How This +$80M Founder Launches A Startup In A Weekend

I w I was in the sauna this morning thinking about you guys and I was just I was just thinking of how grateful I am just there's so many cool people, I don't know, just across our paths across our whole life. Just made me kinda a little emotional, but also just happy. We're supposed to get touchy feely at the end, not uh not at the beginning. YouTube stats show that touchy feeling at the end works, but at the beginning people just bounce.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'll put my law in it like my day song. All right, Noah, we're live. We've got Noah Kagan, one of my dearest friends, one of the OGs of internet marketing of entrepreneurship on on on the uh on the internet. One of my uh Inspiration. So you run this company called uh Appsuma. It does like eighty million in revenue. Now you're a YouTuber. You have what, one point something million subscribers. And you're here to promote a book which you've clearly placed right in front of you.

I didn't even see that there. W give us some of the the sort of wisdom bombs or insight bombs from the book. So give me give us some of the the the key ideas or highlights that you think uh you know You want people to take away when they read the book.

All right, Sean, I have a quote of you in the book. I don't know if you actually said this though. Oh, yeah. But uh so we we kinda read this book like a tech startup where we did like surveys and beta testing and all this stuff. And so one of Sean's quotes Sean, I hope you said this. Yeah, saying yes either way. Don't worry, I got your back. Show me an experimenter and over the long run, I'll show you a future winner. That's true. I did say that. Thank God.

I was gonna have to I'm gonna have to reprint the entire tens of thousands of books. Uh From the you know what I will say from the surveys that we've done and what people said the results that they got. Uh, number one thing is this now not how idea.

And it just means just fucking start right away. But people get so especially with you guys see so many people listening to your show and they're like I don't know, I wanna listen to more shows. I need to go listen to these like fake YouTube gurus that are out there that don't even run real businesses. Uh, but realizing they can actually do things like right now. Like, how do I get a buck right now? Just go get a dollar. Venmo Noah at Noah Kagan.

Go get it from a friend, go get it from your uncle. 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. You used to have this course called the Month One K. I I tell people there's two courses that I paid for that change my life. And it was uh Novel's copyright course, and then it was your monthly one K course. I remember I bought this when I was twenty, twenty three years old. I think it was three hundred dollars and it was like a really big deal for me to buy that.

And I started a a a business based off of it that was like making thousands of dollars a month and then I shut it down. And one of the first lessons in the book was to go to a coffee shop and ask for a discount. And I was

Petrified. to do that. I remember I was so afraid to do that. But I did do it. And then You talked about uh emailing people or calling people and getting customers before you even build a thing, which at the time

Now everyone talks about that, but at the time I was like that was it kinda blew my mind. And during that period of my life, it was all about action. And so I don't know if I could show my feet here'cause I don't I don't know if I can move. Well, I won't even try it. But I got I I I went and bought I got uh Basically a sewing needle. Do you guys know what stick and poke is? Do you know what a stick and poke is, Sean?

Sounds like a jail cell tattoo. It is. Listen, you get a sewing needle. And you Get the thread and you wrap it around the edge of a pencil. So just the needle is sticking out. And then you go and buy India Inc. for five bucks. And you dip it in the the the the needle and you just

put all these little dots. And I've got the word act on my left foot and the word now. on my right foot. And this was when I was still partying and drinking a lot. So I was a little I was inebriated when I did this. But and I was like every day this cour I was like this course is so good. Every day when I wake up in bed and my and I could see my feet and I put my feet down at you know at the end of the bed at the edge of the bed when I get up in the morning, I'm gonna see act now. And that's my whole like life. you know, for business at least, my mantra for business and I remember it like taking your course and I was like it's all about action, fuck planning.

Business plans are stupid. Business cards are stupid. L Cs are stupid. It's all about action and social media. Yeah. That's the ROI, Sam. That's the ROI right there. He made you get tatted up. That's the ROI. Dude, I thought he was gonna say his tattoos act Noah. I thought I was gonna say Noah, not now. Dude, those are some feet. Yeah. Dude, some people some people would would look at it and they're like What's A C T and I was like, Yeah, I got SAT on the other foot. I just love testing. Be mad on his ass. Yeah. No, so number one for the book Now Not How, just what can you do today? And I don't think people realize how much more shit they can do in a day. The second thing is what you just said, which is the power of asking.

Like the upside of asking is like I got on a private jet. The upside of asking when we teach it through the coffee challenge and other examples. Coffee challenge is what you do, which is you ask for a discount. So I did it I did the coffee challenge last week. I did a a YouTube video. Where I try to do the coffee challenge, I got rejected a ton. And then you know what, you get rejected, you're like, Oh shit, guess what? That's okay, let's go forward.

Dude, this is such an immigrant mentality and this is why I love or children of immigrants. Uh no, you're you're you've got immigrants, uh your your father and then Sean as uh an immigrant family, most of my best friends do. They all have this energy where they ask for shit. That I was so embarrassed to do. And then I hang out with Sean for a little while and I see how he negotiates. I hang out with Neville for a little while. It's just like this. This shameless ability to go and ask for stuff. And it totally changed my perspective with I was I used to be so embarrassed. Like, I would go out to eat and if you if I ordered a pizza and you brought me like Chicken Parmesan, I'd be like, nah, fuck it. Whatever. Just give it to me. I'm I'm not gonna say shit to this person. I'm not I'm not gonna complain at all. And then I start hanging out with these guys.

And uh it totally changed my perspective on just being like ruthless about asking for things and it and it one hundred percent worked. I mean, that's all business is, right? Business is like, Hey, will you be my sponsor for your guy's show, necessarily? Or will you be my customer, will you be my partner, or will you be my employee? It's an ask. Uh so at Camp M FM um So this is a slide. I don't know if you can see it. So This is Joe Gabby, the founder of Airbnb, and he he gave us a uh impromptu presentation off his phone. So he had a he basically had like some old presentation he had given

that he kinda like found slides on his phone he started s he basically started screen sharing from his phone onto the TV. And he goes, um, he was he was like, Oh, this was our sales formula. So this is the Airbnb founders sales formula and it's S W squared. Plus

W C equals M O. I don't know if you can If you've ever heard that, he's like anybody heard this before? Like no, he goes Yeah. So here's what it stands for. Some will.

Some won't. Who cares? Move on. And he's like this is the sales formula. Once you realize that Some will say yes, some won't. Who cares? Move on. He's like, now you have the entrepreneurial sales formula, the ultimate formula that will serve you. But did he tattoo that on his ass?

No. Do you know that Airbnb Airbnb is like l it's it's featured in the book. It's also a great example of how to get started super fucking quickly. You guys know how they started? Cr on uh Craigslist, right? They they they they they had like a designers conference was in town. So they had a designers conference and they sent an email. to the designers conference saying, Hey, does anyone wanna couch? That was how they tested the business. That's now worth a hundred billion.

And I think that when you start realizing like there's other ways of doing this, you don't have to do like some Silicon Valley funded way. You start realizing like oh and Facebook started that way in a weekend. Airbnb did. A lot of other companies can too. So Sean and I lived in San Francisco for a long time. He's still there. We've had Uh I probably have had ten Silicon Valley friends and I imagine Sean has had more. And they message us and they're like, Hey

Uh, you know, I used to inv invest in V C stuff, you know, I I invest in startups. And they'll see what Sean's doing a little bit about investing in cash flowing businesses and they're like Can you teach me how to do that? That is so much better. Or like they they want to just make profits now as opposed to well, you know, waiting twelve years to sell business. And it there there is definitely this shift, it seems like that's happening. Have you had that, Sean, where a bunch of friends are hollering at you about that? Uh no, they're not like asking me how to do it. It's pretty straightforward how to do it. I don't think that's the question. I think uh but you are right that a bunch of basically it's the losers of the Silicon Valley lottery, right? The winners are like Yeah, you tell you hang out with Joe Gebie, he's not asking me about how to invest in cash flowing businesses, right? He's not He's not he's not trying to find, you know, the next uh

Ten percent compounded or whatever. Uh it's but it's the rest of us. It's the 99% of the population who played the Silicon Valley lottery for 10, 12, 15 years. And then we're like, All right, I am smart, but Can I play a game with a little bit higher odds of success? 'cause guess what? I don't actually need

Three trillion dollars to be happy. Um, you know, I I'd actually just like to be financially free and I'd like to use all this business knowledge I have, but in a way that's not Ninety five percent based on luck and variance, which is what I would call most Silicon Valley startups. And so yeah, there's definitely a shift to doing things that just work. Uh, maybe buying companies that already work. And making them work better.

And also uh people realizing that it's a lot more funny to have it's a lot more fun to have money now than it is to maybe have money on an IPO ten years from now. And so sure, th all all those are definitely on trend as far as I can tell. You said most of these companies succeed by luck and variance? Yeah, I think if you put if I put A hundred uh

of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room. And I said, uh, you know, and what ended up happening is that let's say five to seven of them ended up doing the thing we were all trying to do. We're all trying to build a billion dollar company and maybe five to seven of them did it. I don't think it's because those five to seven were Smarter or more talented or harder working than the other hundred.

Um What the two things that I think they did do is Project selection, market selection. So I think they pick the Right idea in the right market. Um

But it's not that they're better at doing that necessarily. It's not that they those guys had a different insight or a a a A higher skill at picking. um you know they they happened to pick or the thing that they were curious about happened to be on trend or happened to be the thing that where the bigger opportunity was. So I think that's one. Um

And the second is you know the the There are you know, still like twelve You know Plinko bounces of the of the puck as they go, right? Like we're talking to the Airbnb guy, my biggest takeaway was. This company should have died like seven times.

And I actually give them credit'cause I think they are in the top point oh one percent of like grit and resilience that they actually did have a different thing that Pushed them through. But most of the people I know that made it it They didn't have the same

l uh number of times it could have failed once they once they got going, uh if that makes sense. So Anyways I I guess. I don't think out of the batch of a hundred people that the difference between the winners and losers was intelligence or talent or hard work. I don't believe that that's what was the difference. I would agree with that.

I think these people figure things out, but it it is interesting'cause right now we glorify this person that like It's not working for a hundred years and then finally like the light bulb works. You know, it's it's interesting we glorify that, but a lot of it is like For you guys and myself, how many things have you guys done? That did not work. I mean at least

Fifteen twenty projects. that I've tried that did not work. Right. Some were a day project and somewhere two years projects or three years. Yeah, I mean I'd I've I've done many, many, many things and Uh Like three have

Taken off. This podcast being one of'em. Yeah. So like Thirty per Ten percent have worked. I think we think that the people are smarter though, Sean.

We're like, Oh, these people must know something I don't know. And like I I talked to A bunch of CEOs when I came back to Appsumo'cause I left for a few years. And I remember s I interviewed like the founder of the CEO of Udemy at the time and all these other like famous kind of CEO people. I was like, these people aren't that much better than us. And I think we that takes some time to recognize though. And then you it does maybe they have more experience, which is stuff we can learn over time.

You're fascinating right now, I think, because You've you run one of these companies that was talked about a ton when you first launched it because you were one of the early guys in You you're kinda in this world with Tim, Ferris, and Ramee, and so you're part of the kind of the zeitgeist in two thousand and eight to two thousand fourteen, maybe. And then you started this company Appsumo, which is like Groupon for software discounts.

And you've kind of been quiet, or at least the company has been quiet, App Sumo. But it's one of those stories where you're like What's going on with that Suno? And then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it. Uh, wherever you know, I don't know what you did in the year one, but it's probably 10 years old. You're at 80 million in revenue. And what I admire about app sumo and what you've built there is that you've just done the same thing for about a decade or even more.

And it's just been quietly crushing it. How long, how old is it? So it's fourteen year almost fourteen years old. It's it going through puberty. So we've got some growing pains here. But it but it's been it's been cool though to see that you're just like

I think that there's a few companies like this. I uh like one example, and I have no idea if this is true, is like you know, were you guys know Hay dot com and Superhuman, the email software companies. No, they don't. I think there's a bunch of companies that like they get a lot of hype and then they just get quiet for five, ten, however long years. And they just are quietly killing it and building the business. I'll give you an example of one card. Oh yeah. We talked about it. About seven to ten years ago, it was really popular to create like your

Your personal website. Right. You're about to me. And then there was like Wix and Weebly, and those are like hot YC startups that were, you know, that were doing the thing. Squarespace was like on every podcast. advertising everywhere. Um And then Card came out and it was just simple single page websites.

I still use Card today. I I love this love this app. For what? Any time I need to make a site. It's a it is for me still the fastest way to make a website. Like I think Webflow is more popular. Probably. Cards easier to use. It's really hard, though. Yeah, like I need to find there's there should just be a blog for low IQ people. It's like hey If you're just you know.

Let's be honest about where you're at capabilities and talent wise. This is the software you should be using. It's like card is is in that that bucket of really, really like stupidly easy to use. And They came out, they were like kind of hot on product hunt and stuff like that, like in the kind of when indie hacking was like it had a little moment. Then they kinda disappeared. Nobody really talking about them for a while. And I met the founder one time.

And he's told me the numbers and they were just crushing it and I was like, What? And he goes, Yeah, I know He goes actually uh a really random thing happened. He's like Every like political movement. Uh started using cards. So like during the campaign, like twenty sixteen, twenty twenty.

Thousands of websites got created using card. To promote like election stuff or any cause. It was it became like a thing for causes. Um He's like, Yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that period. And now

Yeah, and I think they just raise like a venture round ten years later. Like they bootstrap for 10 years and then raise like a single round. from investors'cause they kinda couldn't deny like, hey, this is now much bigger than a two person project. We should probably like, I don't know, hire an employee and and see what we're doing. Yeah, they had two people for ten years, right? Yeah, it's this guy AJ and I think one other guy, then that was it. And then now they raise a little money, now they're trying to go for it.

But It was this company that you heard about, then you just didn't hear about it for seven years, but that didn't mean it went away. It just meant like It's out of you know, tech crunch or whatever. I think there's something not talked about about longevity. Right, like just doing it over over and over and over and over and over for a very long time. I think the second thing is really market selection.

Right, like we've stuck with it 15 years almost, but really it's also we chose a good market, right? Like software went from 10 deals our first year. Give or take to not like how many software products out there? A hundred thousand? Plus. And more coming. Uh, and so suddenly when people are starting businesses, it's like, Okay, well, is this something that's gonna be bigger, maybe, in the future? And then how do you at least be mindful of that as you start? Did you bootstrap it or did you raise money?

Bootstrap. So you've bootstrapped it. Fourteen years in, eighty million. So It's profitable. I don't know how wildly profitable or just sort of profitable. I can share the numbers. I'm happy to talk about it. Okay, great. Let's do it. In terms of net revenue, I think we ended It was seventy six something was the actual final at the end of the year. And that's like gross revenue, meaning you give everything.

You give a percentage to the software companies. But you said net. So that's after you paid out the software company, right? So gross sales is seventy six point seven Net revenue was fifty six. Wow. And then profit was seven point five.

Mm. And what do you do with that profit? That's like Noah's Piggy Bank or wh where does it go? Yeah. No, no, it's it doesn't go there. So what we do is it's been the same approach we've had. So we copy Amazon over if you actually look at our net profit over the past literally fourteen years, it's like Point five percent net income margin?

Uh, and so what we do is in Q four, we try to spend all the profit we have so that the every year gets bigger and bigger. So Take everyone on the team to Mexico, ads, servers. Sponsorships if we can, hiring investors, prepaying for things whatever we can within tax rules. I then pay the team distribution and then whatever's left after that, then me and my partner get some distribution. Wait, what? So what's what's confusing about that?

Uh what's confusing about that is um What's the point? Wait, so you're but you're including your paying yourself out of it, right? Like what's the point of running this business for fourteen years without the profits is my my question. He he included he included it just dish distribution and then he prepay ads for the next year. Yeah, you you try to invest everything as much you can theoretically If it's a w if do you think it's a positive investment so that the next year's bigger Yeah, but it's pretty hard to do that. I we do that for our econ business. It's pretty hard to pay seven million dollars ahead of time. So what's the bigger?

No, we spend like I think almost two million dollars distributed back to the team. Just so that they have bonuses. Um And for the first five just for what was interesting, though the first five years I didn't pay myself anything. Right. It was like, how do I put everything back in? Even though we were doing pretty good in terms of the business. Like the business hit right away, which most businesses don't. You guys know that.

Like you try a lot of things and not of them work. Uh, but after I think year six, I was like, I got nothing to show. I don't think I'm gonna go public. No one's trying to buy us. Like I'd like to have some money in the bank. So I think were you broke? I mean, because like before this you'd ran um what was it called? Game kick. Uh or Kickflip. Kickflip was one of them and then Gambit.

And then you were with Mint, and then you were famously with Facebook. Um, were you cash poor for a long time? No I I've never been broke. I had a million dollars at thirty 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 house, lived in my aunt's house. So just as as cheap as possible.

I did get two paydays. One payday was from the Gambit Payments Company. So I think I made around three hundred and fifty thousand. That was payments for Farmville and all those annoying games. Uh and then the conferences. So those plus just being really conservative with the cash. Like it was about a million dollar liquid.

Around thirty. Can you tell the Facebook story? I know you've told us before, but Like I said, I think a lot of this is buried in your blog that people nobody's reading blogs anymore. And so I don't want this I don't want the story to go untold. What what happened with Facebook? How did you Kinda.

below like a hundred million dollar payday. It was more of A few hundred million dollar payday. Every year. I think it's also a good it was a good it was thanks for rubbing it. Did you know this word short in Freud? Yes. Yeah. Pleasure in other people's pain, right?

It's like one of my favorite words. It's like they have a word for that. I think is just kind of the wild thing about it. I mean, you know it's funny, I posted on Twitter some of these like old Facebook memories with like me and Zuck and Dot Moskowits and Bosworth, who's now the CTO, or Chris Cox. Um Charlie Cheaver, Adam D'Angelo. It was it was, you know, Errington from TechCrunch. It was an it was a special time, man. It was a really special story. So how did you get there?

What were you doing? What was it like and what happened? Uh, I worked at Intel, had a day job, but I was always building stuff on the side. So I was always kind of just doing things like Built collegeup.org. Crigs for college students, no one used that. NinjaCard.com discount cards for college students. That did really well.

Uh then I was putting on conferences. So entrepreneur twenty seven. I was basically just really wanting to get the hell out of a day job and and have an on uh My own business. So I sent in my resume cold. But it the differentiator was that I sent in mock ups.

So I I took Facebook and I was like, here's Facebook Maps. If we ever have a Facebook maps feature. So if you want to go see your friend, here's how it would look. And they were like, wow, you have a bunch of businesses for college students and you're doing you're showing us what you would do here. And y you're not a designer, right? So you're you're scrapping these mock ups together, or you paid somebody, what'd you do? No, that was myself. So I think I was either using Google Slides. I don't even know if that was around, probably Microsoft Paint. Like I'm talking super basic. It doesn't have to be fancy. Google Slides is probably that and Canva are probably the best free things you could use to. Did you just cold email Zuck or who how how who'd you send it? No, no, no. I so I was gonna quit Intel in December. 'Cause I was waiting for my health insurance to kick in. I wanted to get my HSA payment.

Yeah. And then I just saw the job listing. There I didn't know anyone there. And so you uh you send that in, they're like cool. You go, what was your first impression walking into the office? I I guess what what was it like back then? Cause what what and what year was this for Facebook? This is two thousand five. I think one of the things for people out there, if you want to get a job, which I think could be cool, is just go look at what you're using all the time. You know, if you listen to a podcast, if you're w working on a project

To be clear though, it is work. People think that at Absumo, they're like, Oh, I'm gonna come party with you guys like. Yeah, realistic. Ninety percent of our day sitting on computer working. Ten percent, yeah, we do a lot of cool stuff, but Um

When I came in there, it was chaotic. I mean I post one of these photos and it's a good memory where like there's cables everywhere, the desks were kind of all over the place. Um But it felt like there's something special happening. It felt like there was like holy shit, we're we're on a mission that no one else is a part of and we know where this is going.

And then we have this this truly fearless leader. That that seemed like a savant. That was he's definitely awkward as hell. But uh I was really impressed about You know, what he was able to do.

And how big he was thinking about this company would could be. What numbers were was he throwing around? Yeah, so a few crazy things. Crazy things that people f forget, though, he copied Connect You. I don't know if anyone remembers this in a weekend. He copied someone else. And then emailed out his uh emailed out to his uh dorm.

And that's how it got going. So I think people think these big companies start very complicated. No, he copied someone else, launched it, it worked, then he kept going, and then he changed his vision. So some of the crazier things That I recall Was that a very early

Time. He rejected a billion dollar sale. Which now maybe sounds a lot or a little, but imagine like Sean, you're what, thirty something? Thirty nine five, yeah. Three five. You're twenty four years old.

And there's like, hey, I'm gonna give you a billion dollars. This was Yahoo. I think all of us would take that in a heartbeat. I took a hundred thousand dollar job. So I think I was gonna take the billion dollar to offer to I heard this crazy story where they're like I think it was Yahoo that was offering to buy him where uh you know Zach's sitting there and all the Yahoo gray hairs are talking to him and they make the offer and he was like, Hey, can you guys leave the room so we could discuss this? And Peter Thiel's in there. And then the executives leave the room and everyone's looking at Zuck, like all right, so let let's take this. And he goes, So I just wanted to like sit in here and pretend like we're talking about this,'cause obviously we're not going to take this deal. By the way, you're totally making this up. That's not what happened. I I read a blog post on it. The story is

They got the offer. Then there was the next board meeting. At the next board meeting he was like uh which is like where Peter Thiel and others were, he was like Okay, but housekeeping, we gotta discuss, you know, we're supposed to talk about this. Got this offer, obviously not gonna take it. And they were like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe we should Mark, that's a lot of money. We should talk about this. That's what they said. But even that I think is John, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Well, I think there's even more revisionist history which Which is interesting here because then later there's another story.

That Zuck actually accepted an offer. From I think it was I think it was Yahoo. And um it was either Yahoo or Microsoft, I don't remember. And then they reneged. They came back and tried to negotiate down.

Uh so like you know he took one point two and then they came back and said no, it's gonna be like nine hundred or something. There's another story like that. And so none of these are congruent because Peter Tiel tells the story. Right. That's where the that was the source of that story. Where he was just trying to say how Zuck is this you know, he was this like Visionary, um, you know, f balls of steel, turn down the billion dollar offer. But then there's this other story where he kinda took it and I'm like, Well

And they're like revenge because they they negotiate him down. I was like, But wait, he said yes. So I don't really know what the truth is, but I know there's a lot of this BS in startup lore where People make up stories that make somebody sound more more uh brave or they are. I I would you know, someone asked me a few days ago like is that good or bad? And I think he's good.

I think people might have negative impression, but he was he he's he's ambitious. But I think he always at least when I was there, had good intentions of being ambitious. It wasn't like I need a Manipulate the media. He's probably like, What are you talking about? It's just an algorithm. I don't know, like change it up again, we'll fix it. No. Can I share the environment? Cause I remember once in when I lived in San Francisco, we were I was doing a startup. I thought I was doing a

I thought this is it. We're we're all we're just like every other startup. We're in the race, we're in the hunt, we're gonna make the next big thing. And then I went to a friend's office. who was doing a startup and they actually had product market fit. And Like the market was pulling their product. They were growing faster than they could handle. And I walked into that office, which was smaller, way less nice.

You know, didn't have like Didn't have it wasn't super organized. They had like, you know, people were sitting on the floor and like there was just like people everywhere. There's cables everywhere. It was like a different vibe. Is the company still around? Yeah, yeah, it w it's it actually sold uh for you know a few hundred million dollars. And so I walked home and I remember thinking on my way home. Oh fuck, we're just playing house. Like

That's what it's supposed to feel like when it's working. I didn't even actually realize it till I stepped foot in there, but that's a totally different energy. They have it and we don't. And um, did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office? Hundred percent. I felt it I've been lucky to feel it a few times. That mint I felt it, Appsumo feels it.

And I think it inside at Facebook one, my boss got fired the day I I I started. So I walked in and my boss is walking out. Which is a really strange you know, I just left Intel, which, you know, I had, you know, eight meetings a day and I had All this training was horrible.

And I you know, I go into a room and Zuck's like Your your boss Doug. Who ended up founding Good R X. Yep. Oh wow. Um I just fired him'cause he he wanted he's a lot of guys from Facebook came from Yahoo.

And he's like, he tried to sell the company, so It's my company. I fired him. Welcome to Facebook. And then I just grabbed literally a corner of a desk and it was like, all right, well what should I work on?

Right, and it it's literally like a stark contrast from Intel where like everything is regimented. And uh it was amazing. I think the thing that was interesting that others didn't know is that we saw the internal metrics about the growth. So we knew there was something happening that others didn't see. In terms of like I think we're at ten million the day I started, by the day I got fired it was about fifty million. Uh so we just saw that like wow, this growth, but the threats were serious. Like Google was a threat.

Which people kinda forget today. My space was a huge threat. Uh and obviously now those things aren't even really talked about. What were you doing the the math when you were thinking about how much your stock's eventually gonna be worth? Where you're like, Man, this might make ten million dollars. My whole thing was that I just thought the equity's gonna be insanely valuable. I didn't know at mint I had a very specific number I thought it would sell for, which I was accurate there. Facebook I was like I don't know the limit.

'Cause Zuck's vision was to connect the entire world and his whole his quote was like we want to be a toll booth for the internet. I remember that. And that was inspiring. It was nice. You know, even at Up Sua now, I'm now like okay, what are we excited about? Um, we're excited to promote software. Like we love for money software. And it's like his was like, I want to connect the entire world. Are you imagining showing up to work?

He's connected the entire world and and what he did a lot of really clever things, which was How do we reduce all distractions? So like he paid for all of our parking tickets. Uh, he paid for all of our cleaning, he paid for us to live close, he paid for like everything. So all we had to do is focus on work. And that wasn't normal back then, right? Like uh like pay your parking tickets and be like, hey, there's gonna just bring your laundry here. Sh like shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just work. Because uh when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast, Jack Smith said this the other day. He go we were hanging out and he goes

I like how he Just has no disregard for social norms. 'Cause we were like, How'd you hire this guy? Or like how do you train people? And he's like They move in with me, basically. Like they just

I attach them to my hip. They follow me everywhere. We work seven days a week and then after six months. Like now you could start to give your ideas because you now you have now a fully absorbed me like All right, well I don't think I could something like California labor laws, like how does this work? And um and and I I think it was right. The the absolute disregard for social norms I've now learned is like a

very, very positive attribute or signal in highly, highly successful people. Sounds like Zach was kinda like that too. I don't know if that I think asking And doing things that you believe. I think you guys are very good at that. But there's also I think negatives. Like I remember this guy, Dan, died. And a bite a tree fell on him. This during one of the work days he was biking and a tree killed him.

And I'm like, okay, are we gonna put a bike rack outside? Are we gonna have a moment? And there was not even any acknowledgement. It was like let's just work. And I just thought that was that was insane. Yeah, I mean there's a price to pay for being crazy like that, right? Like there's pros and cons.

Yeah, I mean it's special to be a part and you have to think like we had Harvard PhDs and customer support. Like imagine that. Like people that wanted to be there so badly, doesn't matter your degree, you just can work there. And so being in that environment was really special. And just like learning seeing all this amazing talent that that was there and then as left to go do really cool things.

And so why did they fire you? It's funny, I was actually looking at the pictures, I was fired at. Basically'cause of Coachella. Like you you dipped out? I was like I was drunk and high at Coachella and then

For me, I I was blogging about Facebook'cause I was so excited about it. I think go find things you're excited about it and tell the world about it. If you think it's a good thing. That that's how I've always felt with the stuff I do. And I let uh 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 and talk about it,'cause Facebook wasn't gonna do any press. And he wrote about it that night and then I emailed Zuck and some of the other E teen. I let him know what I did. So I think it was that. And then

I I think uh for me I also felt frustrated. You got you guys have seen these people where For me at thirty people when it was like no just figure things out. So I was like, All right, I'm gonna help build mobile with Slee. Or I'm gonna help build ads, or I'm gonna help do the status update thing, which they didn't even wanna do. It was just fun. It was very like there's a lot to do there and and I was also Probably more immature.

And then as it got older And it grew. I I didn't want to be in meetings. I didn't want to do Excel Project management. I didn't want to have long discussions with thirty people about basic ideas. When did it become corporate?

I mean, at that point it was a hundred and fifty people. It felt very corporate to me. It felt very You know, and if you look at Facebook, what's the last great thing that Zuck has done since two thousand five? Besides acquiring other people, what does he come up with portal? That was a floppage.

Like, name one thing he's actually done. Besides make he's acquired, he's made good decisions acquiring people, I'd say that. Yeah, just gotten bigger. I mean, he it m tha that's why Facebook's great. It's just it's because everyone uses it. I mean, it's so big. I remember when Sarah and my wife worked there, they were like, We're doing this thing in India where we put blimps or drones up in the sky. And I was like, Why are they doing that? And they're like, Well, because the only people who aren't on Facebook are the people in India who don't have internet.

So we're just gonna go give them free internet so they can use Facebook. I mean his relentless drive towards growing to everyone is is what he's done. Yeah, and stuff like you know, the part thing is the bigger you get, the harder it is to move the needle. So it's like Marketplace. Super successful, but

Yeah. Kind of like who cares? It's like yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook, it's fine. Uh, you know, it's it's they need us they need to do something so big, right? That's why it's like the metaverse or AI, like they have to go on these huge waves just to kind of like Move the needle for how big Facebook is. I think what what was really interesting about people can r think about in their own businesses is the core really great? 'Cause like Facebook marketplace or Facebook events, I was really excited to to grow and improve and monetize early on and he was just against it completely.

And I noticed that with Absuma Awards. Our core businesses go find cool products. Get a deal on him, promote him. That's it. Right, but it gets very exciting to think, all right, can we do MRR? Can we do all these other options? But really it's like can you do the core excellent.

And then start adding new things at a later point. Some of the some of the cool stuff. So you you've had this video Where you went on this plane with this guy who I think was a commodities trader, or I don't I I think that's what he said. You know, and I assume he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I know that you have a bunch of friends who are billionaires. You told me ahead of time You said uh most billionaires that you know are unhappy. What's the

Tell me more about like what you've noticed about hanging out with some of these like uber, uber successful people. Most of them didn't set out to be billionaires. Like you hear people online like I wanna be a billionaire. It's like almost Every billionaire I know, and I've worked for them, or Multi multi millionaire was just like Here's it something I'm curious about or excited about. And yes, maybe in private equity or finance, but a lot of the entrepreneurial

It was just like stuff they're curious about. All of them got rich as well in one way. Like I was just at FedEx this morning. 'Cause I interviewed the guy from uh Kinko's. He just focused on copiers.

That's it. But a lot of newer entrepreneurs I've seen are ones I haven't had as much success are like, I'm gonna do five different Solarpreneur startups this weekend. It's like okay, you can test five. Well which one's working? Let's just do one. These billionaires just did one.

But they tell us to diversify. Yeah. And so I I think that's always fascinating for me is they do one thing and and this is again we kinda come back to the Absumo story is they stuck with it for a very long period of time. Like think about any billionaires you know, how long did it take? Yeah, I mean twenty years, thirty years, a lifetime.

A life a a career. A lifetime. a lifetime and we're trying to get rich in a weekend. Or which you know, crypto rich in a month. And I think

the the slow compounded growth over long periods of time is what doesn't get recognized. Sean, didn't you say that was like your major takeaway from your Camp MFM? Yeah, I wouldn't say it exactly like that, but um When uh I was talking to Jimmy and I was like, Yeah, I think the thing I'm You know, most uh i the thing that's standing out to me the most as I I get out of my bubble, I reassess, I reflect, it's the start of the new year.

Is I think I'm spending Um So much energy. But um

spreading it out. I'm spreading it too thin and That's a mistake. Like I'm doing more and getting less. And I put it differently, I said, I think you have a thousand times more opportunity hit, you know, opportunities coming to you every day. And you've said l yes to half the things I have. So something's wrong here.

I think in general the more successful you get uh the more opportunities you get, but the more things you should and and You should be saying no to I think Hormozy said a nice thing about this that I I I thought resonated. He goes let's say you get let's say you're making Ten thousand a month.

And now somebody comes and offers you something that's gonna make you A thousand dollars. Pretty easy to say no. You have a going rate. If you're making a hundred thousand a month and somebody comes to you and says Here's something that'll make you ten grand.

Easy to say no. The hard thing is when you're making a hundred grand and somebody comes to you and says, Here's the thing that can make a hundred grand and you're like That's my rate. But what happens is You now

After you you've now split your focus and you're basically You're you're losing life balance, but you're also doubling down on the amount of work that you have to do. Only to get You know, one more unit compared to where you were. He's like the best people, the smartest people, they basically when they're at the hundred, they don't say yes to the next

thing that can get them a hundred or two hundred, they will only say yes to something that might get'em You know, ten X more than that. And so the right way to do it is to basically say, All right. This gave me the right to say no to certain things. And the hardest one to say no to is the one that's at the current level where you're currently at.

And the people who really break out and get to the next level, they're the ones who are able to to True. Say no, stay focused until they see something that is truly 10X better opportunity than what they have. So how are you how are you changing this year? Well I s I do a bunch of things. I shut down two of the things that I was working on that were

working, but they were more in that like One X. Um one X type of Category. And then every day I basically start my day with the first three hours'cause I was like

Yeah, the the main thing I want to focus on is is making great content. It's the thing I love doing the most is the thing I think I'm I'm I'm the best at. But the hard part is A deal comes on the table and now I'm spending, you know, the first eight hours that day working on that deal or that investment or that opportunity or that new new idea. And so I just carved out where the first three hours of the day I'm only doing content. And I was like, Cool, I don't want this to eventually be eight hours, ten hours a day, but

The thing I can control is that the first three hours I'm not gonna say yes to anything else. I'm only gonna say this and the cool part is as soon as you do the first three hours, you have so much momentum. the natural thing to do is just to keep going. And so that's been uh very effective so far. Where are you Sean, where are you gonna start making content? Like when when you keep saying content creation, are you talking specifically text? Are you talking about text blogging is coming back? Sean Block. All ideas are on the table. So right now I'm just prototyping. So I'm basically trying to figure out which one do I enjoy the most. I knew I would enjoy podcasting. Um I listen to a ton of podcasts. I

I Prototyped it. So before this podcast I had recorded two other podcasts, one with my roommate and brother in law at home where we talked about sports and Never released it. There's only been three listeners ever. It's me and the two guys I did it with.

Then I did another podcast at my office when I was doing a startup. It was me, Furcon, and a couple couple other guys. Three episodes. I think they're up on YouTube somewhere. Nobody ever watched them. But doing that even though those podcasts went nowhere, it did do one thing, which is showed me, Oh man, I really like doing this. And how cool would it be if I actually like could do this all the time or it was actually you know, if people actually listen to it, man, that would be amazing.

And so I had prototyped it, I had felt it out before I in order to know that that's actually something I wanted to do. So when I say new content. I'll dabble with let's say short form or Or wr you know I'll write a A br a brief to a book, like you know, an outline to a book of the first two chapters. Cause I'm trying to understand what do I want to write a book or not? I don't need to commit to that.

Because I can prototype it and feel it out first. You definitely should go the book route. The problem with the book route, Noah Yeah, you've seen it seem so fucking hard. It seems so hard. Everyone I know who who writes a book They describe it exactly how my friends who run marathons do.

Where they complain constantly while they're in training. They say the race is miserable. And then about two weeks after the race happens or the book goes live, they go, All right, I think I'm gonna do this next book on this topic. And I'm like, Man, I just heard you complain for two years. No, you've been talking about this freaking book for Years. I think it's been way longer than four years, actually. I remember you talking about how you've wanted to write a book forever. And it took four freaking years to do this thing.

Is it you think it's gonna be worth it? What's the ROI gonna be? I like it. I'm proud of it. I think it's first off. And you know coming back to

Well and the the ROI on that, I I think it's gonna impact people. I think one person at a time. I've already seen it. Right, I've seen people read it and I'm like, Holy shit, really? You know, even I think w these things like what what you guys have done with your show and Sean's like what you're exploring on yours, uh Your content.

It's like what's something you're excited to do and that's kind of hard. Right, like no one's ever proud of themselves, like, yeah, I I rode, I walked five feet. Like But if you run a mile Or if you're on a marathon, you're like, damn, that was hard, but I can actually do this.

And I think that that that to me was really the ultimate RI in this book. Can I actually face myself and and work on a book and help other people and then Can people do it for themselves? Did when did you become so political?

What do you mean where I like I'm it's called. You're like a politician, my friend. Like so old Noah. I gotta tell a story about old Noah. I remember Uh, Sean, one time there's a co worker who I work with, who Sean you are friends with. And she, uh we go on to this meeting.

And Noah shows up shirtless. He's got no shirt on. He's in his house. I think he's like on his couch. And I'm like No, what the fuck are you doing, dude? Like he he was this like crazy madman. And that's actually what made him brilliant was like he would do all this crazy stuff and He executed crazy stuff really, really, really well. But now when I ask what the ROI is of this, you're you're showing so much Evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this this stuff.

One, thank you. I think we should have a lot of things. One nip at a time. I've also I I I was gonna talk about inverted my inverted nipples, which I'm very self conscious about, okay? No, I mean look, I'm a Turing. Do I wanna show up shirtless? Maybe if we're hanging out in Arsana.

Like come over. But I I think as you you get older you also realize like What kind of behavior do you want to do? And I think that's fine. Uh do the book I think people have these these like bullshit R O I things like I wanna

Help a million people. I don't give a shit about that. I don't But I am happy if like one or two or five or a thousand or ten thousand then read the book and do something for themselves. Um Noah. We appreciate you doing this, man. I I forgot to I should have plugged this

earlier on, but I'm doing I I'm buying how many how many books am I buying thirty, fifty books? Something like that. So I bought a bunch of books. I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up in in the list. So if you go to the antimba.com between now and Februent, Uh to anyone who gives me their email, I'll just like pick I'll randomly pick fifty of you guys and I'll send you a link to buy the book for free or to enter your uh address in and we'll send you the book.

Um I'm excited to see you do this. I hopefully hopefully you uh impact some people, which I know you will, but also The the ego side of me is like hopefully you rank on some type of bestseller list, which I know is also pretty cool. Um we appreciate you doing this. Uh what do you wanna it's called Million Dollar Weekend. You're Noah Kagan on Twitter. Appsumo.com. No Kagan on YouTube. I'm missing any other plug.

No, man. By the way, Noah. I had an experience like this that shifted my life. I'm a testimonial for this even before your book came out. Uh, I was working on a startup, my very first startup. We were working on it for like nine months, trying to get everything right. We literally had a three hundred page business plan. It was embarrassing, let now that I look back, but we thought that meant we were Yeah. Doing everything. We were doing every

You know, we're dotting T's and crossing I's out here. And so uh we I was like, All right, well At a certain point. I looked at my my co founder and I was like My co-founder, he's my roommate, my friend. And I was like, um

I was like dude I feel like we just keep telling everyone we're doing a business, but we don't actually do any business. He's like, What? And I was like Like how long have we been sitting here with this whiteboard and this plan and like How much we have no revenue. We've never made a dollar. Like

Yeah, I can't believe this. And we just keep tricking ourselves into thinking that this is legit. I just read the four hour work week and I was like, All right. This weekend. We are gonna make money. I don't care how it's like and our s we set a goal for a thousand dollars. I said

We're gonna try to make a thousand dollars in the next you know, basically it was it was Friday. It's like we're gonna make it by Sunday night. And uh I don't care how. Let's go. And And instantly Just by having that intention, things started to fall together. We made this website, we found a product on Alibaba, we got it drop shipped, we made our first sale, we sold. Basically, I don't know, a few hundred of these like wristbands, like kind of customized ni wristbands, like those fat, like live strong bands.

Um to somebody who's uh their parents were having an anniversary and they needed like two hundred of these. We charge them like, you know, four or five bucks per. We made a thousand dollars in one weekend. And I felt like The champion of the of the universe. And I was like, this is what business is supposed to feel like. Taking action, actually going out there trying to sell a product. Um Moving fast. Don't try to perfect everything. You don't need a three hundred page plan.

And after that, like literally my yeah, my whole game shifted just from that one experience. And so I haven't read your book yet. You you sent it to me, I'm gonna read it, but I already like in my soul am on board with what you're all about. Uh.

Dude, I did that wristband business too. That's so crazy. They they were hot at the time, right? Every kid was wearing'em every college kid was wearing them. But I I think the the thing you called out, which is interesting and and uh that's awesome, is like because you said, Hey, I'm gonna do something and I have this limited time And you have fifty two of them, right? So especially if you guys got kids and all this stuff, you you don't have a lot of time.

But you can make an hour or two in a weekend to to do something. And then look at what you did in a weekend, which you didn't do in months. Right. Yeah, exactly that. Look what you did in the weekend that you didn't do in months. That's that's how it's exactly how it felt. And then I was like, I either can go back to the old way.

Or I can go this new way, this action way. And the action way became the way. And that you know Basically that became I don't know. Like Sam, you it's so funny you have that tatted on your feet. Like that's

It's been tatted in my brain. That's like the only thing. You know, I I remember l literally looking around. I was at Duke and there's a bunch of smart kids at Duke. I thought when I was in high school I was the smart kid. Then you go to a college. with all the smart kids from those high schools. And you realize oh you ain't shit. And I was like, All right. Yeah. Am I just gonna be like forgettably average? Cause that's where this is going.

And I was like, am I really gonna get smarter than these people? Am I gonna I don't have any tal like special talents that they ha that that nobody else has? But I realized that A lot of smart people are overthinkers. They hesitate. They doubt, they overanalyze, and I was like

That's my thing. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna immediately take action. And that will be the difference. And that will be my thing. And I could just that'll be the bedrock that I can build any kind of success on rather than Trying to ha have been like a special snowflake that was uh you know uh pre predestined to do great things.

That just became my uh my my motto. I've still got the needle, bro. We can change that. We can we can let's tat it. Let's tat it. Well, Sean, but most people who listen to show want to make a million, they don't ever make a buck. They never make them make that one dollar. And that's where they have to get you know get off their ass. That was dollars, dude. That was that was great. Like good lyrics. Nice, nice words. Thank you. Like Bro, you're a 40 year old YouTuber. How do you not know these things? I'm learning the the vocab, but dude, I read this good book last night, Sam. You made me inspired by it's called The Art Thief.

And uh This guy who steals art, but one of the things he said that stuck with me is like, What's the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning? And I I do respect that. I love that you're like, Well, this is the area I want to improve, which is you know, you saw it on your feet. I I don't see my feet first thing in the morning, but I it's like put something on your bedside, put something out where you're like first thing you see in the morning, maybe it's Sean's face. Maybe it's a million dollar weekend. Maybe it's something, but I I love that idea.

I'm getting my whole legs done. You know, not you know, I've got a kid now, so maybe I'll do her name, but uh I've got a I've got a I've got bold fast fun tattooed on my thighs'cause BFF. That's kinda what I live for when it comes to business. Um I've got a pirate ship is is that is that bro, live laugh love is Yeah, I mean I moved to Austin and I found myself. I did the work, Sean. It's self-loved. I did the work. I did the work, dude. Dude, well you know, the reason I like homemade tattoos is you do what you want. What I found out when you go to tattoo shops, basically find an artist that you like and you're like, here's kinda what I want. And they're like, Yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want. And you're like Too embarrassed to like Tell them exactly what the what you want because this guy you want to impress them. And so I basically have a whole bunch of tattoos on my legs and uh throughout my body that I was just trying to

trying to impress Hector, my tattoo artist. So that's pretty much how it works when it comes to tattoos. Um No, we appreciate you coming. Uh we'll wrap here. Uh that's a pod. I feel like I can rode Well I know I can be what I want to

I put my law in it like my days off On the roadless travel never looking back

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