1. Lessons Learned Growing Moz
by Rand Fishkin
Download: http://bit.ly/growingmoz
Moz has had both great success and frustrating failure over the last 10 years.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can examine those experiences and extract
learnings to help avoid the mistakes and repeat what worked.
3. 2001: Rand Drops Out of UW,
Two Classes Away from Graduating.
Rand in 2001... Thank god for beards.
4. 2005: After 4 Years of Hard Work,
Rand & His Mom Have Built…
$450,000 in personal debt
5. 2007: The Blog Rand Started to Learn More About
SEO Helps Moz Pay Off Its Debt!
The original SEOmoz
site, coded by Rand in
PHP (meaning it barely
worked).
6. Nov. 2007: Moz Raises $1.1mm from Ignition &
Curious Office to Focus on Software
7 employees and
$80K in the bank!
Original Post Here
7. Oct. 2008: We Release Our First Link Index
The launch and ensuing
customer signups helped us
regain profitability
http://moz.com/blog/announcing-seomozs-index-of-the-web-and-the-launch-of-our-linkscape-tool
8. 2009, 2010, & 2011: We Try to Raise Money Three
More Times… All End in Failure
Email from an investor telling me not to worry, 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!
From our pitch deck to VCs in 2011:
http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/seom
oz-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. 2012-2013: Moz Grows a Lot
Details from our 2013 year in review blog post:
http://moz.com/blog/mozs-2013-year-in-review
13. Past 18 Months: We Hit Some Rough Patches
More about this: http://moz.com/rand/cant-sleep-caught-in-the-loop/
After 7 years of 100% YoY
growth, Moz grew ~50% in
2013 and >15% in 2014
14. Cause or Effect? Rand Suffers from Depression
http://moz.com/rand/long-ugly-year-depression-thats-finally-fading/
15. Jan. 2014: Rand Steps Down as CEO
http://moz.com/blog/final-post-as-ceo-sarah-bird-has-the-conn
16. Q1 2015: Growth Rate Turns a Corner
https://plus.google.com/u/1/+RandFishkin/posts/huXkGBpK9Rm
20. 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 =
22. Less Catchy, Better Advice:
Hire slow. If you have to fire, do it 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.
24. 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.
26. #5 Core Values Are Hard
(not having or living up to core values is harder)
27. 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 infuse our work with
respect for the emotions & experiences of others.
We strive to be the exception to the rule, and to take the path
less traveled.
28. 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’/ team’s
past/beliefs.
Real values are
disconnected from
opinions about what
will make the
business succeed.
29. 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
30. Core Values Are the Glue that Holds Vision, Strategy,
Team, & Everything Else Together.
http://moz.com/rand/vision-based-framework/
31. #6 Our Best Marketing Never Feels Like
Marketing
32. We Start Our Values & Our Mission
Empathy: feel the pain and struggles of our customers; make
things we ourselves need when doing SEO
Moz’s Mission: help people do better marketing
50. We compare ourselves and our success to outliers rather than norms, and
this brings great unhappiness.
We Imagine Entrepreneurship Looks Like This:
51. In Reality, It Looks More Like This:
Geraldine’s Travel Blog: http://everywhereist.com
53. In Reality, It Looks More Like This:
For 2 years, she never broke 100 visits/day.
54. In Reality, It Looks More Like This:
This is where most people give up.
55. In Reality, It Looks More Like This:
These days, she gets 100,000+ visits each month
56. 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:
57. The Price of Success is
Failure after Failure after
Failure*
* Hopefully, each of those failures provides an opportunity to learn.
58. 1) Moz is by no means perfect.
Critical Caveats:
2) Getting this stuff right in no guarantee of success.
3) These lessons may not apply to every company. I share
them only in the hopes that you won’t have to learn them
with the same pain we did.