Be Quirky

At the core of every company is its culture—an embodiment of the founders' personalities. It's massively important to embrace your quirks as a founder and company as a whole, both good and bad. One of the driving forces behind AppSumo's success is how well we play up our humor and creativity, utilizing them as tools that transform how professionals shop for educational videos and software.

For instance, the AppSumo logo is a caricature of a sumo wrestler with a burrito-eating grin on his face, Noah Kagan's "title" is Chief Sumo, and our copy is specifically tailored to produce laughs while still being insightful and enticing. Similar to Gary Vaynerchuk, we probably scare off a handful of great potential customers with our approach, but the level of engagement and dedication we get from those we do attract is much more valuable to us. Perhaps what best exemplifies our culture is the new addition to the site: the Taco Rating System.

This isn't because using taco instead of star icons is funny and remarkable (which it is), but because the culture at AppSumo encourages rapid ideation; there is no idea too simple or too stupid. The team is conditioned to set inhibitions aside and ask questions like...

Hey Noah, what if we use taco icons instead of stars for our ratings? Everyone uses stars—they're boring.

Sharing and testing ideas at AppSumo has turned into a quirk of ours—a part of our personality—allowing us to balance our fun-lust and passion to scale while providing a unique experience for customers. How can you leverage your personality to enhance your personal brand or company? We all have weaknesses, so don't get hung up on overcoming them; instead, execute on what makes you distinctly you.