AppSumo CEO Noah Kagan reflects on operational mistakes made while scaling Sumo.com, particularly moving upmarket and raising prices.
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”
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.”