AppSumo

AppSumo: $100M revenue from just 40 hours a week for 10 years

Sam relays Noah Kagan's lesson that AppSumo, now doing $100M gross (about $50M net) and 10 years old, didn't work at first. The 'secret' was treating it like a job: 40 hours a week for a decade until it paid off, the same persistence behind the podcast's growth.

“This year they're going to do $100 million in gross revenue, of which like $50 million is their revenue. It's a great business. It's 10 years old. And he was like, you know, I realized something, that this business that we're running, it's done really well, but it didn't do well at first.”

The 18-month payback, 7-figure bar for new projects

Kagan's rule for allocating AppSumo profits to new bets: it must pay back the investment within 18 months and be at least a 7-figure opportunity. If it's not 7-figure, they don't do it.

“So will we make break even money back in 18 months? And secondly, is it at least a 7-figure decision? So is it at least— if it's not a 7-figure opportunity, uh, we won't do it. The reality is the majority of the money is best spent into whatever's making the most money from a capitalist standpoint.”

Steal thisGate new projects on two questions: payback in 18 months, and at least a 7-figure outcome.

Would AppSumo be a $100M business if they'd never built side projects?

Kagan admits there's an internal debate that if all the time and money spent on SendFox, KingSumo, HaulDrop, and MeetFam had gone into AppSumo alone, it would likely be a $100M business today.

“there's discussion internally that if we would have spent all the money and time that we built on SendFox and KingSumo and HaulDrop and MeetFam and all the things we've done just on AppSumo, the main thing, would it have been a $100 million business today? And the likelihood is, yeah.”