My First Million - How This +$80M Founder Launches A Startup In A Weekend

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Episode 546: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Noah Kagan ( https://twitter.com/noahkagan ) about how to launch a million dollar business in 48 hours. Give Sam your email address at The Anti-MBA ( https://www.theantimba.com/ ) for a chance to win a free copy of Noah’s new book.  No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Now not how (4:30) The upside of asking (5:00) Airbnb sales formula revealed (12:00) Appsumo quietly crushing it with $80M arr (19:00) The lore of Zuck and early facebook (32:30) Only say yes to 10x (41:00) Million Dollar Weekend giveaway — Links: • Noah Kagan - http://noahkagan.com/ • Million Dollar Weekend - http://tinyurl.com/vmmfwpcb • AppSumo - https://appsumo.com/ • Carrd - https://carrd.co/ • The Anti-MBA - https://www.theantimba.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

I was in the sauna this morning thinking about you guys. And I was just thinking of how grateful I am. Just so many cool people, I don't know, just crossing our paths across our whole life. Just made me kind of a little emotional, but also just happy. We're supposed to get touchy-feely at the end. Not at the beginning. YouTube stats show that touchy-feely at the end works, but at the beginning, people just bounce. I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. 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 the internet. One of my inspirations, you run this company called App Summa. It does like 80 million of 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. Give me some of the sort of wisdom, bombs or insight bombs from the book. So give me, give us some of the, the key ideas or highlights that you think, 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. That's great. Could have asked me a while back. But so we, we kind of 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, I'm saying yes either way. Don't worry. I got you 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 going to have to reprint the tens of thousands of books. You know what I will say? From the surveys that we've done

and what people said, the results that they got, number one thing is this now, not how idea? And it just means just fucking start right away. But people get so, especially you guys see so many people listen to your show and they're like,

I don't know, I want to listen to more shows. I need to go listen to these like fake YouTube gurur grooves that are out there that don't even run real businesses. But realizing they can actually do things like right now. Like, how don't 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 Monthly 1K. I tell people there's two courses that I paid for that changed my life. And it was Nevel's copywriting course. and then it was your monthly 1K course.

I remember I bought this when I was 23 years old. I think it was $300 and it was like a really big deal for me to buy that. And I started 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 email.

people or calling people and getting customers before you even build the thing, which at the time, now everyone talks about that. But at the time, I was like, it kind of 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, because I don't know if I can move. I won't even try it. But I got, I, I went and bought, I 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 ink for five bucks and you dip it in 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 so partying and drinking a lot. So I was little, I was inebriated when I did this. But I was like, every day, I was like, this course is so good. Every day when I wake up in bed and I can see my feet and I put my feet down at the end of the bed at the edge of the bed when I get up in the morning, I'm going to see Act now. And that's my whole 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. LLCs 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 going to say his tattoo is act, Noah. I thought I was going to say Noah, not now. Dude, those are some feet.

Dude, some people would look at it and they're like, what's ACT? And I was like, yeah, I got SAT on the other foot. I just love testing. Be mad on his ass. Yeah. So number one for the book, Now Not How, just what can you do today? 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, and we teach it through the Coffee Challenge and other examples. Coffee Challenge is what you did, which is you asked for a discount. So I did the coffee challenge last week. I did a YouTube video where I tried to do the coffee challenge. I got rejected a ton. And 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. No, you've got immigrants, your father. And then Sean as 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 we negotiate. 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. I used to be so embarrassed. Like, I would go out to eat. And if I ordered a pizza and you brought me like chicken parmesan, I'd be like,

fuck it, whatever, just give it to me. I'm not going to say shit to this person. I'm not going to complain at all. And then I started hanging out with these guys. And it totally changed my perspective on just being like ruthless about asking for things. And it 100% worked. I mean, that's all business is, right? Business is like, hey, will you be my sponsor for your.

guy show necessarily. Or will you be my customer? Will you be my partner? Will you be my employee? It's an ask. So at Camp MFM FM.

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 gave us an impromptu presentation off his phone. So he basically had like some old presentation he had given that he kind of like found slides on his phone.

He basically started screen sharing from his phone onto the TV. And he goes, he was like, oh, this was our sales formula. So this is the Airbnb be founder's sales formula. And it's SW squared plus WC equals MO.

So I don't know if you can, if you've ever heard that. He's like, everybody heard this for? We're like, no, he goes, no. 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. Yeah, but did he tattoo that on his ass? No. Do you know that Airbnb is like, 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? On Craigslist, right? They had like a designers conference, was in town. So they had a designers conference and they sent an email to the designer's conference saying, hey, does anyone want to stay in our couch? That was how they tested the business. That's now worth $100 billion. And I think that when you start realizing like there's other ways of doing this,

so you don't have to do 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, I probably have had 10 Silicon Valley friends, and I imagine Sean has had more.

And they message us and they're like, hey, you know, I used to invest in VC stuff. You know, I invest in startups. And they'll see what Sean's doing a little bit about investing in cash-fowing businesses. And they're like, can you teach me how to do that? That is so much better or like they want to just make profits now as opposed to, you know, waiting 12 years to sell business. And there is definitely this shift, it seems like, that's happening.

Have you had that show where a bunch of your friends are hollering at you about that? 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, but you are right. Basically, it's the losers of the Silicon Valley lottery, right? The winners are like, you know, you hang out with Joe Gebby. 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 10% compounding or whatever 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 because guess what I don't actually need three trillion dollars to be happy you know 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 95% 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, maybe buying companies

that already work and making them work better. And also people realizing that it's a lot more fun to have, it's a lot more fun to have money now than it is to maybe have money out of an IPO 10 years from now. And so, sure, 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 of my friends from Silicon Valley in a room and I said, 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. What the two things that I think they did do is project selection, market selection.

So I think they picked the right idea in the right market. But it's not that they're better at doing that necessarily. It's not that those guys had a different insight or a higher skill at picking. You know, they happen 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.

And the second is, you know, there are, you know, still like 12, you know, plinko bounces of the puck as they go, right? Like when talking to the Airbnb guy, my biggest takeaway was this company should have died like seven times. And I actually give them credit because I think they are, the top 0.001% of 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, they didn't have the same number of times it could have failed once they got going, if that makes sense. So anyways, I guess I don't think out of the batch of 100 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 is interesting because right now we glorify this person and that like it's not working for a hundred years and then finally like the light bulb works. You know, 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 15, 20 projects that I've tried that did not work. Right. Some are a day project and some were two years projects or three years. Yeah. I mean,

I've done many, many, many things and like three have taken off. This podcast being one of them. Yeah. So, like, 10% 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 talked to a bunch of CEOs when I came back to Absumo because I left for a few years. And I remember I interviewed, like, the CEO of Udeme 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 that takes some time to recognize, though. And then it does, maybe they have more experience, which is stuff we can learn over time. You're fascinating right now, I think, because 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. You were kind of in this world with Tim, Ferris, and Rameet.

And so you were part of the kind of the zeitgeist in 2008 to 2014, maybe. And then you started this company, Absumo, which is like Rupon for software discounts. And you've kind of been quiet, or at least the company has been quiet, absumo. But it's one of those stories where you're like, what's going on with Atsuno? And then you find out that they're just quietly crushing it. Wherever you, I don't know what you did in year one, but it's probably 10 years old. You're at 80 million in revenue. And what I admire about Apsumo 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 old is it? So it's 14 years old. It's going through puberty. So we've got some growing pains here. But it's been cool, though, to see that you're just like, I think that there's a few companies like this. Like one example, and I have no idea if this is true,

is like, you know, where you guys know, hey.com and superhuman, the email software companies. Yeah, they do. 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 personal website. Right? and you're about dot 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. And then card came out and it was just simple single page websites. I still use card today. I love this, love this app. For what? Anytime I need to make a site. 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 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. They kind of disappeared. Nobody really talking about it for a while. And I met the founder one time. And he's told me the numbers. they were just crushing it.

And I was like, what? He goes, yeah, I know. He goes, actually a really random thing happened. He's like,

every like political movement, uh, started using cards. So like during the campaign like 2016, 2020, thousands of websites got created using card to promote like election stuff or any cause. It became like a thing for causes. Um, he's like,

yeah, that drove a ton of growth during that period. And now, and I think they just raised like a venture around 10 years later. They bootstrap for 10 years and then raise like a single round from investors because they kind of 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 see what we can do with this. Yeah, they had two people for 10 years, right? Yeah, 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 the tech crunch or whatever. I think there's something not talked about about longevity. Right, like just doing it over and over and over and over for 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? 100,000 plus and more coming. And so something when people are starting businesses, it's like, okay, well, is this something that's going to 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?

A bootstrap. So you've bootstrapped it, 14 years in, 80 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 76 something. Was the actual final at the end of the year? And that's like gross revenue, meaning you give a- everything. You give a percentage to the software companies. I don't know. But you said net.

So that's after you paid out the software company, right? So gross sales is 76.7. Net revenue was 56. Wow. Pretty good. And then profit was 7.5. And what do you do with that profit? That's like Noah's piggy bank or where does it go?

Yeah. No, no, it doesn't go there. So what we do is it's been the same approach we've had. So we copy Amazon for if you actually look at our net profit over the past literally 14 years, it's like 0.5% net income margin. And so what we do is in Q4, we try to spend all the profit we have so that every year gets bigger and bigger. So take everyone on the team to Mexico, ads, servers.

sponsorships if we can, hiring investors, pre-paying for things, whatever we can within tax rules, and pay the team distribution, and then whatever's left after that, then me and my partner

get some distribution. Wait, what? What's confusing about that? What's confusing about that is, what's the point? Wait, but you're including you're paying yourself out of me, right? What's the point of running this business

for 14 years without the profits, is my question. He included, he included, he just distributed. and then you prepay ads for the next year. Yeah, you try to invest everything as much you can theoretically. If you think it's a positive investment so that the next year is bigger.

Yeah, but it's pretty hard to do that. We do that for our e-com business. It's pretty hard to pay $7 million ahead of time. So what's the big chunk there? No, we spend like, I think almost $2 million distributed back to the team just so that they have bonuses. And for the first five, just for what was interesting, though, first five years, I didn't pay myself anything.

It was like, how do I put everything back in? even though we were doing pretty good in terms of the business. The business hit right away, which most businesses don't. You guys know that. You try a lot of things and not all them work. But after I think of year six, I was like, I got nothing to show. I don't think I'm going to go public. No one's trying to buy us.

I'd like to have some money in the bank. Were you broke? I mean, because before this, you'd ran, what was it called game kick? Kickflip was one of them and then Gambit. And then you were with Mint, and then you were famously with Facebook. were you cash poor for a long time? No, I've never been broke. I had a million dollars at 30 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 cheap as possible,

I did get two paydays. One payday was from the Gambit Payments Company. So I think I made around 350,000. That was payments for Farmville and all those annoying games. And then the conferences. So those plus just being really conservative with the cash, like it was about a million dollar liquid around 30. Can you tell the Facebook story?

I know you've told this 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 happened with Facebook? How did you kind of blow like a $100 million payday?

It was more of a few hundred million dollar payday. every year it gets worse. Thanks for rubbing. Do you know this word Shorten Freud? Yes. You have 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 it's just kind of the wild thing about it. I mean, it's funny, I posted on Twitter some of these old Facebook memories with like me and Zuck and Moskvitz and Bosworth,

who's now the CTO or Chris Cox, Charlie Kiever, Adam D'Angelo. It was, you know, Arrington from TechCrunch. It was a, It was a special time, man. It was a really special time.

So how did you get there? What were you doing? What was it like? And what happened? 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 college up.org. Grigslist for college students. No one used that.

Ninja card.com, discount cards for college students. That did really well. And then I was putting on conferences. So Entrepreneur 27. I was basically just really wanting to get the hell out of a day job and have an own business. So I sent in my resume cold. But the differentiator was that I sent in mockups. So 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 showing us what you would do here. And you're not a designer, right? So you're scrapping these mockups together. You paid somebody? What 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. slides is probably that and Canva are probably the best free things you could use. Did you just cold email Zuck or how, who'd you send? No, no, no. So I was going to quit Intel in December because

I was waiting for my health insurance to kick in. I wanted to get my HSA payment. And then I just saw the job listing. I didn't know anyone there. And so you send that in. They're like, cool. You go, what was your first impression walking into the office? I guess what was it like back then? And what year was this for Facebook? This was 2005. 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 working on a product.

To be clear, though, it is work. People think that at Absumo. They're like, I'm going to come party with you guys. Like, you realize, like 90% of our day sitting on computer working. 10%. Yeah, we do a lot of cool stuff. But when I came in there, it was chaotic. I mean, I posted one of these photos.

It was a good memory where, like, there's cables everywhere. The desks were kind of all over the place. But it felt like there's something special happening. It felt like there's like, holy shit. We're on a mission that no, else is a part of and we know where this is going. And then we have this truly fearless leader that seemed like a savant. He's definitely awkward as hell.

But I was really impressed about, you know, what he was able to do and how big he was thinking about this company could be. What numbers was he throwing around? Yeah. So a few crazy things. Crazy things that people forget, though. He copied Connect You. I don't know if everyone remembers this.

In a weekend. He copied someone else. And then emailed out his, emailed out to his 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 at a very early time, he rejected a billion

dollar sale, which now maybe sounds a lot or little, but imagine like, Sean, you're, what, 30-something? 35, you're 24 years old and there's like, hey, I'm going to give you a billion dollars. This was Yahoo. I think all of us would take that in a heartbeat. I took a $100,000 job. So I think I was going to 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, you know, Zuck'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 the executives leave the room. And everyone's looking at Zuck. Like, all right, so let's take this. And he goes, so I just wanted to like sit in here and pretend like we're talking about this because obviously we're not going to take this deal. By the way, you're totally making this up.

That's not what happened. That's what I heard. 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, which is like where Peter Thiel and others were, he was like, okay, but housekeeping, we got to discuss, you know, we're supposed to talk about this. Got this offer.

Obviously not going to 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 a way of a good story. Well, I think there's even more revisionist history, 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 Microsoft I don't remember and then they reneged they came back and tried to negotiate down so like you know he took 1.2 and then they came back and said no it's going to be like 900 or something there's another story like that and so none of these are congruent because Peter Thiel tells the story right that's where 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, you know, balls of steel turned down the billion dollar offer. But then there's this other story where he kind of took it. And I'm like, well, and they're like, if he wanted revenge because they negotiate him down, it's 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 brave or more brave or greater than. I would, you know, someone asked me a few days ago, like, is Zuck good or bad? And I think he's good. I think people might have negative pressure, 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 to 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 ask you at the environment? Because I remember once 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 all, we're just like every other startup.

We're in the race. We're in the hunt. We're going to 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 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 actually sold for a few hundred million dollars. And so I walked home and I remember thinking on my way home, oh, fuck, we're just playing the house. Like that's what it's supposed to feel like when it's working.

I didn't even actually realize it until I stepped foot in there, but that's a totally different energy. They have it and we don't. And did you feel that when you went into the Facebook office? 100%. I've been lucky to feel it a few times. At mint, I felt it. Ab sumo feels it. And I think inside at Facebook, one, my boss got fired the day I started. So I walked in and my boss was 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. It was horrible. And I, you know, I go into a room and Zuck's like, your boss, Doug, who ended up founding good RX. He has no good RX?

Yep. Oh, wow. It's pretty, pretty impressive. I just fired him because he, he, he, he, he, 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's literally like a stark contrast from Intel where like everything is regimented. And 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 were at 10 million.

The day I started by the day I got fired, it was about 50 million. So we just saw that like, wow, this growth. But the threats were serious. Like Google was a threat, which people kind of forget today. Myspace was a huge threat. And obviously now those things already really talked about. What were you doing the math when you were thinking about how much your stock's eventually going to be worth? Where you're like, man, this might make $10 million.

My whole thing was that I just thought the equity is going to be insanely value. 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. Because 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 Absuo now, I'm now like, okay, what are we excited about? And we're excited to promote software.

Like, we love promoting software. And it's like, his was like, I want to connect the entire world. But you imagine showing up to work. And he's connecting the entire world. 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. He paid for all of our cleaning. He paid for us to live close.

paid for like everything. So all we had to do is focus on work. And that wasn't normal back then, right? No, it was super abnormal. To like pay your parking tickets and be like, hey, there's going to just bring your laundry here. Like shut up about your life and just bring your laundry here and just work. Because when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast, Jack Smith said this the other day.

We were hanging out and he goes, I like how he just has no disregard for social norms. Because we were like, how did 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 fully absorbed me. They're like, all right, well, I don't think I could. Isn't there like California labor laws? Like, how does this work? And I think it was right. The absolute disregard for social norms I've now learned is like a very, very positive attribute or signal in highly, highly successful people. It sounds like Zach was kind of 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 tree fell on him. During one of the workdays, he was biking, and a tree killed him. And I'm like, okay, are we going to put a bike rack outside? Are we going to have a moment? And there was not even any acknowledgement.

It was like, let's just work. And I just thought what 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, it doesn't matter your degree that you just can work there. And so being in that environment was really special. And just, like, seeing all this amazing talent that was there and that has 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 because of Coachella.

Like, you dipped out? I was, like, I was drunk and high at Coachella. And then, for me, I was blogging about Facebook because 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's how I've always felt with the stuff I do. And I let Errington 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 talk about it because Facebook wasn't going to do any press. And he wrote about it that night, and then I emailed

Zuck and somebody other E-Team, and I let him know what I did. So I think it was that. And then I think for me, I also felt frustrated. You guys have seen these people where for me, at 30 people, when it was like, no, it just figure things out. So I was like, all right, I'm going to help build mobile with Slee, or I'm going to help build ads, or I'm going to help do the status update thing, which they didn't even want to do. It was just fun. It was very, like, there's a lot to do there, and I was also probably more immature. And then as it got older and it grew, 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 30 people about basic ideas. When did it become

corporate? I mean, at that point, it was 150 people. It felt very corporate to me. It felt very, you know, and if you look at Facebook, what's the last great thing Zuck has done since 2005? besides acquiring other people, what does he come up with portal? That was a floppage. Name one thing he's actually done. Besides, he's acquired. He's made good decisions acquiring people.

I'd say that. He had just gotten bigger. I mean, that's why Facebook's great. It's just because everyone uses it. I mean, it's so big. I remember when Sarah, 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? 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 going to go give them free internet so they can use Facebook. I mean, his relentless drive towards growing to everyone 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 kind of like, who cares? It's like, yeah, you built Craigslist inside Facebook.

It's fine. They need us, they need to do something so big, right? That's why it's like the Metaverse or AI. They have to go on these huge waves just to kind of like move the needle for how big Facebook is. I think what was really interesting, but people can think about in their own businesses is the core really great. Because like Facebook marketplace or Facebook events,

I was really excited to grow and improve and monetize early on. And he was just against it completely. And I've noticed that with Absumo or our core businesses, go find cool products, get a deal on them, promote them. 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 cool stuff. So you've had this video where you went on this plane with this guy who I think was a commodities trader. I think that's what he said.

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 most billionaires that you know are unhappy. Tell me more about 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 billioners. Like, you hear people online, like, I want to be a billionaire. It's like almost every billionaire I know, and I've worked for them or multi-millionaire,

was just like, here's something I'm curious about or excited about. And yes, maybe in private equity or finance, but a lot of the entrepreneur was. 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 because I interviewed the guy from Kinko's. He just focused on copiers. That's it. but a lot of newer entrepreneurs I've seen are ones that haven't had as much success.

I'm going to do five different solarpreneur startups this weekend. It's like, okay, you can test five, but which one's working? Let's just do one. These billionaires just did one. But they tell us to diversify. And so I think that's always fascinating for me because they do one thing. And this is, again, we kind of come back to the Absumo story, is they stuck with it for a very long period of time.

Think about any billioners you know. How long did it take? Yeah, I mean, 20 years, 30 years, a lifetime, 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 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 when I was talking to Jimmy and I was like, yeah, I think the thing I'm, you know, most, the thing that's standing out to me the most as I get out of my bubble, I reassess, I reflect. It's the start of the new year is I think I'm spending so much energy, but I'm 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. You know, opportunities coming to you every day. And you've said yes to half the things I have. So something's wrong here. I think in general, the more successful you get, the more opportunities you get.

but the more things you should and you should be saying no to. I think Hormozzi said a nice thing about this that I thought resonated. He goes, let's say you're making $10,000 a month. And now somebody comes and offers you something that's going to make you $1,000. Pretty easy to say no, you have a going rate. If you're making $100,000 a month and somebody comes to you and says, here's something that will make you $10,000, easy to say no. The hard thing is when you're making $100,000 and somebody comes to you and says,

here's a thing that can make $100,000. And you're like, that's my rate. But what happens is, you now have to you've now split your focus and you're basically you're losing life balance, but you're also doubling down on the amount of work you have to do only to get, you know, one more unit compared to where you were. It's like the best people, the smartest people. They basically, when they're at the 100, they don't say yes to the next thing that can get them

100 or 200. They will only say yes to something that might get them, you know, 10x 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 say no, stay focused until they see something that is truly 10x better opportunity than what they have. So how are you changing this year?

Well, I said no to 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, one X type of category. and then every day I basically start my day with the first three hours because I was like, you know, the main thing I want to focus on is making great content. It's the thing I love doing the most is the thing I think I'm 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 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 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 going to say yes to anything else. I'm only going to 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 very effective so far. Where are you, Sean, where are you going to start making content? Like when you keep saying content creation, are you talking specifically? Are you talking about tech space? Are you blogging? Is it coming back? Sean, blogger. I might come back.

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. I listened to a ton of podcasts. I had 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 of 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 has showed me, oh, man, I really like doing this. And how cool would it be if I actually could do this all the time or if people actually listened to it, man, that would be amazing. And so I had prototyped and I 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 write a brief to a book, like an outline to a book in the first two chapters because I'm trying to understand, 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, you've seen, it seems so fucking hard. It seems so hard. Everyone I know 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 going to 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 wanted to write a book forever. And it took four freaking years to do this thing.

You think it's going to be worth it? What's the ROI going to be? I like it. I'm proud of it. I think it's first off. And coming back to the ROI on that, I think it's going to impact people. I think one person at a time. I've already seen it.

I've seen people read it and I'm like, holy shit, really. I think these things like what you guys have done with your show and Sean's like what you're exploring on yours, your content, is like, what's something you're excited to do and that's kind of hard? Like, no one's ever proud of themselves like, yeah, I wrote, I walked five feet. But if you run a mile or if you run a marathon, you're like, damn, that was hard, but I can actually do this? And I think that to me was really the ultimate aura in this book. Can I actually face myself and work on a book and to help other people? and then can people do it for themselves.

Dude, when did you become so political? What do you mean where I like, I'm, it's called me. You're like a politician, my friend. Like, so old Noah, I got to tell a story about old Noah. I remember Sean one time there's a coworker who I work with, who Sean, you are friends with. And she, we go into 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, Noah, what the fuck are you doing? dude. 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 showing so much evolution. You're talking about changing people's lives. It's so funny to see you say this stuff. Well, one, thank you. I think we should all of all. people's lives back then, too, just in a different way. One nip at a time.

Yeah. One nipple. I was going to talk about my inverted nipples nipples, which I'm very self-conscious about, okay? No, I mean, look, I'm maturing. Do I want to show up shirtless? Maybe if we're hanging out in our sauna. Like, come over.

But I think as you get older, you also realize, like, what kind of behavior do you want to do? And I think that's fine. Do the book, I think people have these, these, like, bullshit ROI things. Like, I want to 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. Noah, we appreciate you doing this, man. I forgot to, I should have plugged this earlier on, but I'm buying, how many books am I buying? 30, 50 books? Something like that. So I bought a bunch of books.

I'm trying to do my part to help you rank up in the list. So if you go to the anti-MBA.com, between now and February 15th, to anyone who gives me their email, I'll just like pick, I'll randomly pick 50 of you guys and I'll send you a link to buy the book for free or to enter your address in and we'll send you the book. I'm excited to see you do this. I hopefully, hopefully you impact some people, which I know you will. But also, the ego side of me is like hopefully you rank on some type of bestseller list, which I know is also pretty cool.

We appreciate you doing this. What do you want to, it's called Million Dollar Weekend, you're Noah Kagan on Twitter, app sumo.com, No, Kagan on YouTube. I'm missing any other plug? No, man. By the book, 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. 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 300-page business plan. It was embarrassing. Now that I look back, but we thought that meant we were, you know, doing everything. We were dotting every, you know, we're dotting T's and crossing eyes out here. And so I was like, all right, well, at a certain point, point, I looked at my co-founder and I was like, my co-founder, he's my roommate, my friend. And I was like, 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, 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 going to make money. I don't care how. I was like, we set a goal for $1,000. I said, we're going to try to make a thousand dollars in the next, you know, basically it was Friday.

It was like, we're going to make it by Sunday night. And I don't care how. Let's go. 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 ship. We made our first sale. We sold basically, I don't know, a few hundred of these like wristbands, like kind of customized wristbands like those fat, like live strong bands.

Yeah. To somebody who's, their parents were having an anniversary and they needed like 200 of these. We charged them like, you know, four or five bucks per. We made $1,000 in one weekend. And I felt like the champion of the universe. And I was like, this is what business is supposed to feel like. Taking action, actually going out there, try to sell a product, moving fast,

don't try to perfect everything. You don't need a 300 page plan. And after that, like literally my whole game shifted just from that one experience. And so I haven't read your book yet. You sent it to me. I'm going to read it. but I already, like, in my soul, am on board with what you're all about. Dude, I did that wristband business, too.

That's so crazy. They were hot at the time, right? Every kid was wearing them. Every college kid was wearing them. But I think the thing you called out, which is interesting and one that's awesome, is like because you said, hey, I'm going to do something. And I have this limited time. And you have 52 of them, right?

So especially if you guys got kids and all this stuff, you don't have a lot of time. But you can make an hour or two in a weekend 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 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, 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 remember 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 going to be like forgettably average? Because that's where this is going. And I was like, am I really going to get smarter than these people?

Am I going to, I don't have any, like special talents that they, that nobody else has. But I realize 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 going to do that. I'm just going to immediately take action.

And that will be the difference. And that will be my thing. And I can just, that'll be the best. bedrock that I can build any kind of success on rather than trying to have been like a special snowflake that was, you know, pre-pre-destant to do great things. And that just became my, my motto. I've still got the needle, bro. We can change that. We can, we can. Let's pat it. Let's tat it. But most people who listen to show want to make a million, they don't ever make a buck. They never make even make that one dollar. And that's where they have to get, you know, get off their

ass. That's that. That was, that was great. Good lyrics. Nice. Nice words. Thank you. Bro, you're a 40-year-old YouTuber. How do you not know these things? I'm learning the vocab. But, dude, I read this good book last night, Sam. You made me inspired by it. It's called the art thief. And this guy who steals art. But one of the things you said that stuck with me is like, what's the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning? And I do respect that. I love that you're like, well, this is the area I want to prove, which is, you know, you saw it on your feet. I don't see my feet first thing in the morning. But it's like puts 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 love that idea. I'm getting my whole legs done. You know, I've got a kid now, so maybe I'll do her name.

But I've got bold fast fun tattooed on my thighs because BFF, that's kind of what I live for when it comes to business. I've got a pirate ship. Bro, live, laugh, love is bull. Yeah, I mean, that's true. I moved to Austin and I found myself. Yeah. I did the work, Sean. You did the work, dude.

Well, you know, the reason I like homemade tattoos is you do it you want. When I found out when you go to tattoo shops, basically find an artist that you like and you're like, here's kind of what I want. And they're like, yeah, I'm just going to do whatever I want. And you're like too embarrassed to like tell them exactly 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 throughout my body that I was just trying to impress Hector. my tattoo artist. So that's pretty much how it works when it comes to tattoos.

No, we appreciate you coming. We'll wrap here. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.