A standard only counts when it costs you something

Revenue is a little behind so far in January. So the team asked a reasonable question: can we drop the standard that we have to know who the founder is? Other companies promote products without it. No KYC, no know-your-founder, more products in the store.

I said no. If we’re selling it to other people, I want to know who is accountable for that business. Non-negotiable.

Then I noticed something worse than the question. That standard isn’t written down anywhere. It’s law in my head and nowhere else, which is exactly why it got asked.

Where’s the Tang?

When I was 18 I walked into Whole Foods and asked where the Tang was. They laughed at me. We would never have Tang. Get out of here, you disgusting (very good looking) man. I was like, what the hell is this place?

That’s a standard. Whole Foods knows what is not on its shelves, and the answer doesn’t change on a slow month.

AppSumo‘s standards have moved around over 15 years. In the beginning it was just the best products. Then it went broad. Then the products got better again. Now, in a world of AI, there’s vibe coding and scripts and stuff we never had to underwrite before, so I sat down with Sean, our chief revenue officer, and worked through what gets in the store. A taste:

Does this person take their business seriously? Site updated in the last 30 days, a changelog, some public presence talking about the product. We’re underwriting businesses like a loan company of sorts. If you can see they’re active, it’s easier to believe in them.

Do our beta testers approve it? We pay super customers to rate products. If it’s under the bar, the partner gets the feedback and a chance to fix it. If they fix it, we launch. If not, we don’t.

Where are they from? In some lower GDP countries there’s no recourse for us. They launch, then they close it down. That doesn’t mean we reject them. Push Lap Growth in Africa is crushing it and we’re launching his second product shortly. But it’s part of the standard.

Refund rate. Would you keep a product with that refund rate in your own store?

Does it look like AI slop? Are the testimonials real? It’s insane how many sites have a “Mark Chen” saying this product changed my life. There are a lot of Mark Chens out there.

Does it solve a problem customers actually have, or is it a cheap AI wrapper? That one’s tough. Some wrappers have structure. Subscribr.ai crushed. We’re launching another one that walks you through a business plan, and I can’t say I love business plans, but the structure makes it more than a wrapper.

Can the company be viable for at least 12 months? We built all this because of backlash, understandable backlash, about partners going out of business.

I hate the why, I love the how

I had lunch today with someone I’m not going to name. Worth over a billion, a real billion, not a Twitter-post billion. In tech, you’ve probably used his product, lives nearby. He told me he doesn’t use AI at all and doesn’t really want to. We’re in a world of efficiency and productivity. He’s in a world of connectivity instead.

He’s not trying to raise the most productive kids. He’s trying to raise the best kids, the kindest kids, and he runs his house on standards. Brag at home, not outside the home. Praise the outcome, not just the effort: I’m so proud you got an A. If the kids fight, they hug on the couch until they’re fine with each other. Every one of those is a Tang rule.

I was complaining to him about AppSumo and about AI. His pushback: I hate the why and I love the how. Have work people feel good about doing, and make sure the values you say you want are actually being lived. Then two questions. What are you doing here? What do you guys want to be doing here?

What I keep coming back to is that it is still really hard to get customers no matter what you build. We find people who made something special and tell people about it. That’s the how. On the flight home I watched the F1 movie, and Brad Pitt says he never raced for the money or the trophies, he just likes to race. Even when you’re losing on the scoreboard, are you happy with the game you’re playing?

The lowest NPS we’ve ever had

Twice a year we ask everyone at the company whether they’d refer a friend to work here. It’s the lowest it has ever been. A lot of attrition, a lot of change, and a lot of that is my fault. I’ve written about the plan and I still think it’s the right one. Vision, yes. Standards we can execute against, yes. What I lost sight of is the standards for how we treat each other.

We have a MOM, our master operating manual, and a Sumo-isms values doc, and I lost sight of both. Anna, who’s become our COO, and I are revisiting them. Paul on our partner management team has a lot of good ideas and told me it was hard to get some of them done. So what are our values around that, and how do I coach Paul? I went back to him today to work on it with him.

I don’t feel like we have to panic. The Spurs under Popovich, Belichick’s Patriots, the best teams aren’t always the best superstars. It’s coaching that makes the organization good.

The product standards are going public. The values are getting rewritten, internally, with the team. And the next time revenue is behind and someone asks which rule we can bend, the answer is already on the shelf.

From episode 384 of my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.