The Ledger
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Kagan predicts Google Analytics will be disrupted and lose significant market share
“So one of the easy ones I think is going to easily get its ass kicked is Google Analytics.”
Kagan bets his new DocuSign alternative will make $1M within a year
“And then I believe, I would bet, I'll bet a million dollars, it'll make a million dollars in a year.”
Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook to meet women, not for billions, says Kagan
“Like Mark didn't start Facebook. I'm going to be a billionaire. It's like, ah, let me see if I can meet some chicks online. If we're honest. Right. And I worked for him. So I know that stuff.”
Scaling AppSumo to 13,000 products dropped gross margins from 50% to 30%
“And so we went from 600 to 13,000 products within six months on the site and our revenue stayed the same, but our profit went down, right? Because now we have different margins. So some products have Better margins than others. So we went from normally like a …”
Kagan reveals AppSumo reached $80M in annual revenue as a bootstrapped business
“Once they start working, you know, for AppSumo, it was like, we did some of you, it worked right away. It was like first year, 300,002nd year, three million, but then it was flat, you know, for a few years. Like 4,000,004 1,000,005 1,000,004. Then it started p…”
Kagan observes it takes an average of 20 years to become a billionaire
“These billionaires, they all took 20 years. I was looking at all of the ones I've interviewed and the ones I've worked for. It's about 20 years you ever take on average for them to make a bill.”
AppSumo has been profitable since day one without venture capital
“I think more with raising money, we never really had a good use for it because we did have capital and we were profitable from day one.”
Bootstrapped AppSumo generates annual revenues in the high eight figures
“Like, you know, our revenues are in the eight, you know, very high eight figures.”
Kagan: Publishers avoid green business book covers due to industry superstition
“What was really interesting, if you go look on Amazon or a bookstore, there's no green business books. Which is kind of funny given that a lot of business is about money. They think it's taboo or bad luck, but we tested it and I also like the color myself.”
Kagan: Castmagic reached $1M ARR in less than a year
“There's a tool on AppSumo called CastMagic. I think in less than a year, they had a million ARR.”
Kagan: MaryMakery generated $50,000 in its first year selling greeting cards
“I just talked to someone who read million dollar weekend. Her name's Mackenzie. I got to give her a shout out. Mary makery.com. You know, if everyone's going one direction, so she's a greeting card business, 50,000 dollars her first year.”
Only six of Kagan's 1,300 book launch team members made a referral
“Like, we tried for the book, I did a referral program. Like, hey, if you, I had a launch team for the book. And I was like, all right, bring one person. So there's a 1300 person launch team. And I said, if you could bring one person, I'm going to do a dedicate…”
Kagan's early Facebook hockey app hit 1M users in a week
“So I copied the most popular app in, in one category that had the least competition, which was a soccer app. And I made a hockey app and I chased it and it went viral a million users in a week. And then I launched a bunch and then Naval wanted to fund me and o…”
Andrew Chen modeled the economics behind AppSumo's shift to individual deals
“AppSumo used to be bundled software deals. And then we went to individual daily deals and it's not just cause that's what Groupon did. It's cause we literally like had to go understand that we looked at the economics of bundles. Andrew Chen put it together. He…”