#714 Growing Your Business Using AppSumo w/ Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan is the founder and CEO of AppSumo. He was the 30th employee at Facebook and is well known for helping early stage founders. In this conversation, we discuss App Sumo, their marketplace, how to build a startup, developing your own investing strategies, audience growth hacks, Crypto, and Noah’s thoughts on a litany of other interesting topics. appsumo.com/pomp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Noah Kagan is the founder and CEO of AppSumo. He was the 30th employee at Facebook and is well-known for helping early-stage founders. In this conversation, we discuss AppSumo, their marketplace, how to build a startup, and Noah's thoughts on a litany of other interesting topics. I really enjoyed this conversation with Noah, and I hope you do as well. If you are looking for a job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, I must point you at a brand-new product that we've built. It is called Pomp Crypto Jobs. What's it do? Easy. It is a job board that has hundreds of jobs from the industry's leading companies, everyone

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  from Galaxy Digital to Genesis and Coinbase, BlockFi, Kraken, OKCoin, and many, many others. All you have to do is go to pompcryptojobs.com today, and you can apply completely for free to the top companies in their open roles. Stop working a lame 9 to 5 that you hate. Come work in the future. Come help us build. All skill sets are needed. Come to pompcryptojobs.com and get a new job. All right, let's get this episode with Noah. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Noah here with me. Thanks so much for doing this, man.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. Good to see your face.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Let's jump right in. Remind everyone what AppSumo does. And then we've got a whole bunch of cool stuff that we're going to talk to about how people can make money today, the mindset, the founder, or somebody who works in corporate America, etc. But just remind everyone what AppSumo does.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, so AppSumo is the number-one software marketplace for entrepreneurs. So we actually have a special, I think I mentioned that to you earlier, appsumo.com/pomp. And we're literally paying people to put their software or products on appsumo.com. So if you've been wanting to create a course, or a book, or make money, or you've had this idea, or you've already created it, you can go put it on appsumo.com. AppSumo has been a place, I've been working on it 11 years, but the idea is like, if you want to start or grow an online business, we have all the best tools at an amazing price that people can go buy and start using immediately at appsumo.com.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Let's jump right into an example. So we were talking earlier before we started recording about CoinStats. Maybe walk me through like, what is the product? And then how do they leverage AppSumo to be successful? And then what we'll talk through is a couple of ways that people basically, you know, in the next couple of weeks could start making thousands of dollars, about tens of thousands of dollars using the actual technology.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, we can talk about why like I hate, I hate all the crypto kitties, like literally the kids. It's because they're praying, right? Like they go to the crypto god, the crypto temple, they're like, please just make me get rich so I don't have to do shit ever again. And I, it's just never worked out that way for me in my career, man. But appsumo.com, I'll shout the link one more time, appsumo.com/pomp. We're literally paying people. So if you have anything you can create and we can promote it to other entrepreneurs, we reach over millions of them a month. Check out that link, appsumo.com/pomp. So on appsumo.com, there's a company called CoinStats. This blows my mind and we asked them for permission. These guys out in, I honestly don't even know where in the world, created a crypto portfolio tracker. They put it on appsumo.com and so far to date, they've made $86,000 for themselves.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And I think if you take a step back, the thing that we solved 11 years ago, which is really interesting is the number one problem of every business, which is how do you get customers? So Pomp, if you created a crypto algorithm or crypto book or crypto course, which I actually, I think you have.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  You have an audience, which makes it a little bit easier, but for a lot of the other people out there, if they're like, man, I really love some customers and I created this awesome product, software, course, whatever, how do I find those people? And that is what appsumo.com has solved for 11 years. That's why I've worked with, I mean, name a software product, it's probably been on appsumo.com.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  And so when you look at other ideas that have worked on the platform, like writing a book obviously takes a long time, but what are some of the things that people do in the short term? That can take them from zero to, you know, material revenue leveraging the platform?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. So if I didn't work there, I'll tell you, here's what you could go create literally today and you'd probably make a hundred to $200,000. And this is the kind of stuff with like, it's surprising to see the data, but it's that GPT-3 stuff around copyrighting. So if you can go, GPT-3 is open source. If you can figure out a product that specifically solves something, doing it for ads or for blog posts, or maybe it's for email marketing. Those products have done extremely well. And so where, the way I like to look at how to build things is work backwards from the customers. So if you weren't, I obviously I work at AppSumo, so I have a little bit of advantage. But what I'd recommend is if you're a creator out there, and especially if you're technical, go on the appsumo.com marketplace, look at which products are getting the most reviewed. Right. And so if you go, you'll see it's all this copyrighting GPT three stuff.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  And then I would try to create products that are, you know, unique in that space that is really popular. So that's definitely one of the the huger categories that some of these categories, honestly, man, I'm just shocked. Like you want it. You want another one that's literally been our top seller ever in 11 years?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  This is, this is like probably an eight figure product at this point. It is stock images.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  What do you mean by that in terms of stock images? Like they're just selling the actual images themselves?

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's a site called deposit photos and we've had a bunch of different products like that on the marketplace. And I just like, I remember when the guys wanted to run the product because we, you know, we promoted Mailchimp and Freshbooks and LinkedIn and Evernote and products that you're like, like, you know, the products everyone knows of. And I remember when Anton was like, yo, man, I'm going to promote stock images. And I was like, do not put that on the site, like entrepreneurs and startup people don't want that crap, don't need it. And I love being proven wrong. And so that was definitely a mega successful product that that we've been able to promote on AppSumo.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  And why are people coming there for the the stock photos? They explain that one a little bit more. So they literally, they have stock photos. They simply put them in like a bundle and then they sell them and folks are coming in and buying the bundle of stock photos?

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, or you get access to the library, right? So if you had to go to like deposit photos or Getty or any of these places, it's like a few bucks an image. But on appsumo.com for $39, then you get like 200 credits, which normally would cost you like hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if you're a blogger, if you need B roll for YouTube, things like that. It's honestly surprising all the different use case. I love when like we have a lot of mompreneurs, a lot of mompreneurs in our, in our audience. Use it for their like recipe sites or their mom sites and, you know, those kinds of things. I can give more examples of other categories I think people should copy or go into if you think that'd be helpful.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Do it. Dude, I'll tell you one that that did well on our marketplace recently. I'll tell you a few. I'll just give you kind of things. I'm like, yo, if you want to create software, here's the categories of things that people are really excited to be buying. Business ideas. And I know it sounds kind of like, oh shit, is it like another biz op like sign up for my MLM program? And the answer is no. But there's a product called niches. And so what this guy did is actually pretty clever and you could do it without being super technical. He scrapes Reddit and Twitter and all these places for people that talk about business ideas. And so you type in an idea and it basically gives you all these variations of that idea. And so you can start thinking, oh, well, could I find new trending categories? Like there's huge companies like Jungle Scout, it does it for Amazon. And so you can, I think the thing with business that I've always admired is just get going and then

• 7:26Speaker 03

  that will lead you to another place. And I think so many times people are just sitting on the sidelines being like, one day I'm going to get this idea and it's just going to come to me. I'm going to keep praying. I'm like, dude, don't, don't, there's no hope in business. Like you gotta go make that shit happen.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  When you think of the marketplace itself, is there a way to like test ideas and figure out what's going to work before you go all in on it? And really my thought process here is there's somebody sitting at home and like, okay, well, I've got five different ideas, which one should I actually go ahead and run with?

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think there's a few different ways of approaching it. One of the ways, so we have our internal products called AppSum Originals and I think we have somewhere between six and seven products. Now, this is gonna, this is what's sad about this, Anthony, is we literally have accessed all the data and we have, you know, hundreds of millions of sales this year, our hundred million sales this year and tons of sales over the years. And I was looking over our figures for the AppSum Originals product yesterday with David, who runs it, only 20% of the products we've built have actually done well.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Really?

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Specifically, that's our calendar software called tidycal.com and our email marketing software called sendfox.com. And so it's also, it reminds me of Amazon, right? Like Amazon puts out a shit ton of products and just a few do really well. And I think that's, that's sometimes, so my, my point there, and we use a framework. So let me just take a step back. How do you decide the product? So we used a framework, I'd have to pull it up, but basically what we were looking for is does it solve our current customer's problem versus like people we don't have? Two, is it viral, right? Does it actually have any viral marketing built into the product? So email calendaring, calendar, yes. Email marketing, yeah. And then third, can we build it in under a month? And so we basically mapped that out and then we try to score it based on all the different ideas we have. And then we cross-reference like what products have sold well.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  And even with that, only 20% of ours have actually, and what I mean by that are like seven-figure business units. Now, I think the other ways that I've considered, like, one of the things I'm known for is just like, how do you start a business in a weekend? We call it million-dollar weekend. And the way I've always approached it is a customer-first approach. So what that means is actually straightforward. It's like, one, be your customer yourself. So what are problems that you actually want? I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs get fucked up, is that they go so far out of their comfort zone. They're like, "I'm gonna go do dresses," or "I'm gonna go do fashion," or "I'm gonna go do software." And I'm like, "Well, what's your day job?" "I'm an accountant." Or, "What do you do for fun?" "I do guitar." I'm like, "Well, why don't you just make it easier on yourself? Why don't you go into the spaces you actually understand and find problems that

• 9:51Speaker 03

  you already have for yourself?" You know, like, one of the problems today, I was even thinking, right now for me to pay our partners or pay our teammates at AppSumo, I have to wire money to a company to wire to another company, and there's all these fucking fees. So I'm like, "Oh," you know, I mean, especially the crypto, you know, it's definitely solves that kind of stuff. But I think the point I was trying to make in terms of framework approach is, think about the problems you already want for yourself. And then what I always recommend people is do a customer-first approach, which is, who do you already have access to that makes it easier to solve that business? And then I would put on the AppSumo Marketplace. I think AppSumo Marketplace can help you, and it'll definitely promote the crap out of it. But I think people are praying too much in business instead of guaranteeing it, which is, "Hey, I already know there's customers here for my network, or I can get through referrals," versus just like, putting it up on Etsy or

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Facebook Marketplace and hoping someone buys it.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's really interesting to me is when you start talking about, like, going after problems that you understand, but also if you're the customer, if you're the person who understands that problem or have identified that problem through your everyday life, you actually probably have an idea as to how to solve it as well. Like, I always laugh when I hear somebody saying like, "Well, why don't they just do X?" And they're talking about some company that's built, you know, a product around it. And I'm like, "Yeah, that probably is what they should do." They're never gonna do it, though, because they don't know that's the way that customers want it solved. They're actually really bad at listening to their customers. They're really bad at finding their customers. And so I think it's not only just like the problems that you know of, but also you probably have some novel way of solving it. The other thing that's related to this that I find interesting is, there's problems-

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Problems that you've solved for yourself through some sort of hack or some sort of like workaround. And a lot of times you can just take that thing and you can automate it or you can turn it into software and like that can become its own business all by itself. These are the people who probably had the same problems.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Dude, two nights ago, I was paddle boarding in Austin on the river. This dude put a cooler on his paddleboard and he put a motor on it, on a paddleboard. I've never seen a paddleboard with a motor. And I was like, yo, man, that's dope. Like, where'd you buy it? He's like, I made it myself. And so I think that's a great point you made, which is just what are the examples of things that people have responded well to you? Maybe it's in food, maybe it's in a service, maybe it's in a software, maybe it's in a physical product. I think the one other thing I would try to encourage people to think about. When you're starting these kind of businesses or looking for opportunities, one, what's going to get bigger? Right? Like literally every single category I've picked over my 20 years of doing internet stuff has gotten bigger. And it's some luck, some skill, maybe I'm a fast chaser, but like social networks got big, which I was, you know, early Facebook, Mint got big.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  You know, Groupon with AppSumo originally got big and then we built sumo.com, SaaS got big. And so I think a lot of people pick dying industries. One of my best friends picks, he only picks dying. He picked newspapers and then he just picked masks. And I was like, bro, I love you, but like, just don't pick, you gotta pick these tidal waves that are getting bigger. And then, and I think the other approach that, that I, I try to use more and more is how do you stack the deck? So how do you stack the deck so that as you're creating a business, the odds are in your favor? Specifically, how do you use some data or some framework? I talked about one, we use it up soon, but how do you use some data to actually make a better decision around like, okay, I'm gonna, I could choose A or B. Where is there some data that I can make a better decision on? So can I use Google Trends? That is one of them. Can I go to the AppSumo marketplace and look at what products like have really crappy reviews?

• 12:59Speaker 03

  But it seems like there's a lot of people wanting to use it. And so I think trying to have some framework or structure makes it a lot easier versus just guessing and winging it.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  When you think about those opportunities, how do you think about what products to actually build? Like if you're non-technical, is it better to go find somebody who is technical and then partner up with them to build something? Or is it better to try to figure out something that doesn't require technical skills as the actual product or kind of service?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Well, I would take a step back and figure out how people want to be living. Just start with that, man. It's like, how do you want to actually be living your life? Um, the one, one thing, one dream I want to kill, and I do it on, you know, my YouTube channel, is that everyone uses the excuse, I'm not a technical person, I need a technical co-founder, and that is total fucking bullshit. It's just an excuse. And the way, I've always thought about it, it's like, when I started this business, when I started AppSumo eleven years ago, I was like, I'm gonna figure out how to program it. I spent fifty dollars with a guy in Pakistan, uh, Muhammad, who I still talk to, uh, eleven years later. And it's so much easier to convince people when you have a prototype. It's much easier to convince people when you have something going versus like, man, if I can get a technical co-founder. So whatever you can do to kind of validate it and use, and use Google Spreadsheets to create a marketplace. You can use Google Docs. There's a lot of free options out there, no code options that I think people get kind of messed up on.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Um, I think that your question is like, how do people get going? I, I think the really thing to understand is how do you just find something that people really want? And that's where people get fucked up on. One of the easiest opportunities, obviously you can go to the AppSumo Marketplace, where there are already people wanting to give out money. And I think that's the, the best way to look at it. So go to Facebook Marketplace. Like, if you want to make money today, go sell your shit on Facebook Marketplace. My ex-fiance is selling her art, and she's actually making good money on it. And I was, I was like, go you. Uh, and I think a lot of people think they need permission to be an entrepreneur. And so I always try to tell people like, permission fucking granted.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Facebook Marketplace is drastically underrated. People are so convinced that, uh, Craigslist and like legacy stuff, oh, Facebook, whatever. They just forget like, Facebook has what, two, three billion different users on the platform? And the penetration in the Facebook Marketplace of any local town is probably much greater than Craigslist in, uh, in kind of a lot of places people live.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Dude, it's like when people counted out Microsoft. They're like, ah, Microsoft's dead, Microsoft's dead, you know, and it was for the bomber era, but dude, they have the, you know, at the end of the day, distribution wins. Like, if you have the audience, if you have the people that'll buy things. But one other thing I would say about getting started, if you're, especially if you're non-technical, um, don't let that be your excuse. Get started today. But the, the other thing that you can always do, especially if you're not technical, is that you can do the other parts of it. So one of the ideas that I, you know, you kind of even triggered me today in a good way is like, let's say you have no skills. whatsoever, but you're really excited about crypto or you're really, excuse me, excited about software or entrepreneurship. You could literally go to AppSumo, find the most popular products and literally make a YouTube channel or podcast or a Substack, damn, uh, business, literally reviewing

• 15:51Speaker 03

  these products every single day. So I've always thought like, there's unlimited money out there for the people willing to put in the work. And the problem is people want to sit on the sidelines complaining, why is Anthony getting it? Why did Noah get some? Uh, and it really is because they're just not getting, they're not getting in the game. They're just side liners.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  When you think about, uh, running a marketplace, what are some of the lessons learned that you've had over the, uh, the last few years in terms of what makes that marketplace actually be successful?

• 16:15Speaker 03

  One thing I've learned is no one knows what the fuck they're doing. Let's just start with that. So we spent, we just opened up, so AppSumo has been, I would say more of a daily deals Groupon business when I started 11 years ago, and it's been like that for probably eight or nine years. And last year, we opened up the marketplace and we went around looking for all these marketplace experts. And as you meet people in life, I think it was just a good lesson is that we always think there's some guy or girl who's smarter than us that knows things. And most of the time, we're actually, we're really capable ourselves, much more than we give ourselves credit for. I just think it's just a common thing I've noticed. Like, everyone is so much more, uh, capable. I'm even talking to myself, man. But I'm like, oh, this one woman's gonna have this answer that I really wish she'll finally give me that fucking secret. Give me the secret. And, um, so I'd say that's number one, is that I thought we'd go find a marketplace guru and they would just be like,

• 16:59Speaker 03

  you're gonna look at these three KPIs, tweak the dials and you're overnight rich. I think what's interesting in marketplace stuff, um, there's, there's been a lot of interesting things. Um, still, a lot of our revenue is from the curation. Um, and I think there's just a lot of different pieces of a marketplace that we're still figuring out. So number one, Airbnb, do you bring them customers or do they bring you customers?

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Probably a little bit of both.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, but they, they bring you customers. You put your house up, like Anthony, if you put your condo, your, you know, $20 million condo up on Airbnb today, you know, the, the crypto casita, people would fucking, you know, I mean, even if you go promote it, you're gonna start selling it out. Now compare that to Amazon marketplace. It's really, you put it on there and then they kind of give you some customers, but you have to promote it. Now, I think what I would encourage people to think about marketplace Places are frankly, just any businesses is like, what are the three dials that make a difference? That's really what it is at the end of the day. So for our marketplace, and this is what I'm telling for any business, people are like, I'm going to track all this shit. I'm like, just pick three and three that you can control that'll actually impact an outcome. So what is the income that impacts an outcome? So for us, there's basically three metrics that matter on our marketplace.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  There's, I have a shit ton and I can, we can talk about stats and I'm happy to share almost all of them. But basically, how many people started today? How many people submitted it? How many people are live? And those are kind of the, the three dials. Right now, we're really focused on 6,000 partners. So we basically think there's a flywheel effect, more partners bring more customers, which will bring more partners and so forth. And then in a subsequent years, we'll focus more on like, how much money is each partner really making? But I think in a marketplace, there is a winner take all approach. So you want to have everyone that's, you know, buying and selling tools for entrepreneurs on our marketplace. And so we're focusing really on the quantity with some, I would say, light quality concerns to make sure it's still not garbage.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  When you think through the journey that you've had with AppSumo, why is it that you guys right now are going out and paying for people to actually list and kind of promote their stuff? Like, what, like, what does that do? And people will hear that and say, whoa, that's pretty interesting. Is it simply the kind of insight? The more partners that you bring on, the more products you bring on, the more customers. And so it's a win-win for you and those listing the products.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  It's, someone said it on their team, they're like, no, the fact they were spending a million dollars, like, we could literally take the million dollars and, I don't know, buy Lambos or like, we could fake it on Instagram or do whatever, man. But we're giving it out to people and not only that, once we, they get on AppSumo, we then promote them more, right? Like, we actually help grow their business, you know, by them creating amazing products. At the end of the day, straight up, it's economics. It's an economics play. So we've ran some analysis that each partner that we end up bringing onto the AppSumo marketplace generates around $3,000 of GMB. I mean, it's like gross merchandise value in terms of how much is added to our overall marketplace. And I think one of our mantras in AppSumo is like, how do we 50X it? And so when we find something that, that works, we're like, how do we just go crazy on it?

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And I think that's why we've been able to be around and also do so well is that we're more aggressive and more professional than I think other people competing against us. So in terms of the money. It's an investment. I think it's also fun. It's a little bit different, but we see this a way that we can build up that audience of partners and awareness on the marketplace. And then at the end of the day, like in business, we're not a nonprofit. It is looking to have an ROI. It's like, can we bring enough people? Does it generate investment at the end of the year or in years to come? And if not, that's kind of the thing we would pull back on in the future.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  When you think about investing, you just talked a little bit about how you think about investing from a business perspective. What about personally? Like, how do you think about kind of building a portfolio or trying to construct it?

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, the company stuff has been interesting because it's interesting how we'll behave in one area of our lives, but not in the other. Like in your business, you'll be like, I have a budget and I have a P and L and we have a cash flow and we do investments and we do like make sure it's ROI now. And in personalized, people are like, nah, I don't give a fuck. Let's just see how it goes. And I always find that fascinating. What's been a weird shift for me, Anthony, is more how much I was like greedy and chasing money for most of my life. And I really wanted to prove people wrong. Like I felt Silicon Valley, they all doubted me. And I felt like I got fired from all these fucking places. And I was like, for the love of God, can I please just get out of the middle class? Can someone just give me the fucking ticket so I can get out? And a few, two, three years ago, I finally was like, dude, you have like millions of dollars now. This is pretty crazy.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  But it's hard to get out of that mindset. Like I just, I was living in a, you know, 800 square foot house that was falling down. Like literally falling down, like there's cracks all over it and it's fallen down and it's rough. And so it's, it's an interesting, and look, no boo hoo for Noah, like for the audience, like yo, fuck you, rich guy. Like give me some of that money if you want to go back to that shitty house. But I think how I've approached money lately is just how do you live your life without worrying about money? And I think if you do that, that's actually also how you'll make the most money. Like I've lately tried to not make as much money. Like that's not where, it's not that I'm going against it. I'm just not focused on. I'm more just like, how do I really want to, we have this limited fucking time. So where do I really want to spend these eight to 10 hours each day that I'm awake? I mean, I guess I'm awake more than that, but how do I want to spend that time? So the majority of my money.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  And I'm happy to share specifics. Majority of my money, I just spent all my time on AppSumo and everything else that's not AppSumo is just, I don't do shit with. So pulling up my numbers, I do 25,000. So everything is basically just auto invested. And then I basically just do targeting asset allocation around that.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  When you think about auto investing, why is that choice? Is it just a time thing? Or are there other sorts of like financial benefits or implications?

• 22:21Speaker 03

  So let me just start off. And I told you before the show, I can show my crypto accounts and things like that. I have always sucked at investing. And all these people brag how good they are. I don't know if everyone brags how shitty they are. And so if you look at the data about how to invest, everything, like all data points back is to buy the S and P 500 or some mix of that and leave it alone. And that will outperform everything. Like Warren Buffett, the guy everyone knows, that's what he recommends. And people are like, no, no, Anthony, I'm going to buy this stuff and I'm better than it. And you'll better than it one year, but not for five years and not for 10 or 20. And now I think the thing to really get exciting about or excited about is what is the thing you can be excellent at and have an advantage in? And then spend all of your fucking time in there. Like in this internet marketing, online startup business world, I have a strong advantage. Like I've been in this 20 years.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  That's very hard to fucking beat me. But like crypto, real estate and that stuff, good fucking luck. So I basically just try to ask the smartest, richest friends I know what they do. And then I just dial those things on autopilot. And even now, I'm really trying to reduce so it takes up less bandwidth. Like I was with a wealth advisor yesterday. He's like, we can do all these things to like have taxes. And I was just like, I don't care. Like people leaving California, it sounds like the stupidest thing ever to me. Like I want to, I want to save a hundred thousand dollars to have a shitty your life. Like what's the point of making fucking money then? Like, I don't get it. Like, I love living in Austin, Texas, but dude, California is dope. There's a reason everyone's there. I'd be like, oh, I gotta save a million dollars. I'm like, well, you live this life once. There's no playback. So in terms of investing, it's like, how do you want to spend time? Where do you have an advantage in? Like I was doing real estate years ago and I was trying to, I was like,

• 23:50Speaker 03

  I was like running around trying to buy a property. And I remember I ran the cash flow analysis. I said, all right, man, at the end of this year, if you buy this Airbnb and you rent it out, how much are you going to make? And it was like $10,000 profit. And I was like, dude, that's fucking cool. Right? And if you want to be an expert in something like in real estate or in crypto, that's fine. I just think the people that are doing it without being a professional, but expecting professional results is where shit gets fucked up. And so I saw that analysis of 10,000 K profit. And then I went back to appsumo.com and I was like, how much did we make today in profit? And it was 10,000. And so I was like, I could wait a year to get that, or I could just focus on appsumo. And so I really, with everything else that's not appsumo, try to have someone else deal with, or have it be automated as much as possible.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  So I do think that there's a an element here of not only would it take you one year to make the 10K in the real estate? And you made 10K that day, but also which one is easier to grow? Right? Going from 10 to $20,000 with the real estate is probably much, much higher than, or much harder, I'm sorry, than it would be to take appsumo from 10K in profit a day to 20K. Right? So it's not just about where you are and like the net numbers. It's also what is the growth potential, the addressable market of that return?

• 25:10Speaker 03

  I think what's interesting too with that is like noticing where you're just spending your time for free. And then see how you can actually make that your job. Like if you're noticing, you're listening to crypto stuff all day, and there's something there with you and you're just really excited about as a technology and all the options there. Then that's a great thing. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from anything. It's just try to find a thing where you have an advantage and you really just want to spend your free time. Where I found a lot of my success and the way that it's worked out well for me is I always just focus on the platforms. So if I were to get into the crypto space, if I were to go get a job, I would just look at who owns the platform. Right? So like I would try to work at OpenSea and probably try to look at Moonpay. Maybe it's like with Persona. So I love selling the shovels. And like, let everyone else take the riskier bets and see what works. I'm like, all right, I don't know what it'll be.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  But that's, that's, that has been historically my approach that that's worked well.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Got it. And then when you think about how you go from not understanding anything an investment standpoint to wanting to understand a ton or build expertise, is there one way that you think is better than another? Or is it literally just go find the smartest people like your friends or whatever, and then just ask them a bunch of questions?

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I think the best way to understand anything is through experience. At the end of the day, I mean, like my crypto, everyone, you know what's funny, Anthony, you've talked, how many people in crypto have you talked to?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Thousands.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Does everyone have a fucking crypto story? Like my cousin Bar Mitzvah, the DJ told me about this thing. Like, I feel like everyone's got the story.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Of course, they have to. It's how you got it. It's kind of like, uh, when was the first time you ever used the internet? Like everyone who was at a certain age at that time, they remember how they first came across, right?

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's actually fascinating, like how we, why, why is crypto the one place where people want to tell where they got it? I've never really thought about that. Everyone loves to share that story. So for me in understanding things, I'm trying to think of the recent stuff I've really tried to understand. I guess the approaches I've learned besides going deep on YouTube is just try to pay someone who's an expert. So like I'm playing squash, I don't know. So I have a, like, I'm looking for a squash coach. Uh, I definitely think that's one of the easier approaches. I think if you don't have money, YouTube honestly is the best, freest, like, school in the world. Like if you literally learn anything in your, but I think, you know, if you have an advantage, by the way, if you have money or if you have a network

• 27:19Speaker 03

  and you could literally just go like, go and be in the network. So I have like some WhatsApp groups of people who are experts in categories. I'm like, but a lot of people, the reality is most people don't have that. So A, start building up your network. So you can find people, like I have a friend, he's worth almost a billion in Ethereum. So I just asked him what to do in the crypto shit because that's what he spends his whole fucking day nerding out about. And I spent my whole day nerding about, about the software and marketplace and apps. But if you don't have that, which is 90% of people, start building up your network. And two, just go on YouTube. Like there's people like you who are experts in this space. It's honestly, I can't believe you're doing it for free. It's fucking bonkers. Like I was listening to David Sacks yesterday. He did genie, he did yammer, he's funded all these companies. He's literally giving a speech about how to organize your company at a hundred people for free.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  And I just like took all these notes and I shared it with the team. I was like, all right, I guess that's how we're going to organize the company. So I don't know if there's one way fits all. Uh, for learning, I just think find the thing that you're really curious about. And I think it's hard, especially now when money is good, people are just, it's easier to be curious where you can make money. But really just think about, okay, what do I really excited to learn? And explore different ways of whatever fucking for you to learn. Is it a coach? Is it YouTube? Is it books? Is it just like for me with crypto, I, I disagreed with my, all my, the whole company was into it. For four years from 2010 to 2014, they're all doing it. And I was like, you guys are so stupid. Like that is the stupidest thing. And then I had to buy an illegal NFL stream. And that's how I got in. I was like, oh, I see now why this makes sense. So I do think for a lot of things, it's the experience.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  And then when you start to think through your track record of decision making, do you keep track of it? But like, do you write down your thoughts and revisit them? Or are you more so, uh, hey, I tried to make the best decision in the moment, but I don't really have time to kind of go back and revisit a decision I made three or four years ago. Like, I know people who do both. I tend to not be somebody who like writes down every single decision I made and go back. Uh, but what about you?

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Hon, so how do you approach your finances? Like, do you have a financial framework? Or how do you approach like, so yeah, I'm curious how you approach that.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  I put 95% of my net worth, uh, that's liquid in Bitcoin. I've got a bunch of, uh, you know, private investing. Um, but it's everything's illiquid. I basically write that to zero in my mind. It's just like, I lost that money. And then there's 5% for, uh, for cash. Uh, and that's pretty much it. I, I own, um. Outside of GBTC in my retirement account, I own $5 of Square stock. Uh, which was, uh, I, uh, needed to buy a public stock on a app. And so I may gave you $5, so I bought $5 of Square stock. And that is all of the public market exposure that I own.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Interesting. I think the fact that you have a framework makes it easier for you to live.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  You're like, hey, I do 95.5. And so I think for me, I have my asset allocations around my finances and that's just, makes it easier to make these approaches. So I think people should think about their frameworks for making decisions. One book that I love, probably one of my favorite books this year is called The Artist's Way. And it's not a book that a lot of like Silicon Valley or like crypto, you don't hear people talking about it. But it's a really amazing book about how to be creative again. I was shocked how good it was. I was like, how the fuck I've never heard of this? And one of the things that the book recommends is just journaling every morning. And I I've always heard, I don't know if you've ever journaled. People say they journal and meditate. I just zone out. I'm like, shut up, man. I don't want to hear about your meditation. And uh, and in the morning, I just literally this morning, uh, I write. And so I I try to, I'm trying to spend more time thinking through, uh, just decisions.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  So I I think journaling it out has definitely been, like, I wrote a lot of stuff today and yesterday about like what triggers me or changes in the company. And really just put my time around the things that matter to me. And and honestly, like, I think what's interesting is noticing when we're having, when we're, when we're giving attention to our distractions. So like, six months ago, I was super buying all these random bullshit crypto things because it was like all the rage. I was like, why am I trying to make $4 buying V chain? You know, like, what the fuck? Like, I have all this crypto.com stuff from them and I have, I always take, I take a step back about every month or two when I'm doing a bunch of bullshit distractions and I'm like, why am I distracted giving attention to the thing that's not the major thing? I'm giving attention to the minor thing. And it's just a good time to kind of reevaluate that stuff.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  When you think about buying investments, do you ever have like a time horizon when you'll sell them or do you just buy them and hold them forever?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  So two things. One, I never sell. They call me Noah Never Sell Kagan.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  They call me Noah Never Sell Kagan. I've sold once and I regret it. I should have never fucking done it, man. I sold my Chipotle stock. I'm still fucking butthurt about it. I love Chipotle. I should have sold it. Um, I think the way that I've approached finances, if I can boil it down to the simplest thing that I, that honestly, it works for me and everyone needs to do what works for them because I'm not a risky person. To me, like, I've had cash at 50% for almost my whole life. And I know people are like, that's the stupidest thing you could ever do. Now my cash is down to 6%. But it's something that like I historically, I was just scared of losing, like my dad lost it all, boo hoo. I thought I was gonna lose it all, boo hoo. But my simple stupidest, uh, investment strategy that's honestly worked and I highly recommend it for myself. Just invest in the things that you use.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  And that is the only way I do my private investments, my public investments, and even my crypto. Now it's only the crypto shit I've actually used. Like, I've used Uniswap, so I get it. I bought Mimi. My private stocks, or I'm sorry, my public stocks, I just buy companies that our company uses. So we use Shopify, we use HubSpot, we use Atlassian, I drink Zevia. I don't really even look at the finances. I'm like, yo, who would go away that would fuck me over if they left? And I just buy that. Like I buy, dude, stupid shit. I bought Libsyn. They're my podcast host. And for me, it's like, okay, I'm paying them and I'm excited to pay them. I can't have them to go away. So that's kind of how I approach a lot of it. The private startups I've invested in, same thing, like Teachable. I was like, well, I use and recommend Teachable. So that's what I'm going to invest in. And that's honestly, it's made a lot of my decisions really fucking easy.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  It's also a great way to invest because you understand, it goes back to how we started the conversation. It's if you're going to solve problems, you got to do it things that you understand. Same thing here, right? Is you're going to make investments, you should invest in things you understand rather than trying to become an expert at, you know, anything else. Before we wrap up, I want to get your opinion in terms of any more tactical, you know, kind of suggestions or tips for people as they come onto AppSumo. Are there things like, you know, titles or descriptions or any sort of things that they can do that you've seen work as kind of like the best practices?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  It's kind of, it is an amazing thing that I don't think people think about enough is just how do you package the product? So your image matters a lot, your title matters a lot. You can incentivize reviews, but we have an algorithm on the site. So if your thing is selling more, like if you drive more into the AppSumo and sell more into AppSumo, we are going to sell and promote your product more. I think honestly, dude, let me just say, like, give some examples, like, I called Facebook early, I called Mint early, I called social games early, I've called these different industries early. I think selling products in the AppSumo marketplace, there's going to be seven, eight figure people out of it. On the marketplace specifically, we have a select business, which is like our, our sales team goes out and hand selects it. I think it's one of the things that if you get in early, like, you know, people talk about getting early on like these ICOs and shit, like this is an ICO in the software space. So if you're doing books or courses, icons, templates,

• 34:23Speaker 03

  I would try to see how to get in early on it. And then the whole point in business that I think is one of the things people know me for and what I encourage is just get fucking started today. Just give yourself a weekend to launch a book or launch a software or launch a template. And then just keep iterating from there and that'll inspire a lot of other ideas versus kind of waiting around for the, the, the most genius idea.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I think that's great.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  I don't know. I guess all the other thing I'd probably consider is go look at what

• 34:46Speaker 02

  No, I think that's great advice. And then in terms of the best way to drive traffic or to drive additional folks to those platforms or those products, like what suggestions do you have there?

• 35:00Speaker 03

  I, my marketing, when people say do marketing, it doesn't scale, they don't really mean it. But I love hand to hand marketing, like do the hand to hand combat. I think so many times in these businesses, we're so focused on how to scale it to all these people. Instead of just, just think about how do I scale this one to one? So a lot of it for me, let's just take, I'm picking a random example. So visual site maps. So basically, marketing in businesses really boils down to three questions. What is the problem you're selling for the customer and how, how fucking important is it? So if visual site maps, it's a select deal on appsumo.com, like they create visual site maps. Now, the second question in all marketing is like, okay, that problem, what is it? Now, the other two things in marketing is really who is that customer and where the hell are they online? And so you just have to be really specific. So for them, I would try to pick a very narrow customer base.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  And people always say they do it, but they don't really do it. And then just really try to figure out where the hell is that person online? So are they in Facebook groups? Are they on WhatsApp? Are they on YouTube? Is it going to be through content? Is it going to be through paid ads? And especially starting out, I always discourage people from spending any money until they start making money. So I wouldn't try to do the ad stuff. I personally would just try to do as much like reaching out to specific people I think should be buying it. Depending on whatever product it is.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's really interesting to make money before you spend money on marketing. But I tend to be a believer of the same thing. I have plenty of friends, both investors, entrepreneurs, et cetera, that completely disagree with me on that. That you gotta spend money to make money. But for me, it's, I probably more risk averse than they are. And I want certainty or at least increased probability that I'm going to find success with the dollars that I spend rather than let me spend money to see if this works or not.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Well, let me ask you, I'm actually really curious how you'd approach it. I'd love to hear how you think. If you had, so two approaches. One, if you had to create software to listen to an absolute marketplace, how would you go about, and I have a second product, I'm curious for your take, but how would you go about even thinking about that? And then how would you be successful with it?

• 36:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm cheating just because I've already got such a big audience that like I could drive a ton of traffic there. But I think the, the key things for me are, I would want a product that with minimal conversion could become interesting. Doesn't necessarily have to be like super profitable or whatever, but it's just like, okay, that's interesting. Because I know if I add a zero to the end of the number of customers, then it would be like a very material revenue source. And then the second thing that I would spend a lot of time thinking about is sustainability. I think one of the things that most people, when they come to these marketplaces, they're like, oh, I spent 42 hours carving out this wooden table and I'm going to sell it now.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And you're like, that's amazing. You can make one a week if this is all you focus your time on for the rest of your life. Right? Which means that you can sell, you know, 50 a year. And oh, by the way, you sold it for $10, so you're gonna make 500 bucks. Like, not worth your time. Right? So the sustainability is really important because you've got to be able to do like scale it, but also do it for a long period of time. Cause I found that's really where the advantage is. Like, majority of the advantages I have in from business and content, etc. Like, I've just been doing this shit for five years now. Like, nobody's gonna catch me as long as I don't stop. There's just no fucking way anyone's gonna catch me. But I'm in control of that because as long as I continue, I can't be caught.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  The second that I take my foot off the gas, somebody can quickly catch up with me. Right? So same thing in, in these businesses is if you're creating a product where it requires you, you know, I don't know, to do one-on-one calls with people. Like, you just can't scale it forever. And so being able to figure out how the scalability element would be really, really important.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Let's just say you're starting out. And I hate when people ask this, like, you're 20-year-old, but I think the two things I want to call out there. Number one, people are like, well, if I had an audience like Anthony, if I had but pumps on it. I'm like, well, yeah, just start right now. And in five years, you will. And just do it every fucking day for five years. That like, that is the secret stuff. Pick something, do it for a long period of time and make improvements. But I am curious if you were gonna sell like a course or book or template or software, but you didn't have your audience and you wanted to be successful on AppSumo. Uh, I guess, how would you think about that way? So, you know, for a lot of the audiences, it is a lot of people starting out or wanting to start out.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  I would do a stunt, like I say, for a book. I would do some sort of stunt, like, I don't know, how many books would it take? Let's say you wrote a book, I'll just come with a crazy example. Uh, you wrote a book about the stock market. How many books could you, would it take to bring in front of the, the, uh, New York Stock Exchange? And line the street out in front of books? And then all you're doing is you're racing to get a photo of it. Or could you somehow write, uh, could you somehow write like words? Um, you know, short stocks or something like if you're writing a, a bare book about stocks in front of something.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Could you stack a bunch of books in front of the bull bear? Uh, you know, the, uh, the, um, uh, bull on, on the, uh, stock market, something like that. The other thing that I think I would do is I would do billboards. So right outside the stock market, like, create a bill, I mean, it's like, I don't know, two grand, three grand for a day, maybe. And basically all you're doing is you're, you're, the billboard's not for the attention on the ground. It's to get the photo to then be able to go and, uh, and have it go viral online. And then the other thing that I would do is, um, I would essentially, uh, use controversy to drive book sales about, out of the haters of the book.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  So for example, if you write a book that actually has true value, a lot of people are gonna disagree with it, right? And so when you do that, what you need is you need to basically elicit the haters. A lot of people would try to avoid the haters. They would say, oh, I wanna go over here. I, I don't want, I don't want them to like attack me. Instead, what you would wanna do is you would literally wanna take the book and you would wanna mail it to the people who disagree with it. Cause they'll go fucking crazy, they'll write blog posts about it, they'll attack it, they'll say, you're a moron, whatever, they're promoting your book. And so, uh, you, you just. What you can't do is say like, hey, I wrote a book. I put it on Amazon. I hope people buy it. Right? You, you've got to use kind of big things because you don't have the audience. For me, I don't need to do all that stuff. Because basically I've got the audience. I've, you know, literally spent five years marketing to these people.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Marketing in air quotes of like, they know who I am. That's what you're trying to do with traditional marketing is if you're coming out of nowhere, you don't have an audience. You just want to release a book. You've quickly got to get people up to speed on who are you? What's the book about? Why should I buy it? If I came out with a book tomorrow, right now, everyone's like, yo, I know Pump. Like, I, I, I like what he writes every day. I hear the podcasts. Like, I'm probably gonna like the book as well. And so it's different when you've got the big audience, but if you don't have the big audience, you gotta get that quick.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. One, one idea that you actually sparked, I think it's a really great idea that you're calling out is you can also piggyback. So one of my friends, Vanessa Van Edwards, and I was thinking about crypto specifically, she went on Udemy and found that the most popular course ever sold on Udemy was like a Python programming course. Like that was the biggest course ever sold on the site. And I'm looking on AppSumo, we have a crypto's product I already told you called Coinstats that's making almost six figures. So what is a parallel product? Maybe it's a course, maybe it's a book, maybe it's another piece of software. But if I buy that, I'll probably also want to buy this. So for myself, there's literally no content or very few products around crypto on AppSumo. And we have a lot of people interested in that, starting businesses or growing businesses. So I would try to be like, oh, there's already something doing well on that. What else related to it can I offer?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  What is the biggest surprise you've had by looking at all the products sold? Is there one product that somebody sold really well that you're like, holy shit, I can't believe that that worked?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  I mean, the ideas product is called niches. If you go to appsumo.com, N I C, I think it's N I C C and niches. Or N I C H E S S. It's got a name, Malcolm. Yeah, three S's. This is a product that helps you come up with business ideas. And it kind of, it's like, I think people like the idea. It makes them feel like they're playing business. Like, oh, I got an idea. I can do something. That has definitely been a surprising one of more recent, how well that's done. I was kind of surprised our, the products on our originals ones that did so poorly, that actually on the other side was shocking. So we created like a, you know, link tree. Like you can have all your links on one page. That, we created one called sleek bio that flopped. We created a recent one, SMX texting. So you could have like SMS marketing that flopped.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  We did email badge, you know, like you can have an email badge that looks all pretty on the bottom that flopped. I think some of the flops are almost as interesting as the ones that have been successful.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  I think that that's always the case, right? Is that's how you end up figuring out what actually ends up being the most valuable stuff is you gotta get through the shit that doesn't work either.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  You know, when people look at you and they're like, oh, he's successful. They look at me and like, oh, this guy's successful. It's like, well, it's also because I've been doing it 20 years and most of my stuff didn't work. And finally, after 11 years, something ended up working. And then finally now, like in the first two years, I didn't make shit for money. I didn't get paid the first two years, but I think that's not the part that people want to hear. They want to be like, oh, this guy bought Dodge coin and now he's, you know, living in a van, which I guess is kind of the irony. You live in a van now that you're rich.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It is weird how that happens. All right, so at sumo.com/pomp is where we should send people if they want to go there. And then if they list a product, they will get what?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  They're gonna get, the first 40 people that list products are gonna get a Force 400. Holy shit, I'm giving out this much money. First 400 people just list on the AppSumo marketplace, get a thousand and then $250 to every single one else until we run out of a million dollars. So all you have to do is list something that is high quality, ideally high quality. That's going to help other entrepreneurs or people starting or growing businesses. I think especially in the crypto space, Pomp, which I know is a lot of your audience, there's just like, there's two products. So that seems like a really interesting thing that if you can create some software around it to track your stuff, look for new. Like, here's an idea, I'll just give out a straight one. I just told people that business ideas does really well. Why doesn't someone take that for what is the new crypto stocks or the new crypto coins?

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Like literally just go scrape Twitter and Reddit and maybe Discord or a few other places. And then literally each day, just like, hey, this coin is getting talked about more. And you could sell that software for 25 to a hundred dollars lifetime on AppSumo. I'd be shocked if you didn't make six figures.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a pretty good fucking, that's a pretty good fucking idea.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, dude, actually, hey, we're gonna edit that part out. Pomp and I are collabing on that one.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  All right, and then when you think about where people should go follow you, is it Twitter the best place for us to send them?

• 45:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, twitter.com/NoahKagan or YouTube, Noah Kagan are my two main places that you can find out about me.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Awesome. Listen, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I think people enjoy every time that we have this conversation and I will definitely have to do it again in the future as you continue building everything.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  All right, thanks, brother. Good seeing you.