There’s a constant fight raging at Moz, and every other scaling startup I’ve seen. On one side are the forces of corporateness – trying to make the workplace a more stodgy, inauthentic, TPS-reports-to-be-filed place. On the other are the defenders of humanity and authenticity – the people who built the company and are, by and
Why Every Company Should Have a Marketing-Focused Webdev Team
By Ask any marketing consultant focused on inbound channels (SEO, social media, conversion rate optimization, email, etc.) what the most challenging part of their job is and 75%+ will say: “working with the engineering team.” This should come as no surprise. Engineering and webdev resources are, along with web marketers, the biggest scarcest and hardest to
Why Does a Big Funding Round Slow Down Your Pace of Innovation?
By “Why can’t we build it faster?!” I’ve never met an entrepreneur in the software field who doesn’t ask themselves that question daily. For a lot of the past few years, I had an excuse: the constraint of capital. But, since April (when we raised $18mm), that argument’s invalidated. There’s an excess of cash on the
Why Are You Hiring for the Job I Want to Grow Into?!
By I really, really like Moz’s Renea Nielsen. I was having a rough day at the office today, mostly because my calendar was filled with calls to Wall Street market analysts (more on that in a future post), but also because my sleep this week hasn’t been great. 45 minutes with Renea and it was gone –
You Must Choose Metrics, But Choose Wisely
By I had lunch with Thomas from our production engineering team today. During our chat, we talked about the future of the company’s organizational structure and plans to split into feature-focused teams after a big launch we have planned for 2013. Thomas noted that in his previous role with Amazon, teams were judged directly against metrics
We Can Do Better Than Bit.ly
By Of all the tools I use each day on the web, perhaps none frustrates me more than bit.ly. I like being able to track all the sharing I do across networks with a single URL shortener, but the site’s frustrating from numerous levels. Historic data and habit are most of what keeps me from moving
Understanding Stock Options at Startups (and at Moz)
By Last Friday, SEOmoz held our “allhands” meeting at the Big Picture theater. Out of ~98 Mozzers, 85 of us were in attendance (sadly 3 had to leave intermittently to deal with a misbehaving Riak database we’d just upgraded). We’ve grown a ton over the last 6 months (from ~50 in January) thanks in part to our
Greg – Congrats on the New Blog. Here’s Some Posts I’d Love to Read.
By Seattle has long been in need of good VC bloggers. What Mark Suster has done for LA, Brad Feld has done for Boulder, and Fred Wilson has done for NYC just through writing high quality blogs (nevermind all the other great stuff they do for those ecosystems) is remarkable and game-changing and we need it.
Time Recovery Hacks
By Startup life has intense time requirements. In the early phases, there’s a lot of nose-to-the-grindstone need, and if the company successfully scales, the internal and external demands on your time rise dramatically. With this blog, and my commitment to staying close to the everyday issues of the marketing industry, I’ve had to build up a
24 Things I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then
By I really liked Rae Hoffman’s post from last month, Entrepreneurial Lessons: 48 Things I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then. And, while I don’t agree with everything on her list (at least as it applies to the experiences I’ve had), I felt compelled to take up the format she’d presented and do something similar.