Rand Fishkin

Founder/Wizard of Moz

SparkToro

I co-founded SparkToro (with Casey Henry) to enable high quality audience research for marketers, PR folks, entrepreneurs, and product builders without the need for expensive, time-consuming, inaccurate surveys or impossible-to-scale manual research.

Cofounder & CEO

Snackbar Studio

This is my first foray into the world of video games, and consumer software, but I'm surrounded by an incredible, experienced founding team that I'm honored to work alongside. Our first title, The Snackbar At the End of the World, should be announced in 2024, likely releasing in 2026. Stay tuned for more :-)

After promoting COO, Sarah Bird, to the CEO role, I served as an individual contributor at Moz focused on marketing & product, both internally at the company and externally to our customers and community.

I started SEOmoz as a blog that turned into a consulting company, then a software business. In 2007, I raised funding and formally became CEO, holding that position until 2014, when I stepped down and promoted my COO to the role. I remained at the business as an individual contributor until Feb. 2018. I remain the chair of Moz's board of directors, a large shareholder, and supporter of the company.

CEO & Founder

Inbound.org

Dharmesh Shah and I co-founded Inbound.org in 2011 as a place for marketers to share their knowledge, discussions, and content of value. I sold my share to Hubspot (for no profit) in 2014, but continue to help the site and the community as an informal contributor.

Cofounder

SEOmoz

I'm responsible for the vision, executive team leadership and global evangelism of SEOmoz's software platform.

Founder

Outlines NorthWest

I managed the web design, development & marketing for all of Outlines' clients, including several overseas accounts in sectors such as communications, telecom, healthcare, software and financial services.

Consultant

SparkToro CEO. Author of Lost & Founder. Feminist. I love underdogs, cooking, & helping people do better marketing

In 2018, I started SparkToro, software that makes audience research accessible to everyone. I'm also cofounder of indie game maker, Snackbar Studio, author of Lost and Founder: (2018), prev founded & led Moz (2001-17) and am a frequent keynote speaker on marketing and entrepreneurship. But, I'm probably best known as the amateur chef husband of renowned author, Geraldine DeRuiter.

For the last 4 years, Harvard Business School has run a class analyzing my old company's 2016 challenges, options, and decisions prior to a painful round of layoffs. As part of these, they also analyze the leader/founder's strengths & weaknesses and vote on whether they'd want to work for that person. They did the class again this morning... Results:

Rand's Weaknesses:
 A) Combative communication style (specifically with my old board of directors around the 2016 layoffs, & arguing for more severance)
 B) An antagonistic perspective
 C) Lack of technical skills and missing a technical cofounder
 D) A "small ball" mindset and preference for being a tortoise > hare
 E) Good entrepreneur, but not good enough for the job
 F) Poor operations governance

Rand's Strengths:
 A) Early stage growth execution
 B) Values & mission

The last 2 years, the students voted mostly in favor of "yes, I'd want to work for this person," but this year (and the 1st year), "no, I wouldn't want to work for him," was the majority. Always fascinating to join and learn from the class' perspectives (and, hopefully, have the humility to learn from the student assessments).

Two things about #personas and how marketers tend to build them:

1) I think individual, made-up personas of "Marty the Map Enthusiast" or "Rena the Real Estate Agent" are generally worse than useless. What you really want is verifiable, actionable data, at scale, about hundreds or thousands of people who match your ideal customer profiles.

2) We gotta stop using LLMs/AI for this. ChatGPT can certainly describe a stereotype of a buyer, but that's all it is: a stereotype. Reducing people to the words most likely to come after other words is a foolish way to get a competitive advantage in what you create, how your position it, or how you market to them.

Real data from real people is the only way. Surveys & interviews can do that, or... 👇

NEW: https://lnkd.in/gizChRR5 V2 of SparkToro is here. It no longer relies on Twitter (go suck on a lemon, Elmo 😎). And it's better than ever.

If you want a free report, from a brand new tool, showing you exactly:
 - Who visits your website (demographically)
 - What they search for
 - Which other sites they frequent
 - Which social networks they use (and don't)
 - Which accounts, podcasts, YouTube channels, & SubReddits they follow

V2 can do all of that. In seconds. For nearly any well-trafficked (English-language) website. It can also do the same thing for almost any Google search keyword. Don't take my word for it; give it a spin. We'd love to hear what you find valuable and what you want to see next.

p.s. A huge congrats to my cofounder Casey Henry whose past year building this product has been a Herculean effort with (IMO) outstanding results, and to Amanda Natividad, whose tireless support and camaraderie made every part of the journey better.

"Can't #AI do that for us?"

Look. I think LLMs have a ton of great use-cases. But they're also being broadly applied to solve problems and answer questions they have no business in. Came across a perfect example today that highlights how traditional data collection and reporting techniques compare to AI answers.

Feel free to use it next time your boss/client/team tries to answer behavioral market questions with the output from LLMs (something I've, tragically, seen some of y'all recommending in my LinkedIn feed 😡).

I've heard this quote dozens of times over the 15 years I spent in VC-world:

"The best venture investors want their CEOs focused on growing the business, not worrying about making their rent."

OK... But why does that only apply to CEOs? Why should anyone in a company with millions of dollars of backing and expectations to become an industry juggernaut worth hundreds of millions be struggling with personal expenses? If the logic of "don't-worry-about-life" pay applies to CEOs, surely it applies to anyone whose labor is important to the startup's success?

I'd argue that CEOs optimizing for the best possible outcomes should make sure no one in their organization is underearning their expenses.

p.s. On Tuesday at #Microconf in Atlanta, I'm talking to a few hundred startup CEOs about the 7 Deadly Myths of VC, and alternative ways to fund, build, and grow successful startups. This slide is part of that deck, which Rob Walling and co. may make available afterward 😉

Sometimes, your audience and customers are smarter than you are. This is one of the best reasons to pay attention to what people say about your brand online; not for reputation management, but for product and customer insight.

Case in point: Kerry Campion 💾 of (possibly my favorite name for a copywriting agency yet) God Save the SERP 👇👇👇

Tomorrow morning at 11am Pacific:
 → Who sends traffic to the open web? Anyone besides Google?
 → How much? Where does it go?
 → What's changing? Is TikTok & OpenAI rising or falling? Reddit? Twitter?
 → How does traffic received compare to referrals sent?
 → What does all this mean for marketers?
 → How can we possibly know data like this? (hint: clickstream panels - we'll dive into what those are, how they work, & how you can use 'em, too)

It's a can't-miss episode of #SparkToroHours with myself, Amanda Natividad, and Eli Goodman of Datos Inc. Registration details 👇👇👇

Gonna take you behind the scenes into a feature that only me, Casey Henry, and Amanda Natividad have access to.. because I really need your help 🤔 

1) What should we call this new, search-chip-aggregation data section/feature?
2) What other data could/should we collect and include from the aggregation of these results that audiences search for?
3) Are URLs also valuable to you? How would you use them and what for?

"I want to research 30-something professional women in the US."

Bad news. Technically, you can't do this directly in SparkToro. But, if you're willing to get creative, you can get back into it (and this type of words-in-bio based searching enables a lot of clever queries) 👇👇👇

April 16th, I'm co-presenting a webinar with Eli Goodman, founder of Datos Inc, because as an industry, we **underappreciate and underinvest** in clickstream data.

Seriously.

I've used clickstream panels to prove how serious Google's zero-click search problem has grown, to show which social platforms are growing and shrinking, to show who still sends traffic on the web and how much, and plenty more. That data isn't just valuable for big research projects; it can tell you incredible things about your competitors, your market sector, and your audience.

So, please, join us on April 16 at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern for Office Hours: https://lnkd.in/gQEF3GZm I promise it'll be an invaluable use of your time.

Rand Fishkin very bold claim and I'd take that bet any day. 

AI isn't coming for your jobs is an extremely bold statement that I believe misses the mark. 

While there is a kernel of truth that new technologies often create new jobs over time, I strongly disagree with Rand's prediction that AI will displace less than 10% of information economy jobs and 5% of marketing roles over the next 5 years.

The data simply doesn't support such an optimistic outlook. According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum, AI is projected to displace 85 million jobs across multiple industries by 2025. You can easily do a Google search for “Job loss due to ai” on Google and see results like:

“Since last May, there have been more than 4,600 job cuts in order to free up resources to hire people with AI experience or because the technology replaced tasks, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.” <- This is only one claim.

You can also look at the trend in tech lay-offs with a refocus on resources towards AI advancements.

Or ground floor examples from Reddit: 
https://lnkd.in/eKbyPTAa

Rand points to historical examples like word processors and Photoshop as evidence, but I think that undermines just how fundamentally different and powerful modern AI is as an automation technology. It's akin to comparing the transition from printing presses to xerox photocopiers - a step-change that eliminates huge swaths of manual labor. 

The raw capability gains we've witnessed in just the last year between GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and models like Claude are staggering.

This pace of advancement shows no signs of slowing, and will likely only accelerate with the intense investment and competition in AI currently underway. 

While new AI-related jobs will certainly emerge, it's naive to think they will fully offset the losses from automation of existing roles.

Potential AI regulation is certainly a wild card, but I'm skeptical it will be a saving grace for displaced workers. 

Social media regulation has lagged far behind its societal impact - what makes us think AI will be different, especially in countries like the US? Regulation could actually spur further automation as companies look to remain competitive.

While I respect Rand's perspective, I don't find it grounded in the current evidence we're already seeing play out across the information economy.

Our historical models failed to account for the quintessential automation force that is modern AI. 

We're not even talking AI + Robotics here.

I'm extremely confident we'll exceed his projected 10% and 5% displacement figures for these sectors within his 5-year timeframe. I'd be happy to take the other side of his proposed $5,000 charity bet.

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