Rand Fishkin | Founder &
CEO 7 Lessons that Would Have Made Me (and will make you) a Better Entrepreneur

A) This is Rand’s personal
experience. Disagreement welcome. Caveats

B) The following is intended
to apply to early stage companies (0-200 employees, $0- $50M in revenue) Caveats

C) These are merely patterns.
Counter- examples of successful companies doing the opposite of all these exist. Caveats

D) I do not define
success as $billion+ outcome. Success to me is building a business that survives, that you love, that you’re proud to work at. Caveats

The Environment We’re In Shapes
Our Thinking.

One Thing > Many Things
#1

Becoming Well-Known is a Cheat
Code For both individuals and brands

And It’s Far Easier to
Be Known For One Thing

Known People & Brands: #1:
Have an easier time attracting attention & press #2: Earn links, rankings, & traffic organically with far less effort #3: Have lower ad costs & higher clickthrough rates #4: Every visit is more valuable b/c of higher conversion rates #5: Benefit from a powerful network & low friction, high response outreach efforts

What Do These Brands Do/Make?

How About These?

How About These? All of
them started by doing one thing well!

Simpler Products = Easier to
Market High Med Low ImpossibleDifficultEasy Tricky ProductComplexity Ease of Building BrandAssociations

My Worst Mistake at Moz?

Moz’s Most Successful Products Simple
Obvious Does One Thing Well

Quality & Complexity Are Inversely
Correlated in Early Stages High Med Low TortuousConvolutedSimple Tricky ProductComplexity Ease of Producing a High Quality Product

Story > Tactics
#2

For a Long Time, I
Believed the Classic Advice Big Markets > Small Markets Execution > Ideas Low CAC + High CLTV > Products People Love Better Product > Better Marketing These aren’t all wrong, they’re just not the whole story

Imagine If… Better Taxis! (*please
ignore the ugly externalities & rampant sexism)

Slimfast for techbros!

Regus, but with a hipster
aesthetic!

Product reviews with affiliate links!

A Great Story Covers Many
Sins

Stories Build Memories Far Better
Than Features or Benefits Via Quartz

Great Stories Make Great Startups
Settings & Characters Climax New Normal

Before, Things Were Like This
Our Company is the Solution Here’s How Most startups exist BECAUSE of a story

Features. Meh.
Via UTires

Benefits > Features. Meh. Via
AdsOfTheWorld

Emotions > Benefits > Features
Via Ohio.com

Before, Things Were Like This
Here’s How The problem triggers a negative emotion The resolution triggers a positive emotion Our Company is the Solution

To Craft Your Story: Start
with the most emotionally resonant problem you solve Center the story on individuals, not groups Tell the story in a way that triggers your own emotions Practice the story over and over, with different variations, learning which styles and bits resonate most

Audience That Cares > Big
Market #3

Relative Difficulty Level: Insane Build
for an audience that you don’t have any connection to (other than a belief that they have $$ and a problem) Chase a market that’s big enough to have billion $+ outcomes by pursuing broad, mainstream appeal Serve a hot, growing market that dozens or hundreds of other well- funded companies are also pursuing

Relative Difficulty Level: Low Build
for people who already know, like, and trust you Earn amplification from a group of passionate, raving fans Serve a market that’s underserved because others don’t believe it’s “big enough” Avoid competing against firms with millions in funding

easier to reach harder to
reach Know you personally (& would happily meet for coffee) Know of you, like you, & follow your work closely Are already connected to you via email Already follow you on social media channels Have visited your website at least once Have heard of your company (and can recall it) Are in your target audience/reachable via FB+GG ads

Mark didn’t start Facebook with…
Oh dang… He totally did.

Dharmesh & Brian Didn’t Start
Hubspot with… Oh dang… They totally did.

Brian & Joe didn’t start
AirBnB with… Oh dang… They totally did.

Jeremy didn’t start Yelp with…
Oh dang… He totally did.

easier to reach harder to
reach Know you personally (& would happily meet for coffee) Know of you, like you, & follow your work closely Are already connected to you via email Already follow you on social media channels Have visited your website at least once Have heard of your company (and can recall it) Are in your target audience/reachable via FB+GG ads Pro Tip: Having a lot of target customers in your personal network makes EVERYTHING about starting up easier.

MVPs ≠ Launchable Products
#4

The MVP
Via Varteq

The Problem A lot of
people who want this are gonna be very disappointed by these

An Alternative Impressive Basic Pathetic
MassiveDecentHarmful Minimal ProductQuality Attention & Evangelism Incredible Many products launch here If you have an audience, wait until you’re here

Beta test MVPs w/ a
small, private group; Launch EVPs when your testers are raving Don’t let your brand be associated with these

Long Hours < Fewer, Higher
Quality Hours #5

Glorifying Hours Worked is Just
Dumb “Be extremely tenacious and then just work like hell. You just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.” “If other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing … you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.” -Elon Musk Via Vator.tv

Productivity Over Time 40 30
20 0-20 QuantityofOutput PerHourWorked Number of Hours Worked/Week 50 10 0 21-35 36-50 51-60 61-80 81+ The first ~35hrs we work each week tend to be the most productive After 60+hrs, we’re not just getting less (& lower quality) work done, we’re eating into next’ week’s potential productivity

Via Harvard Business Review What
the @#$%?!!!

Founders’ Most Important Job #1:
Make good decisions #2: Everything else

Via PubMed Central <8 Hours
Seriously Harms the Quality of Your Decisions

Hiring Right People < Not
Hiring Wrong People #6

People Often Rapidly Improve Knowledge,
Output, & Work Quality Strong Rand’sSEOSkills& Knowledge Top Notch Crap 2002 Decent 2004 2006 2008 2010 Mediocre

People Rarely Improve Affinity for
a New Set of Values, Beliefs, & Culture Strong Rand’sCulturalFitforLater- Stage,LargerCompanies Top Notch Crap 2002 Decent 2004 2006 2008 2010 Mediocre

Hire for Culture. Train for
Competence. Via Lost and Founder (img credit: Dawn Shepard)

Via NYTimes & Google (2016)

Via First Round Capital

Tiny Odds of Becoming a
Unicorn < Decent Odds of Being a Zebra #7

The Odds of Being a
“Success” Drop Massively the Day You Raise VC Via Gil Ben-Artzy

Bootstrap vs. VC is a
False Dichotomy Via Twitter

All of these are on
the table: Self fund Bootstrap Revenue loans Smallbiz loans Friends &family Angel $ Conv. debt Crowd- funding VentureAccel- erators Exit Requirements 5+ Year Survival Rate 10X+$$$ orbust 5%+YoYis totallycool <10%50%+

All of these are on
the table: Self fund Bootstrap Revenue loans Smallbiz loans Friends &family Angel $ Conv. debt Crowd- funding VentureAccel- erators We need to stop worshipping & amplifying only these And start telling stories, and elevating all the rest of these

Entrepreneurs can build Zebras, Unicorns,
or anything in between! Via Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break

You Don’t Have to Follow
Anyone Else’s Path Ask Yourself: What do I want to create? What am I seeking professionally? What level of risk is acceptable? What level of reward is enough? Why that? Is it for me? Or someone else?

Rand Fishkin | Founder &
CEO Thank You!