Noah Kagan told how it started AppSumoa “Software Group”, on a weekend in a new one podcast episode. The start-up cost was $60; AppSumo made $80 million last year, and Kagan is still its CEO.

In 2010, Kagan was 28 years old and had already experienced what it would be like to be the 30th employee at Facebook and the fourth employee at personal finance app Mint.

“I think I just felt insecure in some of these places,” Kagan told fellow entrepreneur Jeff Berman on a June episode of “Master's degree“podcast.

Kagan was fired after nine months at Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and was later fired by the Mint, too. He realized that devoting his time to his day job had a risk—another person could decide to let him go at any time.

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“I think I wanted to prove that I'm smart or prove that I'm successful or try that Facebook thing when I got fired, and then when Mint fired me, (that) I could do it,” Kagan said.

The idea for AppSumo, a marketplace for software deals for small business owners or solopreneurs, was born when Kagan thought there was a way to promote software tools and also get paid for it. He saw that the MacHeist site gave Apple users get discounts on software packages and wanted to try making the same kind of discounts available to a wider audience.

“My interest was in letting geniuses create software, and my skill and passion is promotion,” Kagain said.

The business came together in about 60 hours. First, Kagan found software he wanted to sell: the image-sharing service Imgur. He cold emailed Imgur's founder on Reddit and got approval to sell a discounted version in exchange for a cut of the sales.

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The next part was meeting with the founding engineer of Reddit to ask for free advertising. He took that too.

The last part was paying a developer to create a website with a PayPal button and buying AppSumo.com domain the name.

What was the total cost to start the business? $60 and a weekend of his time.

AppSumo made $300,000 in its first year and $3 million in its second, Kagan said on the podcast. It brought in $80 million in revenue last year.

Kagan now has a net worth 36 million dollars.

Kagan said the essential part of business was investing in the problem and getting excited about it.

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“I think that's the thing that business people are missing,” Kagan said. “They're chasing AI now or they're chasing being an influencer. I think you find areas (where) you're like, I don't know if I'll ever get tired of that.”

Starting one side hustle or finding an additional source of income has an advantage—according to Kagan, you have more control over your future.

“If you can just give up 30 minutes a week, if you can give up one Netflix show a week, if you can just give up one thing a week and keep doing it every week, eventually you can have that business “, he said. said.

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