Notes on Noah Kagan at LeanLA

Watch live streaming video from leanla at livestream.com

Noah Kagan is the founder of AppSumo and has worked on marketing for 4-Hour Workweek, Facebook, and Mint. Noah’s blog, OkDork.com, focuses on the topics of marketing, entrepreneurship, and engagement with online communities.

You can watch the video above, and the main things I learned are below. He's a funny, straightforward, and brutally honest speaker, and it was cool to hear about many of the specific tactics he used to get AppSumo off the ground in a lean fashion. He even included a couple deep life lessons in here as a bonus.

• Started AppSumo ("Groupon for software") with just a landing page
  
• Only had registration system at first
  
• Paid an outsourced developer in Middle East $50 for PayPal payment system
  
• Needed a deal, so sent an email to head of imgur (main site for images for Reddit)
• "The most valuable resource is your time."
  
• Just use email to solve your problems.
  
• Learn how to do things with just email lists.
• Took out guy from Reddit for breakfast and got free exposure on their site
• Do something nice and unique for someone.
  
• Sent running shoes, running magazine to someone who runs
• When someone sees something you give them everyday, they remember you and will listen to you.
• Send cookies to people
  
• Initially had ugly designs, just trying to validate as quickly as possible
  
• He emailed every single person manually their discount code by hand.
  
• After the business was validated, they started building the back end and then getting deals.
  
• "There's no way to optimize shit; it's still shit."
  
• Before you get 1000 unique's per day, you can't AB test.
  
• Focused on emails initially to get users
  
• "There's only 1 metric and 1 goal of your business."
  
• At Facebook, the only metric that mattered was growth.
• Only 1 metric at AppSumo is "# of emails"
• They have a daily goal and a monthly goal.
  
• This month's goal: 550,000
  
• Each day have a target of # of emails they need to hit
  
• Used Google Website Optimizer
• Hired an engineer whose sole job was AB testing
• Their view: profit and revenue today is short sighted
  
• Just focused on growing emails for later
  
• If they asked for email up front before showing deal, people were more likely to buy deal than if didn't ask for email up front.
  
• 5% difference in conversion at top of funnel makes huge change.
  
• Spent $6K for 4 iterations just on landing page
  
• Were bringing 3000 to site
  
• Biggest spammer in America: Facebook (recently changed policy)
• No one talks about them as big spammer
• People complained about Facebook but it increased retention and engagement.
  
• Now that Facebook's big, they turned off emails.
• "You'll get some backlash from 1% but will grow the 99%."
• When you travel, you remember just the abnormal stuff; no one remembers the normal stuff that happens everyday.
• Created AppSumo Golden Ticket ($100 credit for no reason whatsoever)
  
• Golden Ticket just emailed by a customer service girl daily
  
• If you're average, customers will never remember.
  
• Think Zappos customer service.
  
• Unsubscribe email sends sad photo that's just something different, memorable.
  
• At Facebook and AppSumo, they put Easter eggs everywhere, fun stuff people will remember.
• They have 3 developers.
  
• If they don't need to build something, they don't.
  
• Instead of building a 404 page, they used a Google Doc.
  
• Do minimal work and if result worth it, do it nicely later.
  
• Did first educational video to actually teach how to use the tools they were selling.
• Did it ghetto with minimal editing
• "Your business should look like shit in the beginning."
  
• Now have full time content and video people