Noah Kagan on building a million-dollar business in a weekend for free

Noah Kagan built a business in a weekend and now it’s making $80M/year. And that's just one of his businesses.

He literally wrote the book on building a million-dollar business in a weekend, so I caught up with him to learn how he does it. We went deep into his expertise, or as he puts it, “Finding things people actually want in a very short amount of time with no money, and then promoting the hell out of it.”

Here’s what he had to say. 👇

How to have a million-dollar weekend

James: You just released your book, Million Dollar Weekend. Give it to me in a nutshell.

Noah: If I had to summarize the book for indie hackers, #1 is just to start. Most people never get started. They feel that they need to be more prepared, but they’re already way more prepared than they need.

James: Couldn't agree more.

Noah: #2 is learning the skill of asking. That’s a skill that you can get better at.

James: How?

Noah: Do the coffee challenge: Ask for a 10% discount next time you get a coffee. You'll probably get rejected, but you asked. And that’s all business is:

“Hey customer, do you want to subscribe?”

“Hey customer, why are you churning?”

“Hey person, do you want to be my wife?”

So let’s get better at that.

James: Not the most romantic proposal. And #3?

Noah: Making and hacking are cool, but making something that people really want is the best feeling in the world.

So be mindful of how much you are hacking vs how much you are finding valuable problems that people are actually excited for you to hack on.

Getting fired, banned, and sued

James: We’ll dive into those points, but let’s start with some background.

Noah: I had a day job at Intel. I applied to Facebook cold and became employee #30. I got fired.

I tried a lot of different projects, including a conference that made a few hundred thousand.

Then I got a job at Mint.com and kept building things while I was there. I either got fired or quit, depending on who you talk to. And I never looked back.

James: Then what?

Noah: One thing that worked while I was building on the side was a Facebook game that got about a million people in a week.

I built games for a year before realizing that payments — this was before Stripe — was a more interesting play.

James: How so?

Noah: Like, don’t worry about which game is gonna work. Support all of them. Less risk, more guaranteed money. That’s the interesting thing about the platform play — even today.

But that company got banned by Facebook and sued on the same day.

James: Sounds like a rough day.

Noah: Yeah. Eventually, I left that gaming company and started getting obsessed with a problem. I noticed that everyone just wants customers. Or podcast listeners, or website visits, etc.

At the time, web software was getting bigger. And I always liked a good deal.

So I built a few deal products to help founders get customers. I got a little bit of traffic but no money. And I think that’s an important part of the story. I’ve tried to build a lot of things that didn’t work.

James: And the failures led you to AppSumo?

Noah: Yep, then I thought of AppSumo. I had seen that Mac software bundles were working at MacHeist, and I thought I could do it with web software instead.

So I launched AppSumo in a weekend, promoting one deal with the whole website.

Focus on the (right) problem

Problems > solutions

James: Heck of a weekend. I want to dive into that but, first, let's talk about how you find problems and solutions.

Noah: I think indie hackers are very smart. And they like to build things. But many of them are focusing on solutions instead of problems.

What I've always found to be cheaper, faster, and easier is finding problems that people are excited about… and then building solutions.

Finding the problem

James: How do you find problems?

Noah: Think about the problems you're having in your own life and business.

We built KingSumo because giveaways were the fastest way to grow our email list. Then it was like, “Holy shit, this is working, maybe others want it.” So we gave one of the guys on our team a 25% cut of the revenue to build it, and it ended up becoming a million-dollar business.

James: What else?

Noah: Think about things you've been paid for in the past. And things that you're excited to work on.

And once you find it, get obsessed with the problem.

Find the solution

James: Once you've got the problem, how do you find the solution?

Noah: Look for the trend. Think about what’s not obvious that will become obvious.

James: So, look for the beginning of a trend.

Noah: Yeah. Like, with all this AI stuff. A lot of people are chasing it, so I think you have to be careful.

James: And how do you find the right idea?

Noah: The way we do it at AppSumo, and this is something everyone here can copy, is we do a stack rank. We rank ideas based on three factors:

1. Is this a product we're excited to use? Like, do we want it?

2. Is it viral? Is this a product that inherently has things built in that people are gonna tell others about?

3. Is there a high-priced alternative?

James: Nice. Anything else to look for?

Noah: Make sure the opportunity is big enough. That's one reason some indie hackers don't grow as much as they could. They don't work on million-dollar opportunities; they work on thousand-dollar opportunities.

Keep it simple. It’s harder to succeed with complicated businesses. A lot of the biggest businesses in the world are pretty straightforward. That’s worth thinking about.

And then, of course, make sure people want it.

Validate the solution

James: How do you find out if people want it?

Noah: It’s when you’re getting buyers without having to convince them. Try to get three of them in a weekend.

James: Simple enough.

Noah: Also, talk to people.

James: 🤯

Noah: Most people, especially developers (because they're so smart and gorgeous) build stuff first and find people later. That's backwards.

We built a Klaviyo replacement and it failed. We could have easily talked to people and they would have told us they weren’t interested in switching from Klaviyo. It would have saved us a lot of time.

James: How would you handle it now if you could do it again?

Noah: We should have gone to their users and asked if we could run their email. We could have used 3rd party software to run the service, building nothing. Then, we could have asked if they wanted us to build software for it. They would have said “no.”

In other words, we should have done the service before the software to see if there was demand. You can do services, make money, get customers, get information, and then build software to leverage and scale what you're trying to do.

It should really be “Service as a Software”; not “Software as a Service”.

James: Well said.

Noah: The other thing to think about is, how can you be #1 in some category?

If you're creating software for solopreneurs, there's literally no better place than AppSumo to promote your product to get guaranteed customers, money, and exposure. There are zero places.

Same with Million Dollar Weekend. I don't think there's any book out there that's #1 in starting a business cheaply in a weekend, with exact playbooks and mindsets. None.

So what can you be #1 in?

And by the way, you can make your own category. How cool is that?

Just start, then stick with it.

James: And once you've got the problem and solution. Just start?

Noah: Yep, just start. And do it a lot. You have to keep swinging. That’s why the book is called “Million Dollar Weekend”.

Swing, swing, swing.

James: When do you stop swinging?

Noah: Once you’ve made a few dollars and you have a few customers.

This is such an important point. If your product is working, it’s very tempting to build another. Everyone wants to do it. But I truly believe you should stick with what works.

Figure out how you can improve the thing that’s already working.

James: But you’re building lots of products, no?

Noah: Yeah, but we’re 14 years in. And we're building tools designed to bring people into AppSumo.

We built unrelated software for a while, but no one used it.

James: Wow, 14 years?

Noah: That’s why I’ve been successful. I’ve swung a lot, but I found a growing trend, and I stuck with it.

I know people want the secret. That’s the secret.

Quit working on failed products

James: But sometimes, people stick with the wrong things. How do you know when to move on?

Noah: Keep working on that product as much as possible until you really think, "Hey, I can't grow it anymore." Then move on.

James: You mentioned you’ve had a lot of duds. What was the difference between what worked and what didn’t work?

Noah: Oh my god. I've built so many things that did not work. Most of these:

1. Were complicated to explain.

2. Took a long time to build without getting any customers involved.

3. Were things that we didn't use ourselves.

James: Were they a waste?

Noah: No, I think it's good if things aren't working. It means you're trying stuff. If it doesn't work out, good. You're gonna learn for the next one.

Honestly, in the beginning, everything should just be thought of as "Hey, I'm gonna go try things and learn."

Don't put so much pressure on wins or fails.

Build the MVP of MVPs

James: And that brings us to building quickly, which is one of your specialities.

Noah: When I built AppSumo in a weekend, the whole website was a PayPal button. That's it.

I would get the PayPal notification, and then the backend was me. I emailed the discount code to the customer. That's it.

Over time, I built a backend. And now, it's a 20-person engineering team. But it started with a PayPal button and a Gmail account, which everyone has access to.

James: So, what’s the lesson here?

Noah: Most, if not all, million-dollar businesses can be started with free products… And then buy your products from AppSumo.com. 😆

James: Haha, subtle.

Promote the hell out of it

James: What comes next?

Noah: Promote the hell out of it.

James: How?

Noah: Everyone tries to do things that are so far outside of what's easy. They wanna make it harder on themselves when they don't have to.

But at a super super high level, it’s just three things:

First, find something people actually want. We've already covered this, but promotion is really easy when you find something that people want.

We need to iterate Paul Graham’s quote about making something people want, because you shouldn't make anything. You should find what people want first, then make it.

James: Okay, what's #2?

Noah: Have a clear goal — one singular goal — and a timeline.

And third, come up with your growth machine.

James: How?

Noah: I like to approach it by asking who, what, and where.

What's the problem you're solving?

Who is the customer?

Where are they?

James: Then what?

Noah: When you know where your customers are, try promoting in those places as quickly as possible to see what works. From that, narrow it down to three marketing strategies to do over and over.

So for my book, as an example, it was my network, podcasts, and prefluencers.

For podcasts, I made a Dream 10 list. If I could only be on 10 shows, which 10 would I choose?

Now, I didn't just DM these people. Some of them I'd known for decades. Some I didn't know. But either way, I wanted to make it a no-brainer for them.

James: How did you do that?

Noah: I literally just did the work for them and sent them the show. I made a thumbnail, or I made the title, or I sent them three pages of documents saying, “Hey, here's why I think the show will do so well. Here are the questions you'll ask.”

I always think of the acronym, WIFT: What's in it for them?

And by the way, you're gonna get rejected. I got rejected by four out of the ten. And that's okay.

James: It's your "coffee challenge" again.

Don’t quit your day job.

James: Okay, so we've started the (soon-to-be) million-dollar business in a weekend and we're promoting it. Any other advice?

Noah: At this point, don't quit your day job. Use your employer as your investor.

James: Love that.

Noah: I’m not this risky I’m-gonna-quit-everything-and-try-to-figure-it-out kind of guy. That just seems unnecessary.

Remember to enjoy it

James: What else?

Noah: You can work a lot of hours or you can work casually. What matters is that you enjoy it.

I regret not enjoying the challenges and ups and downs more. I was just focused on making money and feeling validated externally. And it's like, I could have just enjoyed it.

James: Do you work a lot now?

Noah: I'm working harder now than I ever have. It’s basically 6 days a week, 12 hours a day.

James: So you're not worried about work-life balance?

Noah: When I started working on AppSumo, I worked on it pretty comfortably, probably for the first year.

But no, I don't think things should always be balanced.

That said, if you're gonna have an imbalance of work, do it on something that's working.

When I've done an insane amount of work, it's been like, "Holy shit, this is working." And I go with it.

James: So the amount you work is in response to the current momentum of the business.

Noah: Yeah. But again, make sure you enjoy it. And learn from it too. Starting your own business is literally the best way ever to grow as a human.

Your business is not the end-all-be-all. It's meant to help you live a cool life.

It takes a weekend (and years)

James: Alright, any parting words?

Noah: Anyone can do this.

There are no height requirements. There's no physical skill needed. It's available internationally for free to anyone.

You only need one hit for a business to succeed. Just one.

Then use the Law of 100 to stick with it. Because you can start the million dollar business in a weekend, but you collect the millions over time.

James: Where can people find you?

Noah: I’m on X. I built AppSumo. And you can check out my new book, Million Dollar Weekend.