Noah Kagan is by all means a wizard of new age marketing and a brilliant entrepreneur. He was one of the early team members at Facebook when it was still on the cusp of breaking out, he was part of Mint, a free personal finance tool, which sold for 170 million dollars two years into its launch.
Now he has his own marketing platform called App Sumo, a provider of daily deals on goods sold online.
Noah Kagan is no doubt brilliant but he was also very bad.
Kagan, now 35, was Facebook’s employee number 30 at the age of 24. After that he was employee number 4 to be hired at Mint.
A disruptor all the way he lost 185 million dollars in ESOP from Facebook when he was fired for being a liability to the company. After that he lost another 1.7 million dollars when he quit Mint effectively giving up his rights to his shares.
The 1.7 million dollars pales in comparison to (just over) 50 times that much.
It took a year to deal with the depression of being let go according to Kagan.
From his blog, here’s why he was fired from Facebook:
“After running
AppSumo for over 2 years I’ve finally understood that Facebook made the right decision to let me go.
When you hire people there are three types of employees:1 - Grower. Someone who starts when the company is small and improves / adapts their skills as the company scales.
2 - Show-er. Someone who can be good for the company where they are now but NOT where they are going.
3 - Veteran. They’ve done it before and it’s second nature for them to teach you how to do it in your company.
I was a show-er at Facebook. I dealt with chaos of a 30 person company extremely well. (Did I mention my boss got fired on my first day and my next boss got fired 2 months after me?)
But he wasn't able to adapt, as Kagan says. Here's why:1 - Selfish. I wanted attention, I put myself before Facebook. I hosted events at the office, published things on this blog to get attention and used the brand more than I added to it.
Lesson learned: The BEST way to get famous is make amazing stuff. That’s it. Not blogging, networking, etc.2 - Marketing. The marketing team’s plan was not to do anything and the night before we opened Facebook to the professional market (anyone with a @microsoft.com, @dell.com, etc…) I emailed TechCrunch to let Michael Arrington know to publish it in the morning. He ended up publishing it that night (I was at
Coachella and will never again attend) before the actual product was released in the morning. I immediately notified the e-team and assumed full responsibility.
Lesson learned: I don’t think what I did was that wrong since the marketing team did not do anything to promote our new features. My lesson learned was more I should have involved them instead of just going around them. 3 - Skills. As I said above when things needed to get done, I was there [and got things done]…. As we progressed to needing to organize massive spreadsheets and big group collaboration meetings, I zoned the F out and was then shortly out of the company.
Lesson learned: Go see if your weaknesses are hindering you at your job. I wasn’t great at planning or product management at this time. Fix them or move to another position. Each human on Earth has super powers. I’ve realized mine are execution, sales, marketing, eating tacos and throwing in occasional jokes.
As I’ve gotten older I’m more patient, a bit better at planning and able to work better with larger groups. Would I be a great fit for product management at Facebook now, likely; would I ever work there again, Frick No.”
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
