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Noah Kagan30 January 2024

How To Start Your First Business in 48 Hours - Noah Kagan

7Frameworks
12Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Strategy6 steps

Buy the 10,000 Hours

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Sales8 steps

LOT: Listen, Options, Transition

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Mindset5 steps

Now, Not How

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Self-Mastery6 steps

The Coffee Challenge and Rejection Goals

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Innovation6 steps

The Experiment Mindset

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Finance6 steps

The Freedom Number

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Productivity5 steps

The Law of 100

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Hot Take· 3

Hot Take19:00

Everyone should be an entrepreneur — it's the only unlimited-return asset

Kagan lays out his central provocation by comparing asset classes: stocks around 8%, real estate 7-15% with money down, T-bills 5%, government bonds. Entrepreneurship, he argues, is unlimited on the upside and requires no capital. But he splits the case in two — part one is the financial return, part two is that starting a business is the best way he knows to learn about yourself, because you discover you are far more capable than you assumed. He also handles the obvious objection: if you like your day job, keep it and be an entrepreneur anyway.

“it is the best investment you can ever make that's part one and part two is it's the best way to learn about yourself and…”

Noah Kagan · 00:30

“entrepreneurship unlimited yeah not not even saying books I'm saying if you start your own business there's literally no upside to what you can create”

Noah Kagan · 19:30
Hot Take38:30

Money can buy happiness — and Kagan tested it

Against the standard line that money stops buying happiness past a threshold, Kagan says plainly that he believes it does buy happiness — and that he tested the claim rather than accepting it. Growing up middle class, he assumed you stay in the economic class you were born into; realising there are levels and no rules changed everything. Post-Covid he found himself a multi-millionaire who was not enjoying any of it, so he began experimenting: houses, cars, therapists, coaches, two bikes in two countries so he never has to think about which one he is riding. His caveat is the survivorship bias — he remembers sleeping on floors for a year.

“I believe money can buy happiness”

Noah Kagan · 38:30

“I started renting like I rented a Malibu beach house for 25k and I was like oh yeah money can definitely buy happiness”

Noah Kagan · 40:00
Hot Take46:30

Set less ambitious goals: AppSumo is targeting 7% growth

Kagan's counterintuitive position on growth. AppSumo did around $7 million in profit in the year of recording, and his board — Andrew Chen, an Indeed executive, people from Gusto and Zapier — tell him he is not growing fast enough. His answer is that they are deliberately trying to grow slower for longer, targeting 7% next year, because he does not want to sell or go public. His causal claim: less ambitious goals produce more freedom, less money stress, more creativity, and ultimately a more successful and more enjoyable business. He contrasts this with his old habit of treating anything short of 10x as failure, and cites Abdaal's own book on LeBron James being one of the slowest walkers in the NBA across a twenty-year career.

“we're going to grow at 7% next year that's our goal”

Noah Kagan · 47:00

“and by having less ambitious goals we can have more freedom we're not stressing to make money and that leads us to more creativity”

Noah Kagan · 47:30

Explainer· 1

Explainer21:30

Kagan's definition of entrepreneur: someone who creates

Pushed by Abdaal to define his terms, Kagan strips 'entrepreneur' down to its simplest form — someone who creates — and explicitly detaches it from income. He argues the more-is-better mentality (more subscribers, more money, more food) is the misconception; wanting a little and being content with it is legitimate. Under this definition, Abdaal's teenage freelance web development counts, as do Larry Janesky's $600m basement business, Pam's strawberries-then-wine operation, and a teacher selling cookies for extra grocery money. The unifying idea is expressing yourself and finding out who you are through business, with an unlimited upside attached.

“I believe it's just it's someone who creates”

Noah Kagan · 21:30

“I think it's expressing yourself finding out who you are through business”

Noah Kagan · 22:30

Story· 3

Story51:30

Kagan's full salary history, from $55k at Intel to seven figures

Kagan gives an unusually candid income ladder: graduated 2004, $55,000 at Intel, $65,000 at Facebook, $100,000 at Mint, then down to zero to start his own company, climbing 40k, 75k, 120k, 300k. Six years into AppSumo he noticed he had nothing to show for it and started paying himself half a million; since then it has been one to three million a year, but only in profitable years — during Covid, on a 1.5% margin, he made under a million for about two years. He did not feel he had money until he held $3 million in cash, a threshold he traces to watching his father lose an entire copier business to drink and drugs.

“so I graduated 2004 uh Intel I made 55,000 then Facebook I made 65,000 then I went to Mint and I made 100,000 then I…”

Noah Kagan · 51:30

“and so at $3 million cash I felt like okay I can survive the rest of my life safely”

Noah Kagan · 53:30
Story1:03:00

Abdaal's 15 years of failed businesses before anything worked

Abdaal catalogues the attempts nobody sees: from age 13 to 19, one or two new business ideas a year — affiliate marketing sites, a pyramid-scheme-adjacent TradeDoubler setup, a web design studio, an online video game, cold-contacting Nintendo aged 14 to ask if he could build an online Pokémon (they said no), and a forum teaching kids lockpicking and martial arts. The first thing that worked was at 19, applying web design plus teaching plus his med-school admission into a courses business making about £40k a year in profit. Even then, every acquisition channel failed except YouTube. His emphasis: he was having enormous fun throughout, and the fun is what sustained 15 years of failures.

“like from age 13 to 19 every year I haded one or two new business ideas I did affiliate marketing sites”

Ali Abdaal · 1:03:00

“they don't see like the literally 15 years 16 years now of experimenting and trying random”

Ali Abdaal · 1:04:00
Story1:06:00

How the book got made: a laughed-at proposal and 1,200 beta readers

Kagan wanted to write a book for 15 years. His first proposal to agent Lisa DiMona — who represents James Clear and Tiago Forte — was rejected outright with 'come back when you're serious'. He treated the rejection as a test of whether he actually wanted it, spent a year on a new proposal with a hired expert, then cold emailed Tahl Raz to co-write. Underneath was a real fear that the book might not help anyone, which is what drove the beta programme: 1,200 beta readers, 20 people per chapter across 10 chapters, plus five people every weekend for six months walking through the process live on WhatsApp so he could see whether it changed their lives.

“I sent her the proposal and she laughed at me she's like this is not a real proposal like come back when you're serious”

Noah Kagan · 1:06:00

“so every chapter had 20 people go through every single page 10 chapters 20 people for chapter”

Noah Kagan · 1:09:30

Q&A· 1

Q&A1:22:00

Find exercise you don't need discipline for

Kagan turns the interview around and coaches Abdaal on fitness using his own fun-first principle. He rejects the gym outright for himself — describing it as a jail where you pick something up and put it back down — and instead built a stack he actively wants to do: cycling because you go somewhere and can do it anywhere in the world, boxing because it doubles as a skill, and squash. His diagnostic question is whether anyone has to convince you to go. Abdaal admits squash requires no discipline for him while the gym does, and is testing CrossFit, yoga and boxing to find the version that sticks, plus an accountability coach in Dan Go.

“how do you find exercise that's actually fun not you're convincing convincing yourself it's fun”

Noah Kagan · 1:23:00

“I like cycling because I'm going somewhere I'm seeing the world I can do it everywhere in the world”

Noah Kagan · 1:22:30

Takeaway· 4

Takeaway49:00

Give the money away on purpose: the yearly spend-it-all goal

Kagan describes a recurring annual goal: spend all the money on himself, on others, or donate it. The forcing function is that he cannot simply accumulate — he has to find recipients, which has led to buying Rolexes as gifts and to a matching-Rolex pact with his two best friends tied to all three of them becoming fathers. He references Die With Zero as the underlying logic. His broader argument in this stretch is that beyond a few million a year the marginal money does nothing, and the honest response is to route it to a team trip to Mexico, to servers and ads, to his business partner, or to other people.

“one of my yearly goals this has been a yearly goal every year is to spend all the money on myself or others or donate…”

Noah Kagan · 49:00

“and everyone who's like I want to be a billionaire”

Noah Kagan · 48:30
Takeaway37:00

Confidence is domain-specific — you just haven't put in the reps

Abdaal's contribution to Kagan's action-before-confidence argument. He points out that a CEO can be commanding in a boardroom and useless in a nightclub, or magnetic on stage and stilted in front of a camera, because confidence does not transfer across domains — it is built by repetition inside each one. The practical consequence is that a lack of confidence in a new area is not evidence of unsuitability, just of low rep count. His test: think of something you are confident at and ask whether you were born that way or practised a lot. Kagan responds that this is a great point, and ties it back to getting confidence through action.

“confidence is domain specific and that means if you're not if you're not confident at something that's okay you just haven't put in the Reps…”

Ali Abdaal · 37:30

“you get confidence through practice you get confidence and you kind of keep practicing”

Noah Kagan · 37:00
Takeaway1:12:30

The pregnancy hack: use a hard deadline to expose your real priorities

About to become a father, Kagan describes a 180-degree shift in how he treats time. His girlfriend asked him to finish at 6pm when he habitually worked until seven or eight, and the constraint forced him to check whether his stated priorities and his actual behaviour matched. He suggests everyone run the same simulation without waiting for the baby: imagine you have a family and very little time, then watch how selective you become about what you do and who you do it with. He also notes the entrepreneur's advantage here — no three-month maternity cap, he can take twelve months if he wants. Abdaal echoes it with his own choice to skip a £20,000 sponsored video for his girlfriend.

“I am much more selective what I'm going to be doing who I'm going to be doing with and making sure I finish on time”

Noah Kagan · 1:13:00

“you say this is your priority but this is your behavior is your priority and behavior”

Noah Kagan · 1:12:00
Takeaway1:16:00

Decades, patience and sunblock: Kagan's advice for turning 30

Kagan breaks his life into decades: the twenties were suffering, grinding, uncertainty and living on floors; the thirties brought work he loved at AppSumo but a total failure to take partner selection seriously; the forties finally brought calm, therapy, a relationship coach and contentment. His two closing principles are patience — everyone is rushing toward the same destination, so enjoy the journey — and generosity, to yourself and others. Asked for advice on turning 30, he answers 'put on sunblock', a habit he adopted at 25 from a Neutrogena employee and has kept for sixteen years, using it as the perfect small illustration of starting now and sticking with it.

“I'd say 20s is just like you're suffering you're grinding you're uncertain you're frustrated you're angry at your parents”

Noah Kagan · 1:16:00

“and so for yourself you know what's the thing you're starting now that when you're 40 you're like oh I'm glad I put on some…”

Noah Kagan · 1:19:30