From losing $1B to running a $100m per year business - Noah Kagan

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with Noah Kagan — the guy who got fired from Facebook before it was worth a trillion… and turned that loss into the biggest comeback story in online business.

He went from losing a fortune on paper to building AppSumo, a $100 million-a-year bootstrapped empire - all without raising a single dollar of VC money.

Noah, thanks a lot for being here!

TIMELINE

00:00:00 - 00:02:10 : The trillion-dollar miss at Facebook

00:02:10 - 00:06:43 : Leadership lessons from Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar rejection

00:06:43 - 00:12:13 : The lifetime deal dilemma destroying software value

00:12:13 - 00:19:40 : Why most entrepreneurs never take action

00:19:40 - 00:26:49 : Building discipline through small daily choices

00:26:49 - 00:33:10 : The scary reality of AppSumo's uncertain future

00:33:10 - 00:42:09 : Community quality crisis in the AI era

00:42:09 - 00:48:58 : Testing new models before it's too late

00:48:58 - 00:57:07 : Hiring secrets for bootstrap businesses

00:57:07 - 01:04:29 : Finding contentment beyond the billion-dollar dream

REFERENCES

- Mark Zuckerberg 

- Peter Thiel 

- Marc Andreessen

- Sean Parker

- Dustin Moskovitz

- Soleio 

- Bill Gates 

- Steve Jobs 

- Moody

- Christine Rogers

- Jesse Mecham – 

- Ayman Al-Abdullah

- Reid Hoffman

- Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan

- AppSumo  

- TidyCal  

- Airbnb   

- Asana  

- Lemlist   

- Reclaim

- Bolt

- Hostinger

- Emergent

- Pika  

- YNAB

- Vercel

- Tabby  

- YC