Category: Startups

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…
Startups

What I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Company

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Every year that I’ve run SEOmoz, I’ve thought to myself “Who was that idiot they let run this place last year?” _ It’s not that every decision I’ve made has been terrible, or that I’ve brought the company to the brink of destruction, but it is true that the quantity of unexecuted opportunity has outpaced our growth substantially, and that’s…
Startups

Rise of the Celebrity Investor

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Nearly everyone in the startup space has recognized the rise of a new class of VC and angel investor over the last few years. I’ll call them the “celebrity-investor” because much of their reputation stems not necessarily from their accomplishments (though most have achieved and invested in remarkable things) but from their personal brand – often centered around a popular…

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