Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan: Summary & Notes
by Noah Kagan
In One Sentence
Start a business this weekend by validating before building—find three customers willing to pay, then iterate from there instead of spending months on a product nobody wants.
Key Takeaways
- Ask: "Would you pay for this?" before building anything
- Validation before creation—sell first, build later
- The NOW Not How method: start immediately, figure it out as you go
- Coffee Challenge: get comfortable with rejection
- Find one customer, then ten, then a hundred
- Business is experimentation, not perfection
Summary
I’ve followed Noah Kagan for a long time, back to his growth blogging days when he was working on growing the financial tool Mint. He’s long provided open, honest growth marketing advice.
His book is a short read, highly actionable, and shares many themes with The 4-Hour Workweek, which is the book I attribute to getting me into entrepreneurship.
Highly recommend for anyone who is interested in starting their own business. Follow the template in the book and you’ll be off to a great start!You can also get the first chapter and the resources for the book for free here.
Who Should Read This Book
- Aspiring entrepreneurs who never start
- People stuck in analysis paralysis
- Anyone who wants a side business
- Those who have failed to launch before
FAQ
What is the Million Dollar Weekend method?
Noah Kagan's approach: validate business ideas by getting real customers to pay before building the product. The book walks through a weekend process of finding problems, validating demand, and getting your first sales.
Click to expand comprehensive chapter-by-chapter breakdown (~15-20 min read)
