Category: Personal

Hiring Personal Team

Welcoming Kristy Morrison as Chief of Staff

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Story time—late last year, I developed a painful, still-undiagnosed condition in my hands, likely from repetitive stress. Blah blah chronic pain, it’s hard to work, typing and mousework for more than 45 minutes in a row is unbearable, I’ve been to lots of doctors, followed lots of random Internet advice, whatever… I don’t really like complaining about health stuff. But,…
Events Personal

The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide 2024

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Everyone’s favorite food and drink gift guide is back with all-new picks! Same same, but different. It’s the 5th anniversary of this gift guide. Same rules apply: A distribution of gift options between $20-$300, with very few at the top end of that range, and plenty of affordable selections A diverse range of products that can accommodate various palates and…
Personal Startups

Snackbar Studio Raised $2.15M Using SparkToro’s Funding Model (and we’re open sourcing the docs)

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Since SparkToro’s founding in 2018, I’ve been been passionately loud about our unique funding model (becase it’s a really good idea.) The model focuses on chill work, sustainability over growth-at-any-cost, and offers investors and founders a lower-risk way to benefit from long-term, profitable operation. Several companies and funds have used our structure to raise money since, including accelerator program TinySeed…
Personal SparkToro Startups Team

The Chill Work Manifesto

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Shortly after Amanda Natividad joined SparkToro, she coined the term “Chill Work” to describe the unusually patient, mature, laid-back approach we take to building this business. And for the last three years, it’s become a bigger and bigger part of how I think about not only this company, but everything I do professionally. Today, I want to share a documentary…
Events Personal

The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide on the Internet 2023

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
Here it is, our fourth annual edition! The first three were just practice for this masterpiece of culinary and imbibable magnificence. Because this year, our food and drink gift guide isn’t just the usual excellent selection — products we’ve used, received and enjoyed, and/or gifted — it’s also chock-full of pithy commentary on important topics like the politics of tiki…
Marketing Personal Tactics

How Rand Makes Those Split-Screen Videos You See on LinkedIn and Twitter

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Several times a week, I post videos that look like this on (usually) LinkedIn and Twitter: They tend to get a lot of engagement (in this case, 10,000+ “impressions” which translates to a respectable 2,880 “viewers” according to LinkedIn). And inevitably, I get comments, DMs, or emails that ask “how do you make those split screen recording videos?” It’s easy…

Keep up with SparkToro®