In 1997 I was just graduating from high school and started to design small business websites using Microsoft Frontpage and a variety of amateurish HTML hacks. In 2001, I dropped out of college, two classes away from graduating to work full time at a tiny web consulting business with my Mom. That didn’t go very…
Sometimes VC Just Ain’t Enough
We’ve gotten a lot of interest from venture capital, private equity and other types of investment firms lately at Moz. Nearly every week features a phone call or two to answer some of that inbound interest. I suspect it’s due to multiple factors, but the current, hot investment environment and upward slope of the search marketing…
The Dangerous Hubris of the Startup World
Students of history will almost certainly be familiar with the 7 Deadly Sins – the list of human vices that are, purportedly, the source for much of humanity’s evil. Of these, one in particular stands out: In almost every list Pride, or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source…
Why I’m a Conference Whore
Mark Suster, whose blog and tweets I enjoy and whose investments strike me as innovative and smart wrote a blog post in October, Be Careful Not to Become a Conference Ho, that’s been grating on me. The central tenet seems wrong, or at the least, myopic. via XKCD Granted, the Internet is filled with content…
“You Can’t Do It” is Powerful Motivation
From age 20-26, I was, quite possibly, the world’s worst entrepreneur. I dropped out of college two classes away from graduating. In a typically low financial risk business – consulting – I managed to rack up hundreds of thousands in debt building, well, nothing. Wracked by credit card and equipment loan debt I had no…
“You Can’t Do It” is Powerful Motivation
From age 20-26, I was, quite possibly, the world’s worst entrepreneur. I dropped out of college two classes away from graduating. In a typically low financial risk business – consulting – I managed to rack up hundreds of thousands in debt building, well, nothing. Wracked by credit card and equipment loan debt I had no…
The Algorithm + the Crowd are Not Enough
In the last decade, the online world has been ruled by two, twin forces: The Crowd and The Algorithm. The collective “users” of the Internet (The Crowd) create, click, and rate, while mathematical equations add scalability and findability to these overwhelming quantities of data (The Algorithm). Like the moon over the ocean, the pull of…
A Cautionary Tale from the Startup World
A few years back, several close friends of mine worked for a remarkable startup. Their trajectory was incredible, growing from $0-$75+ million dollars in their first 4 years and becoming a recognized brand name in the process. At its height, the company employed more than 130 people and their products reached customers in dozens of…
What I Learned About Sales But Foolishly Forgot When Raising VC
I hate selling – both the players and the game. But, for the first 6 years of my career, I ran a consulting company. That meant making sales or going home hungry. I did plenty of the latter before I found a tolerable way to do the former. Early on in our consulting business, we found…
“You Earned that Bump Like a MotherF—er”
I’m not partial to expletives in my writing, but I’m making an exception with the embedded video below, which you should watch before reading the rest of the post (don’t worry, it’s enjoyable as well as instructive):…