Kagan draws a roughly $200,000 annual salary from his company and pays himself a bonus out of the profits. In 2023, he received $3.3 million.
This story is part of CNBC Make It's Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Noah Kagan always wanted to be rich.
As a school-age kid, he sold Costco pencils at a mark-up to his classmates and as a preteen, he pocketed the money his mother gave him to spend at his summer camp's canteen. He tried out the usual carousel of teenage jobs: retail gigs at Macy's and OfficeMax, counseling at a computer camp, selling popcorn and candy at the baseball field.
But as a native of Silicon Valley, Kagan knew that the pathway to riches ran through the world of tech. "My dream was Microsoft. If I could be around Bill Gates, who at the time was iconic … that's the path that I wanted to follow," he says.
Kagan's parents took him to visit the campus in Redmond, Washington, for his 17th birthday.
In 2005, at age 23, Kagan found himself working for what would become another tech giant with an iconic founder: Facebook. And in a story that everyone in venture capital and tech circles has a version of, he could have been very, very rich had things worked out. Kagan's position paid just $65,000, but also came with a 0.1% stake in a company that's currently worth about $947 billion. Do the math.
Facebook fired Kagan in 2006 after he leaked company information to the press at Coachella.
Money Report
"I was shocked," Kagan says. "I'm 24 years old and working what I believe is the most important thing on the planet. I lived in a house with six other Facebook people a mile away. So it was my entire, frankly, existence."
With he benefit of hindsight, though, Kagan, now age 41, admits that the firing was not only justified, but also put him on a path to where he ultimately wanted to be.
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"It's a good experience to get fired and realize, you might want to take control of your own destiny and be an entrepreneur, and you have that option to do what you want to do," he says.
He'd go on to do just that, founding discount software website AppSumo in in 2010. Last year, the company generated about $80 million in revenue. In addition to his roughly $200,000 salary, Kagan took in a $3 million share of his company's profits.
Add in some real estate income, and Kagan made $3.3 million in 2023. He and his girlfriend, Maria, split their time between her apartment in Barcelona and his house in Austin, Texas. At year-end 2023, Kagan calculates his net worth (the value of his cash, investments and real estate holdings minus mortgage, credit card and other debt) at about $36 million.
In other words, after some ups and downs and trial and error, Noah Kagan is rich, and enjoying it.
"It definitely makes me happier every single day," he says.
Wanting money, but knowing it could 'go away'
Early in his career, Kagan hoped to make a lot of money, but was not overly interested in spending it. After graduating from University of California, Berkeley in 2004 with a bachelor's in economics and business, he took a job at Intel as a supply chain analyst. He was able to keep much of his $55,000 salary by living at home and often biking to work.
"I didn't work too hard at Intel and I didn't spend a lot of money," Kagan says. "That gave me a lot of time to start businesses during work, as well as nights and weekends."
It's an attitude he comes by honestly. Kagan says his mother and stepfather were frugal and practical when it came to their finances.
"For them, having secure jobs, health insurance, investing, two vacations a year was the right path that they really worked hard on and showed me [a] good work ethic," Kagan says.
His father, an immigrant from Israel, was more of a hustler, selling copiers door-to-door. "He was just wild," Kagan says. "He made a lot of cash. He spent a lot of cash. He lost it all. It was an interesting observation of being able to make money through entrepreneurship, which was appealing, but also through a lack of discipline, being able to have all that go away."
Early on, Kagan says he struck a balance of the two approaches. He lived frugally, but always had his eyes open for the next big thing.
Venturing into entrepreneurship: 'How do I prove these people wrong?'
Following his firing from Facebook, Kagan ran conferences for aspiring entrepreneurs (a hustle he had started while at Intel), taught English in South Korea and picked up consulting work for Silicon Valley tech firms.
"For the next few years, frankly, I just tried so many different things to figure out, 'How do I prove these people wrong?'" Kagan says.
He picked up a job as marketing director at budgeting firm Mint in 2007 while working on a new side hustle building games for Facebook users. After noticing that a soccer-themed game had taken off on the platform, Kagan hired a developer to make a similar hockey app.
"You could put your hockey logo on your profile, and then below it I had a link to that hockey team's Amazon page where I got a little cut of the sales," Kagan says. "I built that with a developer in the Philippines, maybe in a day or two. And then instantly, no joke, we had like 10,000 people using it. And then within a week, we had about a million people using it."
When Kagan and Mint parted ways in 2008, he thought this was it: his chance to give full-time entrepreneurship a shot. That year, Kagan moved to Argentina and pulled in $42,000 while sleeping on his friends' floors.
In 2009, he and his business partners shifted their business to focus on a payment platform for Facebook games. Kagan made $75,000.
By 2010, though, Kagan was getting tired of the Facebook stuff. He flew back to Austin and rented a room. He and his partners spent six months and more than $100,000 trying to build a sports betting website. "No one came," Kagan says.
That year, the Facebook gaming company netted Kagan $350,000, but he was miserable. His business partners didn't like him and the betting idea hadn't worked.
"So I actually quit that company and gave it to my two partners, and went off to figure out something else that was better."
Founding AppSumo in a weekend for $60: 'People instantly started buying it'
Kagan founded AppSumo that same year. It only took a couple of days for the plan to come together, a process Kagan details in his upcoming book, "Million Dollar Weekend."
The short version: Kagan had the idea to copy MacHeist — a site that offers discounted software bundles for Apple users — and make a similar service available for PC. Kagan emailed the founder of Imgur, an image-sharing service popular on Reddit, and offered to promote a discounted version of the software in exchange for a percentage of what he sold. Then he met with Reddit's founding engineer to ask for free advertising.
"Why not?" Kagan recalls hearing. "Our users love Imgur. They'll be thrilled to get a discount."
He paid a developer in Pakistan $48 to build a website with a PayPal button.
"I spent $12 on AppSumo.com and put it on Reddit, and instantly people started buying it," Kagan says.
The rest, as they say, is history. Last year, AppSumo, which Kagan describes as a "Groupon for software," took in about $80 million in gross revenue and reported more than $7 million in profit.
But the road from the first sale to the company's best year ever was hardly smooth.
"We've had three times where everyone's quit or most people we've had to let go," Kagan says. That includes a cull two years in when the staff shrunk from 20 people to four, and a pandemic-era exodus that slashed the workforce from 130 to 70. These days, AppSumo has about 100 employees.
Kagan didn't pay himself in the first year in charge and cut himself a $42,000 check in year two. In year three he made $75,000, and paid himself $120,000 in each of the next two years.
Once the company began to truly flourish, Kagan began taking a portion of the profits as an annual bonus.
"That's only if he have a profit. We take [our employees] on an all-expenses paid vacation … we make sure everyone has what they need to live their own great life," Kagan says. "Then, after that, I get my own distribution of what profit is available."
How he spends his money
Here's how Kagan spent his money in December 2023.
- Discretionary: $13,429 on a home sauna, charitable donations, payments to a money manager and baby supplies, among other expenses
- Gifts: $11,600 on Rolex watches
- Housing and utilities: $8,701 on mortgage and utility payments, homeowners insurance, housekeeping, pool cleaning and lawn care
- Transportation: $1,564 on bike and scooter repairs, Tesla charging, ridesharing and parking
- Entertainment: $1,772 for tickets and concessions, plane storage and maintenance
- Travel: $1,042 on a flight to visit family and a corporate retreat
- Insurance: $525 for vehicle, health, dental, vision and umbrella liability coverage
- Subscriptions: $233 including subscriptions to Peloton, Spotify and YouTube Premium
- Phone: $85
Bringing in a high salary allows Kagan to live lavishly, but wasn't always the case — even when he had plenty of money.
"I never felt worthy of having really fancy things. I grew up in pretty basic, middle-class lifestyle. I did have some money, I never really enjoyed it," Kagan says. "And so when Covid happened, a lot of the Airbnbs were really cheap. So I rented really fancy houses to see what that would feel like. And through that and therapy and a few other things, I started feeling more worthy."
Kagan's biggest regular expense is housing, which costs him about $8,700 a month between his mortgage, homeowners insurance, utilities and paying staff for upkeep. He also owes $41,000 in property taxes on his primary residence for 2023, a sum he'll pay down in April.
His sizeable income leaves room in his budget for big irregular expenses, too. His December charges include $10,548 for a sauna he installed in his home and $11,600 at a jewelry store — he gifted Rolexes to some friends.
Expenses that would feel major in most budgets — $1,000 on travel, $1,500 on bike and scooter repairs (he has a Tesla and Mazda Miata as well, which he pays to insure), $350 monthly to store, maintain and insure the plane he flies recreationally — don't really move the needle.
And that all allows Kagan to live an extraordinarily comfortable life, whether he's staying at his own home or at his girlfriend's apartment in Barcelona.
On a typical day — when he's not working on a special project, like, say, a book — he might get up and read, ride his bike and then hit the sauna. After that, if he feels like it, he makes content for his YouTube channel or social media accounts. AppSumo work doesn't start until 12.
"One of the best parts of being an entrepreneur is that you don't have to wake up to an alarm," Kagan says.
Looking ahead: 'I hope I never retire'
None of that is to say Kagan is ready to rest on his laurels any time soon. In addition to his AppSumo business and his book, Kagan operates a YouTube channel and manages five rental properties. His content creation business, which he pays people to help operate, netted a modest loss in 2023.
His income properties, two of which he rents to long-term tenants, two as Airbnbs and one he leases to AppSumo, turned a relatively small profit, but sucked up a lot of Kagan's time. "It makes very little money relative to the amount of effort it takes," he says.
It's worth noting that Kagan spends a significant amount of money each month on both his properties and his YouTube channel. For the purposes of giving a clear picture of his budget, we considered these business rather than personal expenses.
All in all, Kagan's real estate holdings make up about 30% of his investment portfolio. He allocates 20% to cash and another 30% to stocks, which he holds across a variety of accounts including a 401(k), a SEP IRA and a taxable brokerage account. The last 15% of his investments go into what he calls the "risky" bucket, which includes cryptocurrency and direct investments in small businesses.
Despite his diligent saving, Kagan isn't hoping for a traditional retirement.
"Make enough money that you don't have to worry about retirement and find a job you never want to retire from," Kagan says. "I get to make content, have a book, help people be entrepreneurs, promote software deals on AppSumo and live in cool places? I hope I never retire."
Rather than how much money he could have in the future, Kagan is thinking about what his money can buy him now. Namely, it's time to be present — something that has become a priority since Kagan learned that he and his partner Maria are expecting a child in July.
"But it's really shifted like, 'How do I make sure that I'm present for my partner and everything she needs and be available for my child?'" Kagan says. "So that is more what I've been thinking about in terms of time instead of money.'
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