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Posts by Rand Fishkin:

Marketing Startups

Exceptional Upgrade Path UX from WPEngine

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m fascinated by the mechanics of startup marketing, customer acquisition, and revenue generation. So when I received this email for my WPEngine WordPress Hosting account (on which Dharmesh and I host inbound.org), I couldn’t help but get curious: It’s hard to list all the ways this email is a work of marketing art, but I’ll start with a few of…
Moz Startups Team

What’s the Right Team Structure?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
As I often note on this blog, I’m a rookie CEO who’s gotten very lucky. Much of the time, I wish I had more experience in other corporate and startup environments, so I’d better know what works and what doesn’t. I rely on other team members and a lot of outside advice for that, and I’ve been thinking that maybe,…
Hiring Moz

Keeping Amazing People on the Team

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Many of my posts on this blog are intended to be broad in scope and provide an opinion, data or experience about startup/marketing paths. This one might not fit that pattern as well. Rather than describing my thoughts or collected advice from experience on startup talent retention, I’m going to instead channel feedback from our employees themselves on what keeps…
Hiring Startups

Why Cash Bonuses Make No Sense in Startups

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s tough competing for candidates with the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. In the past 6 months, we’ve lost bids for half a dozen or so engineers to these companies, and more than a few mentioned the additional cash bonuses as one of the reasons they were motivated to choose these companies over us. Despite this, I’m holding…
Startups

My Favorite Board Meetings

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
When we first raised an investment round in 2007, SEOmoz’s board of directors (consisting of Michelle Goldberg from Ignition, Gillian & myself from Moz, Kelly Smith from Curious Office and Sarah Bird as secretary/counsel) would meet nearly every month. Over time, that became every 2-3 months and now it’s quarterly. Unlike some CEOs, I’ve (almost) never dreaded or stressed for…
Startups

One Bad, “Policy Change” Email Can Kill Company Culture

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
We’ve all received a work email that made us cringe – the ones that sound formal and threatening or vaguely like a punishment for something we’re pretty sure someone else did. They often have titles like “New Travel Policy” or “Changes to Benefits Package” or even “Office Happiness Update.” These subject lines sounds innocent enough, but in the modern professional…
Startups

The Big Picture Conversation

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I feel like a broken record. Lately, I’ve been sitting down with founder friends of mine and having a discussion about how their business is going. Inevitably, I get a sense that even those with a lot of tactical successes or growth seem to be missing a larger purpose. Inevitably, we end up in a discussion about “the big picture.”…

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