Category: Moz

Moz Personal Psychology Startups

A Long, Ugly Year of Depression That’s Finally Fading

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Yesterday morning I woke up early to speak at the Business of Software conference in Boston. It was my first time there, and it’s an exceptional group. Then, after some meetings, I spoke in the afternoon at Hubspot’s Inbound conference (thankfully just across a long skybridge that connects Boston’s World Trade Center from its Convention Center). This morning, I woke…
Marketing Moz Startups

Mixergy Interview On Startup Marketing, Reaching Early Adopters, Burnout, & More

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
A few weeks ago, Andrew Warner of Mixergy interviewed me on a number of topics. We started by talking about launching a startup marketing strategy, got deep into the tactical process of earning an audience, and ended discussing some of the challenges I’ve had at Moz this year. (Andrew via Extra Pack of Peanuts) Andrew is one of the best…
Moz Personal Psychology

Can’t Sleep; Caught in The Loop

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
During the worst weeks of this year, I’ve had this weird mental cycle that, despite being incredibly exhausted, keeps me awake. In my head, I’ve taken to calling it “The Loop.” (photo credit: Geraldine in Paris) The Loop starts out with something small. I’ll be lying awake, in bed, trying to fall asleep, and thinking (as I do most of…
Moz Personal Team

Swapping Drivers on this Long Road Trip Together

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
2013 has been a really hard year for me. In many ways, it’s been harder than even the 2002-2006 era when my Mom and I went deeply into debt and worried about paying the rent and being chased by creditors. Some of that is attributable to the less-than-what-I-hoped-for results the business achieved (mostly because we artificially constrained our acquisition funnel…
Events Moz Team

Vision-Based Framework

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Some companies exist primarily (or exclusively) to make money. Others exist for a variety of non-financial (or pseudo-financial) reasons. But in much of the research about companies that have gone from startup to scale to world-changing status, observers found a common architecture. This architecture is vision-based, and mission driven. It starts with a core purpose and core values, then builds…
Moz Psychology Startups Team

Generosity & Entitlement

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’ve been trying something new at Moz. I schedule 90 minutes every week or two for “office hours,” and invite anyone from any team at the company to come visit and chat about whatever’s on their mind. So far, attendance has been sparse (only 1 person the first week, ~10 the 2nd week, and 4 each of the last two…
Moz Startups Team

Well, He’s Not Going to Get Very Far

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Company culture is incredibly fragile. It’s hard for founders/CEOs/execs to understand how little faith and trust people have in us when we stand up at a meeting and say “we believe in our culture” or “we put values first.” That skepticisim has often been built up over years or decades of being let down. People joined companies that claimed to…
Moz Personal Team

The Expectation of 100%

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s 4:36am. I’ve been awake for an hour, stumbling through email and catching up on reading. G and I flew back from London two nights ago, and although I slept great last night, I crashed at 10pm tonight and only managed 6 hours before the jetlag kicked in. Casey, who runs the inbound engineering team at Moz, and I had…

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