: Wealthy founders succeed through immediate action, not waiting
“And I think people are waiting to be ready, and they're just never ready. And people like yourselves, me, who ultimately have gotten to somewhere of wealth, We're just doing shit.”
Noah Kagan: Business fundamentally reduces entirely to making asks
“Business is like, Hey, will you be my sponsor? For your guys show necessarily, or will you be my customer? Will you be my partner? Will you be my employee? It's an ask.”
Noah Kagan: AppSumo did $76.7M gross, $56M net, $7.5M profit
“So gross sales is 76.7 net revenue was 56. Pretty good. And then profit was 7.5.”
Noah Kagan: AppSumo kept a 0.5% net profit margin over 14 years
“So we copy Amazon for, if you actually look at our net profit over the past literally 14 years, it's like .5% net income margin.”
Noah Kagan admits knowing AppSumo would take ten years would deter him
“Like for me, if you would have told me when I started AppSumo, like, hey, no, you'll be a millionaire, but it's going to take 10 years. I probably wouldn't have started.”
Noah Kagan: Reached $1M liquid by age 30 through extreme frugality
“No, I, I've never been broke. I had a million dollars at 30 from day jobs. I think that's kind of, like, not recognized by most people. Meaning, one, I was super cheap. Right? So I lived on floors for a year. That's a good way to save money. Lived at my mom's …”
Noah Kagan budgeted $500,000 for his YouTube channel production team in 2022
“We'll spend about half a million dollars on just the team this year.”
Noah Kagan's YouTube channel generated $121,800 in first-year AdSense revenue
“Last year on AdSense. We made a 121,000 dollars to 800 and year one. In our year, first hardcore year of having a team around.”
Noah Kagan paid $100K for a WordPress plugin with 1M installs
“For the Google analytics one, they had a million sales. I paid a hundred K.”
Noah Kagan lost $25K acquiring a Chrome extension he failed to monetize
“I think I bought it for 25,000 for 40,000 installs active installs on Chrome. But with that one, we could not monetize it at all. We tried like paid features. We tried ads to it. We tried to grow it. And we were not as successful. So I pretty much lost almost …”
Noah Kagan: AppSumo pays roughly $60 to acquire a paying customer
“I think we're paying like 60 dollars for a paying customer now.”
Noah Kagan left Mint early because his equity upside capped at $2M
“I thought mint was going to sell for that price. That's why I left early.”
Noah Kagan claims DTC beverage brand MudWtr generates $60M in annual revenue
“I think he's, I mean, last we heard it was a sixty million dollar revenue, which revenue is always different than profit, as I'm sure you know.”
AppSumo generated $2M on Black Friday, paying over half to creators
“Black Friday was our highest day. Almost two million dollars in that one day on Black Friday, which we paid out half of that at least half of that to creators, which is fucking wild.”
Noah Kagan actively invests in public software companies that AppSumo utilizes internally
“So when we were building Shopify apps five years ago, I was like, I don't know if our Shopify apps are going to work, but I'll put 10,000 dollars in Shopify stock when it just started. So if our apps suck, I think the Shopify thing will probably work. And that…”
The other half of the tape: Noah Kagan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 44 times in 16 episodes on My First Million. 6 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Parr 37Codie Sanchez 5Shaan Puri 1Jason Yanowitz 1
Statements about Noah Kagan, by other people (6)
Parr: Noah Kagan lost $100M in unvested equity when Zuckerberg fired him
“Noah was the 32nd or 30th employee employee... And Zuck goes to his desk and he goes, you're fucking with my company. You're out. And he fires him on month nine. So Noah was three months away from his first invest. And Noah's told me, he goes, had I just made …”
Sam Parr: Business plans, business cards, and LLCs are stupid
“Business plans are stupid. Business cards are stupid. LLCs are stupid.”
Parr: AppSumo will hit $100M gross and $50M net revenue
“Noah Kagan runs this company called AppSumo. It's a weekly email where you get deals on software this year. They're going to do a hundred million in gross revenue of which like, 50, fifty million is their revenue.”
Parr: AppSumo will generate over $80M in revenue in 2021
“Their goal this year was a hundred million in revenue. They're gonna miss it by a little bit, but he said they're gonna get north of eighty million in revenue.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2024 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- Everything I Learned From 48 Hours With MrBeast (The +$1B Mindset) (#539)
- Jesse Pujji on Bootstrapping a +$1B Business + Selling To The Ultra Rich
- You Have 70 Days to Win the Year
- Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas
- 3 Underdog Stories That’ll Get You Inspired This Week
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 30 mentions in 9 episodes 3 per episode
- How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, QVC for Mobile, and More
- How Virtual Horses are Making Millions & A Potential 9-Figure Company | My First Million #181
- How to Buy Distressed Assets, How to Network with Codie Sanchez | My First Million Ep. #176
- MFM #160: How to Build a Paid Community Making $20M a Year
- Half-Baked TV Show Ideas, Miss Excel Making Millions, The Adventure Challenge, and More
- Fitness Hotels, Steel-Manning, and Why the Creator Economy is Overhyped
- Why You Should Have a Diversified Investment Portfolio | My First Million #214 with Ramit Sethi
- 4 Big Trends and $0 to $1 Billion Startup Idea Frameworks | My First Million #191
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2021 →
Appearances (2)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| How This +$80M Founder Launches A Startup In A Weekend | ft. Noah Kagain (#546) | Feb 2, 2024 | 14m |
| Brainstorming The Best Business Ideas To Start In 2022 with Noah Kagan | Jan 18, 2022 | 37m |