Noah Kagan: From Losing a $1 BILLION Job to 9-Figure CEO
This creator was employee #30 at Facebook and #4 at Mint.
If he’d remained at Facebook, he’d be worth >$1B today.
But things took an unexpected turn. So he forged his own path.
And today, he runs a $100M business and has over 2M followers.
Meet Noah Kagan.
Noah grew up amidst the tech boom, in Silicon Valley.
After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2004, he got rejected by Microsoft and Google. So he settled for a “cubicle monkey” job at Intel.
On the side, Noah held meetups and conferences. Through which he met the likes of Ramit Sethi, Tim Ferriss, and Ryan Holiday – before they were famous.
Noah was an entrepreneur at heart. He ran a few side hustles while at Intel, including:
- Ninja Card - college discount cards (that sold >$50K of cards)
- CommunityNext - running conferences (that grossed $200K)
- Entrepreneur27 - social meetups for entrepreneurs
He’s also kept a personal blog, documenting everything since 2000.
“Creating content is a career cheat code”
After 14 months at Intel, Noah jumped ship.
He traded in his grey cubicle for graffitied office walls, a chaos of desks, and cables dangling like vines from the ceiling. He was now employee #30 at a new startup called Facebook.
Day one, Mark Zuckerberg walks straight up to Noah and says:
“Hey, I just fired your boss. Don’t ever try to set the company against me! Hi, I’m Mark. Welcome to Facebook.”
In no time, Noah was living with 6 other Facebook employees. He loved it – the product, the people, Zuck’s vision to “connect the entire world.”
He helped build some key features, including mobile and statuses. It was a transformative experience. Until Zuck warned him about being too outspoken regarding Facebook on his blog.
Unfortunately, 24 y/o Noah didn’t listen.
Then one day, two Facebook leads sat him down and told him:
“Today is your last day at Facebook. We think you’re a liability, and you’re not going to work out here.”
Shocked and embarrassed, Noah turned in his company Blackberry (see image above) and left. When he got home, he gathered up his clothes and went to live on a friend’s couch. In just 9 months, Facebook had gone from being his whole life to a painful memory.
If he’d stayed long enough to vest his 0.1% stake, he’d be worth ~$1B today.
Despite feeling devastated, Noah didn’t give up on himself. He began consulting, taught Business in Korea, and ran more side hustles.
He realised what matters is not what happens to you, but how you respond to life’s inevitable lows.
In late 2006, Noah got in touch with Erin from Mint (Intuit). It was early. They had no customers, no product.
But Noah was sold on their vision.
So he created a 90-day marketing roadmap, walked them through it, and asked whether they’d take him on for 3 months on low pay.
Erin agreed. They made him Director of Marketing (despite Noah never having worked as a “marketer”).
“What can you do for free to make it a no-brainer for that person to want to hire you?”
Noah collected emails and fostered relationships with prospects. By the time Mint had a product to launch, he had built a monthly newsletter to 100K people.
He helped put Mint on the map.
Mint taught him the importance of getting a customer first, before building a product. He went on to earn six figures and was promised a 1% stake in the company. But he quit 10 months in.
Noah was done working for other people. He felt ready to go all-in on a business of his own.
Over the next 2 years, Noah founded and grew the #2 payments company for social games (Gambit) to $18M in annual revenue. Then Facebook banned them for breach of terms and conditions. Overnight, their revenue plummeted by 90%.
But Noah felt relieved.
He hated payments and games.
Plus, this gave him an excuse to try something new.
He didn’t waste any time.
In one weekend, Noah launched AppSumo (think “Amazon for software”). It ticked all the boxes:
✔ Solves a burning problem (“Everyone wants customers”)
✔ Plays to Noah’s strengths (marketing)
✔ Growing industry (software)
Noah’s “Totem Pole Effect:” Solve a problem that keeps customers up at night (a high mark on the totem pole), not just a problem they can live with (a low mark).
Since 2010, AppSumo has grown into a $100M business. And Noah has harnessed his learnings and experience to:
- Become a millionaire by 30
- Amass over 2M online followers (with 102K on LinkedIn) and
- Author an instant New York Times bestseller (“Million Dollar Weekend”)
His story shows why experimenting (a lot) and documenting your learnings are both crucial for success in business and as a creator.
Today, Noah’s mission is to inspire others to create the business (and life) they love – and that it only takes a weekend to start.