In his 2013 presentation, Rand Fishkin outlines Moz's core purpose, values, and strategic vision, emphasizing the importance of collective contributions to society beyond profit-making. He shares the company's mission to improve marketing practices, strategic initiatives for customer retention, profitability, and audience reach, alongside a big hairy audacious goal of achieving one million subscribers by 2018. Fishkin also discusses enhancing company culture and making Moz's core values actionable to better engage employees and customers alike.

1. A New Beginning
Rand Fishkin | Moz All Hands | June 2013

2. Topics:
1. Moz’s Core Purpose, Values, Strategic Vision, and BHAG
2. Our Key Initiatives for the next 12 months
3. Making TAGFEE Actionable
4. Q+A

3. Moz’s Core Purpose, Values,
Strategic Vision, and BHAG

4. Why Does a Company Exist?
“Many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply
to make money. While this is an important result of a
company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the
real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we
inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people
get together and exist as an institution that we call a
company so they are able to accomplish something
collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they
make a contribution to society."
- David Packard

5. Vision-Based Framework

6. Defining Core Purpose
Purpose (which should last at least 100 years) should not be
confused with specific goals or business strategies (which
should change many times in 100 years). Whereas you might
achieve a goal or complete a strategy, you cannot fulfill a
purpose; it is like a guiding star on the horizon -- forever
pursued but never reached. Yet although purpose itself does
not change, it does inspire change. The very fact that purpose
can never be fully realized means that an organization can
never stop stimulating change and progress.
- Jim Collins

7. Our Core Purpose (aka “Mission”)
Moz's mission is to help people
do better marketing.

8. Defining Core Values
Core values are the essential and enduring tenets of an
organization. A small set of timeless guiding principles, core
values require no external justification; they have intrinsic
value and importance to those inside the organization…
Ralph S. Larsen, CEO of Johnson & Johnson, puts it this way:
"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 in certain situations.“
- Jim Collins

9. Our Core Values
Transparent
Authentic
Generous
Fun
Empathetic
Exceptional

10. Defining Strategic Vision
Strategy takes what you want to achieve and develops a plan
to get there. From strategy you can develop tactics and
implement them. For me, strategy is as much about what you
are not going to do as what you are going to do.
Strategy is important because the resources available to
achieve your goals are limited.
- Fred Wilson

11. We Believe (and have evidence) that Marketing
Spend & Effort Will Shift from the Red to the Blue

12. Our Strategic Vision
Power the shift from interruption to
inbound marketing by giving every
marketer affordable software to
measure and improve their efforts.

13. Moz Analytics,
Local, and Alerts
are all designed to
help marketers here

14. In the future, we
might help marketers
in these areas, too.

15. Defining a BHAG
To build a visionary company, you need to counterbalance its
fixed core ideology with a relentless drive for progress.
One way to bring that drive for progress to life is
through BHAGs (short for Big Hairy Audacious Goals). With his
very first dime store in 1945, Sam Walton set the BHAG to
“make my little Newport store the best, most profitable in
Arkansas within five years.” As the company grew, Walton
set BHAG after BHAG, including the still-in-place goal to
become a $125-billion company by the year 2000. The point is
not to find the “right” BHAGs but to create BHAGs so clear,
compelling, and imaginative that they fuel progress.
- Jim Collins

16. NASA’s 1960s BHAG
To put a man on the surface of the
Moon, and return him safely to the Earth.

17. Our BHAG
One million people paying to use
Moz’s products by May 29th, 2018

18. 2007-2013:
21,616 Subscribers,
2.16% of our goal.

19. 2013-2018:
97.84% to go

20. Moz’s Strategy Over the Next
12 Months

21. Our 5 Major Strategic Initiatives
1. Increase customer retention in every cohort
2. Return to profitability
3. Reach a broader marketing audience with our
products, content, and brand
4. <redacted>
5. Improve Moz’s company culture

22. #1) Increase Customer Retention
We believe it is achievable to cut each of these
numbers in half in the next 12 months.

23. Why Greater Retention?
Low retention (high churn) is an indication that our
software isn’t critical or valuable enough to the
customers trying our product. High retention (low churn),
indicates we’re building something our audience needs,
uses, and loves. That’s one of the key reasons we’re here!
Higher retention enables
us to grow and improve
profitability much faster.
High retention improves the
valuation of our business in
a sale or IPO scenario.

24. How Do We Improve Retention?
Improve our in-app, email,
and upfront product
marketing to create better
awareness & usage.
Launch email alerts for Fresh
Web Explorer to help better
show the value of the data.
Launch Moz Analytics, continue to
upgrade features and improve
based on customer feedback.
Start our customer mentor program
to engage 1:1 w/ our subscribers,
help them learn our product, and
incorporate their feedback.
Build & launch Moz Academy to
educate customers through video.
Improve nav, design, user
assistance and UX across
our sites to make products
more usable.Make Mozscape the web’s best link
index, surpassing our competitors on
the key metrics of size, freshness,
accuracy, and correlations.
Ensure great uptime &
reliable access to data

25. #2) Return to Profitability
We made a lot of big bets the last 12 months and spent a lot
of cash, too. We need to see them pay off before we can re-
invest in growth at the pace we want.

26. Why Profitability?
Reduces risk of more
extreme cost-cutting
measures in the future.
Lets us invest in new
opportunities through
cash flow growth
Means we don’t need to
raise any more capital or
take dilution
Removes the emotional
challenges of having a
limited runway

27. How Do We Get Profitable?
Increase the retention rates
of our Moz Analytics
subscribers.
Reduce contractor costs,
particularly in software dev
for Moz Analytics.
Launch Moz Analytics publicly and
re-open our free trial customer
acquisition funnel.
Move the vast majority of our data
and software off of AWS and onto
our private clouds in TX/VA/WA.
Grow subscription revenue by
improving our marketing funnel from
top to bottom (visits, CRO, etc).
Grow our API revenue by
fixing billing errors and
improving data quality.

28. #3) Reach a Broader Audience

29. #3) Reach a Broader Audience
22 million local businesses in the US
70% say they use Facebook to market
1mm have claimed Yelp profiles
Sources: Merchant Circle, Quora, Yelp,
SELand, Bloomberg, Facebook
80mm worldwide claimed G+ listings
100mm worldwide in Apple Maps
11mm businesses have Facebook pgs

30. We Will Do This w/ New Products
Moz Local
$TBD/month
Serves small biz owners
and marketers focused
on local listings
Moz Alerts
$TBD/month
Serves entrepreneurs,
PR folks, investors, and
marketers of all stripes
Moz Analytics
$99/month
Serves professional
web marketers focused
on inbound channels
Moz Data
$Variable
Serves software devs &
enterprises who need
link & mention APIs

31. And Through Our Content/Marketing/Brand
We have many guides similar to the Beginner’s Guide to SEO
planned over the next 6 months. Social’s up first!

32. Why a Broader Audience?
Leverages existing data sources &
talent to create more value for
communities we already reach and
for future customers we want to help,
too.
Gives us a greater long term
opportunity to achieve the
growth we (and our investors)
want.
Reduces reliance and risk on a single
product, and creates revenue &
customer diversity (valuable to
investors/market)
We need to convert a smaller
percentage of a larger
audience, and we can start to
tap into early adopters in
more fields.
A broader audience will help
give us feedback and ideas
not present in the SEO world.
If we want to grow, we need to
reach a wider audience with our
content and marketing efforts.

33. How Do We Launch Local & Alerts,
and Broaden Our Content/Brand?
Alerts will use the
technology we’ve built
for Fresh Web Explorer.
Adventure Teams! Local already
has a team and Alerts will get one
after Moz Analytics is publicly ready.
Local will use the GetListed
backbone, email lists, and
marketing platform to get
early traction.
Publishing, e.g. our new Inbound
Marketing book and a marketing
book by Rand coming in 2014
Blog posts,
videos, social
sharing, and
community
Big content pieces like
guides, ranking factors,
studies, and surveys
Participation at conferences
and events in broader
marketing fields, about
broader topics
Creating relationships in a wider array of
marketing venues on and off the web through
business development and partnerships
Moz “CV”
project to build
a “Dribbble”
for marketers

34. #4) Redacted. Sorry!

35. #5) Improve Culture

36. What Does Culture Do For Us?
Makes our professional
lives more enjoyable,
and helps us get
through tough times
and frustrating work
Keeps us accountable
to TAGFEE and to our
mission/vision
Helps us attract,
motivate, and retain
the best & brightest
people; our most
important resource
Provides a consistent
framework for how we
work together that we
can all believe in

37. How Can We Improve?
Eliminate negativity while
supporting and acting on
constructive criticism
Improve our communication
styles, channels, and
processes
Be more empathetic to one another
by experiencing each other’s
perspectives and challenges
Create more consistency and
transparency across teams and
processes
Return to a less stressful, more
stable/sustainable, high growth
environment
Hire a VP of People to help
take on ownership, strategy,
and execution of these
endeavors

38. Everything we work on must be:
1) Mapped to one or more of these initiatives
2) Measurable with numbers that are made
transparent to everyone at the company
3) Prioritized against other things that can
move the needle on our initiatives

39. e.g. Make Mozscape the Best
Happier customers, because our
data maps to what they see from
their analytics, Google, and our
competitors
Make Mozscape the web’s best link
index, surpassing our competitors on
the key metrics of size, freshness,
accuracy, and correlations.
More loyalty and
evangelism from expert
OSE/Mozscape users
Directly makes other products (FWE/Moz Analytics)
better and more useful

40. e.g. Make Mozscape the Best
Comparison via AnalyticsSEO
Some numbers we can use to measure, report progress, and define goals

41. e.g. Make Mozscape the Best
Big data team could instead work on:
Google Analytics
alternative
Link analysis/building-
focused features inside
OSE/Moz Analytics
Traffic estimation
project
Keyword research
alternatives

42. e.g. Make Mozscape the Best
Big data team could instead work on:
Google Analytics
alternative
Link analysis/building-
focused features inside
OSE/Moz Analytics
Traffic estimation
project
Keyword research
alternatives
None of these feel as high priority or directly
impactful to our current strategic initiatives

43. Making TAGFEE More
Actionable & Accountable

44. TAGFEE Can Seem Nebulous
This project should be more
Transparent.

45. TAGFEE Can Seem Nebulous
This feature isn’t exceptional.

46. TAGFEE Can Seem Nebulous
Trying to ship Moz Analytics is not fun.

47. Balancing TAGFEE Can Be Hard
I don’t like talking to you while I’m
eating lunch.
TA but not GFEE

48. Balancing TAGFEE Can Be Hard
Sure <chew><chew>, let’s chat.
G but not TAFEE

49. Balancing TAGFEE Can Be Hard
How do we talk about what went
wrong with Moz Analytics?
A retrospective might help, but it will take a lot of
careful balance between transparency & empathy.

50. All of Us Get TAGFEE Wrong Sometimes
Are Sarah and Rand really firing each
other if we don’t launch Moz by June 1?
We were using “firing each other” as a
forcing function, but it was probably in
poor taste and not TAGFEE.

51. We Don’t Need to Change TAGFEE

52. We Do Need to Apply TAGFEE In More Places
Teams (Functional & Adventure)
Meetings (all kinds)
Bi-annual Performance Reviews
Weekly 1:1s w/ Managers
Product Design & Development
Website UX
Marketing Efforts
How We Interact With Each Other

53. We Need to Make It Actionable
In situation A do X and Y to make A more TAGFEE

54. e.g.
After a 1:1
where a
manager
has given
critical
feedback to
a direct
report
follow up
via email
with that
person
to help make
the process
better
documented,
more
transparent,
and to be
empathetic
to folks who
may not
have
perfect
memories

55. We Need to Have Answers to Tough Questions
How can we be inclusive while staying agile? Which is more
important, or does it vary based on what’s being done?
How do we prioritize TAGFEE? What if being TAGFEE to one
person is non-TAGFEE to a team or to customers?
How can I better understand a project that I’m worried
about without bothering/derailing the people working on it
How can we give critical feedback that is still empathetic?
When does it make sense to define a process vs. just doing
something fast? When is it right to break an existing process?

56. We Need to Give It Some Process
These are Amazon’s
core values made
actionable (and
probably a bit
scrubbed for public
consumption). We
need to do some of
this at Moz.

57. And We Need to Make Ourselves Accountable
How do we measure if feed
authority is sufficiently transparent? How do we measure
how generous FWE is
or isn’t?
How do we improve
if we didn’t build it
right the first time?
How do we know if the product
design process was empathetic?

58. We Will Make TAGFEE Better Together
As I noted in my Top 5, I’ll be
working with some folks internally
to brainstorm the right questions
and answers over several working
sessions. If you’re passionate
about this, please email
nicci@moz.com and join in.

59. Rand Fishkin | Moz All Hands | June 2013