LOST AND FOUNDER

Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of Moz, reveals how traditional Silicon Valley "wisdom" leads far too many startups astray, with the transparency and humor that his hundreds of thousands of blog readers have come to love.

Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: A young, brilliant entrepreneur has a cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions, and becomes the envy of the technology world.
This is not that story.

It's not that things went badly for Rand Fishkin; they just weren't quite so Zuckerberg-esque. His company, Moz, makers of marketing software, is now a $45 million-per-year business, and he's one of the world's leading experts on search engine optimization (SEO). But his business and reputation took fifteen years to grow, and his startup began not in a Harvard dorm room but as a mother-and-son family business that fell deeply into debt.

In LOST AND FOUNDER, Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life that most CEOs would rather keep secret. For instance: A minimally viable product can be destructive if you launch at the wrong moment. Growth hacking may be the buzzword du jour, but initiatives can fizzle quickly. Revenue and growth won't protect you from layoffs. And venture capital always comes with strings attached.

Fishkin's hard-won lessons are applicable to any kind of business environment. Up or down the chain of command, at both early stage startups and mature companies, whether your trajectory is riding high or down in the dumps, this book can help solve your problems and make you feel less alone for having them.

AUTHOR PLATFORM: Rand Fishkin has a huge following for his writing and videos online. His weekly marketing web-series Whiteboard Friday reaches 12,000 to 15,000 views per episode (and sometimes up to 50,000), and his blog posts reach tens of thousands of readers each week. He also has over 390,000 followers on Twitter.

APPEAL OUTSIDE SILICON VALLEY: Moz started as a family business with no venture capital or Ivy League connections. Fishkin's journey from outsider to tech guru will appeal to those who feel excluded from the current idea of what tech startups should be.

FREQUENT SPEAKER: Fishkin is one of the world's foremost authorities on SEO and is invited to keynote 2-3 events per month.

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder and former CEO of Moz, host of Whiteboard Friday, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, and co-founder of Inbound.org. This is his first book for a trade audience.