Insight
Kagan: Sponsoring hyper-niche and international creators beats paid ads on ROI
“Don't go to me. Go to the person whose audience is, like, hyper engaged on a really tight subject, And even if you want to be even more creative, go to different languages. So we have people crushing it in Spanish, crushing it in Portuguese. And it's like when…”
Disclosure
Noah Kagan: AppSumo team spends roughly $30,000 per YouTube video
“I mean, we're spending on per video, I don't know, maybe 30,000, if you look at salaries, and editing, and thumbnail designer, and consultants, and all this different travel stuff”
What-if
Kagan: Sumo.com could have hit $20M ARR by keeping $20/mo pricing
“If we just would have stayed on that price point and that customer, it could be a twenty million dollar ARR, maybe more in that space.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: Sumo.com peaked at $6.5M ARR and had a $30M offer
“We peaked at six and a half million. We, and we were getting offers, like, I think around thirty million. I think we had like a thirty million dollar offer.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: Sumo.com sold in a seven-figure deal at roughly 1x ARR
“They were willing to pay, I think it was around one X ARR for the business. ... So it was a seven figure sale”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: AppSumo will reach around $80M in revenue 13 years after launch
“We launched 300,001st year. Second year, three million. Third year, four million. And then it was basically three to five million for the next three years. And then this year it'll be around eighty million. 1313 years later.”
Insight
Kagan: Paying elite advisors $1,000 hourly is an underused startup cheat code
“Like, we have, you know, elite advisors that you could actually pay a thousand dollars an hour, a little more, and get access to 10,000 an hour people. That's like such a super, super cheat code that people don't use enough.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: AppSumo margins plummeted from 15% to 2% during marketplace expansion
“We went from 15% margin to around two percent margin of the business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: AppSumo cut monthly payroll from nearly $3M to $1.2M
“Our teammate cost per month, we call them teammates, not employees. Today it's about 1.2 million a month. I think we got it up to two and a half, three million.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: TidyCal drives nearly 25% of all new AppSumo buyers
“Ours is tidy cow, which brings in, I think it's around almost 25% of all new buyers come through tidy cow into the AppSumo ecosystem.”
Insight
Noah Kagan: Commit to the 'Law of 100' before quitting any initiative
“With the YouTube channel, I commit to, it's called the law of 100, which is do a hundred of it, and then quit. Or make the decision to quit, because we quit too soon. I quit my podcast. I've restarted it, and I'm, I've stuck with it, but I quit it too soon. I …”
Disclosure
Kagan: AppSumo spends $500k monthly on profitable direct marketing
“And we spend about a half a million dollars a month around that and it's all profitable.”
Assertion Supported
Kagan: SumoMe bought the Sumo.com domain for $1.5 million
“It was Sumo me, and then we bought the domain after seven years for a million and a half”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: Calendly competitor TidyCal has grown 5x this year
“And I was telling you tidycal.com, our calendar, Calendly alternative is crushing. It's like five X growth this year. And that's one of about 10 products that we've launched on the original team.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: AppSumo spent a year recruiting and 18 months training its CEO
“One, we spent a year recruiting, and then we spent 18 months training.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan earned $2M-$3M annually while stepped back from AppSumo
“I mean, I was making two to three million dollars a year,”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: AppSumo rebounded to around 12% margin after refocusing
“And this year though, we've definitely gotten back up to, I think around 12% margin, reduced a lot of the distractions that I was doing, and then just focused on the core of the business”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kagan: Around 30% of AppSumo customers recognize him from surveys
“We've surveyed, and around 30% of people that buy at AppSumo know who I am.”
Noah Kagan