Category: Team

Hiring Industry Team

Embrace the High-Level Individual Contributor: How to Hire for This Unconventional Role

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
I’m SparkToro’s VP Marketing and here’s how I spent a recent afternoon: I sifted through our Google Analytics dashboard. I was looking for our most popular pages and copying them into a spreadsheet so that we can keep track of what needs to be updated for the public launch of SparkToro V2. I included the title of the page, link,…
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…
SparkToro Team

Two Announcements: SparkToro V2 Coming Soon and Brendan Hufford (Temporarily) Joining the Team

Amanda NatividadBy Amanda Natividad
How is it only August? It feels like two years since January. Especially here at SparkToro, where the year’s had so much upheaval, despite our attempts to maintain Chill Work. Shortly after our pricing change in February, Twitter/X’s new owner announced a bevy of pricing and access changes to their API, including the deprecation of data SparkToro’s infrastructure relied on…
Product SparkToro Startups Team

SparkToro Year 3 Retrospective: Investor Payback, Systemic Challenges, and V2 on the Way

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
3 Years ago, SparkToro launched in the midst of a world-changing pandemic. In 2021 and 2022 I wrote updates about this business’ journey, both because I love to transparently share the adventure, and because we’re passionate about spreading the model SparkToro’s used to fund, grow, and bring value to customers. Let’s continue that tradition today 😊 Here’s the good news:…
Hiring Industry Psychology Team

You can’t hire ambitious people and then ask them to stop being ambitious.

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Hiring managers, executives, CEOs—especially those in tech—are proud to say that we only consider applicants with an unrelenting drive for success and a track record of impressive accomplishments. These qualities often correlate with what we perceive (accurately or not) to be our own reasons for success, and we want to find people like us: individuals with intrinsic motivation, constantly striving…
Hiring Psychology SparkToro Startups Team

SparkToro’s Mission, Vision, and Values: BELUX

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Those skilled in the art of BS detection can tell you that 99% of company mission, vision, and values statements are meaningless. For corporate ideals to be more than just blatant-hypocrisy-in-poster-form, leadership has to build them into the company’s operating systems: how they hire/fire/promote, how they prioritize product investments, treat customers, make decisions around funding and acquisitions, and more. Even…
SparkToro Startups Team

SparkToro’s Year 2 Retrospective: Can Chill Work, Alternative Funding, and an Indie Approach Scale?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Two years ago today, at the nerve-wracking start of a global pandemic, we launched SparkToro. Since then, we’ve learned a lot, and uncovered plenty of unanswered questions, too. As is tradition, I’ll try to share the good, the bad, and the interesting in the hopes it can help other entrepreneurs, especially those considering an alternative to standard, venture-backed funding. First,…
Personal Psychology Startups Team

Hustle Culture vs. Chill Work

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
A few weeks ago, Wil Reynolds and I were on a video call together. I think I joined in a couple minutes after him, and the discussion was already starting: Someone on the call: “… just hustling”Rand: “Ugh, I hate hustle culture.” Wil: “Yo, Fish*, can you define hustle?”Rand: “Easy one. Hustling is working hard to work hard. It’s valuing…

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