I'm back as AppSumo CEO
Noah Kagan Presents
Noah Kagan
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My book Million Dollar Weekend is for aspiring entrepreneurs who dream of starting their own business. I break down the process of starting into simple steps that you can do in just one weekend.
After a year of paternity leave, I'm back as CEO at AppSumo… and holy moly, it's been challenging.
In this episode, I share a behind-the-scenes of stepping back into my company, where we've gone wrong in my absence, and what I'm doing to fix it.
From running a "listening tour" across the company, to rethinking our deal standards, this is me working in real time to bring AppSumo back stronger than ever. It's been exhausting but humbling. If you've ever faced chaos in your own business, I think you'll get a lot out of this one.
In this conversation, you'll enjoy 3 BIG things:
• How getting clear on "who owns what" keeps teams from drowning
• Why true leadership beats management every time
• Why making a call (even if it's not the right one) is always better than sitting on the fence
Enjoy these 3 things plus many nuggets along the way.
I have also been sharing emails on my brutally honest advice on a variety of topics. People have been loving it. Sign up at noahkagan.com and join 350k other people who get juicy insights every month.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What is up, you sexy bastards? |
| 0:04.8 | It is your boy, Chief Sumo, aka Rabbi Can't Lose, aka Noah Kagan. |
| 0:10.9 | We're coming in hot because I've got two hours before Jason, the podcast editor, needs this episode. |
| 0:16.9 | And I promise you you get an episode every single month. |
| 0:20.1 | And so we're going to deliver. And this episode, I'm going to be an episode every single month. And so we're going to deliver. |
| 0:21.1 | And this episode, I'm going to be talking about I'm back as CEO of App Sumo. |
| 0:27.7 | And holy shnikis, it sucked. |
| 0:33.2 | Wow, man. |
| 0:34.1 | It's been quite a year. |
| 0:36.3 | And I just wanted to talk about it with y'all because I'm sure everyone's going through their own journey, and I hope I can make some space for you in your earlobes, and you can make some space for me to hopefully inspire, help you in your own business journey. My daughter was born last year, and then I took paternity, and then I asked the asked the team like hey can I just stay on paternity |
| 0:54.8 | and so I more or less I was checking with the team here and there but I was on paternity for the |
| 1:00.0 | past year and then I finished that off in Spain where we got back at the end of August and it has been |
| 1:06.7 | a rocky year for absumo I'm not going to beat around the bush. Why do people beat around |
| 1:11.4 | bushes? I guess get animals to come out. It's been a challenging year and I think there's |
| 1:15.9 | definitely market changes. There's team changes. I think a lot of our stuff has been self-inflicted |
| 1:21.2 | and I came back to work beginning of September. It's now the end of September. And I just got off a meeting with Matt |
| 1:28.7 | Bean, who I think he was working in like operations and now he helps run a product management, which is so cool to see that's been the ethos of Absumo, which is you get a chance. And one of the things I noticed coming back into Absumo is we have a lot of smart people. And I know they listen to the show, so I have to say that. |
| 1:43.7 | We have a few dummies, |
| 1:45.1 | but we just have a lot of smart people |
| 1:46.3 | and it makes me so excited. smart people. And I know they listen to the show, so I have to say that. We have a few dummies, |
| 1:44.8 | but we just have a lot of smart people, and it makes me so excited to help work on the business. |
| 1:49.9 | And I also feel frustrated on the other side of that where we're making the same mistakes. |
... |
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