Rand Fishkin's presentation on lessons learned over a decade of entrepreneurship around culture, team building, values, and more.

1. The Hard Truths of
Entrepreneurship
Rand Fishkin, Individual Contributor, Moz
@randfish | rand@moz.com

2. Download this Slide Deck
bit.ly/mozhardtruths

3. With a Story
Let’s Start

4. 2001: Rand Drops Out of UW, Two
Classes Away from Graduating.
Rand in 2001... Thank god for beards.

5. 2005: After 4 Years of Hard Work, Rand
& His Mom Have Built…
$450,000 in personal debt

6. 2007: The Blog Rand Started to Learn More
About SEO Helps Moz Pay Off Its Debt!
The SEOmoz blog,
coded by Rand in
PHP (meaning it
barely worked).

7. Nov. 2007: Moz Raises $1.1mm from Ignition &
Curious Office to Make Software
7 employees and $80K in
the bank!

8. 2009, 2010, & 2011: We Try to Raise Money Three
More Times… All End in Failure
An email from an investor telling me not to
lose sleep, just days before they pulled
out of our signed term sheet 
http://moz.com/rand/misadventures-venture-capital-funding/ and http://moz.com/blog/seomozs-
venture-capital-process

9. 2012: Thankfully, We’d Stayed Profitable!
Our pitch deck to VCs in 2011: http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/seomoz-pitch-deck-july-2011

10. April 2012: We Meet Brad Feld; He’s Dreamy
Brad wrote about TAGFEE: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2012/05/seomoz-tagfee-and-me.html

11. We Raise $18mm w/ Foundry & Ignition
http://moz.com/blog/mozs-18-million-venture-financing-our-story-metrics-and-future

12. We Raise $18mm w/ Foundry & Ignition
My favorite coverage was from TNW: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/01/awesome-seomoz-uses-popular-
internet-memes-to-announce-18m-funding-round/

13. 2012-2013: Moz Grows a Lot
Details from our CEO’s blog post on 2013 in review:
http://moz.com/blog/mozs-2013-year-in-review

14. Past 12 Months: We Hit Some Rough Patches
More about this: http://moz.com/rand/cant-sleep-caught-in-the-loop/

15. Jan. 2014: Rand Steps Down as CEO
http://moz.com/blog/final-post-as-ceo-sarah-bird-has-the-conn

16. of Entrepreneurship…
10 Years
6 Lessons to Share Today.

17. People & Hiring Matter
(but not in the ways you might expect)
1

18. http://moz.com/rand/what-company-culture-is-and-is-not/
Most companies
incorrectly reverse
these two.

19. Via: http://moz.com/rand/what-company-culture-is-and-is-not/
What Does “Culture Fit” Mean?
What Culture Is Not
• Whether you rock climb/surf/
hike/watch NFL/etc
• What kind of movies you like
• Bean bag chairs
• Nerf gun fights
• Catered lunches
• Mashed potato sculpting contests
judged by your auditors at Deloitte
(yes, we really did this at Moz, and it
was totally fun)
What Culture Is
Shared Values
Shared Priorities
Stylistic Cohesion
ValuesMission & Vision
Hiring, Firing, & Promotion Criteria
Cultural Fit =

20. Via: http://moz.com/rand/what-company-culture-is-and-is-not/
Common Advice:
Hire slow. Fire fast.
- Every management book & guru

21. Less Catchy, Better Advice:
Hire slow. Fire with a consistent,
empathetic process.
- Moz
Why? Because consistency in evaluating people and giving them time to improve is essential
to maintaining your reputation internally & externally. When firing happens fast, you create an
environment of fear, uncertainty, & mistrust.

22. Humility is the Most
Underrated Attribute
2

23. In my experience, those who
think highly of themselves are
very hard to work with, and
those who don’t think about
themselves lack
self-awareness.
In my experience, both
confidence & arrogance are
correlated w/ poor results, while
self-deprecation is often
correlated w/ the right kinds of
humility.

24. Core Values Are Hard
(not having them is way, way harder)
3

25. Moz’s Core Values: TAGFEE
Transparent
Authentic
Generous
Fun
Empathetic
The Exception
We share what we do, what we learn, and
where we struggle openly and honestly.
We will be our true selves, never masking our
beliefs for commercial gain.
We seek to give without thought of return.
Work is only work if you make it so.
Our most important value – we strive to share the
emotions & experiences of others.
We strive to be the exception to the rule, and
to take the path less traveled.

26. http://moz.com/rand/diving-deep-on-tagfee/
Moz’s Core Values: TAGFEE
Transparent
Authentic
Generous
Fun
Empathetic
The Exception
Real values come
from a deep,
personal place in
the founders’
past/beliefs.
Real values are
disconnected from
opinions about what
will make the
business succeed.

27. When things go well, values are easy.
When things get rough, values are important.
“The core values embodied in our credo might be a
competitive advantage, but that is not why we have them.
We have them because they define for us what we stand
for, and we would hold them even if they became a
competitive disadvantage.”
- Ralph S. Larsen, CEO of Johnson & Johnson
http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html

28. Core Values Are the Glue that Holds Vision, Strategy,
Team, & Everything Else Together.
http://moz.com/rand/vision-based-framework/

29. Your Team Is Absorbing Far Less
Information than You Think
4

30. Like most CEOs, I sent emails, presented at
team meetings, and expected people to
internalize that information.
This is not the face of a
smart man.

31. Note: the percentages on this visual don’t have credible research behind them (though the broader concept does):
http://acrlog.org/2014/01/13/tales-of-the-undead-learning-theories-the-learning-pyramid/

32. Assuming knowledge that’s been shared once (or
even a few times) has been internalized by everyone
can create fatal pitfalls.
The same type of distribution happens
internally at organizations, too.

33. If Management is the Only
Way Up, We’re All F***’d
5

34. In Many Organizations, the Only Path for Career
Growth is to Become a People Manager
Career path illustrations from a variety of companies & fields

35. See Daniel Pink’s Illustrated Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdzHgN7_Hs8
What Makes Us Happy at Work?
Many people are not motivated or made
happy by managing others

36. And, People Managing is NOT the Only Skill of
Value to a Growing Company
http://moz.com/rand/if-management-is-the-only-way-up-were-all-fd/

37. At Moz, We’ve Built Two Tracks with Equivalent
Compensation & Recognition
http://moz.com/rand/if-management-is-the-only-way-up-were-all-fd/
Pay ranges at each level are
the same across both tracks.

38. At Moz, We’ve Built Two Tracks with Equivalent
Compensation & Recognition
http://moz.com/rand/swapping-drivers-on-this-long-road-trip-together/
I recently made the move from people wrangling to
individual contributor myself!

39. Building a company is really just
a cycle of failure & learning
that, from a distance, resembles
overnight success.
6

40. http://buttersafe.com/2008/10/23/the-detour/
A lot of days feel
like this:

41. We compare ourselves and our success to outliers rather
than norms, and this brings great unhappiness.
We Imagine Entrepreneurship Looks Like This:

42. In Reality, It Looks More Like This:
Geraldine’s Travel Blog: http://everywhereist.com

43. Geraldine started her blog in 2009
In Reality, It Looks More Like This:

44. For 2 years, she never broke 100 visits/day.
In Reality, It Looks More Like This:

45. This is where most people give up.
In Reality, It Looks More Like This:

46. These days, she gets 100,000+ visits each month
In Reality, It Looks More Like This:

47. Every first-time founder I’ve ever talked to shares a
story that looks a lot like this one.
You are not alone.
In Reality, It Looks More Like This:

48. The Price of Success is
Failure after Failure after
Failure*
* Hopefully, each of those failures provides an opportunity to learn.

49. 1) Moz is by no means perfect.
Critical Caveats:
2) Getting this stuff right does not
guarantee success.
3) These lessons were hard learned by
me & Moz. I share them in the hopes of
saving you that same pain.

50. Rand Fishkin, Individual Contributor, Moz
@randfish | rand@moz.com
The Hard Truths of Entrepreneurship
Online: bit.ly/mozhardtruths