In this episode, Rob is joined by Rand Fishkin for an honest and transparent conversation about his time at Moz, raising funding, his book Lost and Founder, as well as his current effort, SparkToro. They discuss growth levers and the importance of owning the channel where you build your audience.
The topics we cover
[01:44] Impacts from writing a book
[08:41] Transitioning from Moz but continuing to work there
[15:53] Venture capital vs angel investing
[19:59] Launching SparkToro
[36:08] Raising capital for SparkToro
[44:14] Growth levers that are working today
Links from the show
- Lost & Founder
- Start Small, Stay Small
- Rand Fishkin’s Bio
- Sarah Bird
- Startups.com
- Zirtual
- Clarity — On Demand Business Advice
- SparkToro
- Spark Toro Terms
- Conversion Rate Experts
- Rand Fishkin (@randfish) | Twitter
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Wow!
I’m catching up on your podcasts. I’ve always admired Rand Fishkin. Hearing his disaffection with the VC model and all that it brings is really refreshing. I’m tired of what turns into a pump-and-dump dynamic of burning a runway, getting VC money then exiting. Him citing it has a tax dodge instituted from the Reagan era really nails what’s going on. Our start-up is small and bootstrapping (our F&F round got $10k). It’s given me food for thought about where we’re going and what the investment step looks like. We need some investment to steepen our growth curve, so investors are somewhere in our future, but maybe not in the traditional start-up way.