Fishkin: SparkToro generates under $2M ARR with three employees
Rand Fishkin · He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishki... · PMF Show · Apr 15, 2024 · at 25:10
Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro, describes the team size and financial profile of his post-venture company.
0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rand Fishkin
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 …”
Fishkin: VC incentive structures inherently harm most startups for a few winners
“Their incentive structure is such that you're going to by your very nature, right? By your, even your existence harm a lot of, Small and startup companies in exchange for a very small number of winners.”
Fishkin: Equating founder worth to raising VC and chasing unicorns is toxic
“Overall the last 25 years have definitely created an environment where Almost every founder feels like if I'm not raising lots of money and trying to become the billion dollar unicorn, then I am not as good of an entrepreneur. I'm not as impressive of a person…”
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…”
Fishkin: Building a $100M startup is less likely than winning the lottery
“Even a hundred million-dollar startup should feel ridiculous to most people, because the odds of that happening are so vanishingly slim, and it's weird to me that we all talk about this thing that's less likely than most lottery wins, so, you know, I don't tot…”