The Startup Ideas Podcast - Bootstrapping Through a Bear Market with Noah Kagan

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Are you trying to grow your side project from hobby to profession? In today’s episode we examine how building has changed in 2022, share why so many entrepreneurs fall into the same trap, and divulge the secret to scaling a profitable business without VC funding. Hosts Sahil Bloom and Greg Isenberg are joined by guest Noah Kagan, CEO and founder of AppSumo, who was able to build his company with negative Net Working Capital. Noah shares the critical mistakes that led him to succeed, offers insights into where the next era of entrepreneurs will come from, and explains why everyone needs a personal “council of wise men.”►► Join our email list at http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS ►► This episode is also brought to you by LMNT (http://DrinkLMNT.com/HAPPENS). LMNT is a delicious electrolyte drink mix with all of the things you need and none of the junk. It contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio: 1000 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, 60 mg magnesium. LMNT can help prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency. It tastes amazing and is great after a workout or one too many drinks :) Right now LMNT is offering our listeners a free sample pack with any order. That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Get yours at http://drinklmnt.com/HAPPENS. And it’s so good they have a no questions asked refund policy but you won’t need it.►► This episode is brought to you by Fundrise. Fundrise is on a mission to use technology to build a better financial system for the individual. With over $2.4B AUM and 250k active investors, it’s the largest direct-to-investor real estate investor platform in America.Their platform is so easy to use and they make it so easy to diversify your portfolio. For a limited time if you sign-up, you can get $10 bonus. Just go to www.fundrise.com/roomTHIS EPISODENoah Kagan: https://twitter.com/noahkaganSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985

I think it's going to be work regardless, so just find the work that you actually want to spend time on. Versus, I think if you're young, just chase a bunch of shit and get in the reps, just like in any sport. But then try to find the path. Like for you guys, I think creating content is like so obvious how good you guys are. It's like you guys are doing it naturally. Noah, welcome this show. Yeah, well, it's good to be here, guys. It's good to be.

Noah and I were just talking before we started recording before you came on, Greg, about how I had to bail on this like awesome boasts. event that he and absumo were throwing in New York. And my excuse was that I was literally having my baby, you know, during the like two day window when, like, I think you did that on May 15th. Like the kid was, my son was born on May 16th. Like it was like, right the next day. But we were talking about how, you know, there are these like trump card excuses of getting out of things like being pregnant or like having a baby that you can basically get out of

anything and use it as an excuse. And Noah said, like, why aren't we just honest about things? just say like, yo, I don't want to go to that. So I don't know. What is it, Greg? Why aren't we just honest? It's human beings when we don't want to do things. I think people don't want to let other people down. I think like making, people generally want to make other people feel good. And like when you let someone down, it doesn't feel good.

So I think it's difficult to be honest. But yeah, I agree with you. I feel like we should we should all be more honest. I'm trying to be more honest. I think we, like in general, when you think about your calendar, like I think this relates to a lot of things. You think about your calendar and how many like emails in your inbox

you put off replying to just because you don't want to say no. But really you're just going to say no. You're just delaying it. And it's like someone was just talking to me about this. Rich Handler's his name. He's the CEO of Jeffrey's, you know, big financial institution. He was saying like the reason people don't reply to their emails right away. is because they're delaying the pain of just saying they don't want to do something.

And so he's like, I reply right away. And I either say, like, yes, let's do this right now or no, I'm not going to do that. And it's like a much more efficient way of just getting through the things. And I realized when I thought about it after I went home when he said it of like, yeah, that's totally what my email inbox looks like. The reason I'm not always at inbox zero is because I have 25 emails sitting in there that are things where I just don't want to reply to the person to say no. do you owe them a reply?

Just hit archive. What do you owe them? Yeah, I guess that's true. Stepfather? You know, like, I guess that's true. I think it's just having standard protocols makes things easier. Like, hey, I'm only focusing on these three things,

so I'm not doing extra meetings right now. Really, really standard makes it be easier. It's like, or I'm phone phobic. People love the phone. Yeah. It's like, hey, I'm just phone phobic. Like, it's actually a phobia I have. I can't take this, this, you know,

I'm scared. I'm scared, man. I actually do like the, you know, hey, I'm not doing call, you know, not doing Zoom calls. Love to do it in real life if you make it out to New York, you know, type thing. Because I do just like, I will meet almost anyone in person because I just so prefer that. But, man, doing Zoom calls, like my threshold now is so high relative to what it was a year ago. Anyway, I feel like we're on a long tangent. No, but I think the thing you're calling out is a really great point.

and just being honest with yourself and like, how do you get more alignment in your life? Right? And the alignment, what's interesting is like when you had a baby, it was easy to be like, I really don't want to do this, but you're using the baby as a nice buffer to that, or I'm pregnant or COVID or whatever these types of excuses are. COVID's pretty legit. They're all legit. But it's like, what if you could do if you could just live honestly?

Like I have two friends recently. Like, I don't want to go to these weddings of my other friend. How do I say no? And I was like, you say no. But I think it's also helpful if you're like, hey, I really want to go. I don't want to lie to him. Hey, yeah, your wedding son's promising.

I just have a lot going on. Can't make it. Yeah. I do think that like you brought it up a couple minutes ago of like, hey, these are the three things I'm focusing on right now so I can't take this on is a great way of thinking about it. I mean,

it all ties into like, people feel these inherent like sunk costs almost to going and doing things. Like, oh, you know, I already, I've always thought about it with like, oh, I booked flights. I had this last year. Like I booked flights to go to this wedding. And then the wedding was coming up and I was swamped with other stuff. And I was literally dreading it.

But in my mind, I was like, oh, man, I paid for the flights already. So I got to go. And the reality was I was just going to go make myself incrementally more miserable by going to this thing. And so that I ended up bailing because I was like, oh, it's actually just a sunk cost. I need to think about this clearly and rationally and just pass on it. Totally. But we have all these like embedded reasons for doing things that I do think if you just reset yourself, you can step away from. I think a lot of it is energy, like kind of, I think Greg was kind of highlighting it a bit,

which is just like, is this increasing your energy and clarity or is it decreasing? And so a lot of times in my week, like I was meeting with our head of marketing at Absumo yesterday, and I was like, who do you, I'm not going to call it people, but I was like, who do you meet with during the week that you're, like, excited about? And you're like, wow, I have more energy and, like, I feel productive. And who do you not? And there's probably either the meeting is bad or the person is bad. And so on my Sundays and, like, when I do calendar on Fridays and Sundays, I'm like,

what am I really looking forward to? Is there stuff that I'm just not looking forward to? There's probably some connection that I don't want to do it. And just doing that maybe in all regards. Yeah, I love that. It's like who energizes your battery and who depletes it. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don't.

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diversification to your portfolio. So join over 250,000 other investors, build a new investment. a better portfolio with private real estate. Signing up is easy. Just head over to fundrise.com slash room. Again, that's f-U-N-D-R-I-S-E dot com slash room to get started today. You know, I used to do that with my calendar. This is like, this is one of my favorite frameworks, actually. I started energy color-coding my calendar in real time after the meetings, and it completely changed. I mean, this is like six months ago. Greg, it was actually as a result of a conversation I had with you about like how my calendar was too full.

And so I literally would like at the end of a day go to my calendar and color code things green when I felt like they created energy for me, kind of like orange if it was neutral and then red if it was like, you know, I felt drained after doing it. And it forced me to visually see how many of the things I was taking on during the week were draining energy from me. And so I basically just said, okay, I'm going to eliminate or delegate all of those. And that was the first step. And it was like, okay, now my calendar looks all green and neutral. And then the next step was like, what can you kind of trim out of the neutral and make it mostly green?

And now I feel like my calendar is mostly green. And it completely repositioned it just by like having this visual cue and signal. Dude, I love that. I've been trying for the past two years like a week in review at the end of the week. So I have like a survey that I give myself on Google Forms. And you can kind of see trends for like, was it? For me, it's really related to Absumo. It's like, was I consistent?

How was my leadership? Did I move the business forward? And then the last thing is like, whether there are any blockers from this week or meetings that sucked that I want to adjust? And it really does make most of the weeks get subsequently better. I feel like feedback and like regular feedback and just in all aspects is how we improve life.

That's a pretty cool idea, actually, just like for a business. So you know you have, you know how you have like a, do you wear a whoop band or like any of the health tracker? I wear the or ring at night when I go to sleep. Yes, me too. So like the beauty. of those things is that it gives you like a trend line over time right like you know you can see what it looks like you know what your different metrics REM sleep whatever over over longer periods

it becomes really interesting um it's kind of a cool idea to like take something and apply that to you know your your your kind of personal uh productivity energy etc like what you're jerry rigging um you know and like jankily putting together with a google form and with a google server and sending to yourself there's probably a business to just be built around that like the personal energy survey or something, where you create a nice UI, UX and basically overlay it on top of data that is effectively a Google form that you get every week. Dude, I love that. I think that's great.

Here's the idea. Because sometimes with these things, like, we get baseline information and we're like, okay, if I go to sleep early, it's good. If I don't drink, it's good. It's like there's not really that much deltas of change. It's more just like some level baseline move forward. So I think it's just like how do you get more consistent iterations and improvement? I think the idea is like, have you seen those emails where at the bottom of the email, it's like, hey,

like, how, was this good, bad, okay? Yeah. And so it's basically after the meeting, you get an email, it starts like getting data points. Was it good, bad, whatever? And it starts adding those data points until it knows enough about you that it's just like, hey, you have a meeting coming up in an hour with Sahel and you like hate meeting with Sahel. or you or you know so we're going to go ahead and like cancel that or you know you love meeting with sahel we're going to when you're going to schedule it it tells you to cancel it actually just like don't

schedule this because we already know i actually think there's something really interesting to be built like a simple tool around this because like they all exist and there's like a massive multibillion dollar industry around like app tracking stuff on your computer on your phone that like tells you there's something called like rise productivity i think it's called that's like a computer app that like, actually I got it on app sumo, Noah. It was like one of your deals of the week at one point, like last year. And it like tells you, you know, it gives you all these metrics and data at the end of every week of like what apps you spent your time on, where you were productive, where you got drained, etc. But doing that, but for like your personal energy and sort of like using it as like a

week in review type template that gives you data behind all of that. And maybe it's self-reported, but it's still, you know, actual data that tracks over time and putting a UIUX on top of it, I feel like it would actually be pretty productive. Kind of like it. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. So, well, I want to come back to that, actually, because there's something interesting to be built there.

So we will talk about that. But Noah, you know, it's been super excited to have you on. It's taken longer than we should have to do this recording. So I'm happy that we're finally getting to do it. And a handful of stuff that we wanted to just dive into with you. But I thought maybe we could just set the stage for a little bit with like hearing a little bit more about who you are in your background. Because I also just personally feel like I don't know enough about your background and, you know, some of what has gotten you to where you are today. And obviously you're a, you know, amazing entrepreneur.

And you're also an amazing creator. And so I want to dig into a, dig into a bunch of that. But we'd love to just hear, you know, what has kind of like created your map of reality over your life. life, like, where have you kind of come from? And how did you end up where you are today? Dude, I have no idea. I was on a date, like, a year ago, and she's like, who are you? I was like, what?

I was like, can I just order my dinner at Chick-fil-A and call it a night? Like, who am I? That's a fancy date, man. Yeah, I think they're the best. That's why I'm probably still single at 40. By the way, I know, I just checked my Gmail. I just put your name in my Gmail, and I think I slept in your bed. Dude, awesome.

We should have opened up with that. Yeah. Are you just having a sauna party? 2016, Matt Gallaghan was like, hey, like, my buddy has his apartment up for rent or something like that. And I think we might have stayed at your place. Dude, awesome. I love hosting. I love, like, I'm, well, that's a whole money thing we can talk about.

The short of who I am, I don't know, man. Like, I'm trying to figure it out. I try to follow, you know, I try to follow. I try to follow what really, like what I'm listening to my body, you could say, like what really is calling me. I definitely get distracted with shiny objects, but I think my career and my life has been like what feels right. And then trying just a shit ton of things out. And most of them not working and some of them working. And then really surrounding myself with just like epic people.

I've been very, I think some of my talent is talent. I'm just like a talent like, you know, those metal detectors for pennies and nickels. I kind of like that, a little bit with people. And professionally, yeah, I was born into, like, tech. I don't know how my brother became, my brother's a doctor, but I was born, like, a few miles from Apple. And I love tech. I love the computer stuff.

I love, like, all this internet stuff. I love the app stuff. I love the crypto stuff. I just think it's really interesting how it's evolving society. And then, Absumo, you know, professionally was a culmination of just a lot of rejection, a lot of soul searching, a lot of, like, experiments and then finally in trying a lot of companies out to finally figuring out how do I work with people I really like where I don't feel so insecure working on something I really like

which is promoting things and talking about these things you know and being able to live the kind of lifestyle I want and so that's come together and creating content I've been doing blogging for a long time more hardcore lately on YouTube for the past little about two and a half years specifically around like you know starting a business making money overcoming fear. So you were born and raised in Silicon Valley? Yeah. And I was kind, which is, I feel very lucky because my dad is a sales guy.

He was like from Israel. He didn't know English. And he just started selling things. And then my stepfather's an engineer. So it was just really cool to get that mix of personalities. And then I was, I was just, it's all luck. It's all. I was mostly lucky to be born there.

And then all of my friends in Silicon Valley are just like extreme high achievers. Like my lowest friend is like a senior engineer at Fitbit. Like that's the worst off person I know. And like not bragging. I'm just like I was lucky to be born with that type of, you know, expectations. I think something about success is people like, it's a network. It's not network. It's who's around you and what's their ambition levels?

And I just had really high ambition people around me. And it's really inspiring. And there's a balance of that of you have to figure out your own ambition. Like do I want this or am I just competitive or comparative? but that was inspiring to be like, oh, cool, there's a lot of things I can do out there. So do you feel like, I mean, you mentioned the ambition point. I've never really thought about it much, but do you feel like you're kind of everyone always uses that phrase of like, you know, you're the average of the five people you spend your

most time with? Do you feel like that's about ambition that like you're really the average of their ambition level? Like if you're around a bunch of people and you come up around a bunch of people who have tremendous ambition, it's hard not to have that same level of ambition and, you know, and spend time with them. I think it, you know, I think it sets a bar of what, what things could be. Like, if you don't know what excellent food tastes like, like, how do you know what excellence looks like? So I had a chance to be like, hey, I worked around Zuckerberg. I worked around, you know,

Mark Pinkis and, like, you know, Peter Thiel and, like, the elite. And they're elite for a reason, because they're excellent. And then I think there's also some just internal motivation. Like I'm just naturally moving. I'm naturally active. And that's a little bit just, I was born with that. I think people want to imitate, like, the people, generally speaking. Like, you know, if you're, I think, you know, that's why, okay, I was reading a study late, late a few nights ago about how people who have friends who are overweight, generally eat more.

than the average person. And then they become overweight. And I think it speaks to this point, which is like you probably grew up with a lot of people who were exceptional or tried to be exceptional. And because of that, like, you know, it might just, you know, it might have been in you,

but it also might have just been, you know, manifestation. Yeah, manifestation. Yeah. I think a parallel, oh, sorry. A parallel example of that is like, I'm in a text group called like single guys in Austin. And it's like all these guys.

It's like by three other best friends. And it's always like, dude, I'm on this date. Look at this. Check this out. Like, you know, it's a safe space for a single gentleman. But then one day I'm like, dude, I'm just surrounded by these bozos talking about hooking up all the time. Like, of course that's why I'm single. You know, and it's not that necessarily being single is a bad thing.

But it's just like if you're around a bunch of healthy people to Greg's point, and like you'll probably be more healthy. and I think people probably aren't as intentional as I'm not a brag I think I'm very intentional about who I surround myself and besides these bozo single guys who I love I'm around a lot of very like intentional people not just in making money it's not only about that it's just like an integrity and follow-through character and just like they inspire me in different capacities and I have it's honestly kind of like amazing I mean it's probably the best parts of my life it's it's sort of it's interesting. Like I have a few thoughts on this. So one is that these kind of things cut both ways.

You know, like I often think about, I have friends who don't make a lot of money. Totally fine. You know, they're successful, but don't make a lot of money. And yet they roll in a circle of people who do make a lot of money and who spend a lot of money. And those friends of mine that roll in that circle then are constantly in trouble and stressed because they basically are like living. at the means of somebody who spends a lot and who makes a ton of money when they don't have that. And it's like they've kind of grown accustomed to living in this way by just like, I don't know, like osmosis or something like that. And it creates a lot of issues for them as a result. Because you do kind of like naturally blend into your surroundings for better or for worse. So I've often thought that was, it's just like an interesting fact of humans that we tend to just like

chameleon into our surroundings one way or another. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about like the insight with Apsumo? Like what actually led to the business creation? I mean, you mentioned it as kind of like failure rejection, things that had gone wrong and led to it. But like the actual insight around what it is, what was it that sparked that for you? How did you decide to go build it? And, you know, that I kind of would love to just hear a little bit more about the business today. Sure. I think it was a, it was a, it was a, culmination of all of my failure. Packaged did in one. What was your failure? Like you say, you know, you say that,

but like what was the failure? I mean, the failure was like Intel 14 months, Facebook nine months, mint nine months, kickflip, 10 months, which was funded by Naval Ravi Khan.

And then I did Gambit, which did really well. And then Facebook sued us and we got banned by another company. And then it was just like, I'm 30 years old and I'm just like, wow, and like, I don't know, I thought you just get money magically in your bank account. And so it doesn't happen that way.

Or I thought I'd have a wife. I thought she'd just like show up at the house. They don't. They don't. You have to actually go out and make it happen. And so I think all those different experiences in my life of what I didn't enjoy and what made me feel good and bad led to be like, all right, well, I really want to work with people that, I don't know, are humble. And I felt Facebook in Silicon Valley was just like this level of arrogance I didn't enjoy being around. There's a little confidence and intelligence, but the arrogance was too much. So I knew I wanted to be with great people.

which I didn't really experience. I knew I liked promoting things. I think it's like for all of us, there's some skill we enjoy, and we're doing for free. And so just find the thing you want to do for free and make that your job. There's debates of that.

I just found that for myself. I'm going to be promoting things, like whether there's apps for me or not. Like I'm still doing this YouTube thing, or I'm still doing my newsletter at, okay dork.com. I'm doing these things. And so I was like,

I want to keep promoting things. And then through some of these businesses, I realized, like you talked about this one idea, Sahel earlier. You said, we should help people track their work stuff. And I think especially now during a recession, this is where a lot of, this is where, like, some of the best innovation is going to come out of. I'm really excited to see who's going to be

creative here. Like, who's going to win? Someone's going to win. Winning is all subjective, but who's going to come out and create something special that they'll enjoy? And so, uh, I think for me, I was like, man, I like promoting. I don't like doing this payment stuff. Uh, I like software. And I love deals. And I saw like Mac Heist, which was around for a, do you guys remember that? Yep. Oh, wow. I saw Mac Heist and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. That like enables you to get people customers, promote cool stuff. I don't have, there's not a lot of pressure. And to be candid, and I think most people don't quit your day jobs when you're starting a side hustle and be clear on your vision. Be clear on your fantasy. I like calling it a fantasy. Like, what if you could live a fantasy? Like, how cool is that? And my fantasy was like, make a few thousand bucks, just doing it. Like, all these things I had bad partners and all this different stuff. It's like, just doing it the way I wanted. It wasn't like the, the, aspiration. And this is something that someone called out that I thought was interesting. Most aspiration of billionaires or millionaires or multimillioners was not always that case. Like Mark didn't start Facebook. I'm a big billionaire. I was like, let me see if I can meet some chicks

online if we're honest. And I worked for him. So I know that stuff. It wasn't like, I'm going to go create this world. Eventually it evolves. So your vision evolves. But I think being clear on what you want in your fantasy and vision was really helpful. So for me, it was like, can I do this thing and make a few thousand bucks promoting and getting basically deals I want on products. And that's more or less how it was for the first year. And I think the thing I've got to highlight for people out there for starting businesses specifically, and that's what I'm known a little bit for, it's kind of twofold. One, I just picked a really great industry. That's not because I'm that smart. Like, I'm above average smart. I'm not like excellent. I'm like a B plus kind of smart. That's what I aim for.

You know, I get almost the good thing, but I don't have to do all the work. And I think one thing is like software just grew so much. And I guess I kind of assumed it would, but like what's going to get even bigger? Like is YouTube going to get bigger or smaller? Way bigger. TikTok, bigger. Twitter, probably bigger. So go find the categories that are going to get bigger.

So that's one. And then I think with that, secondly, I got very lucky. And I think the other thing is when people are building these companies like that tracking thing we talked about, especially during a recession, are you building something a must have? Like I can't live without it. Like right now, go to your credit card bills. What can you not cut?

That's a must have. What can you cut? like even employee wise those are nice to haves unless they're must haves and i think with absumo there was two components which is everybody wants more customers in this world we live in you guys want more listeners sahil you want more twitter followers i want more youtube subscribers like those are just kind of what we're interested in so i thought if i can give people customers that's literally the most important thing i can do on earth for these people and then secondly i think we got very lucky with our business model which was we don't have to create anything we don't have to hold any

inventory on anything. And we promote a thing you created, someone else created and some software creator. We get the money up front and then we pay them 60 days later. And there's a reason for that. We had to put up all this money and all this experience and time to get the audience and the community. But the model just was epic. We don't need a big office. Like we can really run it very much. It's a 60 day cash conversion cycle that way. So you're like, you're just generating cash as you grow, but like negative working capital basically. Is it negative or positive? So we get the money. at front and then we pay our partners 60 days later. Yeah, negative working capital. Positive working capital is like a, like a, you know, apparel business where you have to pay your

vendors and then you receive money, you know, in 30 days. And that's a pain in ass to grow because you're having to fund all the inventory growth. Negative working capital is the other way where like they give you the cash. And now as you're growing, you have this float of a bunch of cash that you can be using to invest in things because you don't have to pay your partners for 60 days. It's a pretty incredible business model when you make it work. Yeah, ours has gotten really lucky I would say with all those things. And I mean, it's a pretty, I think find a business that you just really enjoy doing. Like we promote, like our jobs literally to find cool software products, get a deal and then tell people about it.

And that's how like the money just comes down. And then we give the partners money, the people get a good deal. I think more businesses aren't figuring out like triple win. They're like win, lose. Like you gave me the money, but you're getting screwed. And I think there's like mint was a perfect example of that. It was like free plus like the plus like these partners get money. And it was just like a really cool like everyone.

winning there, but I think it's some businesses that does feel like win-lose. Can you talk a little more? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, can you talk a little more about like the first year of Apsumo? Because I imagine, like now it must be easy. You know, you have this massive audience. People know Apsumo. But like the first year I can imagine. I wish, dude. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Oh, dude. Oh, dude. It gets harder. I thought it, you know, there's a, what's his name, Jim, Jim Roth, Jim Rome quote. It's like, it doesn't get, it doesn't get easier.

You just get better. And I like that a lot because it doesn't get easier. Just your problems get harder and you get better at it. The first to be, and look, our narratives of our mind are all liars. Like our, like, how we reminisce and things is total lies. Like, we just totally change the history to sue whatever purpose and whatever moment we're in. but the way I recall it to the best of my ability, and I looked at revenue of it recently, and it's been 12 years. So our first year revenue was 300,000. And that was me, truthfully,

just by myself. I really wanted a business where I was like, I don't want to have a developer, I'll do it myself. Don't want to have support. I don't want to have anybody to fucking depend on, initially. Now I can't do it without this team. And it was just like kind of, I think one of the key things that people miss in business in general is they're not working backwards from their customer very specifically. So that's, I'm assuming I literally just once a month. I didn't do a lot of work. I probably worked about, I don't, 10, 20 hours a month. I would be like, all right, I want to reach Y Combinator audience. What are the products that I could get deals on that that would get a voted on Hacker news? I was like, oh, well, let me get those. So I got optimizely, I got mixed panel. Then I was like, how do I get on life hacker? That's an audience I want. Well, I looked up all of Life Hacker's top, top reviewed software they've ever talked about. And I got a deal on that. And I emailed them and said, hey, if I get deals on this, can you promote it? And they're like, yeah, maybe. They did. And so it was a very intentional approach of, you know, customer first is how I like to label it in working backwards in that. And I treated it very casually, Greg. I wasn't very like, this is going to be a big ass company. I was like, I make, you know, a few thousand bucks every month or so for not too much work. And I think one thing that people need to be clear on, especially, whatever you're on your career, I lived so cheap that I didn't have to make a lot of money. I didn't even have like, I was doing consulting for speeddate.com. They're paying me $5,000 a month. And I didn't. really do much for them, but they loved me. I was like, dude, that's awesome. I was like a product

manager for them as a consultant. But I had the 5,000. I lived crazy cheap, and it gave me the flexibility to really find stuff I enjoyed. And I did it very comfortably until probably around a year in, I hired, you know, I found a developer named Chad, who's still my business partner. And that's an amazing story. And then Andrew Chen, who's one of my best friends was like, no, why don't you take it seriously? And he, you know, he tiger mommed me. He's like, you're going to try to be rich and you're going to grow this big. And I was like, dude, I'm just chilling, man. Just let me chill, dude.

He's like, no, make something of your life. And so we switched up the model. We went from bundles to single deals. And we went from single deals to like tremendous amounts of advertising and giveaways and different things. And the business went from $300,000 to $3 million the next year. And it was, that's not normal. And so the way I think of the first year, Greg, it was enjoyable.

It was, I wouldn't say professional in the sense. It was very hobby. And I think this is a very clear difference in as a baseball player. And as a professional in sports or as a professional in business or a professional in a hobby, is that are you treating it like a hobby? Are you treating like a professional? And we had a lot of, we eventually people copied us and we're just very professional. Like I worked at these very impressive companies. I have a very, it's not bragging, but I have a, like we got blocked by PayPal.

And then I literally emailed or texted the VP at PayPal and got unblocked within like 30 minutes. That's just, it was just luck because I have that network from being in Silicon Valley and stuff. And so I think that gave us an edge over other people as we started professionalizing the business. And, you know, what year in? In 2022, I mean, it's fucking hard, man. I used to think CEO, so I hired the CEO. His name is Amin Al-Avdula. You should check him on Twitter.

And I hired Amin. He ran the company for five years. And I basically just, like, got pretty rich during that time period. And I really didn't do a lot of work. And I was like, this is very unsatisfying. Getting a lot of money is satisfying. I will not deny that. But not working.

It's pretty unfulfilling. And I just thought he didn't do shit all day. I was like, this fucking guy, dude, like, he makes good money. I don't want to, I can't say his numbers. I'm like, this guy's making all this money. And like, what does he do, CEO's do nothing? He sits around, has everybody else do all this work. And then he quit last year.

And I was like, oh, shit, man. I guess I'll try to do it myself. And it's, it's not like a boohoo story for me, but it's like, oh, wow, there's until you're in someone else's experience and really understanding it. It was hard to really grasp like how challenging it is day to day and like the level of responsibility he had. And so I definitely empathize more with him and anyone leading a team and being responsible for jobs and, you know, running a business. Did you, did you raise money or has it been bootstrapped? It's been bootstrapped. It's so cool to, you know, it ties back to the working capital

point that we were making earlier. But like, you know, the inherent feature. of the business model you've built is that you're kind of being just funded by customers along the way. So, you know, most venture-backed business models, they're like gross margin negative from the get-go or, you know, or you're having to, you know, fund a bunch of upfront technology build out.

And it's, you know, you need a tremendous amount of money up front in order to build that so that you can hopefully get to the point where, like, you're kind of at the, you know, the benefit point of like the marginal cost of zero of the deployment of the technology. But the reality is then you have to raise a bunch VC capital and dilute yourself in order to get there. With your business model, negative working

capital, you're like, you know, pulling in cash and you don't have to pay for a while, you're able to actually fund all of that growth and all of the growth initiatives with customer money. And so, like, you don't really need to raise money along the way and you can maintain that ownership. So it's a pretty cool, it's a cool thing to see how it actually played out and flowed that way. Yeah, I can't say it's that I'm not smart about it. I think more with raising money, we never really had a good use for it because we did have capital and we were profitable from day one. And I think more businesses can be. I don't think we're unique in that. I think people get deceived. I think the other thing that's interesting is the advantage we have by, we've talked about

going in public. Our revenues are in the, you know, very high eight figures. And I don't know, I just don't want to be at the mercy of other people. I like being at the mercy of our customers. Like if they like us and we like them and we try to do our best, they buy and give us money and we can live our lives and hopefully they benefit and the partners we promote, get a bunch of money for us to promote their stuff. I like the idea that, and not having, it is good to have adult supervision, like we have a board. They can't fire me, which is, you know, good and bad. But I think having a board of advisors in general, like I'm seeing one of them tomorrow because I'm having a bunch of issues is critical. In the personal life, I have a council of wise men,

is what I call it, but also in your professional life. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you bring that up right. Like, you know, not everyone needs to raise money and there's a lot of businesses that could be profitable from the get-go. I just think that there's been this, I mean, it's probably just a relic of the fact that we've been in this raging 10-year bull market where like money was free and you could go raise it a billion dollars after a year of existing. And, you know, I think in general, people have created this storyline that they're going to follow as entrepreneurs. And it's like, here's what I'm supposed to do, quote unquote, and what I'm supposed to do as an ambitious founder is I'm supposed to start.

at this business. I'm supposed to raise money from Andresen Horowitz at this valuation. And then I'm supposed to be a unicorn by a year from now and get my Forbes article written about me. Then I'm supposed to go public. And it's like, okay, but take a step back, zoom out. And as you said, I mean, Greg would definitely agree with this. It's like, why? Do you actually want to do that? Is that going to make you happy? Are you going to be incrementally happier from going and running a public company? And like, in your case, what does that entail running a public company? It's like, Now I have to get on quarterly, you know, earnings calls with a bunch of analysts and have a bunch of people grilling me and have news articles written about me every time I do something. You know, there's just a bunch of headaches that come with the traditional path that everyone thinks they're supposed to follow.

And so I think like one of the great things that hopefully comes out of this, you know, bear market if we're in it is that people actually reassess and take a much more first principles approach to thinking about what they really want to do when it comes to building companies. Yeah. Yeah. I would encourage anyone just to get started. Like, it's just if you have a day job. Like, you know, I was talking with a buddy of mine named Sam from Financial Samurai and it was like, if you have a day job, number one, kiss your boss's ass a lot right now. A lot. It's a good time to kiss ass. It's a fucking great time to build your network because, you know, when people are looking to cut costs, they're like, well, who's who's showing up or who's calling it in, right? And the people showing up generally while the higher chance.

and then also build the network right there as well for those times. I think we're going to see a lot of profitable products being created right now just because all that VC money is drying up. And, you know, I think it's just going to, we're going to see over the next 18 months of some profitable businesses come out. Like, do you remember Groupon? Like, Groupon was like a $30 billion company. at its peak.

Like, that came out of the great financial crisis. And I think we're going to see a lot of businesses, kind of like APSumo, where people are going to want deals on one side and companies are going to want customers on the other side. And entrepreneurs are not going to want to raise money, not because it's impossible to raise money, but just because it's, like, difficult and, and, you know, and, you know, annoying right now to raise money. Is that true, though?

Because sometimes I'm like, if you're good looking, you're always going to get hit on. Like I was on a date a few days ago, and she's like, I have 6,000 guys to choose from. And I was like, I'm one in 6,000. She's like, you were one of the last ones. It's like, that's fine. But it's, you know, I think if you have, if you're an air table or a, you know, figma or a notion and there, and you're, you have a model that works, I still think you can raise like stupid easy.

I think the challenge, and you know, I think that's what you're saying, Seahill is like, if it's like, yeah, we're going to have to do a lot of stuff and there's a lot of uncertainty.

It's going to probably be a lot more challenging experience. I would you're doing zero to one. When you're doing zero to one, like pre-seed seed, that's where it's going to be more difficult to raise. But yeah, once you have product market fit and you have something that's working,

like there's always money. Yeah, it's a flight quality at that point too. I mean, it's like all the same money is going to pour at the ones that are working and doing well. You hit on, I do want to, Greg, I want to talk Google Chrome extensions for sure,

but before I do that, there were like three frameworks that Noah hit on in the context of, in the context of his business building that I thought were awesome to reiterate for for any entrepreneurs or builders listening. One was to go like just think about what industry is going to be growing a ton in the years ahead. And like that is a great place to go and build. If you know that like, you know, for you, software was going to be much bigger and you can go and build in front of that trend. That's a great place to start. The whole like must have is versus nice to have framework that you dropped. I thought was really interesting. I've always thought of it as like,

painkillers versus vitamins is the way I always like thinking about that, where you're just like, vitamins are nice to have. They might make you feel okay and good. Pain killers, like, you need to position if you're going to be selling well, you need to position what you're selling as a painkiller because people are way more willing to pay and if you make it feel urgent. And then that final one was triple win businesses, which I loved, like try to create a business model that is a win, win, win, where you have like the companies winning, customers are winning, the partners are winning in it. And when you can do that, you know, it becomes much more effective and it's a much easier sell from the early days of it. So a bunch of stuff that you hit on that I thought was just

that was just gold. Greg, can I pass it over to you to kick off this little bit of ideation around the Google Chrome extensions? Because I absolutely loved the writing you did on that. So I invested in a company in 2012 called Vid IQ. And the founders, this guy named Rob Sandy, he raised like a million dollars from Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk and all these guys to go build the Hootsweet but for YouTube or the buddy media for YouTube. So a platform that gives you analytics on YouTube. he did like the pure Silicon Valley approach like he got like an awesome office he hired like all these like well-known people he was burning money like crazy he was down to his last dollars this is like 2014 2015 and he basically got rid of everyone except a few people he went remote when remote wasn't a

thing and basically was surfing every day living in Santa Cruz kind of like to your point Noah like almost like the first year of your business. He was just kind of like, what can I create that generate some revenue and that would be fun to create? He ends up taking vid IQ and turning it into a Chrome extension that when you're on YouTube, you go on YouTube and let's say I'm, you know, at the, you know, let's say you're on our channel, right, the Where It Happens channel, which by the way, you should subscribe. We have like a crazy low amount of subscribers on it. go subscribe. We got to get on Noah's.

We got to get on Noah's level, man. And you're there. It'll say, you know, when you're on this video, let's say, it'll say the vid IQ score is 92. The average, you know, views per hour is 2.1. You know, here's the ratio of likes. Here's like the engagement. It basically gives you deeper analytics for people who are interested in getting a leg up on other creators.

And then he started, so he created that for free, and then he started charging for it. Today, fast forward to today, he's doing millions of dollars of revenue a year. His team is like 50 people. The Chrome extension has two plus million users. It's now no longer just YouTube. They're on TikTok too, and it's also a web app.

And it's an incredible story. of a business that like you know pivoted did their own thing passionate guy and use chrome extensions as a great way to get an initial group of users and then just charge for it so that inspired me to write a tweet thread around Chrome extensions which I'll just pull up really quickly here I basically said people sleep on Google Chrome extensions but it's secretly a gold mine. Grammarly, Loom, Metamask, and Honey are companies that started as Chrome extensions and created billions of value.

And then here's why it works. People barely uninstall extensions. The barrier to install is low. Extensions are quote unquote always on. So people are a daily active users of it. And then people pay for many of them. So Noah and Sahel, I want to get your perspective as to what do you think about Chrome extensions as a place to be building.

I love it. I texted you as soon as I saw this because I, so I invested in this, it was the first time I'd ever really encountered Chrome extensions, and this is kind of embarrassing, but I had just never really used Google Chrome. And so I was like completely unfamiliar with the Chrome ecosystem. And then I started using it and basically had gotten approached right around that time

by this founder who was building a Chrome extension that allowed you to, split payments across multiple credit cards. So like, you know how, you know, if you go to a store and you're buying like a big purchase, you know, like a laundry machine or a fridge or whatever, you can like take two credit cards and be like, hey, split it across these two and they'll do it for you like at Walmart or Sears or wherever you were. You can't do that online incidentally. Like it literally didn't exist. You can go and you put in one credit card. You have to spend it. And that's challenging for big purchases. It also presents an issue where like, you know, if you want to manage your credit, you don't want to overextend within one credit card. And then also,

you might want to optimize across points and rewards across different credit cards. And so this guy invented this Chrome extension that basically creates a kind of an instant card that splits it however you want across multiple credit cards. And I had no understanding of like Chrome extensions or how he was going to go to market with it. Anyway, now fast forward like three months after initial launch and they're doing, you know, 10 plus million of GMV through this thing without having a single dollar of market. expense yet. Have not spent a dollar. It's been all completely organic and like product-led growth of people sharing this stuff. And so that was what opened my eyes to the power of these things of like just how much you can do with them, especially because they're cross-internet.

Like you just have it plugged in. You can use it wherever across the internet now on different transaction sites for this. Honey was the same way I imagine in the early days. So I think it's super interesting. There has to be a lot of cool stuff to be built here. That business is called Kashesh, by the way. K-A-S-H-E-E-S-H, like cash. Jeez. They should work on their name. You put a little juz on that, Sahel. I think my, just two comments, you know, maybe you don't want them.

I'll shut the hell up. But I think, you know, two observations here. One is I think it's wrong to look at where necessarily the biggest size of audiences and be like, I need to build a business there versus like, what's the actual problem? and then what's the best way to resolve it? And I think this is where people get trapped. Like a lot of entrepreneurs are like, I need recurring revenue.

What's the best way to get people to give me money every month? I'm like, well, make something they want to give you money for every month. But I think that that line of thinking needs to be reversed generally, which is working backwards from the customer's problems, that they're excited. Like, I think that's the thing with that soon. I've tried a lot of other businesses since then and before then. It was like, this is the first one we're like, please let me give you money. I was like, damn, this is cool.

And the second thing is that I do think Google Chrome is big. I've bought Google Chrome and I've ran Google Chrome business. It's called Leo.io. And things always seem easier or cooler or bigger than when you actually do it. And you're like, damn, this is hard. And so we tried to monetize it didn't work. We tried to drive ads from it, didn't work. The growth loops when it worked that hard.

And then a lot of the people, if you try to buy a Google Chrome app, are actually pretty premium price. But I think you guys are on to something that there's, there's a lot of people here. They're probably actually rich, like wealthy for internet standards because they're on Chrome, right,

versus probably like maybe other browsers or they're maybe on Android. I guess Android would be Chrome. But I think they're telling you have more money. I think what you're saying sells also is interesting. It's like you could study the ones that are doing well, like Rocket Reach, I think is a huge one that no one talks about.

I think there's a lot of these ones. But I would try to work backwards on the customers and then not assume that this one thing is going to be easy because it almost never. It sometimes is we bought it. I spent $25,000. I paid a dollar for a reactive user. And then two years later, now it's just like collecting dust and getting emails from people wanting to monetize it in some scammy way. I agree with you, no.

I think like the trap that entrepreneurs make are like, okay, there's a lot of action here in Chrome extension. Now I need to like build a Chrome extension. Like Rob Sandy from Bid IQ, like when he was surfing in Santa Cruz, he was like, he was a YouTube, he was a, he was, he was, he actually created a YouTube competitor called Bidler in 2005 around when YouTube came out in 2005. Like he was, he under, like, he's OG day one YouTube video creator. So, you know, to your point around your earlier point around passion and, you know, do things that you basically have. a competitive edge on like he understood it and then he was like okay the the tool is going to be on an extension because it's just way easier for creators when they're on youtube to have this extension and use it and it'll be 10 times quicker um he wasn't he wasn't like oh yeah like uh i i

you know this is a huge opportunity i need subscription revenue um at all it just came once I'll fell in love with it. I think you're calling out the right thing, though, which is, like, what are industries or categories that are getting bigger? And then where is it being underserved? I do think sometimes, though, as an entrepreneur, I always think the other thing is going to be so much easier than mine. I'm like, dude, I'll do Chrome. Finally, it'll be so cake. I'm going to finally get super rich.

And then I do it, and I'm like, I thought I was supposed to, like, I read Greg's tweets. I thought it was supposed to be super easy. I think it's going to be work regardless, so just find the work that you actually want to spend time on versus I think if you're young, just chase a bunch of shit and get in the reps, just like in any sport. But then try to find the path. Like for you guys, I think creating content is like, so obvious how good you guys are. It's like you guys are doing it naturally, naturally now after putting it in, but it's kind of like lubricant versus friction. So I try to find that areas that I'm like, I like creating content. I like sending emails. Like, it's kind of what Absimo does.

Why do you do all the content? Like, you've built a massive YouTube present. You do a ton of videos. They're great, by the way. Like, you go, I see you, like, knocking on doors, talking to, talking to people. Oh, fuck, dude. Which I got shredded on the internet a few weeks ago for suggesting. But, yeah, no, like, just what has, what has led to that? Like, why are you excited about creating content?

Probably insecurities and ego, if we're all honest. You know, some form of legacy. Like, I hope people remember me or think I'm, like, smart or special. Do you think that's a thing? Like, do you think that anyone will remember any of us? No. Not at all. No, Elon Musk, that guy's fucking gone.

Yeah. Lame. Like, not lame in a bad way, but like, in like a hundred years, maybe, remember, maybe. And people, today is like God here. Fine. No problem. Like, thanks for building this cool stuff. But I think we're overly fixated on the reality that like, there's almost none of, like, any, like, building.

I always thought about this colleges. Like, you get a building. Dude, they're going to rename that shit in 50 years if it's still a, exists. Sianora. I think part of... I wrote about this recently. Like, I just think, I think it's like, I think it's such a false pursuit. I just think it's like an unfortunate false pursuit, actually, the whole idea of legacy.

Because the reality is in like, like you said 100 years, I was going to say a thousand. Like, no matter what in a thousand years, you're all forgotten. Like, how many people from over a thousand years ago do we remember? Yeah, like, we don't remember shit. Like, you know, like Socrates and like a few random, you know, Jesus, whatever. there's a few people out there that we remember, but the reality is like... Jesus is the only guy that we know from 2,000 years ago, and there's still debate if he's true. Well, we're all Jewish here, right? So like Abraham, Isaac, you know, we got some other guys out there.

We got some other dudes out there. Hunter, are you half Indian half Jew? What's that? You're half Indian half Jew? Yeah, I'm a Hindu. Dude, I've only, I think you're the first ever. I've only heard about you. Yeah, wow. I heard about 2,000 years ago. You're in the Bible. Yeah, yeah.

Mostly, like, when I tell people I'm Jewish, most people because they see me, they think I'm Sephardic. Like, they think, yeah, just because of my brown skin. But, yeah, no, my mom is Indian, Hindu. My dad's white Jewish from the Bronx. Okay, let's ask that. I think that's a little bit. Why do I like doing this shit?

Because one, I like marketing, and it's really a marketing problem. It's like, who is the audience? I call them underdogs. They're 18 to 35-year-old men that want to start a side hustle or a business or solopreneur. And I don't know what to do and they want inspiration. And I make content that inspires them. I do it because I like making the content. I like seeing what goes viral.

I like looking at the metrics and then tweaking it. And then I personally, I get a lot of joy engaging in the comments. I really like responding to almost all the comments myself. And so there's that. I think the question I was curious, though, is like, what's with Jews? It's always when we start with that.

What's with Jews and all of us? Is that the end of the question? No, no, no. Why do we love broadcasting? Like, all the Jews are like comedians, Twitterians, like, disproportionately, like, there's a lot of Jewish people. I don't know, there's something interesting about our culture. It goes back to the Bible.

It goes back to... Yeah, what happened to the Bible? So it goes back to... I've never read the Bible. The Golden Calf. And you know the story? No, go on. Okay, so...

I mean, this... Okay, so basically the story is Moses was in the desert with the Israelites. They fled from Egypt to go to Israel. And in the process of that walk, I believe what happened was the Israelites started worshipping pagan gods and symbols. And that's when Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the Ten Commandments from God, so to speak. and I feel like Moses broadcasted to all those people at the bottom of Mount Sinai to help them sort of see back Judaism and give them the Ten Commandments. Was that the first tweet, would you say, the Ten Commandments?

He's like, here's a listicle. I've got a tablet. Ten things to improve your life. I mean, you know, are you first? You guys both put out a lot of content that I think does that. You know, I mean, it's a tried and true, right? Like BuzzFeed, you know, created a billion dollar business around that. You know, just the numbers grab people.

You know, you get the like, you know, the clear effect of like hooking people in. I mean, let's be real, like YouTube, like every single platform, the people that have built big presence, like you, you continue to lean into the things that are grabbing people. Like how many YouTube videos say, like, how I bought eight Lamborghinis for 10 grand in a weekend, like that's every video when you go to it because those are the things that are hooking people. So it's like human nature in some way, shape, or form. You know, it's attracted to these like neatly packaged things. I mean, it's the brilliance of the Ten Commandments. It's like 10 commandments.

I know like that encompasses my whole world. It's like great marketing. If Jews believed in hell, all of us are, I'm definitely going. I don't know if I'm going. I think I'm doing my best to stay wherever the hell Jews go. The other thing that's interesting, so hell about that is, I think more people should do, like,

culling, is it culling the right word? Which is, like, a pruning. Like, I pruned really aggressively on all my content. Like, on Instagram, I think I followed 20 people because it's just, like, attractive people and some watches. I think YouTube, it's like,

really, I watch poker and squash, and then my videos. I don't, like, I see these other business guys, they drive me crazy. I'm like, just block them then. You know, on Twitter, too, like, I go through seasons. I'm like, oh, I really want to get this kind of content.

And then I'm like, I don't know, it's not certain. could be a little bit more intentional about the inputs. And then just get over, get like brainwashed with positive inputs. Right? Like get brainwashed with TikTok.

I try to get addicted TikTok. It's hard for me. I just think it's so garbage. It's a relatively state-owned corporation that controls the data of a whole lot of American teenagers and that is scary. What does that say though that the American teenagers don't give a fuck about it?

They're like, I don't care. And even teenagers, there's a lot of adults. Even myself, I put up on TikTok. And I'm like, they can have my garbage videos. I think they're taking on my diarrhea. And follow me. It's just so abstract. On a micro level, it's so abstract. It's like hard. It's one of those things where it's like for one person, it's very hard to conceptualize what that means. But in the aggregate, if it means that, you know, in a hot or cold war with China, they could make slight tweaks to the algorithm that

completely influence what all of our teenagers are seeing and how they're thinking on a daily basis. That's pretty scary. But like for an individual, I don't really know what that means for me. I'm not going to be skewed by whatever I see. You might be immediately. You know, you have an arrogance around it. So I think it's scary geopolitically. I really do.

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Thank you so much for joining and doing it. Yeah, my wife is getting me to leave right now. I got to go. She's like, oh, the kid. I can actually, legitimately, I can actually hear a screaming baby. And so that's generally my cue to leave. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at high at trwiH.com.

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