Why Cash Bonuses Make No Sense in Startups
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…
My Favorite Board Meetings
When we first raised an investment round in 2007, SEOmoz’s board of directors (consisting of Michelle Goldberg from Ignition, Gillian & myself from Moz,…
One Bad, “Policy Change” Email Can Kill Company Culture
We’ve all received a work email that made us cringe – the ones that sound formal and threatening or vaguely like a punishment for…
How We Cheat at Conferences (and why you should, too)
Every year for the last 7, we’ve held a customer event in Seattle during the summer (and only been rained on 3, maybe 4…
Domain Bias: Why Branding & Search Marketing Cannot Be Separated
Let’s say you’re visiting Phoenix, AZ for the first time. You head to Google and type in a search query for “best restaurants Phoenix,”…
The Big Picture Conversation
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…
Belief in the Mythical, “10X” Hire Hurts Your Team
There’s a long-running meme in the tech & startup ecosystems that goes something like this: The top 10% in any given professional field are…
Events Can Be Both Wonderful & Dangerous Places to Launch
This week at Mozcon brought some big launches of new products and projects – the Google Algorithm weather forecast project, Mozcast, the new job…
Hacking the Character Litmus Test
I had coffee with SEOmoz’s new recruiter, Sierra, recently. She’s amazing, and she has to be. The people who make up our team over…
A Philosophy for Startup Success: Choose Short Men
One of the not-so-surprising facts about online dating is that short men and tall women tend to do poorly in comparison to their peers.…