Launchfest - Noah Kagan (AppSumo.com)

From Ghetto to Classy

Noah has worked at several companies, including Intel, Facebook, Mint, and Gambit. The most precious resource is time. After today, he hopes that everyone will walk away with one actionable idea. 

How AppSumo Started - Start simple and build out from there!

They started with a landing page and began collecting emails. Noah treated business is a hypothesis - he wanted to test it out to see if the idea worked.  He thought that people would want to buy digital goods in bundles (daily deals for web geeks), and created AppSumo to see if it was true. They built AppSumo for $50 in one week. Paypal integration, and he built out the front end. He searched Google and used the code he found to build the landing page.

Here are some important points:

• The velocity to the first dollar - how do you get to prove your business is working?
• Focus on relationships - they are the most important aspect of starting a business.
• Start your work with those who you want to build a relationship with. That should be done first.
• Don’t build out at first - it’s more important to prove people want to use your business. 
• It’s not about being pretty - it’s about getting customers quickly. Over time, get classy. Make sure you pace yourself. Don’t spend a lot before you make it. 
• Do not a/b test if you are not at least at 100,000 visit a month. you haven’t proved your business is working yet. 
• Evolve from ghetto, using free products, to hiring, to paying more, to growing. Use Google website optimizer at first. Build out from there as you become more successful over time.
• Have a specific target and focus on achieving it. 
• Think about your business as a funnel - start at the type of the funnel. 
• The bar for amazing ideas and people is really low. How do you be memorable, and treat your customers well?
• Think about optimization - do you have a fast enough computer? What else do you need? Work the way down your funnel. 
• Optimize your landing page. Then go from there. 
• Test stuff out before building it out to see if it’s really wanted. Do something for a day, throw it out there, see if it works, and then build it out.
• It’s not that you can’t do big things, but the point is how do you do the core of the good idea quickly without distraction, and then go from there without wasting $$$?
• 86% of their efforts fail.
• Surround yourself with better people. They will help your business grow.
• If you do anything more than once, set up a system. Document things - make sure you know what to do if people leave. Don’t repeat things over and over and over.
• Generate and automate if possible.