Kagan, who resides in the US, is the son of Israeli immigrant parents. His father was an immigrant from Israel who did not speak English and sold copiers door-to-door while his mother worked as a night nurse and his stepfather was a computer engineer.
Getting laid off from a big giant is not the end of the world, this was proved by the inspiring story of a 41-year-old techie who shared that he began his own company after being fired from Facebook, and now makes approximately $3.3 million (Rs 274,319,265) a year.
Noah Kagan, CEO and Co-founder of Appsumo.com, recently featured on CNBC Make It'sMillennial Money series, which talks about how people around the world earn, spend, and save their money.
Kagan, who resides in the US, is the son of Israeli immigrant parents. His father was an immigrant from Israel who did not speak English and sold copiers door-to-door while his mother worked as a night nurse and his stepfather was a computer engineer.
Kagan as a kid sold costco pencils at a mark-up to his classmates and as a teen, he did normal 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 Kagan always aspired to be rich and was passionate about 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 said.
After graduating from University of California, Berkeley in 2004 with a bachelor’s in economics and business, at the age of 23 in 2005, he began working for Facebook as a product manager but was fired a year later after he leaked company information to the press at Coachella.
''I was shocked. I'm 24 years old and working on 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,'' he added.
Recalling the incident, he admitted that the firing was justified and reasonable.'' It's a good experience to get fired and realize, you might want to take control of your destiny and be an entrepreneur, and you have that option to do what you want to do,'' he asserted.
After being fired, he gave conferences for aspiring entrepreneurs, taught English in South Korea, and did consulting work for Silicon Valley tech firms. In 2008, he became a full-time entrepreneur.
Utilizing his expertise working with Facebook, and other tech giants such as Intel and Mint.com, he began his discount software website AppSumo in in 2010 in just a weekend, and it soon became a hit.“I spent $12 on AppSumo.com and put it on Reddit, and instantly people started buying it,” Kagan said.
Last year, the company recorded about $80 million in revenue and reported more than $7 million in profit.
''The way I have always done my salary is that I pay myself relatively low. Historically, it's been around $200,000 in annual salary. And at the end of the year, after we have paid the team after we have taken everyone out for an all-expenses-paid vacation, and done other distributions to people in the company, then I take a profit share. Last year, I took a $3 million profit share for my salary,'' he told CNBC Make It.
Apart from running the AppSumo business, Mr Kagan runs a YouTube channel and manages five rental properties. He also published his book, 'Million Dollar Weekend', which is a guide on how to build the ''business of their dreams''.
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 "Noah Kagan, CEO and Co-founder of Appsumo.com")
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