A copied business idea, some cheap labor and one weekend. This is how you can become a millionaire.
Multimillionaire Noah Kagan copied the business idea and hired a Pakistani developer to code the website for the service. It took a couple of days, a few tens of money. Pixabay
Noah Kagan is either a genius or the luckiest man in the world. He built his million-dollar business in one single weekend and with an investment of only 60 dollars (55 euros). He opens the birth story of his company AppSumo in his book Million dollar weekend.
AppSumo’s business idea was not unique in its founding year of 2010. Kagan copied it directly from the well-known website MacHeist, which offered various Mac software packages at a discount. AppSumo offered the same service, but for Windows users.
After getting the idea, Kagan hired a Pakistani developer for $48 to build a website for the service. $12 was spent to acquire the domain.
After getting the site up and running, he contacted the management of the image-sharing website Imgur and offered to promote a discounted version of the service for a few percent commission. After accepting the offer, Imgur used the deal to convince the founder of the discussion site Reddit to allow AppSumo to be advertised on the site.
– What’s more, our users love Imgur. Everyone likes discounts, Kagan recalls the Reddit founder saying.
The rest is history. Last year, according to Kagan, AppSumo generated $80 million in revenue. Kagan himself says that he raises the company’s salary by more than three million dollars a year.