Rand Fishkin is the co-founder of SparkToro and previously built Moz to $50M ARR—before stepping away and rethinking everything about how he works, hires, and grows a company.

Today, SparkToro is a 3-person, profitable SaaS business doing $1.5M+ in revenue, and it’s intentionally calm: no cold calls, no demos, and no aggressive sales playbooks.

In this episode, Rand explains how to grow sustainably without chasing scale, how he leveraged brand to jumpstart SparkToro, and why product, not integrations, features, or funnels, is the real growth engine.

Topics we cover in this episode:

• Why SparkToro doesn’t offer demos and still grows fast

• How Rand built a waitlist of 14,000+ on day one

• The tradeoffs of calm growth: fewer integrations, higher churn

• How to design a business around what you’re good at

• What Rand would do differently if starting today

• Why founder-led marketing still works—and how to scale it

• Rand’s take on AI, competitive risk, and moving slowly on purpose

• Product-market fit is a journey, not a destination

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Connect with Rand:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/
SparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/
Rand’s book - Lost and Founder: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Rand-Fishkin/dp/0735213321
Snackbar Studio: https://snackbarstudio.com/

Connect with me:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/
Website: https://www.project33.io/
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH

Chapters:
00:00 Building Moz to $50M ARR → Starting Over at SparkToro
01:35 Founder strengths, weaknesses, and designing around them
04:10 Why Rand stopped taking sales calls (and what happened)
07:12 Hiring for cultural fit, not just talent
09:24 Intentional product limits—and accepting churn
12:30 The “rules for business life” Rand wrote before SparkToro
14:15 Why calm companies make better decisions
17:21 Product is 80%. Here’s what the rest looks like
19:37 Do you need a founder-led marketing motion?
22:20 Building brands without being the face
25:08 Launch strategy: how Rand got 14,000 waitlist signups
26:22 What changed after Rand’s Moz exit windfall
28:01 Is financial comfort a requirement for calm growth?
30:26 How Rand would grow SparkToro if he started at zero
31:27 The role of content, Reddit, YouTube, and cross-posting
34:36 Why Reddit is a B2B marketing cheat code
36:14 Should technical founders learn marketing, or just hire?
38:58 SparkToro vs. SnackBar: building in different industries

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