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Rand Fishkin

15 statements across 1 episodes · 7 bullish · 4 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Apr 15, 2024 by Rand Fishkin · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Rand Fishkin's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Everything said about Rand Fishkin, oldest first

Apr 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Fishkin: SparkToro pays $200K-$300K salaries with ~$1M net profit
“It's close. That's pretty, pretty close to accurate. Good good guessing there.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 28:26 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Fishkin: SparkToro broke even seven months after launch with 15k email list
“When we launched, we had maybe 15, 16,000 people on that list, possibly a little bit more, and we were profitable seven months after launch. So breakeven profitable, right?”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 38:25 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 negative
Insight
Fishkin: Finding product-market fit does not get easier for serial founders
“Improving along that spectrum I think is not made easier by doing it multiple times, and that's very frustrating.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 44:36 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 positive
Insight
Fishkin: Pre-launch audience building is key startup risk mitigation
“I think it is a huge risk mitigation tactic, right? Because the process in the process of doing that, you're going to do two things. One, you're going to mitigate the risk that at launch, nobody wants the thing you've built and that the cost of customer acquis…”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 39:17 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Fishkin: Wrote dozens of personal checks to underwater Moz employees
“And, you know, we ended up writing Dozens of personal checks to people who'd been screwed at the company.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 22:02 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 negative
Opinion
Fishkin: Exited founders who don't compensate employees are bad people
“I think any founder who does well out of their business should make sure that all of their employees are taken care of. And if I can shame you into feeling terrible about taking your ten million dollars and being like, well, it's all mine. Like, yeah, legally …”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 22:09 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 bullish
Assertion Supported
Fishkin: Ahrefs is bootstrapped and generates over $100M in revenue
“Ahrefs is entirely bootstrapped, never Fundraise. They're well over a hundred million in revenue as well.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 29:16 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Fishkin: SparkToro capped founder salaries until returning $1.3M to investors
“There's, in the docs, there's a built-in thing, again, sort of protecting investors and also encouraging founders, which is that our salaries were capped to the Seattle software engineer average. Until we repaid our investors their 1.3 million, at which point …”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 38:40 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Fishkin: Retained roughly 17% to 18% equity when Moz exited
“So I think at the end of the company's life, I still own, you know, Geraldine and I had. 18% of the company, 17%, something like that, which is very, very high for effect for a founder, especially a founder is no longer at the business.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 20:26 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Fishkin: SparkToro generates under $2M ARR with three employees
“SparkToro has three people, myself, Casey, our CTO, and Amanda, our VP marketing. And, you know, it's small, it's under two million dollars ARR, but it's also very profitable, extremely profitable, very beautiful business.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 25:10 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024
Disclosure
Fishkin: SparkToro raised $1.3M from 35 angels and repaid them in full
“In 2018. We raised, we sparked Toro, right? Casey and I, with essentially an idea and a piece of paper, raised 1.3 million dollars from 35 angel investors. They put in between 25 and a 100,000 dollars each. Last year, we repaid them their 1.3 million dollars.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 33:15 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 negative
Insight
Fishkin: Being overruled while company performance drops is an emotional killer
“But the combination of that feeling not listened to and poor performance Oh, that is just, you know, emotional and psychological killer.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 17:41 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 neutral
What-if
Fishkin: Moz could have reached public company scale under better leadership
“If I had been more persuasive and a sort of better CEO and remain CEO and like done a great job, I think Moz could have been in a, in that position or a similar position, right?”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 15:57 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024
Insight
Fishkin: User behavior and brand dominate modern search ranking algorithms
“User behavior that went into it which now today dominates most algorithms, right? Brand dominates a lot of algorithms today.”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 8:12 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
Apr 15, 2024 negative
What-if
Fishkin: I would rather Moz failed completely than lose close relationships
“If we could go back in time, and Moz failed completely, like it just, you know, kind of went to zero, never sold, didn't come worth anything, but all those relationships were preserved. Like everybody had stayed on the same page, fighting the good fight togeth…”
Rand Fishkin Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 19:24 He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show
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