In this Leveling Up interview, host Eric Siu and co‑host Bryce sit down with entrepreneur Noah Kagan to unpack the unconventional principles that have shaped Sumo.com and AppSumo. Kagan shares his personal background, the evolution of his role from founder to delegator, and the cultural philosophies that drive his companies. He recounts a conversation with an Israeli firm (IronSource) that taught him to avoid golden handcuffs and to treat every employee as a co‑founder, fostering ownership, autonomy, and accountability. Kagan explains how this ownership mindset underpins Sumo’s growth, how he transitioned AppSumo to a self‑sustaining business, and why he values delegation over ego‑driven control. He reflects on past hyper‑growth experiences (Gambit), the pitfalls of premature CEO titles, and his current “dream‑team” recruiting approach inspired by Hiten Shah and the 1992 NBA Dream Team analogy. Throughout, Kagan emphasizes that sustainable scaling comes from empowering people, building predictable revenue streams (e.g., Sumo.com’s marketing tools), and continuously learning from the people he works with.
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Today we are going into the Sumo office with Mr. Noah Kagan right here.
Yes, hello.
Let's go ahead and check it out.
Hi everybody.
Lift off.
Let's go. All right, today we have Mr. Noah Kagan who has been on the Growth Everywhere podcast before twice. Twice. Go listen to it if you haven't listened to it before. But today we're going to talk about everything. We're going to talk about We're gonna talk about sumo, which is all this stuff back here. And I mean, let's just start off with kind of who you are, Noah, and then what you do right now. You do so many things, man.
Uh, I don't. I don't. I don't think I do. Uh, you know, it's always interesting when you ask someone like who they are and then how they like to start that answer.
Yeah, who are you, man?
No, do you ever notice that when you ask someone like, oh, what do you do? Or who are you? And then where they start is really interesting how they define themselves.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I'm Noah. What's up? I live in Austin, Texas. I like mountain biking. I'm in a relationship. And then I help run sumo.com and I started appsumo.com.
You notice how you said you help run? It's not like I run.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of ego with companies these days. I met this company in Israel called IronSource. You've never heard of them. They're this random Jew company in Israel. Revenue, I'm not talking valuation. You know people with valuation? I'm talking real business. $500 million this year.
Wow.
In revenue. And guess how much profit? $120 million in profit. I was like, yo, dog, just drop like $2 million. Like, just all I need is $2 million, I'm done. And I asked him, I was like, man, that's so great. Like, you must be— you're so rich, you're so awesome, you're good looking, you're, you know, you're the Brad Pitt of Israel. And he had a few interesting things, but the number one interesting thing that he said to me is they've grown a lot through acquisition. And that's fine. You know, we've all heard of that before. So a lot of growth happens through acquisition. But here's one of the things that he said that's really stuck with me. Whenever someone joins, number one, they don't do golden handcuffs. So they just give them all the money for their company right away. 'Cause a lot of times you get acquired, they're like, now you have to stay.
Mm-hmm.
Number 2 is that everyone becomes a co-founder. And I was like, that's really interesting. I was like, you make them a co-founder, don't you want the— you're the founder, you started this, it's yours, it's mine. And he's like, number one, I don't care at the end of the day. I want the company to do well. And 2, I want them to be a co-founder in the business. And it's actually stuck with me where The more that you can have founders working at your company and people running businesses, those are the people that are looking for change and improvement and growth, and not to be an employee. And so the more that you can actually have that at your business, the more likely you're gonna have a bunch of people looking to grow your business to be very large.
Right, so everyone's an owner.
Everyone is an owner in title, in compensation, and frankly, in the autonomy when they're a part of your business. And I was like, man, that's a good way of looking at it. So with Sumo, someone was just asking me outside, hey, you know, Isn't it cool you have all these fanboys and fangirls and people that love Sumo or AppSumo? And it's always kind of bothered me, mostly because, well, I was gonna say one, because we have a male audience, but that's just a bad joke. But no, number one is because it's not me doing the work. I'm doing part of the work. It's every single person out here, every single person who's been a part of our journey for 7 years, and I think they should get as much credit as I do. And that's something that I've always been like, no, it's, I help facilitate this and I've helped start it, But it's no reason I should get more credit than anyone else.
What was the turning point of you evolving into understanding to give more autonomy and things like that? Because like AppSumo was your baby, right? And now you've kind of handed it off to Ayman to run things over there. What was the turning point?
Well, with the AppSumo journey, it's been ups and downs. And I think, you know, I realized with a lot of businesses, I don't think we empathize that everybody else has problems. We all think our own problems are the worst. But when you actually talk to someone else like you, you probably have relationship issues. You probably have business issues, you probably have your parents' issues.
Not probably, for sure.
For sure. Yeah, and you don't ever think about it. But at the time with our business, I had my own problems, and I was depressed and not feeling well. I went to India and came back, and AppSumo was flat. We skyrocketed. And I think that I've kind of gotten to the business mentality that these businesses that skyrocket also skyrocket down. And so I think sometimes when you're frustrated with how your business might be growing slowly, it's not gonna go away quickly. And so be okay that it's going patiently, 'cause that's actually building a real foundation. Uh, and with AppSumo, in terms of letting it go, we wanted to try to figure out, I think in all businesses, every business has some type of, um, Achilles heel. Every business has some limitation. So maybe with Growth Everywhere, Single Grain, you're like, man, it's always hard to find clients. And that's why most agencies create their own software.
Why?
'Cause then they have predictable revenue.
Mmhmm.
Uh, so with AppSumo, we have, we have deals. It's a Groupon for geeks. So we have some months a million dollars, some months $100,000. And so it's hard to make that predictable, and it's hard when you have expenses that are always like this. And so we started Sumo.com to sell the marketing tools that we've been building. And in terms of delegation, we brought on someone and we said, and this has been an interesting part of it, we brought on someone and it took about a year to ramp him up. And we said, don't fuck this up. We need you to run AppSumo, not fuck it up.
Mmhmm.
And we need that money to help build Sumo.com. And so the first year, he, we said, he was like, he came and he's like, I got this idea. No. Okay, Noah, what if we do a subscription thing with AppSumo? We could do a conference, all this shit. I'm like, no, just keep it. We need the money. Like, don't fuck it up. And then after 2 years, Sumo was self-sustaining. So we were break-even and we could cover our own costs. And Ayman at that point started really experimenting and exploring his growth. So in terms of delegation, for me, I'd say probably, and I've realized this recently this week, one of the biggest satisfactions that I have is working with someone who teaches me.
Hmm.
So working with someone who's like giving me like, hey, here's something I learned, here's something that we're doing. I'm like, damn, that's really creative. I never thought of that. And so with Ayman, once, like for me, I want to delegate. And I think that there's a difference between your 20s and 30s. What I've noticed is that in your 20s, you have an, I have an ego. In my last company, I started it and I brought on people and then I eventually became the CMO because we need someone to be a leader. And so I, one of the other guys, we said, you're gonna be the CEO. And I think to some extent I sabotaged that company because my ego couldn't let go that I wasn't the CEO title.
Ah.
So that was pretty crazy.
What company was this? Oh, Gambit, got it, got it.
Yeah, we did payments for Facebook games, virtual currency. You know, we were doing $30 million our first year. It was very, you know, talk about hypergrowth, that was hypergrowth. And I think with the ego, what it made me realize is like, what do you really wanna accomplish? Right? And does the title really make that much of a difference for you? And I think the ones where you're doing that, it's like, okay, that's obviously, I think, misguided. 'Cause you have a title, but if your business sucks— that's why I think most people shouldn't be calling themselves CEO right away.
Mm.
I don't think anyone should be called— unless your business is making a million bucks a year in profit, don't call yourself CEO. 'Cause you're not a chief executive of shit. So in terms of delegation, I love delegation. That shit's my fucking favorite. But I'd say in your 20s, you don't delegate enough 'cause you have ego and you have energy. And in my 30s, what I've started looking for is, I always think of it as a dream team. You remember '92 with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird? That was a dream team. And so what I think about in recruiting now these days is like, I want to delegate. And Hiten Shah actually mentioned it to me, and I thought it was a good point, where it's like, if you're doing the work, your business is not gonna grow.
Right.
And I was like, nah, that sounds like someone who's lazy. But it's actually not lazy, it's someone who's like, alright, well the business can either grow in 2 ways. People or technology. And if you can't do it with technology, you have to go with people. And so what I'm looking for is like, I, like today, nowadays, I can either do it myself or put a little bit of time up front to recruit and then go through the delegation.
Right.
So I think more and more, if you actually want to grow your business, you have to get comfortable. How do you delegate and then make sure that they're going in the direction that you want them to go?
Woo!
That was really good.
That was amazing, right? Yeah, I loved that. That was really good. Noah just knows his stuff. I'm also Noah. He's one of the producers on the show here. I'm Noah too. No, this is Bryce. Eric is gonna be back at you with another interview right after this, so be sure to subscribe so you can get the next episode. We've got lots of great interviews on Leveling Up coming your way. Let us know in the comments what your plan is to level up, and be sure to subscribe. We'll catch you in the next one.
I mean, if you look at Richard Branson, started over 400 companies, right? And what I understand about his day-to-day is he has 2 assistants running his day, and he really doesn't— he works for maybe 4 hours or so, and then he's just done. So he's become this master delegator, right? And it sounds like that's kind of what you're moving towards now. You know, I have to wonder too, what's your end goal with all this stuff?
