What I Learned from Losing $170 Million, with Noah Kagan

Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.7 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2019

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#228: In November 2005, when Noah Kagan was 24, he was hired as Employee #30 at Facebook. His stock options would have been worth $170 million if he’d cashed out in 2014, he says. But he didn’t see a dime. In June 2006, merely 9 months after he started working at Facebook, Noah got fired. Instead of making $170 million, he made zero. He fell into a deep depression for a year. Then he rescued himself by becoming a serial entrepreneur. He tried his hand at a lot of things -- including developing Facebook games, selling discount cards, creating a payment processor in the gaming space -- but he’s best known for his two most successful companies. In 2010 he started a company, AppSumo, which offers discounts on small business software. By 2012, AppSumo was grossing $4 million per year in revenue, with annual net profits of $500,000. Yet Noah wasn’t fulfilled. He pivoted. In 2015 he started a sister company, Sumo.com, which develops marketing tools for websites and online businesses. In today’s episode, Noah and I discuss reflections on business, money and life. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode228 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can afford anything but not everything.
0:11.0	Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just
0:14.4	apply to your money.
0:15.5	That applies to your time, your energy, your focus, your attention.
0:18.8	That applies to anything in your life that's a limited resource that you need to manage.
0:22.6	And that leads to two questions.
0:24.2	Number one, what's most important to you?
0:27.0	Number two, how do you align your daily decisions?
0:29.9	To reflect that.
0:32.2	Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is
0:35.3	here to explore.
0:36.6	My name is Paula Pan.
0:37.6	I'm the host of the Afford Anything Podcast.
0:39.8	And today, the entrepreneur Noah Kagan joins me for a fireside chat.
0:44.8	In November 2005, when Noah Kagan was 24 years old, he was hired as employee number 30
0:51.4	at Facebook.
0:52.8	At the time that he was hired, Facebook was a one-year-old company with only a few
0:56.9	million users.
0:58.1	It was growing rapidly.
0:59.1	It was adding 50,000 new users per day.
1:02.2	And it was at that time that Noah joined the team as a product manager.
1:06.5	As employee number 30, he made a base salary of $60,000 plus 0.1% of ownership, which was
	...

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