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
A New Blog and a New Challenge
By Over the past few years, I’ve been tremendously impressed by a handful of bloggers in the field of technology, startups and investing. In particular: Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures Mark Suster of GRP Partners Brad Feld of Foundry Group Three qualities about each have impressed and inspired me: 1) They’ve all had a dramatic impact
Uncategorized
A Healthy Dose of Fear is Appropriate When Dealing with the Press
By This past Friday I read Ben Huh’s post entitled Don’t Fear the Press. He writes: I often see very puzzling behavior from some entrepreneurs when it comes to dealing with the press and media. Either they are desperate for it and would kill to get a press write up, or they vilify the press and hate
Making Email More Scalable
By 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
Fear of Ignorance
By 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
Misadventures in VC Funding: The $24 Million Moz Almost Raised
By Over the course of this year, I’ve written a couple times about raising a potential round of venture financing for my company, SEOmoz. At last, the saga’s over, I’ve been released from terms of confidentiality and I can share the long, strange story of how I first rejected, was eventually persuaded, but ultimately failed to
Uncategorized
Inflection Points: Bravery vs. Foolishness
By Inflection points in startup life technically happen every day, but in my experience, there’s a difference between the once-a-week variety and the truly BIG decisions – to sell the company, to raise funding, to pivot on business models, to expand into a new location or new product. Sometimes these happen organically as a result of
Uncategorized
Just Keep Going
By In 1997 I was just graduating from high school and started to design small business websites using Microsoft Frontpage and a variety of amateurish HTML hacks. In 2001, I dropped out of college, two classes away from graduating to work full time at a tiny web consulting business with my Mom. That didn’t go very
Uncategorized
Sometimes VC Just Ain’t Enough
By We’ve gotten a lot of interest from venture capital, private equity and other types of investment firms lately at Moz. Nearly every week features a phone call or two to answer some of that inbound interest. I suspect it’s due to multiple factors, but the current, hot investment environment and upward slope of the search marketing
Uncategorized
The Dangerous Hubris of the Startup World
By Students of history will almost certainly be familiar with the 7 Deadly Sins – the list of human vices that are, purportedly, the source for much of humanity’s evil. Of these, one in particular stands out: In almost every list Pride, or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source