Today we are going into the Sumo office with Mr. Noah Kagan right here.
-Hi everybody.
-Alright today we have Mr. Noah Kagan who has been on the Growth Everywhere
podcast before twice go listen to it if you haven't listened to it before
but today we're gonna talk about everything we're gonna talk about his
life we're gonna talk about Sumo which is all this stuff back here and I mean
let's just start off with kind of who you are Noah and what you do right now
you do so many things man.
-Uh I don't I don't I don't think I do
you knows always interesting when you ask someone like who they are and then
how they like to start that answer.
-Yeah, who are you man
-No do you ever notice that when you ask
them like oh what do you do or who are you and then where
they start is real interesting how they define themselves yeah I'm Noah
what's up I live in Austin, Texas I like mountain biking I'm in a
relationship and then I help run Sumo.com and I started appSumo.com
-Did you notice how you said you help run it's not like I run.
-Yeah I think there's a
lot of ego with companies these days I met this company in Israel called
IronSourse you've never heard of them there's this random Jew company in
Israel revenue I'm not talking valuation you know people valuation that's a real
business five hundred million dollars this year
-Wow
-In revenue and guess how much profit 120 million in profit I was like yo Dawg
just drop like 2 million like just all I need is two million and I'm done
and I asked him I
was like man that's so great like you must be you're so rich you're so awesome
you're good-looking you're you know you're the Brad Pitt of Israel and he
had a few interesting things but the number one key thing that he said to me
as they've grown a lot through acquisition and that's fine you know
we've all heard that before so a lot of growth happens through
acquisition but here's one of the things that he said that that's really stuck
with me whenever someone joins one number one
they don't do golden handcuffs so they just give him all the money for the
company right away because a lot of times you get acquired they are like now
you have to stay number two is that everyone becomes a co-founder and I was
like that's really interesting I was like you make him a co-founder don't you
want that you're the founder you started this it's yours it's mine
he's like number one I don't care at the end of the day
I want the company and do well and two I want them to be a co-founder in the
business and it's actually stuck with me where the more that you can have
founders working at your company and people running businesses those are the
people that are looking for change and improvement and growth and not to be an
employee and so the more that you can actually have that at your business but
more likely you're gonna have a bunch of people looking to grow your business to
be very large right so everyone's the owner everyone is an owner in title and
compensation and frankly in the autonomy when they're apart your business and
I was like man that's a good way of looking at it so with Sumo someone was
just asking me outside hey you know isn't it cool you have all these fanboys
and fangirls people that love Sumo or appSumo it's always kind of bothered
me, mostly because well I was going to say
one because we have a male audience,
but that's just a bad joke.
But no number one is
because it's not me doing the work I'm doing part of the work it's every single
person out here every single person has been a part of our journey for seven
years and I think they should get as much credit as I do and that's something
that's I've always been like no it's I helped facilitate this and
have helped start it but it's no reason I should get more credit than
anyone else.
-What was the turning point of you evolving into understanding
to give more autonomy and things like that because like appSumo was your baby
right and now you've kind of handed it off to Ayman to run things over there
what was a turning point
-Well the appSumo journey it's been
an ups and downs that I think you know it realized with a lot of businesses I
don't think we empathize that everybody else has problems we all think our own
problems were they're worse but we actually talked to someone else like you
you probably have relationship issues you probably have business issues
probably have your parents issue.
-Not probably, for sure.
-Yeah and you don't ever think about it but at the time with our business I had
my own problems and I was depressed and not feeling well I went to India and
came back and appSumo was flat we skyrocketed and I think there I've kind
of got into the business mentality does that these businesses that skyrocket
also skyrocket down and so I think sometimes when you're frustrated with
how your business might be going slowly it's not gonna go away quickly and so be
okay that it's going patiently because that's actually building a real
foundation and without Sumo in terms of letting it go we wanted to try to figure
out I think in all businesses every business was it some type of Achilles
heel every business has some limitation so maybe with Growth Everywhere or Single
Grain you're like man it's always hard to find clients and that's why most
agencies create own software why because then they have predictable revenue
so with appSumo we have we have deals it's a Groupon for geeks so we have some
months million dollars some months hundred thousand and so it's hard to make that
predictable and it's hard when you have expenses that are always like this and
so we started Sumo.com to sell the marketing tools that we've been building
and in terms of delegation we brought on someone and we said and this has been an
interesting part of it we brought on someone and it took about a year to ramp
him up and we said don't fuck this up we need you to run appSumo not fuck it up
and we need that money to help build Sumo.com and so the first year we
said he was like I got this idea well no okay no what if we do a
subscription thing with appSumo we could do the conference all this shit
I'm like no just keep it we need the money like don't fuck it up and then
after two years Sumo was the self-sustaining so we were breakeven and
we can cover our own cost and Ayman at that point started really experimenting
and exploring his growth so in terms of delegation for me I'd say probably and
I've realized this recently this week one of the biggest satisfactions that I
have is working with someone who teaches me so working with someone who is
like giving me like hey here's something I learned here's something that we're
doing I'm like damn that's really creative I never thought of that and so
with Ayman once like for me I want to delegate and I think if there's a
difference between your 20s and 30s what I've noticed is that in your 20s you
have any I have an ego in my last company I started it and I brought on
people and then I eventually became the CMO because we need someone to be a
leader and so I one of the other guys we said you're gonna be the CEO and I think
to some extent I sabotage that company because my ego couldn't let go that I
wasn't the CEO title so that was pretty crazy.
-What company was this? Oh Gambit
-We did payments for Facebook game virtual currency we you know we're
doing 30 million dollars our first year it was very--you know talk about
hyper growth that was hyper growth and I think with the ego whatever it made me
realize is like what do you really want to accomplish right and does a title
really make that much of a difference for you and I think the ones were you're
doing that it's like okay that's obviously I think misguided did you have
a title but if your business sucks that's why I think most people shouldn't
be called himself CEO right away I don't think anyone should be call unless
your business is making a million bucks a year in profit don't call
yourself CEO cause you're not an executive shit so in terms of delegation I love
delegation that's just my fuckin favorite but I'd say in your 20s
you don't delegate enough because you have ego and you have energy and in my
30s what I've started looking for is I always think there's a dream team
number 92 with Michael Jordan Magic Johnson Larry Bird that was a dream team
and so what I think about in recruiting now these days is like I want to
delegate and Headon Shah actually mentioned it to me and I thought was a
good point where it's like if you're doing the work your business is not
gonna grow right and I was like no that sounds like someone who's lazy but it's
actually not lazy it's someone who's like alright well the business can
either grow in two ways people or technology and if you can't do it with
technology you have to go with people and so what I'm looking for is like I
like today nowadays you I can either do it myself or put a little bit time up
front to recruit and then go through the delegation right so I think more and
more if you actually want to grow your business you have to get comfortable how
do you delegate and then make sure that they're going in the direction that you
want them to go. That was really good! That was amazing.
That was really good! Noah just knows his stuff!
I'm also Noah, one of the producers on the show here. I'm Noah too!
No this is Bryce. Eric is gonna be back at you
with another interview right after this, so be sure to subscribe
so you can get the next episode. We've got
lots of great interviews on Leveling Up coming your way
Let us know in the comments what your plan is to level up
And be sure to subscribe, catch you in the next one!
If you look at Richard Branson, who started 400 companies right?
What I understand about his day to day is that he has two assistants running his day. He works for maybe 4 hours
or so and then hes just done
He's become this master delegator, right?And that sounds kind of like what you are moving towards
What's your end goal with all this stuff?