Category: Startups

Startups

The Problem w/ “Fire Fast”

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
It’s universally accepted in startup-land that “hire slow, fire fast” is a mantra to live by. The benefits are clear – by adding only the best to your team, and constantly pruning for non-cultural or skill fits, you can build the best possible team. And, of course, the best teams always win. This universal advice, though, might be in direct…
Startups

Impostor Syndrome

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Someday, if you achieve great things, a man will show up at the door with a clipboard, ask you some questions and take away the life you’ve built and love, to replace it with the one you dreaded. If you’ve achieved any modicum of success or happiness in your professional life, you almost certainly fear this already. Here’s Neil Gaiman…
Startups

The Web’s Publishers Can Only Take So Much

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
The article 11 Sexy Girls with Star Wars Tattoos that You Don’t Have the Right to Publish should be scaring marketers and content creators at least as much as algorithmic updates from Google like Penguin and Panda scare SEOs. Content marketing is a phenomenal tactic, but this type of thing has real potential to ruin the power of great content…
Moz Startups

The Power of Support

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Sarah (Moz’s COO) and I snuck in a quick 10 minute sitdown today in between some other meetings. We do this pretty regularly – informal, non-calendared check-ins to chat about the big and little things we’re both handling. Sarah’s working on a potential acquisition and getting ready for our annual audit. I’m keeping an eye on a big release planned…
Seattle Startups

Seattle vs. The Valley

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
If you live in Seattle and work in or around the startup ecosystem, you’ll have heard the “why-can’t-we-be-more-like-the-valley” conversation plenty of times. The typical complaints are always the same: It’s easier to get funding in the Valley Rounds are better priced (meaning investors pay higher pre-money) There’s a stronger culture of true 24/7 focus The networking is better It’s easier…
Startups

Making Email More Scalable

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
UPDATE: This experiment in productivity didn’t work; more details at the end. If you’ve been referred to this blog post in an email reply, first off, hello! and second, I’m sorry. If I were a less busy or more efficient person, I would have (and should have) responded to your request individually, rather than through this post. You deserve more…
Startups

Fear of Ignorance

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
This past week, I was interviewing a candidate for a VP role along with two of our engineering leads. Everyone in the room excluding myself was classically “technical” – they could write code, had experience solving hard software problems and a background in computer science. I wrote my last line of PHP in 2004, and it had to be rewritten…
Events Marketing Moz Startups

Why I’m a Conference Whore

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Mark Suster, whose blog and tweets I enjoy and whose investments strike me as innovative and smart wrote a blog post in October, Be Careful Not to Become a Conference Ho, that’s been grating on me. The central tenet seems wrong, or at the least, myopic. via XKCD Granted, the Internet is filled with content I find disagreeable. But, in…

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